Chapter Seventeen The Nova #2
“I hear you perfectly.” I smoothed my hands along the petals. The veins of them slowly came alight, quivering at the touch. “This is no different than any other ritual.”
Altair was quiet, but the energy from him vibrated in my ear. He was angry, like a wasp. Just as pestering too.
The center fruit, I assumed, was the female part, considering it was coated in a nectar substance. Though the little hexagons along the surface could also be seeds. I wasn’t completely sure, since all the flora in this place was not quite right.
“Can you feel it too?” I looked over to Altair. “Since you Peculiars are all one.”
His shadowy form began to squirm and shift, like something building just under the surface. Then, a change.
The shadows began to form tendons, like muscles spun tight and wrapping around him. Then the ink faded, and he began to resemble the plants around us too. Matching green vines knotting and forming, the dark tendrils turning to roots, but the glow of his eyes remained the same, familiar.
“Are you jealous?” I asked, touching the fruit.
He looked at me, silent.
“You said you take form according to connotation,” I teased, my finger scooping up the nectar before tasting it. “Are you sure you didn’t mean according to attraction?”
“Are you attracted to plant species?” His words were defensive.
“No, but it’s something I’m finding more interesting than you at the moment.” I turned toward him, two other flowers sprouting beside me as I sat among the vines.
“Interesting despite the danger?”
“Well, you’ve been reluctant to give me a reason why I can’t.” I shrugged the robe off my shoulders, going up on my knees.
He lowered himself, as if kneeling before me, though his legs had been replaced by a mass of moving vines instead of vague shadows this time. Even with the movement, he didn’t say he was inclined to help.
I lifted one of the fruiting flowers, bringing it to my lips. The nectar was sweet, a floral undertone like gin. It was a thick enough syrup to scoop with my tongue, but that didn’t stop it from dripping like honey down my arms as I held it.
“I wouldn’t do that,” he warned.
I crawled close to him, lifting it between us. “Or what?”
He didn’t answer, but the vines that made up his body twitched and moved. I placed the flower in his lap, then leaned back against the second flower behind me. The wet stamen was warm, the nectar a pleasant scent like that of tropical fruit.
My head swam, all the colors were brighter, the glowing flora around us trailing in my vision.
There was suddenly a lightness to my soul, unburdened or forgetful of earthly things that troubled me.
The flower stamen behind me slipped between my legs, but too low to be inserted.
It poked out through my thighs, the sap dripping down the front.
“This doesn’t have to be just my gain—consorting for luck is mutually beneficial.” I placed my hands on the roots, where his thighs should’ve been.
“Mutually pleasurable, you mean,” he corrected. “It’s more distracting than productive.”
“See?” I dragged a nail down his cheek, my lips brushing against the beast’s bark-like skin as I spoke. “You think more like a person than you think.”
I squeezed the fruiting flower in his lap, then collected the nectar before smearing it across his lips. You couldn’t see them, but you could feel them. I wished to taste them . . . and I did.
I pressed my lips to his. At first, his didn’t move.
I wiped my tongue along his bottom lip, collecting the sap. I smoothed my arms over his shoulders, letting my back bend as I sat down on the flower behind me. I dragged my nails over the tightly wound vines, wondering if they would unravel if he couldn’t keep up the illusion.
Then the poke of talons, his large hands covering my hips as he held them.
I let the flower stamen enter, just the tip at first. The liquid coating was viscous but slick. It took very little effort to enter, and I kept it slow. It was warm, the petals tickling my thighs in anticipation.
The vines along his chest began to move, to loosen. Then they opened, moving to the side to unravel, and the riblike vines held me, like they could close up and snatch me at any moment. Would he dare?
With one hand, he guided my hips down on the stamen, the semisoft form filling me, my knees spreading wider, as if that would make a difference. My legs were shaking, my fingers digging into the vines of his back. They quivered and moved, allowing me to take hold of them for stability.
