Love As The Darker Binding Ch. 07

Then he was bored AND dying to know.

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They'd liked to sit next to each other from the start. After they'd become a couple, Imogen wouldn't feel that she always had to keep her thighs together then if they were at home. It felt more comfortable and besides, he didn't keep his together at any time either. In public was another matter and Imogen sat like any other young woman then.

Imogen was still chuckling over it as Dusty looked over and down. "I thought you'd have noticed sooner, and then I forgot. Sorry."

"But why?" He asked.

"I felt like doing it," she said, "I've always wanted to try it. I just never had a reason before."

He was confused, "I think I'm going to look dumb, but what's the reason?"

She smiled at him, "I bought that swimsuit, remember? Even though I've always trimmed it, I had way too much bush to be able to wear a swimsuit like that one. I'd look like I was trying to walk away with somebody's Shiatsu or something."

She had to explain it, but her reward was his laughter. Imogen loved it whenever he laughed and she missed it when he was hiding out like a dog when they were outside.

"So tomorrow's Sunday," she said, "and I know a beach that a lot of people don't know about. We're going there."

Dusty nodded, but then he looked at her curiously, "Wait. You said you haven't gone swimming since you were a kid. I've heard you tell me that everything around here just gets paved over and built on. How do you know that beach is even there anymore? It might be a boat-in mall by now, or a, ... I don't know, a Shiatsu dealership. Do they have those?"

Imogen laughed, "I think you mean a Subaru dealership, but I get what you mean. I've been there in the last two months, Dusty. I'm pretty sure that's not enough time to pave it over, even for here."

"But you said you don't swim," he said, still confused.

Imogen shook her head, "You don't have to go swimming to want to go to a beach. Some people like to go there for a walk, or to walk their dogs.

I happened to read a romantic novel or six where the girl would walk down a deserted and lonely beach in every one looking mysterious and wistful and she'd meet a handsome guy there by chance. So I'd go to that beach sometimes to work on my mysterious girl look.

But I never saw even one guy who could have walked out of one of those novels. They looked more like the convenience store clerk type."

She looked at him, noticing his expression, "What?"

"I dunno," he said, looking down, "Sometimes it takes me a second to work through the knots in your language. If 'colorful' means full of color and 'hopeful' means, ... "

He looked up, "What's wist?"

She looked at him with a slightly annoyed expression. "A really powerful laxative used by novelists," she remarked dryly.

"I'd walk along being shadowed by the same half-dozen seagulls every time – I'm pretty sure it was the same ones, all of them walking beside me, telling me to quit fucking around and hand over the fries they were sure I was hiding in my pocket.

Other than them, the only guys that I met were goofy-looking jerks who must have read other books by that same author – or his wife, maybe.

They were out there trying to look distant and enigmatic.

But the flaw in that is that you can't exactly be distant when you're trying to hit on the mysterious girl with the thick glasses within the first two sentences. It's way obvious."

She rolled her eyes, "And that guy was a surfer. I wasn't there to look for surfers. It upsets my seagull entourage when they run up carrying a board.

That surfer hairstyle only works well when there's a board under your arm and the mysterious girl is a surfer too. I was at my limit going for just mysterious. I can't do surfer girl at all. Besides, you don't see many couples like that ever. I think they're the reason God made sharks. You never see them pushing little surfer tots around in strollers, do you?

I like distant surfers the best when they've got some distance to them.

And you blow 'enigmatic' all to hell as soon as you open your mouth when you jog over to the mysterious girl trying to pretend that you run fifty-one miles every hour and a half.

Do I look like a girl who wants one of those?

I stare right through their enigma and tell them to piss off. It just saves time for everybody. I already had Marchetti for the same thing and at least he paid me.

Oh, and forget the ones who have that haunted look. You don't look haunted unless something's chasing you. Ex-wife, loan shark, or Dracula himself, I don't wanna know. But those are the ones who think you'll listen to their tales of woe. Fuck that, I've got my own tale."

She shrugged, "Anyway, they all looked like they probably still lived with Mom. I saw the crappy cars in the parking lot.

