Chapter Eight – Altair
Chapter Eight
Altair
I step out of the bath, water dripping from my body. I reach for a towel and wrap it around my waist. My hands shake. I can’t stop replaying what just happened.
The way Tressa looked at me when she pulled down my trousers, the gasp that escaped her lips, how she fell backward and couldn’t look away from my two cocks standing hard and flushed for her.
I honestly didn’t expect her to agree to help me undress tonight. Not after she refused for an entire month. I don’t understand why she changed her mind or what shifted in her.
I feel awful because I didn’t stop her when I should have. I shouldn’t have forced her to see me naked, especially knowing the effect she has on me.
Every time Tressa is around, I go hard for her. It doesn’t help that since she’s moved in, I haven’t touched myself or given myself any relief. I want to punish myself for what I’m doing to her.
Earlier, when she washed my back, when her fingers brushed my skin and her breath warmed my neck, I nearly lost control. I moaned like some pathetic creature.
I walk to the bookshelf in my sitting room and pull out the leather-bound book from the middle shelf. I step inside the cramped room.
I light the candles on the low table against the wall, and the flames cast flickering shadows across the mirror above it.
The room is barely larger than a closet, with stone walls and no windows.
The table is my altar. One small painting rests among the candles, but I look away from it.
After what happened tonight between Tressa and me, I simply cannot look at it.
A leather whip hangs from a nail hammered into the wall, the leather soft and well-worn from repeated use.
My fingers close around the handle, and I drop to my knees on the cold floor.
I position myself in front of the mirror, so I can watch.
This is the whole point. I must witness my own punishment.
I cannot hide from what I’m doing to myself.
I raise the whip and bring it down hard across my back. The leather cracks against my skin, and I grit my teeth at the sharp, bright pain.
“One,” I count.
I raise the whip again and strike myself harder.
“Two.”
Again, and again.
“Five, six, seven, eight.”
I feel warm blood slipping down my back in thin rivulets. The pain is sharp and burning, radiating across my entire spine.
“Twelve, thirteen, fourteen.”
My arm trembles, but I continue, blood running down to pool at the small of my back and drip onto the stone floor.
“Eighteen, nineteen, twenty.”
On the twentieth strike, my arm gives out, and the whip falls from my hand. I brace myself on the ground with both palms, head hanging low as wet, blond hair falls into my eyes. I pant heavily.
I stay on my hands and knees for several minutes, catching my breath. Then I feel the familiar tingling sensation of my wounds beginning to heal. The torn flesh starts knitting itself back together, and the bleeding slows as a maddening itch spreads across my back.
For the thousandth time, I curse my own nature. Every time I punish myself, the wounds don’t last.
I’m frustrated like never before, fury rising in my chest at my body’s betrayal. I can never carry the permanent scars I deserve.
I jump to my feet and rush out of the hidden room without bothering to close it properly. Blood still drips from my healing wounds as I cross my sitting room and throw open the doors to my balcony, the cool night air hitting my sweating, bloodied skin.
I rip the towel from my waist and throw it aside, standing completely naked on the balcony, exposed to the night.
Even now, even after the whipping, my two cocks are still hard.
It doesn’t matter what I do to myself, or that Tressa isn’t even here.
My body is constantly obsessed with her.
Just the thought of her in the room next to mine makes me impossibly hard.
I shift into my wyvern form despite knowing how much it will hurt.
The transformation tears at my barely healed wounds.
I let out a loud, anguished screech as my back splits open.
Fresh blood seeps between my scales, and I launch myself from the balcony, soaring into the night sky as every beat of my wings sends sharp pain through my back.
I welcome it and push myself harder and faster.
I circle around the palace in wide, sweeping arcs. The massive structure looks small beneath me despite its grandeur, the four towers reaching toward the sky, with their windows dark except for scattered lights.
As I complete another circle, movement catches my eye.
I look down to see a small figure. It’s Tressa, looking up at me.
She stands at the railing of her balcony in a white nightgown that is sheer enough to make her look like a divine creature, too good for this world.
Her light brown hair hangs loose down her back, nearly touching her waist, and she seems so small and frail compared to the mightiness of the palace, and impossibly tiny compared to the sheer size of me in my wyvern form.
