Chapter 35 #2
She dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, as if volume might disguise the sheer insanity of the conversation. “Would something more… involved… help him stabilize for longer?”
Splice stared. “Involved how?”
Goldie groaned, dragging her hands down her face. “Oh, don’t make me say it out loud, Splice. So you and I had sex, right? And that helped. But maybe I need to—do I need to have sex with Mycor directly?”
Splice looked as though he’d been physically slapped by the sentence, vines curling like defensive reflexes.
Goldie let out a cracked, helpless laugh and buried her face in her hands. “Please. I don’t know what’s happening, but it feels like Mycor needs some kind of… sex watering. Divine boning. Mystical dick therapy.”
A beat of silence. “Gods,” she muttered. “I am in a nightmare. What the hells am I even saying?”
Mycor’s breath stirred again. Goldie looked up, catching Splice’s eyes glowing as he communed with his god, lips parted as though he were listening to something beyond her hearing. He exhaled hard, like the weight of the answer had landed directly on his shoulders.
“Goldie—” he began.
She shook her head quickly, cutting him off. “I’m sorry. I know. It’s stupid. Forget I mentioned it.”
His sigh came rough and reluctant. But his hand lifted, settling on her hip with a strange blend of gentleness and possession. “It would help,” he admitted. “But, Goldie…”
His eyes found hers, and she saw something raw and uncertain flickering beneath the surface. “You tell me not to drain myself for him. But now you’re offering this. Is this something you actually want? Or something you think you should do?”
She opened her mouth, unsure whether to argue or reassure, but Splice pressed on, voice fraying.
“I don’t want you to do this out of guilt. Or duty. And… selfishly, I don’t want you to do this at all.”
Her heart clenched. “Splice—”
“I know he needs it. And I want him to be whole. I need him to be well. I do.” His jaw flexed, barely keeping the grief from spilling through. “But I hate that it has to be you.”
Goldie blinked, startled by how bare his voice was. There was no anger in it. Just grief. Tenderness. Want.
“It’s not like I’m being forced,” she said softly, trying to keep it light, though the words trembled.
“No.” The word cracked out of him. “I don’t like that you’re doing this and it’s not with me.”
Goldie leaned in, her hand rising to cradle Splice’s jaw. Her smile, small and steady, carried both defiance and understanding. “Hey. It’s okay. You’re here with me, right?”
Her thumb brushed the curve of his cheek. “We’ll help him together. You can take care of me. If you want to.”
She leaned closer, lips brushing just beneath his cheekbone in a whisper of breath. “Would you like that?”
A slow pulse flickered at his throat, betraying a shiver beneath all that stoic restraint. “I… yes.” The words sounded dragged out of him, reluctant but real.
A surge of heat in her belly and tangled with the heavy ache in her chest. The air shifted. A ripple shivered through the atrium, clear and resonant as a bell-strike.
For a heartbeat, Goldie’s own voice wasn’t hers alone. Another lower, older tone wove through it, as if the Grove Core itself had leaned forward to ask the god through her: Is this what you want?
Mycor stirred. His eyelids fluttered open, gaze dim but intent. One vast hand twitched toward her, yearning, fragile. His voice rasped like leaves crumbling underfoot. “Yes.”
Goldie exhaled. “Okay,” she whispered. “Yes. We’re doing this.”
The words drifted into the air like smoke curling against glass. Sparks of magic rippled down her arms, setting her skin aglow. Power and want. Hope and heat. Everything inside her tangled into something unsteady but undeniable.
“Don’t worry, big guy,” she murmured, steady despite the storm gathering beneath her ribs. “I’ll make you feel better. Just hold on a little longer.”
She looked back at Splice. His dark eyes met hers with a raw, searching intensity that made her shiver. His jaw tightened, the muscle ticking hard beneath skin gone pale with strain.
“I’m still not happy about this,” he murmured, rough as gravel, his fingers tightening around hers. Then he leaned down, brushed his lips against hers, soft and fleeting.
“Go on,” he said, voice low and thick.
Goldie let out a breath that was half-laugh, half-shudder. “Okay… always the awkward part.” Her mouth curved. “Good thing I wore a skirt today. Easy access. Way better than the leggings fiasco the other day.”
With a nervous little wiggle, she slipped her panties down her thighs, kicking free of them. For a heartbeat she hesitated, the scrap of silk dangling from her fingers. Then, with a crooked grin that was equal parts tease and trust, she pressed them into Splice’s hand.
