Chapter 12 Tula
TULA
The shower had been almost as revelatory as the sex.
Esag had insisted on washing her hair, his big hands surprisingly gentle as they worked the shampoo through the strands. Then he'd soaped every inch of her body with a gentleness that had bordered on reverence, careful with her oversensitive breasts, and paying special attention to her belly.
Now they lay tangled up in one another in his bed, the soft duvet pulled up to their waists, her head resting on his chest. His heartbeat was strong and steady beneath her ear, soothing, calming, reassuring.
Tula was finally at peace, perhaps for the first time she could remember, but she didn't know whether it was the aftermath of the venom, the sex marathon, or just Esag being all the things for her that he hadn't been for Gulan.
Usually, the thought would have been enough to spark a surge of anger, or at least sadness at the unfairness that her sister had been subjected to, but not now. Not when Tula's limbs felt liquid, her heart full, and her soul buoyant and safe.
She should be sleeping, but she couldn't, or rather, didn't want to allow herself to drift away. Not yet. She was still committing to memory all the wonders she'd discovered tonight.
"You should sleep," Esag murmured, his hand stroking her back. "I don't think I'm capable of another round, but if you need me to help you fall asleep…"
She chuckled because she was too tired to laugh. "I couldn't go once more even if my life depended on it. I'm completely wrung out."
His hand stilled on her back. "In a good way?"
"In the best way." She lifted her head and kissed him on the lips. "You don't need to fish for compliments. This was the most mind-blowing experience of my life. Nothing compares."
He grinned, his white teeth gleaming beneath his dark red mustache. "Tell me more."
She laughed this time. "You're such a male."
"Is it a bad thing?"
"No. It's just proof that you are flesh and blood and not a mythological sex god."
"Stop!" He put a hand over his chest, clutching it. "If my ego inflates any further, it will burst out of my chest. You don't want to be responsible for my demise, do you?"
That was more like the Esag she remembered from five thousand years ago, always ready with a joke, always irreverent and teasing.
"Fates forbid." She kissed his hand over his chest. "But I need to talk about this. I'd heard about the aphrodisiac effect of the venom bite. The ladies in the harem talked about their experiences with Mortdh sometimes, and I was surprised to hear that they remembered sex with him so fondly."
He grimaced. "I thought that Mortdh was a monster."
"So did I, especially after hearing the way Annani and Gulan talked about him. And maybe he was, but he'd treated his harem ladies well. They were pampered, and he gave them pleasure. When Navuh took over, he ignored them because Areana was his truelove mate. They didn't hold any appeal for him."
"Were they upset about it?" Esag asked.
"They were at the beginning when they thought he would get rid of them or doom them to a life of celibacy.
Then he came up with the brilliant plan of keeping them on and breeding them with humans who looked like him so he could claim their sons as his own.
The downside was that their sons were taken away from them in infancy.
They could live with it. I couldn't." She sighed.
"But I don't want to talk about that. I want to talk about the venom bite.
I thought they were exaggerating, but now I think that they were understating it.
" She laughed, the sound coming out a little breathless.
"Fates, Esag. I had no idea. I couldn't have imagined. "
"But you've experienced a venom bite. Otherwise, you couldn't transition."
She waved a dismissive hand. "He was just a boy who was a couple of years older than me and more scared of biting me than I was of being bitten.
I was surprised that the tiny amount of venom he produced was enough to induce my transition.
I felt a little woozy and saw some pretty colors, but that was the extent of it.
Perhaps the tiny amount was enough because he was close to the source. His grandmother was a goddess."
Esag's hand stilled on her back. "What was his name?"
Tula frowned. "I don't remember. I only remember that my parents made a big deal about securing a direct descendant for my ceremony."
"I'm sorry that your first venom experience was so underwhelming."
She let out a breath. "I'm glad that it wasn't memorable. Otherwise, I would have spent five thousand years mourning what I had lost. I don't think I could have survived."
He chuckled. "Was my bite that good?"
"It was literally out of this world." Tula closed her eyes, letting the memories wash over her.
They were still vivid, still sharp, as if they'd been etched into her mind.
"I was flying, but not like in a dream, where everything is fuzzy, and you can't quite control where you're going.
This was incredibly real. I could feel the wind on my face, see the landscape spreading out below me in colors I've never seen before.
Colors that don't exist in the material world.
The sky was many shades of purple I've never seen entwined with gold and turquoise and other colors I don't even have names for, swirling together like paint in water.
The ground below was covered in crystalline structures that caught the light and scattered it into rainbows.
And there were people waving at me, but they were translucent, like they were made of pure energy.
Have any of your partners experienced anything similar? "
He nodded. "They all reported pretty much the same thing with some variations, but I couldn't let them remember the experience and had to thrall the memory away. I always felt like a thief, robbing them of something wonderful, but I just couldn't risk it."
The harem ladies had spoken of similar experiences. Tula just wanted to make sure that what she’d seen was real, or her own mind’s creation, and not what she’d expected to see.
"The strangest part wasn't the landscape or the translucent people. It was the feeling. This overwhelming sense of peace and love, like being wrapped in a warm blanket made of pure light. I've never felt anything like it."
"That sounds amazing." He kissed her forehead. "I wish I could claim credit for making you feel that way, but it was just the chemicals in the venom that influence your mind to produce certain visions."
"I don't know if that's true…" She hesitated.
"It's kind of like a near-death experience.
People who come back from the brink of death speak of this overwhelming sensation of peace and love and some even claim that they've seen God.
Most scientists say it's just chemicals that the brain produces to provide comfort to the dying, but that doesn't make sense to me.
