Chapter 8
Eight
There was a moment when Zax didn’t seem to know what to do, standing awkwardly next to the bath. Then he stepped closer, offering his cocks to her.
“Please,” he said hoarsely.
Fawn’s mouth filled with saliva. She swallowed it back, berating herself silently.
She wasn’t going to suck them; she would never fit them in her mouth.
She was just going to jerk him, as he had done to himself.
To please him, she told herself. But even she knew this was a lie.
She took him in her hands because she wanted to.
It was difficult, stroking two cocks at once. But Zax didn’t look like he cared that her rhythm was uneven, or that her grip faltered. He growled desperately, the sound trailing off into a whine, as if she was the best thing he’d ever felt.
Then again… was she?
“You’ve done this before,” Fawn asked. “Right?”
“Not like this,” Zax said, strained. “Just... rutting. With a strigoi demon we came across in my adventures. He was nice, but too rough. And he did not have a mouth I could kiss.”
Bizarrely, Fawn wished she could kiss him. But the angle was all wrong. He was standing while she was sitting in the bath, and the only thing within kissing distance was those big, glistening cocks. They were already slick with precum and every stroke made them shine more.
Everything in Fawn wanted to lean in and taste them.
Even after he hadn’t told her that he knew about her husband’s family, even after her renewed motivation to flee—it didn’t matter.
All she wanted at that moment was his cocks in her mouth.
And if that strigoi demon didn’t have a mouth, he wouldn’t be able to tell if she was bad at it.
“I can’t wait, either,” Fawn heard herself saying. “I want them inside me. I want you to stretch me, to fill me up.”
Zax whined louder. His hips bucked, and Fawn gasped as his strange, pointy cockheads skimmed her chin. They left streaks of salt, and Fawn ran her tongue over the remnants before she could stop herself.
Then, like a woman possessed, she leaned forward and ran her tongue over the glans. First the top one, then the lower one, tasting the pre-come they gave her at each touch.
Zax howled and came. Both of them at once, which had never happened before. Both cocks pumped white liquid over her, streaking her chin and her chest, dripping down her breasts and into the bathwater.
Zax slumped to the floor on shaky knees.
“I will,” he panted. “I will… clean you again.”
He scooped the clean portions of bathwater over her chest. He even cleaned her face, his touch as gentle as ever as he cleaned his spend off of her. But there was a moment when his come was gone and he just sat there, stroking her damp face for so long that Fawn had to turn away from him.
“The water’s getting cold,” she lied.
Zax jolted out of whatever ridiculous, impossible daydream he was having and stood. “I will fetch you a towel.”
After the bath, they slept. He curled around Fawn in his nest, and she pillowed her head on his soft stomach, as she often did.
She should have known he was offering a life that was too good to be true. He was being nice to her at the start. But who knew how he would change once they were tied together forever? If he wasn’t telling her that her husband’s family was looking for her, what else hadn’t he told her?
Fawn had to escape. She might have had stray thoughts telling her otherwise, but those were the foolish thoughts of a woman who thought she had finally found someone who could treat her well.
Like she was still a child, truly believing a man should accept and even embrace her true self instead of the meek, quiet self she would be forced to present.
He wouldn’t like her anyway if she stopped pretending. She was doing them both a favor.
Just when she thought he had fallen asleep, Zax nuzzled her hair, still damp from the bath.
“I am glad you finally arrived,” he said sleepily. “I was lonely.”
Don’t fall for it, Fawn told herself firmly.
But a tidal wave of sadness washed over.
She was lonely, too. Even married, even traveling with that Circle of people who had never seen her small, stifling hometown.
For a few days with Zax, after the mortal terror began to fade…
oh, gods. Those were perhaps the best days of her life. What was the matter with her?
“Me, too,” Fawn whispered, a lump in her throat.
She reached into her pocket and touched the freckle rock he had gifted her. She was still touching it when she fell asleep, listening to the soothing sounds of his belly rising and falling under her cheek.
Three days later, Fawn was testing her gait across the wooden floor when Zax came in with a giant stick.
“A cane,” Zax said. “For your leg. Though I will carry you all the way up Anderfel mountain if you wish. My brother is actually quite near the bottom of the mountain. He says he does not enjoy the cold.”
Fawn leaned on the table and took the cane in her hand. It was strong and supple and easy to grip. It was also very smooth—smoother than any stick she had found in nature. Had he rubbed it down for her?
“Your ankle is so much better than it was,” Zax said. “I think we should go to the mountain soon.”
Fawn gripped the stick hard. It wouldn’t fend him off if he caught her as she was fleeing from him. But it was better than nothing.
She had come to a decision in the past few days: she could not kill him.
She wouldn’t have been able to kill him a week ago, despite what she might have told herself.
But she still had to leave. What kind of woman got kidnapped by a Skullstalker and just…
stayed? She was still suspicious of Zax’s brothers’ wives, who surely had something wrong with them to stay with a literal monster.
“Fawn?” Zax said.
Fawn made herself smile. “That sounds wonderful, my love.”
She had never said it before. It had the desired effect: Zax glowed with excitement, his eye flaring bright and his tail swishing in absurd pleasure.
“Good,” he said, very fast. “That’s—that’s good. I will go and pick you some berries. You will tell me what recipes you enjoy later. I will learn to make them!”
He lumbered toward her, oddly shy. Then he pressed a kiss to her forehead, and Fawn had to stop herself both from cringing away and from leaning into it.
He left her there with a small pressure mark from his skull mask. Fawn laid her cane on the table and dipped her hand back into her pocket to feel the freckle rock, wondering if she would still have it in a week or even a month. Would she still talk about Zax, even after she fled from him?