He arched a brow, a glint of humor flickering through his tension. Slowly, deliberately, he lifted the fabric to his face and drew in a breath.
Goldie’s pulse stumbled. Heat flared low in her belly, sharp and sweet. “You’re bad,” she whispered, voice breaking on the word.
His smile was faint, pained at the edges, but there. “Only a little,” he said softly.
Her pulse hammered as she drew a steadying breath and turned back to Mycor. She slid her hand down his arm, fingers trembling as they wrapped around the god’s open palm. His skin was bark and stone, rugged beneath her touch, yet pulsing faintly with a fragile, living warmth.
The Thornfather murmured, low and resonant, a sound that seemed less like speech and more like the earth itself shifting. It thrummed through her bones, vibrating with old power and aching need.
Goldie lifted her other hand and brushed her palm across his cheek with tender reverence. The god’s massive frame jolted beneath her touch. A rush of warmth flooded from him, thick and radiant, sweeping through her body until the world hummed with green-gold light.
The Grove Core inside her flared in answer. A surge of emerald fire seared through her veins, racing outward until the air itself seemed to catch. The atrium shuddered. The ground pulsed once beneath them, a deep, heartbeat thud that sent ripples through the pool at their feet.
Mycor drew in a sound that might have been breath, or might have been the rustle of every leaf in the Grove Core. When he spoke, it was not a whisper but a tremor: the low rumble of soil stirred by rain.
Goldie’s smile softened, tender and awed. Her fingers tightened around his large hand. “I feel your pain,” she whispered, her voice rough with emotion. “Let me ease you.”
She turned back Splice, her smile crooked, voice low but thrumming with heat. ““When I get that feeling… ” she half-sang, off-key and deliberate, “I want… sexual healing.”
Splice let out a ragged exhale, a sound somewhere between a groan and a laugh. The hard edge in his gaze flickered, softening into something achingly human. “You’re impossible.”
Her grin brightened, teasing and tender all at once. “And you love it.”
The word hung there—love—small but incendiary, catching in the air like a spark on dry grass. The space between them seemed to thin, charged and fragile, one breath away from breaking.
Goldie’s breath left her in a trembling sigh, her whole body drawn taut with nerves and heat. Splice’s dark gaze met hers. He leaned in and pressed a kiss to her temple, soft as a vow. “Go ahead,” he whispered.
Goldie closed her eyes, steadying herself, willing her breath to even out as she gathered the hem of her dress. The fabric whispered up her legs, baring skin inch by inch until it pooled at her hips.
Then she looked down.
The Thornfather lay before her, massive and unmoving, though his chest rose and fell in deep, steady breaths. The bark of his body had softened in places, but he was still something out of myth. Ancient. Powerful. And unapologetically naked.
Her eyes drifted down his vast form and then stuttered as they hit the space between his thighs.
“Oh… okay,” she whispered, voice thin.
Wetness bloomed hot and immediate between her legs.
His enormous cock lay heavy against his thigh.
It was thick and ridged, more root than flesh, its bark-like surface traced with faint, glowing lines like sap veins.
Not hard with desire, but still undeniably alive.
Faint pulses shimmered under the surface.
The head of it was flared and slightly tapered, crowned in something that shimmered like dew on a leaf.
Was it a root? A vine? A divine battering ram?
“I am definitely going to need to warm up first,” she muttered. She let out a shaky laugh, breathless and giddy. “Maybe a little… top off before the main event? Just a quick appetizer?”
Slowly, carefully, she reached for the Thornfather’s massive hand and guided it downward until his bark-rough palm pressed gently against her bare thigh. His touch was cool at first, like stone in shade, then slowly warmed, the heat blooming through her skin like sunlight through soil.
The weight of it grounded her. Reassured her. Goldie swallowed, voice barely more than a whisper. “We’ll go slow. Just… follow my lead, big guy.”
Her hand drifted lower, sliding between her thighs until her fingers found the aching, swollen pulse of need waiting there. She circled slowly, coaxing the arousal forward, breath catching at the little spike of pleasure that chased her own motion.
The god’s heavy palm stayed planted on her thigh, unmoving.
Hot. This is hot. This is definitely hot. Keep telling yourself that, Goldie.
Except her brain wouldn’t stop bouncing like a ping-pong ball.
The mossy floor was cold on her knees. The god’s breath was steady but shallow.
His vines didn’t so much as twitch. And behind her, Splice was right there, witness to every awkward sigh and every clumsy stroke.
Watching her try to get herself off with a comatose nature deity.
Nope, don’t think about the awkward. This is very hot. Not awkward.