Chapter 14
Chapter
Fourteen
I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU DID AS A BOY… WELL, I DID NOTHING AS A GIRL, SO THERE GOES MY CHILDHOOD
Clara slowly thawed out, moving as if every nerve hurt, when instead she felt like sun-warmed butter. She slowly stretched a leg downward, letting Shiver lower her to a stand.
“That… was mean,” she said.
“A necessary evil to keep your thoughts on me,” said Shiver, still licking the last of her from his lips.
Thinking about him had never really been difficult for Clara, but especially now that she could see him properly.
He was once darker than a shadow, but now his skin was a golden brown.
He wore an arrogant smirk under his long nose and had eyes that twinkled with the promise of more mischief.
His hair was a tangle of dark curls that ended just before broad shoulders she could easily ride again and again.
And then there were the horns; couldn’t forget those.
Remembering the way his body had rocked beneath her when she held onto them, she reached up to stroke one, her fingertips bumping along ridges and lines she’d never noticed before.
"Ohh," Shiver's breath caught, that touch shooting straight to his cock.
"I'm sorry, is that… sensitive?" She asked, her terror giving way to her curiosity for a moment. Her goats had always appreciated a good head-scratching, but then, with precious few exceptions, goats were not demons.
"Sensitive, yes, you might say… yes," Shiver caught her wrist before she could take her hand away.
Clara's eyebrows lifted as it clicked into place.
"Oh, I see," she said, stroking upward again, slowly, one finger tracing the ridges up to the sharp tip. Clara kept her eyes on his face, at last seeing the vulnerability there that he could so easily force out of her.
Shiver bit his lip, trying not to show what her touch was doing to him. It was one thing to touch her and make her come with half of Hell watching, but quite another thing to find himself under the spotlight.
"As you said, we have all night," said Clara, suddenly feeling much braver than she had a moment ago, even as warm liquid seeped down the inside of one thigh. "I think it's time I learned a few things about you."
Shiver licked his lips, trying not to think about the many hateful eyes on him— but then thinking of Clara wasn't helpful either, not if he wanted to keep his composure.
"You know plenty about me, girl," he huffed, squirming as she played with the tip of one horn, testing its sharpness against her soft little fingers that, fuck him, he wanted to bite and suck until she—
"Where were you born?"
“I—what?" His sluggish brain scrambled to latch onto her words. Born? Had he even been born? "It's—I can't r-remember, that must have been—hundreds of years ago."
"Try, please," she said, reaching up her other hand to play with his other horn. It wasn't an easy reach for her with Shiver standing a foot and a half above her, but the demon was happy to lower his head to rest against her soft chest.
"I don't—I think there was seawater nearby," he said, just barely catching onto a scrap of a memory. The smell of salt on the air. Those screeching birds. Little white flowers by the shore. Palm trees. “And buildings, massive ones.”
Clara could see this was a struggle for him, and she decided to accept that answer, for the moment. She rubbed the very tips of his horns, watching his face.
"How many humans have you… fed from?"
Damn me twice, and you too for asking, thought Shiver with a wince, knowing his demonic cohorts could all hear his interrogation and see him sweating, and they knew his numbers as well as he did.
"I don't know," he said in a quiet hiss, knowing he would never get away with that.
"He liesss!"
"More than any of us, he's had!"
Clara's sharp eyes pierced Shiver, and he felt it like an arrow aimed straight for his chest.
Her hand dipped between his thighs, curling around his aching shaft.
And….fire.
"Tell me."
"Honey, d-don't make me tell you — you don't want to kno-w," Shiver groaned, breath hitching, as her delicate little hand slid from his base up to his tip, slick with his anticipation for her.
How many times in one day had he nearly died?
He supposed if his last moments were in her hands, being slowly tormented for information, he could accept that, though he would prefer to keep her from hating him all over again before his demise.
"More than fifty?" Asked Clara, her thumb circling his tip and spreading pearlescent arousal with agony-inducing patience.