I gasped, burying my face in his shoulder. “Do you always tremble like this at the sight of mere mortals?” I teased, gripping harder on the vines.
His other hand smoothed up my waist, a claw dragging, and the slight sting of a cut.
His rough palm cupped my breast, squeezing.
“Mortals are delicacies for those too massive to pass through tiny tears in our reality,” he said, his hand on my hip relocating to press flat on my tailbone.
“Tempting enough to pleasure or to eat,” he hissed, his hand forcing my hips down.
The slick fruit slipped all the way in, burying itself. The petals closed around my legs and hips, for stability and hold.
“W-wait,” I gasped. There was an intense pressure, like swelling inside. It was like a full bladder. I shifted my hips, but the fruit was firmly placed. Then . . . a pulsing. I thought it was just me.
No, it was the flower.
Altair’s sharp nails dug into me. My entire body felt hot, my markings brighter than ever.
The pulsing inside was like a muscle spasm, or at least an attempt to simulate one. My gut twisted as I tried to deny myself the pleasure. I knew it would be a forced orgasm. As much as I held back, it wasn’t working. I cried out, gripping him as if his embrace would save me.
Then, like floodwaters on a low bridge, I collapsed. The gates were open, and I nearly blinded myself with my own light when I came. The orgasm was so strong it made me double over, my body curling as if it could stop. Pathetic whimpers, pleas sang from my throat.
But it wasn’t over, it didn’t stop.
“Please,” I cried, tears pricking my eyes, “please make it stop . . . It’s too much!”
There was a different kind of pulse, a strong, repeated twitch of the stamen. A new type of pressure built, rapidly. Then it spilled down my leg, and it didn’t stop. The flowerlike creatures repeated it all over again.
“It’s . . . it’s hot,” I complained. “Obscuria!” I cried.
But nothing happened.
There was a low, arrogant chuckle.
I stared at him, reclined and watching.
“Do something!” My throat hurt from the panic.
“Your rules don’t work in a place with even ground,” he said, tucking a loose curl behind my ear. “But you didn’t listen, did you?”
“It . . . has to stop.” I began to shake, heat at the back of my neck burning in panic. “You can stop it.” I bit out the words, salivating from the overstimulation alone.
“I said that once the Otherside latches on to you, there’s a chance it will never let you go,” he reprimanded.
“Wait—”
“If I leave you like this now, as the mess you are, you will be suspended in nowhere, to be used for this energy, kept alive only as food. Reduced to nothing but a producer”—his claw dragged along the side of my face—“part of an ecosystem.”
“I don’t want this, damn you!”
He tugged my chin up, forcing my face to his. “What do you want?”
“Help me, please,” I sniffled. I could barely keep my eyes open.
“Have you learned your lesson?”
The flower jerked, like it was getting a better grip on me. The pain of fullness made me flinch, the wetness never-ending down my trembling thighs. “Yes! Yes! I’ve learned!” I sobbed.
He raised his palm, then closed it into a fist.
Everything froze.
The only thing still moving was my trembling body.
The plant deflated, slipping out and wilting right there on the floor, the nectar rushing out of me. My face grew hot, the embarrassment of the entire ordeal burning back to my foggy mind.
“You could have stopped it earlier,” I accused him.
“Do you understand why I suggested against using random entities for your harvest?” If he had an eyebrow in this form, it would’ve been raised to his hairline.
“Take me back”—I blew hot air through my nose—“since you’ve rendered my closing incantation useless.”
“Not me,” he pointed out. “Your incantations only work in the world that made you. You are in unfamiliar territory.”
“Take me back,” I repeated, a stronger demand.
He sighed, raising his hand again.
I blinked, and suddenly I was on the floor of my library, midday light heating the humble space through the windows. I was in a wet puddle on the floor. And my library was normal, the same as when I’d last left it. No strange flowers or tempting fruit. Just the disorderly messes of my own creation.