Chapter 48

I sat up abruptly, blinking sleep from my eyes. Myta murmured beside me in complaint, tugging at the linen sheets I’d pulled from around her. My favorite attendant had never been fond of abrupt awakenings. I took a moment to admire her graceful form beneath the sheet, clad only in her silver torque and bangles. But her beauty only soothed me momentarily. My heart was racing, as if from danger, and I cast about looking for what might have awoken me.

There was nothing. My room was simple, though the few furnishings I owned were finely crafted. Just my bed, my chest of belongings, and my alchemy accouterments. The Mithali claimed that the simplicity of their furnishings was a sign of austerity, but I’d always scoffed at that idea. A single stool from the Tribeta woodweavers cost as much as any gilded throne from Ramana.

There was no alarm from the hall, not even a distant mutter of voices. And certainly no space in my room for anything alarming to hide. The bare stone walls soothed me.

Myta groaned, curling into my side. Her teeth nipped at my hip, playful even in her drowsy state. I smiled fondly down at her, my lips quirking as her hand found my knee, and then drifted upward.

“Up already, master?” Something about the way she said it tickled the back of my mind, but the feeling vanished as her fingertips found my groin, stroking teasingly.

“Always, for you.” I chuckled, trying to play off my strange distress, drinking in the outline of her lithe form in the moonlight that spilled through my open door. She gave me a skeptical glance, clearly not fooled by my casual tone, but she didn’t press. Instead she nuzzled my loins, stroking my sensitive skin there with her lips. I shivered in response, my shaft swiftly rising to the occasion.

“So I see,” she murmured as I hardened under her fingers. “If you’re awake, perhaps it’s time for that lesson you promised me? You’re not doing anything else productive at this time of night.”

Gracefully she mounted me, her sex wet and ready, as it almost always was. Her flesh gripped me in a snug embrace, squeezing delightfully as she deliberately flexed, stroking me with her moist heat. There were times when I wondered if my sorcery was shaping her body, molding her form into a perfect tool for my pleasure. Other times I was certain of it.

Once I was seated firmly inside her, we rocked our hips together, not rushing to our ends, but enjoying the lazy buildup. I reached out to her spirit, and together we turned our attention mostly inward, to the mass of fiery mana that Myta had been trying to harness. It seethed with rage, an uncompromising wrath that bordered on hatred. I was going to show her how to tame it.

We began passing mana back and forth between us, the connection between us allowing us to increase the speed and pressure of its flow. The familiar pulses of the sharing fizzled along my nerves, building up to the rhythm of our hips. When it reached a good intensity, I pulled on the violent mana, trying to draw just a thread of it into our grasp.

“Pointless,” the voice came from nearby, and I turned my head at Ensu’s dry tone. He sounded mild, a little sardonic perhaps, but I knew him well enough to hear the rage he tried so hard to veil. My own anger rose in response, but I just let it roll through me and gone. Myta’s moans were enough to keep me grounded. I loved the way her hoarse voice became so breathy and urgent when we were together.

“You waste your life on things like this, on trash like her?” Ensu’s lip twitched in a sneer. “The far towers have fallen. Our brothers have died, impaled on the spears of those who hunt us, and you waste you time fucking your pain away? Don’t you remember what we lost? What they did to us!”

I did remember. I remembered a boy with dark eyes, and a soft face. His small body torn apart by hungry dogs in the street. I remembered the temple matron, who’d been a mother to us from the age of five. I’d killed her myself so that she didn’t suffer through the pain of the attack, like having your insides shredded by broken glass. My rage rose now, not just at our persecutors, but at my brother as well. As though I could ever forget the suffering of our family.

“Look at me, master.” Myta kissed me fiercely, then pressed her forehead to mine. Her hands cupped my face, and my rage and loss were so intense that I sobbed. “Live here with me.”

She was still riding me, still moaning as my fingers dug into her hips, clawed at her back. I needed the release, the catharsis. This was an old pain, giving rise to an old hate. But it was one that I’d put aside long ago. Myta cried out as I abused her flesh, the pain adding spice to her pleasure as her hips began to make little circles each time she sank back down on me.

