Chapter 9
ROSE
This time, when I appear it’s not into darkness, but into a room full of soft, warm light.
There are at least two dozen little candles scattered about the place, illuminating my house in a way that makes it feel like home, lit as it often was back when I was alive.
Zak sits in the centre of the room, cross-legged on the floor atop a plush blanket, and though he’s smiling at me, there’s a tightness around his eyes that makes me worried.
“I didn’t appear last night, did I?”
“You didn’t appear,” he confirms. “How are you feeling? You look…”
I follow his gaze, staring at my arms. They’re slightly brighter, and just a little less transparent than ever before. That’s new. “I feel well, actually,” I say, surprised, before meeting his gaze once more. “Was it just the one night?”
“Yeah, you were here the night before. I’m so fucking glad to see you again.” His voice is thick with relief, and I nod.
“I’m sorry I worried you. I wish I had control over it all. If I did, I would never leave your side.”
“I know.”
Tears burn at the back of my eyes, and Zak blinks rapidly before glancing away.
It’s the same for him; worse, in fact, because he’s forever watching me go.
For me, I feel the moment I begin to leave, and then nothing until I wake here again.
This strange existence may be happening to me, but I’m not the one constantly watching their love disappear.
He deserves better than this.
“I hope,” I begin, tentatively stepping forward, until I’m sinking to my knees beside him. “I hope you didn’t wait for me for too long, not like last time.” Hearing about how Zak had stayed up all night, sitting on the cold hardwood floor as he waited for me, had broken my heart.
“I waited for an hour here, and then went back.”
“Good.”
He shrugs. “I sat on my bed and stared out at this house for half the night.”
“Zak.”
“You always appear right on sunset, eh.” He points to his phone. I’m still in awe at the technology available in this strange future. “I was timing it tonight, to check. You were bang on, exactly as the sun went down.”
“It’s very strange.”
“Yeah. I mean, this whole thing is weird, and you know I’m not meaning that in an offensive way —”
“I promise you, I’m not offended in the slightest.”
“Good. I just wish I could make sense of this. I think… maybe I should try to find a witch who can help us.”
There are aspects of this new world that I still struggle to comprehend, despite my current predicament. The fact that magic dictates the lives of so many is something I can’t quite fathom. “Do you really think that’s a possibility?”
“It’s worth a shot. I need to help you, and I just don’t have the skillset myself. I’ll never forgive myself if something happens to you.”
“Don’t say that,” I whisper fiercely, shaking my head. “Don’t say that. Something has already happened to me. If something more happens… Zak, it will never be your fault. You make my existence here so good, so happy when I would otherwise be so alone, but —”
“I want you forever, Rose. I don’t want anyone else.” There’s a naked desperation in his eyes, and without thinking I lift my hand to touch his face, as if I’m made of real flesh, as if—
Twin sounds of shock fly out of our mouths, our eyes wide, breath caught in our lungs at the sensation because… “I’m touching you,” I whisper. “Zak!”
I can’t feel the warmth of him, but I feel him there under my fingertips, under my palm, a solid presence. My Zak.
“I know, I know,” he whispers as my vision blurs from tears. Even so, I see the way his hand trembles as he lifts it, covering mine, pressing my ghostly flesh further against his cheek. “You’re solid, Rose.”
“Solid enough.” With my free hand I trace the outline of his face, his strong brows, his beautiful aquiline nose, that full lower lip, the point of a tusk.
All of it is faint, but there, as if I’m still trapped behind a barrier.
I am still trapped, somewhere, somehow. “What does it feel like to you?” I ask.
“Like a cold breeze, but stronger.” I press harder against his cheek and he grins. “Yeah, I felt that.”
I feel suddenly shy as a thought occurs to me, and Zak being Zak, notices immediately, a cheeky glimmer appearing in his eye.
“Are you thinking dirty thoughts, babe?”
“No!” I doubt he can see it, but I’m blushing. “Yes. Maybe.”
“Maybe, eh?” The brush of his thumb against my lips feels like a dream. Slowly, tentatively, he leans forward, until his nose touches mine. I stare at my glowing reflection in his deep brown eyes, every part of me lit aflame.
“Kiss me.”
All hesitation disappears with the first press of his lips.
I make a whimpering sound, desperate and needy, and that’s all it takes for us to give up being anything but the touch-starved creatures that we are.
It doesn’t matter that the sensations are still only half-there; with a growl from Zak, there is a press of something against my tongue — his, I imagine — and the phantom weight of his hand against the back of my head, and with that I am lost to the hedonistic pleasure of it all.
“Fuck. Come here.”
The fear that this might not work disappears the moment he lifts me, pulling me flush against his chest, my hands yanking at the hem of my skirt, pulling it up and out of the way so that my legs can wrap around him.
We both groan at the sensation of my core against the hard bar of his cock, and I am too far gone to ask him to undress further; gripping his shoulders as best I can I rock against him, aided by his big hands on my hips, chasing that high, that friction against my clit, until I’m crying out, coming, clenching around nothing, listening to him whisper praise into the night.
It’s all too much, my head too light, the feel of his touch disappearing as I sink to the floor, my ghost limbs slipping through his solid form. “Zak,” I say, voice thick with emotion, joy and grief filling my heart in equal measure.
“You did so good,” he says, his handsome face filled with love, though I see the pain in his eyes.
I’m going, and then I am gone.
There are limits to this new development, though Zak and I make do all the same, as we always have. “It’s like there’s a bubble between us, or something,” Zak muses from between my thighs. “I apologise in advance, because I promise I’m more skilled than this probably feels to you.”
“I know, but —” I break off in a moan as he hits the right spot, rocking my hips slightly. It’s all the instruction he needs, bless him. He repeats the action with his tongue again and again, never altering his rhythm, until I’m letting out a deep groan and coming hard.
