Pure Requiem - Aja James Page 0,71

will burst if you pinch too hard! I want to warn her, but I fear that may only spur her on.

“Eh…something I can help you with?” I offer with a toothy smile, locking my jaw when her hand tightens painfully around my flaccid cock.

“You’ve helped me plenty last night,” she murmurs, and thankfully, her hand releases my penis to trail down my legs.

I can handle rape if that’s what she’s into—been there, done that, got the tattoo—but I’m unutterably relieved that she seems to have just as much interest in the skin between my toes as she did in my dingdong.

“Do tell,” I encourage.

Maybe if she talks more, I’ll figure out what the hell is going on here.

“Come now, don’t play coy, Creature,” she chides, and the fleeting expression I catch on her deviously beautiful face flicks on the lightbulb in my head.

“Wan’er,” I breathe with disbelief.

But…she looks completely different. How can that be?

“In the flesh,” she confirms with a dip of her head, circling around me so that I can see her fully when I turn my face to the side.

“My original flesh,” she expounds. “This is the form I was born in. I finally have the powers and the immortality to harness it once more. When you helped me end Medusa, all of her powers became mine alone. So, my thanks for that, little Creature.”

I clear my throat around the consternation.

“It was my pleasure.”

Well, it was actually Tal’s, who deserves the honor of ending Medusa more than anyone else, so I’m glad he got it.

But all of this is news to me. How had Wan’er become so powerful? It’s so mind-boggling I can barely process the implications.

“But you failed to give me what I want most,” she continues.

“Medusa’s beheading wasn’t enough?” I quip.

She laughs softly. Menacingly.

This does not bode well. At. All.

“Oh, dear little Creature,” she muses, “Medusa’s demise is certainly satisfactory, but what I really want is the miracle of this.”

She clutches my sex and gonads in a tight fist once more, making me arch my neck to look down at myself.

“Umm… pretty sure every male comes with them,” I mutter around the pain, truly baffled.

“But you’re special,” she hisses close to my ear, licking the shell with her disgusting wet tongue.

I can’t repress the shudder that racks my body, can’t help the reaction of twisting my head away.

“Don’t you know that you’re my monster? My little Frankenstein.”

What?

Her monster? But…Medusa was my Mistress.

She must see the bewilderment on my face, for she goes on to explain.

“I told you before that Medusa is no chess master. She is merely my pawn. As are you. You have been mine all along. I was there the day you were born. I was the human-skinned handmaiden that oversaw Ishtar pushing the girl and then you out of her feeble body. I am the one Lord Wind tasked to take care of you after he defied Anunit’s orders and breathed life back into your shriveled little husk of a body.”

What?!

“The offspring of a Dark and a Pure one, a Dark One with the animal spirit from my Mate, the male that the Dark Queen Ashlu stole. The offspring that has the breath of Elemental Air inside him, reviving his pitiful little life.”

Whoa. My head is spinning from the revelations. I have a feeling I know where she’s going with this, and it’s freaking me the fuck out!

“The only ingredient you’re missing, little Creature, is human. After I made sure Medusa found you and revived you from your death as a Pure One, then again when the Destroyer obliterated Persia and Egypt, I took note of your unparalleled ability to survive. You’re like a cockroach that never dies. So I started my experiments in earnest, crudely at first, without modern technology. Don’t you remember them?”

A fissure splits through me, nausea rising in my throat.

I don’t remember. I really fucking don’t want to remember.

“I harvested your genetic material and your sperm for my other experiments. You provide the base for all of my creations. It is because of Evergreen that I can chemically turn warriors into programmable machines. It is behind the success of splicing human genes with animal, Pure and Dark. You are my magical ingredient, Creature. But you still haven’t given me what I want most.”

Oh gods, I think I vomited a little in my mouth.

How could I have not known this? I’ve been blinded to Medusa’s power over me. I never saw the real power behind her.

“Wh-what do you want most?”

I