Why would nature care about what people feel when they are dying? Nature is about survival, right?"
"I guess."
"Doing something nice for the dying is not beneficial for survival, which means that it is not the correct explanation.
Nature is not merciful. I believe that the venom further widens the constricting funnel of our brains, allowing us a peek into the afterlife, so we can see what those who cross the veil see.
It's a glimpse of what's waiting for us on the other side. "
"Please don't talk about dying." Esag pulled her closer, his arms tightening around her. "It terrifies me."
"Why? Knowing that we continue in some way is supposed to be comforting."
"The veil means separation of the dead from the living.
I now understand why Navuh jumped after Areana.
I thought that he expected to survive because he was an arrogant bastard who thought he could do what no one else could, but he didn't think that.
He couldn't live without her, and he didn't care about surviving.
He just wanted to be with her even if it was beyond the veil. "
Tula also understood. She understood what Esag had said without actually saying it, and it touched places deep in her heart.
She nestled into his warmth, pressing her face against his chest. His heart beat faster now, a subtle betrayal of the anxiety her words had caused him.
"It was just a peek," she said. "I came back, and I'm not going anywhere."
He let out a breath. "I'm going to hold you to that." His hands resumed their gentle exploration of her back, her hip, the curve of her waist.
Tula let herself drift, savoring the sensation of being held, of being wanted, of being seen.
"Nothing I've ever experienced compares to tonight, and I'm not talking about the orgasms, although those were spectacular.
There are just not enough words to describe those.
It's the connection between us. It's like a solid cable pulled taut, linking us together.
With Tony, it was like a thread, and with those who came before him, it was even less. There was no connection at all."
"There's more connecting you to Tony than a thread," he said quietly. His hand drifted to her belly, palm pressing gently against the swell. "You're connected through the child you created together. That's not a flimsy thread. That's a bond that will last forever or for as long as Tony lives."
His words should have felt like a rebuke, but they didn't. They felt like acceptance. Like understanding.
"Are you jealous?" she asked.
"Of course, I am." His hand remained on her belly, warm and steady.
"He'll always have a piece of you that belongs to him.
" He shifted, tilting her chin up so she was forced to meet his eyes.
"I know I will love your child wholeheartedly, because I love you.
This baby is part of you, which means he's already part of me.
I intend to be there when he takes his first steps and says his first words.
I can already imagine myself teaching him to carve and telling him stories about the old world. "
Tula's throat constricted, but at the same time, her heart swelled with emotion. The declaration was so open, so vulnerable, so utterly sincere that she didn't know how to respond.
Esag had said that he loved her, and she'd felt the truth of it in the connection between them, that taut cable humming with emotion.
He loved her.
And she didn't know what to say back.
"I—" She stopped, frustrated with herself. Why was this so hard? Why were those three little words so hard to say?
She'd never spoken them to any of her partners because she'd never been in love. She'd loved her parents and her sister, and she loved Areana, and she had strong feelings for Esag, but love?
She wasn't there yet.
"It's okay," Esag said softly. "You don't have to say it back." He stroked her cheek with his thumb. "I'm a patient male. I'll wait until you're ready."
She stared at him. "Can you read my mind? How did you know what I was thinking?"
A small smile curved his lips. "I know you, Tula. Better than you realize."
"We've only just met, Esag. You knew me superficially as a girl five thousand years ago, so that doesn't count. We are still in the stage of learning about each other."
He smiled. "You forget the visions and the dreams. The connection we shared was intimate.
I saw pieces of you that you don't let anyone else see.
Your fears. Your hopes. The walls you've built to protect yourself.
" His expression softened. "At some point, you will feel safe enough to allow your heart to open to love. "
She wanted to deny it. Wanted to snap back with something sharp and deflecting, the way she always did when someone got too close. But the words wouldn't come because he was right.
"I don't know if I'll ever be able to do this. I've lived like this for thousands of years. My brain is hardwired a certain way."
He chuckled. "It's funny to hear you talking in computer speak when you are still struggling to figure out how to navigate your phone."
She lifted her head and glared at him. "I also can't fly an airplane, but I know how it works. I've read about aerodynamics."
Smiling, he cupped her cheek. "I didn't mean it as an insult.
I'm sorry if it sounded like that. What I should have said instead was that we are not computers, and our brains are much more malleable.
" He kissed her forehead, soft and lingering.
"We'll figure it out. There's no rush. We have eternity, remember? "
Eternity.
For the first time in forever, that sounded like a promise rather than a curse.
The word had always felt like a prison sentence before.
An endless stretch of years to be endured and survived.
But lying here in Esag's arms, with his heart beating beneath her ear and his warmth seeping into her bones, she could actually look forward to spending eternity like this.
"I feel things for you," she said quietly. "Strong things. Things I don't have words for yet. The connection is there, and I can feel it pulling at me, demanding acknowledgment. But I don't know if that's love or just chemistry. Biology. The venom makes me soft, wistful, hopeful."
"It's not the venom."
"How do you know?"
"Because I felt the connection from the first moment I saw you on that submarine, furious and beautiful. In fact, I already felt it when you appeared in my vision, but I wasn't ready to acknowledge that yet."
Tula wanted to counter with something clever, but she was too tired, too wrung out, and too overwhelmed by all those unfamiliar emotions that were making her weak.
Instead, she let her head fall back to his chest, let her eyes drift closed, and let the steady rhythm of his heart lull her toward sleep.
His arms tightened around her. "Good night, my love."
"Good night," she murmured back.
Maybe love wasn't recognizable all at once. Maybe it crept up, one moment at a time, until it encompassed everything.