Pure Requiem - Aja James Page 0,38
other.”
As if she can’t help herself, her hands unwind from the small of my back to travel underneath my T-shirt, stroking up my abdomen to my chest, skin to skin.
She needs the intimacy of feeling my naked skin against hers. I realize that I need it too.
“You taught me how to love, Lord Bright Eyes. If I never met you, maybe I would have become like my mother and sister one day. You saved me with your love.”
That’s not true. Ishtar has too much innate goodness to ever become like the Dark Queen and Medusa. But I am mindful of her storytelling, so I keep my thoughts to myself for now.
“You have the most heavenly smelling skin,” she murmurs, pushing my shirt up, burying her nose in the groove of my pecs.
I can’t help a little huff of laughter at her distraction.
For some mysterious reason, this amazing, beautiful, loving female wants me with keen desperation. I feel it whenever she’s near. She wants to touch me all the time.
For the first time since we were innocent children, I want it too. Not for Mating as her male. Just to give and receive affection.
To give and receive pleasure.
“Continue with your story,” I remind her, grasping her busy, searching hands in mine, holding her still.
“Take off your shirt,” she orders, as if it’s a fair trade for her to keep talking.
Despite the heaviness of the topic, somehow, she makes my mood light. I grab the back of my T-shirt and pull it over my head in one smooth motion.
She wraps her arms around me again and purrs with gratification against my now naked chest.
“And then what?” I urge her. “What happened after the Ivory Palace fell?”
“The Pure Ones left,” she replies. “But the humans stayed. They looted everything of value. What badly wounded Dark Ones they rounded up, they tortured and killed just for fun. It must have been the bloodlust from battle. Or perhaps the millennia of servitude turned them mean. They took advantage of our weakness and ganged up against us. They reveled in their newfound power over what was once the most dominant predators on earth.”
“They tortured you?” I ask bluntly, wanting to recall the words the moment I said them, but wanting to know her answer more.
I need to know.
“Yes,” she says simply, emotionlessly.
“I was in my Great White Beast form. They trapped me in an iron net. I’m not sure how, but it felt like it had magic in it. The more I struggled, the more it caged me in, making me grow smaller, until I was normal leopard-size. They taunted me and prodded me with spears, sticks, burning rods, wooden pikes. Even children threw stones at me. I tried to keep my animal form. I knew that the abuse would be much worse if I took humanoid form. But I was too weak from blood loss and the pain of my wounds.”
She takes a deep breath, and her nails claw into the skin of my back, as if she is desperately clinging onto a lifeline, something to remind her that this was all in the past, so that she can speak about it without breaking.
“When I finally transformed, well, what I expected to happen happened,” she growls matter-of-factly.
“I think half of the human soldiers and maybe half of the entire village at the foot of the Ivory Palace took a turn with me. Several turns. For many months. They kept me weak enough to control, starving me, torturing me, so that I could never heal enough to shift into my stronger forms. And they held me down and fucked me with my neck and limbs in shackles while others gathered to watch the show.”
Fucking gods!
I wrap my arms tighter about her as she takes in deep gulps of air, breathing me in, as if fortifying herself with my scent.
And then, surprisingly, I feel her hands snaking down my spine, beneath the waistband of my trousers to cup my naked ass.
“I love that you don’t wear underwear,” she mumbles and nicks my nipple with her sharp little teeth.
I huff a startled gasp at her sudden detour. If she’s trying to distract me from the gruesomeness of her tale, it’s…somewhat working.
“I love these muscled globes,” she purrs, kneading my flesh covetously. “Have I ever told you that you have the most magnificent bottom of any male I’ve ever met?”
“Ishtar…” I rumble, trying to remind her to focus on her story, even while my own concentration scatters like a