Chapter 24 And for Dessert, Buns
twenty-four
And for Dessert, Buns
The flaming scars stop just above his pubic bone.
Instead of hair, his mound is covered in textured skin that looks like one of those exfoliating massagers.
I rub the backs of my knuckles over it and the hairs raise on my arms at the tickling sensation.
His cock jerks, slapping against my clit, and I whimper.
His shaft is red like the rest of him, and there are several nodules under his skin, like someone placed beads there. I drag the tip of my finger up his cock to one of the bumps and press gently. It gives some, but is still firm. What will that feel like going into me? Coming out of me?
My eyes move up his shaft to his head laying against me.
It’s lighter pink than the rest of him with a wide flare and a thick slit.
Precum glistens there, teasing me. I swipe my finger over it and he hisses in a breath.
I bring my fingers to my lips and taste him.
Salty heat, with some undertone of herbal earthiness.
It might just be my new favorite flavor.
“I apologize,” he murmurs.
I quirk an eyebrow and look up at him as I pull my finger free. “For?”
He thrusts against me, his head bumping my clit as his shaft slips over my opening. I gasp at the friction and he groans in satisfaction.
“I have reached the limit of my restraint…”
I clutch at his chest, and he grips my ass hard in both hands. He rocks into me again and pleasure zings up my gut to my throat in a whimper.
“Don’t hold back,” I say.
I angle my hips to meet him, but he stops me.
“Are you…” He pauses, breathing heavily. “Are you protected from pregnancy?”
Oh, shit, I didn’t even consider it.
“Is it possible? Are we compatible?” I ask.
He nods.
“I’m not,” I say. “I’ve never…I don’t need to.”
He leans into me, squeezing us together tighter. “My Jiahui has never been touched?”
His.
I shudder from the power of his presence. “Never.”
He groans and thrusts again. The nodes on his shaft bump against my clit and fill me with fire. He draws back and moves against me harder, desperation snapping his hips forward. I kiss him fiercely, feeling the bite of his fangs on my lips.
He wraps an arm behind my back and pushes us flush together. His cock glides over my slick skin again and again, the rhythm of it bringing me so close. I’m moaning into every one of his thrusts, and he replies with grunts and groans of his own.
“Rhaz, come for me, please. Come with me,” I cry against his lips. “Come on me.”
My last request sends him into a frenzy. His hips pound against mine in a furious pace I know will wreck me one day.
The first spurt of his release feels like hot wax hitting my chest. I cry out when the second hits my clit and throws me over the edge.
I lock eyes with him as I’m sent freefalling into a pit of pleasure, the depth of which may have no end.
I might exist in this state of muscle-clenching, heart-pounding bliss for eternity.
My astral tether sings with need, a vibration so powerful I can’t breathe. It whips about, seeking heat and strength, a place to moor itself and grow stronger. It scared me the first time, but now I see its destination.
Him.
It wants to live inside him and connect us.
I grab the reins of my astral body and yank hard, dislodging it from him. I suck down a desperate breath as he thrusts again, and again, spilling himself on my stomach and chest in quantities that seem impossible.
Finally, he slows his pace and shudders. The heat of his cum dripping over my hips and down my ass makes me sigh. But in this moment of relaxation, I’m barraged with the knowledge that something about me is greedy, and needy, and absolutely batshit crazy.
My astral presence wants to be in him…
Why does my spirit think it has a right to just burrow inside him? I’m only just getting to know him, and I know very little! Also, he has no idea what’s happening.
“You pulled back again,” he says. “Why?”
“What?”
“Your magic. It’s reaching for me, too. To share with me like I do with you.”
Oh. I guess he knows more about what’s happening than I do.
“It’s scary, I guess,” I mumble.
I look down to escape his gaze and gasp at the sight. There is so much cum on me. I would definitely have gotten pregnant. I don’t think condoms can stop all this. Shit, I’ll need to go on birth control.
But that’s long-term thinking, and I’m short-term inhabiting.
Fuck, I keep getting confused and I can’t afford to think like this.
I can’t get attached to someone I’m never going to see again.
Ace and Nai Nai want to go home. I can’t keep him from his friends.
