Chapter 24
twenty-four
CIELO
My eyes dart across the room when I see Dante at the counter, placing herbs on his tongue.
I know what they are immediately. I spent my years before my service to the capital harvesting them and sending them either to Earth to help the humans produce more cum, or to the villages, so during breeding time, the females would be able to mate and produce viable eggs.
I can smell it from where I stand. It reminds me of the times when the scent of picking fresh leaves would send me into a rut, and I would have to hurry deep into the caves to keep the others safe. It would have been a death sentence on Erethar, to be unmated and taking this herb.
To be placing myself deep inside my Dante and filling him with my seed is the most grievous sin, but I still wish to see him fat with an egg. And even worse, I wish to tell him that is what I want.
But we have done this before, and Dante seems to have no regrets.
Now, he looks me in the eye as the herbs melt on his tongue. I can scent him almost immediately. He smells like lust, like forever, like VySytheh, though I dare not speak that word aloud. It is as ancient as the Vyastil, and it is forbidden.
But it does not change that my hearts know he belongs to me.
I cross the room without realizing it, just as he begins to shake, and his arms curl around me the moment his chest touches mine. He groans, rocking his cock against my thigh, wordlessly begging for relief, and I plan to give it to him.
Over and over and over, I will take him. I will make him cum. I will lap it from his skin and drink from him as he spills.
But for now, as my claws begin to shred his clothes, leaving him glistening with sweat and writhing against me, I kiss him. His tongue searches for mine, hungry and just as possessive as I am.
If he were Vyastil, he would have shoved me against the wall and sank his fangs into my neck while singing the song of our forever. But his human body seems unsure as he all but climbs into my arms.
“Need you,” he gasps. “Please, Cielo. Please.”
His voice has reached a whine, so needy it makes my cock extend, and I push it against his. Groaning loudly, he tilts his head to the side, the rapid beat of his pulse in his neck almost too tempting.
But I must not.
This is already a crime. I have defied every law, have ignored my sentence. I have taken a human, taken cum, and taken pleasure.
But as his scent floods my nostrils and my mind is consumed with my Dante’s overwhelming need to be filled and kept and bred, I do not care.
I will not care.
“I have you,” I sing to him in Eretharian. He doesn’t understand the words, but he understands the meaning from my mind. We are connected as I spin him against the kitchen counter, then lay his torso along the flat, cool surface.
His hole is open, waiting. Dipping my head low, I lap at him with my tongue. The taste is overwhelming. It is glorious. I push inside of him, lost to my rut, which is taking over my control. I let out a heavy growl as I taste him as deep as I can manage, then pull out with a wet pop.
“More,” he gasps. “Please, Cielo. I’m going to fucking die if you don’t give me more.”
I will not allow such a thing. Spreading his cheeks, I slot my hips against his lower back, using my knees to keep his apart, and then push inside of him. I feel him stretch, hear him gasp as I fill him.
He cannot take all of me. Not yet. But he takes more of me than before. My cock vibrates and pulses as I go deeper, the urge in my body to dump all my seed and breed him now humming through my veins.
My hand goes to his stomach, where a Vyastil female would be round with an egg. She would carry it for several weeks, then lay it in a nest to be hatched.
I close my eyes and send an image to Dante of his stomach, round and filled, and he groans loudly, fucking his hips backward. “Yes, fuck yes. God, breed me.”
“I cannot,” I respond, my regret profound.
He sobs against the counter as he wriggles his hips back and forth, trying to take even more of me. “I know, I know. But…can you try?”
I will always try. I cannot help it. It is a miracle that the scent of him doesn’t send me into a constant rut. With a breath and another growl, I sink my claws into his hips, and he moans loudly as I begin to push in deeper.
My hips snap, moving his body in time with mine, and I feel my release rising. “I am going to spill,” I tell him, but I do not think it is in any human tongue.
He is too far gone to notice. Reaching around, I take his fat cock in my hand, and I realize it is wet. He has spilled at least once.
I gather the cum on my fingers and lick them clean as my eyes slam shut, and I take one more short breath before I expel inside of him.
He shouts, his head falling back against my shoulder as his body twitches, and I take his cock once more as it spills endlessly.
The cum pools against my palm, and I bring it to my lips as I spin him, drinking it down, desperate for more. Dante’s fevered eyes meet mine, and he swipes his thumb over my lips, then feeds me the drops I missed.
“Suck me,” he says.