I laughed, pushing the mana between us harder, pulling her down into my lap harder. The slap of us coming together was a satisfying reward for my aggressive enthusiasm.

Ensu was gone, I didn’t even need to turn my head to know that. He’d never learned what I had. That holding onto anger was poison. That it’s only value was when it could push you forward. So I rode out my anger as my vas rode me, screaming in release as I flooded her.

“Don’t!” I barked at my flame as she began to climb off of me. I was still hard, still buried inside her. “Hold onto me my love, but lean back.”

She did as I bade, and I reached one hand between us to rub at her pearl, keeping the other on the small of her back. I made circles against her bud of flesh, starting smooth and slow to explore her at the awkward angle, but rapidly ramping up my attentions. Her hips began to move again, not rising and falling, but making those little circles again. Stirring my shaft inside her, rubbing against her most sensitive spots.

Going rigid, she nearly fell backwards as she came, hips bucking wildly. Her head fell back, and a strangled cry tore from her throat. When her body relaxed, she tried to pull away, but I held her firmly. Not letting her escape my grasp, or the incessant motion of my thumb on her pearl.

Jerking, struggling, she tried to fight me. To pull away from my tortuous stroking of her sensitive flesh. She gasped, unable to to take a full breath, or make a true protest as I **** another climax from her. Curling forward she hunched over me, biting my shoulder. Her arms and legs shook as she tried to pin my hand between us, to keep it still as she clawed at my back, but it was futile.

My mind was hazed, with a state that was not quite anger, but felt akin to it. A sort of madness of possessive passion that sometimes came over me. I couldn’t, didn’t want to stop my ****, even as tears began to pour down Myta’s cheeks. Even as overwhelmed as she was, I could feel her deep sense of relief and release. This would end when I wanted it to, and not a moment sooner.

I pushed her over the edge once more, and her fists drummed on my back, before she sagged against me. Her flesh throbbed around me, seeking to milk me of my own release. But the rest of her body was limp and powerless, her breath coming in great, shuddering gasps. When the pleasure bordered on outright pain, I finally pulled my thumb from her tortured nub, thrusting my hips once. I spent myself again inside her. A whisper of my previous climax, but the throbbing of my cock inside caused my flame to jerk and squeak.

When she finally caught her breath, Myta began to laugh. An uncontrollable outpouring of emotion that did fascinating things within her, even as I was softening. That caused another squeak, and then a groan, followed by more laughter. It took perhaps ten minutes, before she brought her unruly body back under control.

“Master, what is this place?” She posed the question once her limbs had finally stopped shaking with the aftershocks of pleasure

“A battleground. It’s not a real place, but something created by our inner worlds. A reflection of my oldest anger.” I looked about the room, unable to suppress my sense of loss. It had been a long time since I’d looked at these memories, and for good reason. They brought me far more pain than comfort.

“It’s gone?” Myta stroked the side of my face, and her eyes were full of understanding. I hated that she understood, that her eyes reflected my sadness. “Then I’ll be your home, master. As you are mine.”

I didn’t respond aloud, just pulling her close. We’d fallen to our sides on the bed, and she nuzzled her head under my chin, kissing my neck. I kissed her head in return.

When I felt a little less raw, I stretched out my awareness. We were indeed in my inner world, deep in my vault of memories. And it seemed that we’d accomplished our goal. I could sense our connection to the spirit. More confusingly, I could sense the spirit itself as though it were present. Not connected, as Myta and I were, but somehow fully present inside my inner world.

That was impossible of course, the inner world was only a mental construct. Regardless, the spirit had undergone a transformation. Its aspect did not directly reflect Myta’s catalyzing flame, but rather one of liberating catharsis. Clearly that was my fault, for becoming too lost in my memories at the beginning.

“My senses are confused, but the spirit should be relatively safe now. We need to return quickly, lest enemies find our bodies.” Myta nodded at my comment, composing herself before we both pushed ourselves back to the physical world.