I can’t keep her from her life. And I have to be there to support them both. They are my family. Not him.
I push his chest gently and scoot back. “I should get home. It’s late and I have to open in a few hours.”
“Of course,” he murmurs, taking a step back.
The fiery bindings disappear from my wrists and I put my hands behind me to support myself. All my muscles are spent. I don’t know how I’m going to walk tomorrow, let alone work.
He turns to the table and grabs a bao bun out of the steamer. “You need something to eat after all that hard punishment.”
I chuckle and he hands me the bun. There’s a napkin in his other hand and he sets about cleaning me up.
Affection swells in my chest as I watch him swipe everything away with smooth, deliberate strokes, cleaning me thoroughly.
I could do this every night with him for the rest of my life and never want for more.
The revelation of the depth of my attachment strikes like a hammer, driving that nail of truth all the way into my brain.
How have I fallen for him so quickly?
How can I leave this behind?
He looks up at me, his eyes soft like flickering candlelight. His silence is deafening when the expression on his face screams this loud. He wants me to stay. He wants me. He’s never wanted anything more, not even his freedom.
I can’t breathe.
“I have to go.”
I set the bun down and drop to the floor to get my clothes.
I don’t know where my panties are.
Where are they?
Fuck!
Doesn’t matter.
I grab his boxer briefs and tug them on.
“Jiahui, slow down.”
“I can’t. I need to go to sleep.”
But how the fuck am I going to sleep with this mountain sitting on my chest? The air is too thin, and I can’t get enough of it. I reach for my dress and Rhazan snatches my wrist.
“You’re hurting yourself,” he says, his voice tinged with anger. “Slow down. Breathe.”
Little stars are dancing in my vision and I realize I’m hyperventilating. I can’t stop. Not enough air.
My legs buckle and the next second, I’m in his grasp. He’s so warm, and his body feels like safety, but I can’t trust it. I can’t fall for it. Nothing is safe. No one can protect me. I have to be strong enough for myself, for all of them. I can’t let him. I can’t.
The same haunting melody he sang to me nights ago rumbles through his chest and halts the spiral in its tracks. He rocks side to side, and the gentle motions sync with my breathing. The stars recede from my vision and I close my eyes. My body stills and I latch on to the sound of him.
The sound of peace.
No thoughts enter my mind as he hums and sways like the ocean lapping the shore. My breathing follows him, and the weight on my chest slowly eases, until I’m free of it. I open my eyes to see him looking down at me with so much fondness it aches.
“You don’t have to be alone, Jiahui,” he whispers. “The things that burden your mind are not too great for me. I’m not going to disappear.”
My throat squeezes painfully. “I am.”
“What do you mean?” he asks.
His voice is patient, not a hint of surprise or worry. The calmness from him is staggering…and it makes my eyes burn.
“I have to go back to Boston,” I say.
He hums in acknowledgement. “Right now?”
“No, but…soon?”
He steps toward the table and sits in the other chair that didn’t transform into a torture dais. He grabs another bao and holds it to my lips.
“Eat.”
I open my mouth and take a bite. It’s so fluffy and gooey. The filling is tangy and sweet, with just the right amount of spice. I take another, much larger bite as tears blur my vision. I keep biting until the bun is gone and my mouth is full.
“It’s really good,” I say, my cheeks stuffed.
He chuckles. “I’m glad.”
“You’re not having any?” I ask.
“I don’t eat.”
“Ever?”
He shakes his head.
“You can’t?”
“I can, but there’s no point.”
I scowl and sit up in his arms. “Do you have taste buds?”
He smirks. “When I want to.”
Then I remember how he’d changed his appearance. Was it not just his looks, but perhaps even his composition too? Can he alter himself so wildly as to not have taste buds? What else can he change?
“I feel your mind whirring. Can I answer some of those questions?”
I swallow the rest of the bun. “Are you a shape-shifter?”
“I am.”
I trace one of the lava-like scars on his chest. “Is this what you really look like?”
“No.”
My eyes dry up and I sniffle the last of my sadness away. “Will you show me your true form?”
He shrugs and grabs another bun that he holds to my lips. “Maybe.”
“Where do you come from?”
“Eat.”
I pout and take a bite.
He smiles. “Good girl.”