I need no further invitation. Dante holds himself up on weak legs as I take his cock all the way to the back of my throat, and I suckle and taste him until he is spent.
He wants to release more—I can sense it—but his body is failing him.
No.
No.
It’s more than that. The cries he’s giving are not of pleasure or joy. They are of pain. I can feel it, like an echo in my head, as I look up into his face and find his eyes tightly shut, his fists balled up against his sides.
“Dante,” I gasp. Rising to my feet, I gather him into my arms. “Dante.” I feel immediately helpless.
“It…didn’t work,” he gasps.
“What?”
“The herbs. They did…last time,” he stops and lets out several heavy sobs. “I feel like I’m dying. This is….oh god, this is worse than before.” His lips part on a cry. “Cielo. Help me.”
I do not know what to do. I cradle him with one arm, grateful he is small enough that I can do that, and search the herbs. I find the zitha and quickly feed it to him, but even so, the pain does not stop.
Not this time.
The pinpricks of blood my claws left behind heal, but Dante is not getting better. A single peek into his mind gives me nothing but agony, and I cannot let him live like this.
I cannot.
“Doctoooor,” I say. Those are the strange, almost barbaric humans that treat illnesses and injuries with primitive tools and medications that often cause more harm than healing.
Dante shakes his head, gasping as he clings to me harder. “Can’t help. Can’t…oh fuuuuck. Take me to bed, please?” His words are thready and weak.
I rush him through our apartment, kicking open the door to the bedroom, and lay him on the mattress. He curls onto his side, then fumbles around with one of his hands until he pulls a large, gray bit of fabric from the nightstand.
It’s attached to a long, white cord, and he hits a button that turns green, then yellow, then red.
“Hellllp. I wannnn to help,” I manage.
Dante cracks one eye open. “The zitha isn’t working. I don’t know what to do.” Tears gather in the corners of his eyes and then begin to fall.
This is agony—his pain and my inability to do anything about it. I can feel it, the stab of agony knocking against my mind. If we were on Erethar, I could find him more herbs. There are so many. And with my Tarek contacts, I know one of them would have some solution to this.
But I am banished. I have no way.
I have…
Oh.
I have Everest.
The thought hits me almost violently, and my hands begin to shake. Everest. Dante told me he has a secret way into Erethar, a portal to the Outerlands he and Rathyn often use to enjoy the singing caves and the underground oceans without the scrutinizing gaze of the Vyastil from the capital.
And that is exactly where I need to go.
“Waaaait,” I tell him.
He grabs at me as I start to stand up, and I take his hand, pressing his palm to my lips. “Don’t leave me,” he whispers.
“Never. My Dante,” I tell him. “Never.”
He lets me go, and I hurry through the apartment, searching desperately for my phone. I do not know how much more pain my Dante can take, and if it means I am found out and killed over this, it is worth the risk.
He will always be worth it.
By nature, Vyastil do not believe in what humans call miracles.
We understand the concept of fate, but we are taught that everything can be within our control.
But for a moment, I think I understand what fate is because as Dante is shaking, crying, and sweating, Everest appears with Rathyn at his side.
“Where is he?” Everest asks.
I lead him to the bedroom where Dante is lying in the dark with the heated cloth pressed against his skin. The lights are out, save for the one from the bathroom, and it illuminates the sheen on my Dante’s face, the grimace on his lips.
I wish for him to be the man writhing in pleasure, taking what he wants from my body. Not this.
“Did you give him zitha?”
I nod, making a distressed hum deep in my chest.
“It didn’t help at all?”
“No,” Dante says, his voice tattered and raspy. “Nothing’s helping. I don’t understand.”
Everest brushes past me and drops to his knees, pressing the inside of his wrist to Dante’s forehead. “No fever, but you feel clammy.”
“It…it should pass,” Dante murmurs.
“How long? I mean, is it normally this bad?”
Dante squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his head. “No. Never. Not…not like this.”
Perhaps it was me. Perhaps I have broken him.
“No, baby,” Dante sends to me. “It wasn’t you. I’m just sick.”
I do not like this and turn away, unable to watch him suffer anymore. I walk out of the room, finding Rathyn in the kitchen. He looks uncertain, and I do not blame him.
I think he knows what I am going to ask, and I have a feeling that when Everest volunteered the use of their portal, he did not ask Rathyn if that was allowed.
“Is he dying?” Rathyn asks me in Eretharian.