The chorus of laughs, hoots, and catcalls from all around them gave her more of an answer than Shiver's stammering.
"More than a hundred? Five hundred?" Clara's chest began to constrict.
Shiver was right; she didn't want the real answer.
She wanted to know about his humanity, his favorite flavors or melodies, she wanted to know if he had ever been in love before—but as much as she hated to admit it, those demons surrounding them were right.
She had no idea who Shiver was, what he had been doing all these years, or how he really felt about it.
Her hand worked almost as if seeking revenge, gently squeezing as she slowly drew her hand up to his tip before fisting it down hard and fast. Shiver was gasping, trying to focus, trying to answer her properly, all while his useless male brain could only think, Where did she learn that, and who must I kill for teaching it to her?
"You think he caresssss?" The demonic voices crowed around them. The crowd was growing even more agitated as they watched, testing the barrier over and over, eliciting little crackles and hisses.
"Do you remember every grain that sustained you, every pathetic oat? That is a human to usss, mere crumbsss…"
"Shut up, you—m-maggots," Shiver hissed, bucking his hips shamefully into her hand.
Seven hells, he knew she was testing him, possibly even angry with him, but she had every centimeter of him aching as if he had been poisoned.
Those pretty little short fingers couldn't halfway touch, wrapped around his shadowy cock, but a mere glance at the sight made him dizzy and weak.
"If that's not true, then say it," said Clara through a painfully tight throat, staring at Shiver as her hand moved faster. "Are we crumbs to you? Am I?"
If either of them had their entire wits at their disposal, they might have realized the problem they were creating—looking at each other, touching each other, yes—but also letting in the voices of the demons on all sides, and demons had no talent more true than that of using their voices to twist the truth and amplify the darkness.
“Of course not!” Shiver groaned.
“Of courrssseee yesss!” The chorus called with malicious glee. “Do you think he lovesss you? Why you? You are not special, farm girl!”
The others took up the call, tasting weakness in the hot night air.
“Farm girl! Goat girl! Chicken girl!”
Clara’s hand slipped, and she took a step back, feeling the horror creep under her skin with every sharp word.
She was not special. She was not unique or fascinating or different. She was no great beauty. Her greatest adventure had been moving to the city to write an Agony Aunt column for lonely people, and she had given that up to go back to being a goat girl.
“Clara, please—“
“He begs now that you stop pleasing him,” came a hiss in Clara’s ear, too close—Frenzy, nearly touching her from just beyond the barrier. “See how he will turn on you if he can’t use your pretty little body.”
Shiver looked up with eyes that burned, glowing bright white again with his fury. Though Frenzy was his target, Clara was the one who jumped back, just enough for Frenzy’s hand to break through the barrier and catch her throat.
“I will never do such a thing to you,” he whispered against her ear, pulling her closer to him as the barrier crackled and burned them both, sending off sparks that leapt up to the ceiling.
“Let me in, and I will use you in the most delicious ways, and never promise you anything as outlandish as love.”
Tears slipped down Clara’s face as she felt her skin burning, felt that demonic hand pressing against her throat, felt more hands joining Frenzy’s to grab at her dress, her hair, her arms.
“A demon will always put himself first, little human,” said Frenzy, leaning down to scrape his teeth along her soft neck. “You are not the first to be fooled.”
The sound of cracking and shattering, like from a frozen lake when spring started to poke out its fingers, sounded all around them as more hands broke the barrier, more claws reached for Clara.
Then another sound came, a freight train in the distance barreling closer by the second, and Shiver’s fury erupted in a quaking roar.
Demons were blown backward from the light of the sigil that glowed so brightly that Clara had to shut her eyes, though she could hear the screams as the horde was flung against the walls of her rattling house, feel the hands leaving her as one by one they were dragged off with the force of Shiver’s rage.
When she felt hands on her face again—soft hands, his hands, she knew without looking—she opened her eyes to the face she knew well, even though she had only just learned what he looked like.