I shiver in the aftermath as I feel the scrape of pointed tusks against my thigh, still dull, but there.
“Are you biting me, sir?”
“Just gently.” He does it again, brown eyes watching my face. “You’re beautiful.”
I lift my hand to his cheek. “So are you, my darling. Now let me have my turn.”
“Your turn at what?” he asks, but he’s grinning, a dusky flush on his green cheeks, and lays back on the blanket beneath us, tucking his hands beneath his head without me even needing to prompt him further.
He’s all long limbs and rippling muscle, his body perfectly carved, reminding me of a marble statue, though I’ve never seen a statue so well-endowed before.
I run my hand up his thigh, listening to the way he sighs with pleasure from this one simple touch, until my hands cup the weight of his balls, my fingers brushing the base of his very thick — and very erect — shaft.
“I imagine this part of you is very warm,” I say quietly as I wrap my hand around him as best as I can, squeezing tight.
All I feel is the solidness beneath my fingers, but it is devoid of any heat, any real texture, even as I trace my finger along one snaking and prominent vein to the exposed head of his cock.
“Yeah,” he says on an exhale, a stream of precum leaking from the tip. The liquid drips through my fingers, another example of how none of this makes sense. “Shit that feels good.”
“Mmmm, I think this will feel even better,” I whisper, dragging his foreskin up over the head and back down again, before finally lowering my mouth.
This won’t be the first time I’ve had his cock in my mouth, but it will be the first time we both feel it.
I hum as I lick at him, feeling the smoothness of him under my tongue, smiling as his cock jumps against my lips.
“Oh, fuck. Oh, Jesus Christ.”
“Are you a religious man, Zak?”
“No. Not at all. You?”
“No, though I had to pretend to be around the good Christian women in the community.” I grasp his cock with a little more force this time, rubbing my thumb in that spot just below the head, smiling as he gasps.
So it is the same for an orc. “I just wanted to check and see if I was corrupting you,” I say, before taking the entire head of his cock into my mouth.
It’s a stretch this time, but I push on, knowing there’s no way that this can harm me.
“Baby, you can corrupt me every day of the week if you keep doing that. Fuck.”
I hum around him, too occupied to speak, falling into a rhythm that’s clearly enough despite the fact that my body is still not right.
For the first time, I can feel when he hits the back of my throat, and I suppose one benefit of this situation is that I don’t gag.
Zak curses again and again, a constant stream of words to match the stream of precum that leaks from him, pooling around the base of his shaft and dripping down his balls.
“Are you going to come for me, sir?” I ask, taking a moment to lick at him again.
There’s no taste, no sensation of liquid on my tongue, and I cannot smell him, but it’s so much more than we had a mere week ago, and for that I am grateful.
The man I love can hold me in his arms, and that’s a gift I didn’t think I would get.
“If you want me to,” he answers, and I nod.
I’m not going to admit it, but I’m a little afraid to try sitting on his cock tonight — not because I don’t want it, but because I fear the disappointment if I can’t sense much at all.
I still couldn’t feel his fingers inside me yesterday, and I don’t think much will have changed.
Tonight I’m going to enjoy what I do have, and be satisfied with that.
We don’t speak again, my mouth too full, and his too busy letting out moans and gasps and iterations of “Fuck yes, baby.” I move faster, moaning around him, clenching my own thighs together, until his whole body tenses and he comes with a deep groan.
His cum, as I expected, isn’t something I can feel.
It explodes; dripping, falling through my fleshless body, landing on his stomach and thighs, a beautiful, wonderful mess.
I pull back, watching the last of it, squeezing his cock with my hand until he’s spent every last drop.
“Happy?”
His grin says it all, his chest heaving with exaggerated breaths. I crawl up the length of his body to kiss his neck, the point of his ear, his cheek, his lips, and sigh with contentment when he wraps his arm around me until I’m tucked against his side.
“I’ll have to clean myself up soon,” he murmurs against my hair.
“Mmm. Not yet. I like this too much.”
I stare at the walls, the candle flames throwing flickering light over the torn wallpaper, making the water stains appear as if they’re moving.
“This is how I grew up, by candlelight in the evenings,” I tell him, doing my best to focus on the comfort and nostalgia of it all, and not the hollowness I so often feel inside this house.
“No electricity?”
“As a child, yes. We had it added to the street not long after we moved into this house.” I point to the ceiling, where the receptacle for a lightbulb sits empty. “They were just beginning to connect electricity in Whangarei; I read it in the paper not long before…”
I can never bear to finish those sentences. Zak’s hand brushes though my hair, the drag of his pointed nails across my scalp soothing. “It was a different world, eh?” he murmurs, and I hum in agreement.
“No clip-clop of horse hooves down the street these days, just that one motorcycle across the road…”
“That fuckin’ asshole runs his engine at all hours,” Zak complains, and I laugh.
“Nah, seriously, he drives me mad because you can hear him now —” We can; the engine revving in the background is a noise that I’ve purposefully drowned out for the last ten minutes, “—and he’ll be going again at seven in the morning.
The amount of times I’ve been woken up…” He shakes his head.
“And I thought I was the bad neighbour with my messy property.”
“Nah babe, you’re fine. I’m gonna work on the garden next. I’ll start out front.”
I don’t know what it is about that exactly that brings tears to my eyes — his generosity, his all-round goodness, his willingness to love me despite me being an unlovable wraith — but once I start crying I can’t stop.
Zak simply holds me tighter, pulling me over him until his heart beats under my ear, and it is that sound that I fade away to; the most wonderful lullaby, and a reassurance that at least there is one of us who is alive and well.