“Where d’you come from,” I ask around the mouthful.
“There are many planes of existence. I come from another.”
“Stop being so vague.”
He bumps my lips with the dumpling.
I sigh and take another bite.
“I, and the many others like me, come from a plane inhabited solely by a single, powerful being. The place is both a universe of its own, and the being that dwells there.”
I never thought a place could be a person, too. Wheel of Fortune is gonna have a ball with this one.
“How did you get here?” I ask, then take another bite. I realize my eating is payment for his answers. I’ll eat the whole container to hear him talk more about himself.
“They released us to go experience the worlds. Particularly, your plane, and Earth.”
I finish the second bun. “Why?”
He shifts me in his grasp, and I sense that he’s stalling. His gaze moves around the room, as if there’s something he’s following only he can see.
“They can’t experience pain, or fear, or love. They are knowledgeable in all things but don’t comprehend emotions. They sent us as vessels for their understanding. One day, I’ll return to them, and my experiences will enlighten them.”
My stomach clenches. “One day when?”
He smiles down at me, his fingers tracing the line of my cheek to my jaw. “Not soon.”
I sigh in relief, and a sudden wave of exhaustion hits me.
I stifle a yawn, but he notices. He stands and brings me back to the wax-caked dais where my dress sits in a bunch.
He puts me down on the edge, then lifts my dress from the floor by his tail and holds it over me.
I put my arms up and let him pull the material down my body.
The trail of his knuckles against my sides is borderline illicit.
It makes me want to stay here, but I know I have to go.
Not in a rush like before. Not fleeing from what I was feeling, my fears…but because I need rest. There’s still a lot hanging over us. He knows I have to leave, but that doesn’t seem to matter to him.
“Where do Sylvia and Apollo live?” I ask sleepily.
He chuckles. “Why, you want to go for a visit?”
“No, I mean, how do they get here?”
He hums as he helps me down. “Apollo is a powerful demon like me. He can traverse great spatial distances when he moves between the realms because of the power he can put into his astral doorway.”
“And when I leave the coffee shop, I lose your power.”
He nods.
“So, I wouldn’t be able to make a door from Boston to here?”
“I don’t know.”
He tucks a pink strand behind my ear and follows the line down to my neck.
He cradles the back of my head and leans down.
I stretch up to meet him in a gentle kiss, one that lingers on my lips long after it’s ended.
He presses his forehead to mine, and smoke curls around our faces from his heavy exhale.
“That you would want to makes me happy,” he says.
I cup his cheeks and kiss him again. “You deserve happiness.”
His hand tenses on the back of my neck, and then he pulls away. “Time for you to go to bed.”
I smile. “Thank you for the date.”
“I look forward to the next,” he says, and his half-hard cock twitches against his thigh.
I blink and avert my eyes. “Oh, my god, you’re naked.”
Somehow I hadn’t realized.
“You took my underwear,” he says with amusement.
On the floor by my feet, camouflaged against all the black, I see my panties. I pick them up and hold them out to him with an overly wide smile.
“Here you go.”
An expression I’ve never seen comes over his face. It’s a shit-eating grin filled with challenge.
He snatches my underwear and bends down, stepping his feet into the leg holes. I watch, mouth agape, as he pulls them up to the bulk of his thighs and the material stretches to its limits. With a slow, deliberate tug, he gets his dick behind them, and snaps the band on his muscular hips.
He turns, showing off the thick globes of his ass sticking out the bottom of the panties while his tail snakes out the top.
“A tad small,” he says. “But very luxurious.”
I laugh. I can’t help it. He’s so…
A million words fly through my mind at once to describe him, but there isn’t one. The closest equivalent is…wonderful.
He’s so wonderful.
He laughs too and slides my panties off. I take off his boxers and we exchange underwear. Mine are still warm from the heat of his skin and something feels so right about that.
Rhazan leans in one more time, kissing my cheek as a fiery portal appears beside us.
“Good night, Firecracker,” he murmurs against my skin.
I turn into him and capture his lips, then bite the bottom one and suck it into my mouth. He groans, his hands tightening on my arms. I release him with a pop and step toward the portal with a grin.
“Good night, RhazDaddy.”