I know I should fly away and leave her alone, but I simply can’t resist her. I bank sharply and descend toward her balcony, landing with a heavy thud that makes the stone shudder under my clawed feet. My massive wings spread wide, blocking out the stars.
Tressa takes a few steps back to give me space, pressing herself against the wall. She looks at me with apprehension in her eyes. She probably thinks I’m going to shift back to human form, but that’s not my intention.
I close the distance between us, my massive body filling the balcony as I enter her personal space.
She takes a sharp intake of breath but doesn’t back down. Because there’s nowhere left for her to go. She looks up at me, and I admire the strength she displays. She is such a tiny human, so helpless in front of me.
I tower over her and could crush her with a flick of my claw. Of course, I’d never do it. It’s fascinating to me that, while I know my own strength and know I could destroy her easily, I feel absolutely powerless in front of her. She controls whether I live or die.
I move my massive, horned head close to her face, and my breath rushes hot against her skin as my blue eyes focus on her.
“Come, Tressa. Ride me.”
She laughs. The sound is hollow and sad.
“No, Altair. You know I would never. Should I remind you what happened to my brother when you asked him to ride you?”
I’d have expected her to be angry and hateful, like she always is, but her voice sounds defeated and resigned.
There’s no fight left in it, no fire, and that saddens me more than anything.
It’s worse than her throwing plates at me or calling me a murderer.
This quiet defeat is what finally breaks through my walls.
I back away from her and shift to my human form. Once again, I stand naked before her, but now I’m vulnerable in a way I wasn’t before. I tuck my wings and my tail into my body, wanting to look fully human.
I’m not hard anymore. How could I be? After her words, desire has fled entirely. All that remains is shame and grief.
She isn’t looking at me with the interest she showed an hour ago. Tressa’s eyes study me from head to toe, but the flush from earlier is gone. She doesn’t seem affected by my nakedness.
I take a few careful steps toward her, moving slowly, not wanting to startle her.
Tressa moves close to the balcony railing. Her hand grips it tightly, knuckles white. I can’t tell what she’s thinking. Is she afraid of me? Scared I might do something to humiliate her further?
I hate that these thoughts might be going through her head. I curse myself silently for creating this situation. I wonder why I must be the horrible creature that I am. But I know exactly why. I am the result of my father and his upbringing – raised by a monster and taught by a monster.
“I am sorry,” I say.
Nothing shifts in Tressa’s expression. She just stares at me with those green eyes. She doesn’t believe me.
I try again, putting everything into my words.
“I am sorry. I am so sorry for everything that I’ve done to you, and everything that my father and my family have done to your family. For what it’s worth, I am not like my father. And now the Kingdom of Aurumveil has a human queen, and things are changing. I am changing.”
“Are you truly not like your father?” she asks. “Or is it something you tell yourself because it makes you feel better?”
She’s right. I tell myself I’m different, but how can I be?
Tressa sighs heavily. She sounds exhausted.
“Altair, tell me the truth. Why did you bring me here? Just to be your servant? Just to torture me and punish me? For what? I’ve never done anything to you.”
“I am sorry. I don’t know... I don’t know what I was thinking. I saw you there, on the auction block, and I knew I couldn’t leave without you. I knew I couldn’t let someone else, some other monster, buy you. I know I am a monster myself, maybe one of the worst. But I couldn’t. I had to have you.”
Tressa scoffs at me.
“Because you didn’t have enough servants?”
“No. This charade is over. I never wanted you as my servant. I want you as my wife. When I decided to go to the bride market, it was because I was looking to buy a bride.”
Tressa laughs in my face.
“And do you expect me to believe you? Do you expect me to be impressed by this sick game you’re playing?”
“Please believe me.” My voice cracks. “I know I’ve been awful to you, and I can’t explain it. I have no excuse. But… please believe me. I want you to be my wife.”
Tressa shakes her head, still laughing. She waves at me dismissively, in a gesture of complete rejection, and turns away, walking back into her room. She closes the door firmly and draws the curtains, shutting me out.
I watch the light in her room go out. I stand naked in the cool night air, with blood drying on my back.
I went too far, and not just tonight. I will never have her.