She had collapsed to the floor, and he loomed over her, the glow in his eyes fading to that concerned dark black.
“Demons lie,” he panted, brushing her hair away from her face. “You are my world. I will love you until I cease to exist.”
Clara yanked his face down into a burning kiss, curling her body around his. She felt it. How doubt had ever crept in, she didn’t know, but she felt it now—his love, his protection, his willingness to put her life in front of his own.
He bunched up the front of her dress, desperate to feel more of her against more of him. With the slightest press of his hips, he slid inside her inch by agonizing inch, parting from her lips only so he could watch that adorable gasp as he filled her.
“Tell me,” he begged, his vision whiting out as he sheathed himself.
“I—I love you,” she said, gripping his huge shoulders.
Now the sounds of demons around them were as insignificant as clucking hens as the hellish cabal groaned in pain and struggled to break into this new, stronger forcefield.
“Again, baby,” said Shiver, pulling back and snapping his hips up, shaking them both—indeed, the whole house—with his thrust.
“I love you!” She gasped. “I love you!”
He growled it into her neck, whispered it into her ear, moaned it as he yanked the buttons free from her dress and sucked her nipple between his lips, all the while driving his cock into her faster and harder.
I can’t possibly come again, she thought as she felt it building between her hips, too hard and too fast. Her body couldn’t take another climax, no matter who was or wasn’t watching, but impossible as it seemed, it was crawling closer.
Shiver reached beneath her to lift her hips from the ground, arching her back and driving into her deeper. His kisses sizzled across her breasts as buttons scattered across the floor.
“One—more—my baby,” he groaned. “Please.”
That was all it took for her to come apart, crying out hard enough that her jaw ached, her eyes flashed white and red, and her bones liquified.
With her body squeezing him, Shiver had no choice but to follow.
He buried his head in her neck and roared, shaking the dust from the light fixtures and rattling the lamps… .
Until something broke, and a great bubble burst outward, flattening everything beyond their circle.
For a moment, they both lay there, breathing hard and trying to force their minds to chug back to life.
Dawn was breaking, the grayish blue light just beginning to fuzz upward over the treetops beyond Clara’s field—a field they had an excellent view of because the house, which had moments ago been at least mostly standing around them, was now no more than a few teetering beams and her cast iron stove.
The demons were no more than stains burnt into the ground and remaining floorboards.
Clara struggled to focus her eyes in the dim light, watching splinters and half-burned paper and feathers from her pillows drifting down to the ground as her chickens—confused, but nevertheless delighted to find themselves with a much bigger yard—wandered off in search of new bugs to eat and new adventures to have.
“Oh, Clara, I—I’m sorry, I’ll fix it, I’ll—I’ll make you a new one,” Shiver stammered, still fully inside her.
Clara laughed, and they could both feel it between their hips, a drumming little echo of her mirth where they were still connected.
“Thank you, no,” she said, curling her arms around his neck, in no hurry to move. “I vote we get out of town.”
Shiver grinned, stroking the side of her face.
“I can take you to my birthplace,” he said.
Clara watched him in awe. “You remember it now?”
“Enough of it to get us there. Although I don’t think they call it Sumer anymore.” He chuckled, looking around at the ruined house and the vanquished demons. “I guess this makes it all final.”
Clara raised an eyebrow.
“The… spell?”
“The marriage.”
“Whose marriage?!”
Shiver held up his wrist, still tied with the red cord that was connected to her own.
“Ours, honey.”
“Oh!” Clara’s face flushed red for a moment, as if the idea of finding herself suddenly married was more shocking than lying with a demon half inside her on the only piece of remaining floor she had, which was scrawled with a magical symbol. Then she returned his cheeky grin.
“Very well, I accept.”
Shiver laughed—as if she could possibly escape him now. “Oh, well, thank you very much.”
“You’re quite welcome, my fine feathered friend.”
END.