I can spot a pile of wist when I see it and I know bullwist when I hear it.

All I ever got out of it was an intense desire to murder a particular novelist. He only had the one gimmick. I checked. The same fucking beach shows up for at least one scene in every novel.

He even had one couple fucking in the surf. Awesome. The water washes away your juice and just one little grain of sand is all you need to complete the experience."

She smiled, "But you and me, we're not going there for that. Your job is to keep the seagulls off my fries."

She looked at his face and saw him looking back pointedly.

"- That I'm not going to be having, ... any, ... of, apparently," she laughed.

"C'mon, I'm not the same girl I was when I read those wist-filled novels, Dusty. I already know that I'm losing a lot of weight with you around and us walking all over together. I can see it too."

Her eyes brightened after a second. "Hey, there might even be a sausage cart there!" she exclaimed, "You never know."

His smirk was slow to turn on, but it was there, "On a deserted beach? Or were you thinking of trying to talk me into letting you buy one on the way?"

Imogen went for the trembling lip and dented halo look.

"Four words," Dusty said over his shoulder as he padded his way to the fridge.

He was back in seconds to drop a sandwich bag onto her thighs; which annoyed her because it was cold, "Celery and carrot sticks."

Imogen decided to try a larger caliber weapon. She turned on her big-eyed look.

"I thought you loved me."

"I do," he replied, unaffected, "I just haven't forgotten the instructions from the demon we work for – the one who can rip a human's soul right out of her chest if he feels like it. Whenever I think of him when he's pissed off, I remember that my mom doesn't live around here."

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The small fire wasn't exactly blazing. If anything, it burned rather fitfully in the darkness of the trees. Balna listened now and then, seeking for other sounds beside the quiet rush of the waves many yards away. What he was doing here in the middle of the night would be considered illegal, since it wasn't an area set aside for beach fires or campfires and he didn't have a permit. He knew that he'd be in even deeper if he were to be seen and discovered here now, since he'd removed his clothing.

But the way that it had been done, using the things that he'd used and uttering the ancient words, there wasn't much of any smoke to the fire and it burned odorlessly, giving little light as the flames hugged the fuel of dried branches and moss.

He sat thinking and feeling, chanting very softly now and then as he considered the dreams for any possible meanings.

Long ago, far, far back, many of the shamanistic tribes in the land where he'd come from had lived closer to the ground in a big way. It was their lives as they saw it to be bound up with nature.

He didn't know much of it, since he'd only heard references to the practise, but somewhere in the collective memory back there, the stories told of relationships with the animals and it was hard to glean what had been meant, so his interpretation had been of a joining of spirits with them, since that was the most prominent theme.

But the creatures in his dreams hadn't been animals, any more than he was one, other than basically unless he practised his worship this way. He hadn't had to join his spirit with the one that he remembered from the dream. They just spoke plainly. And what that beautiful being had done for him there, ...

That confused the hell out of Balna.

He realized then that he was just wasting time, so he worked at letting his own spirit go to seek what might be found.

As it happened, his spirit hadn't had to go very far at all. He opened his eyes in wonder, though he was still in the trance state.

There was a woman of some sort standing in the middle of the now waist-high flames.

Sha'senh already knew that someone like Balna didn't have any cultural references to demons in forms like she was showing him now. She knew that they had them, just not like this. She stood comfortably with her eyes closed, looking just as she'd been all day since riding in the fuel truck with Abi, though she'd discarded the chains.

Balna stared in amazement, his gaze running over that body before him. His sense of wonder rose as high as the flames now when she opened her eyes to smile at him as she slowly began to dance for only him.

It took him deeper in a way and he just gave in to it. He listened to her quiet speech as she told him that she hoped that it pleased him. She was truthful, telling him of finding him and the way that she felt a gentle hope in her, though she knew that she wasn't his kind. She began to change before him, showing him the shapes of several women as she danced.

She almost stopped in pleased surprise when Balna asked her if she was the one from his dreams. At the time, she'd been facing almost away from him and she'd looked back over her shoulder to reply, happy as well that though he was looking at her bottom, he wasn't as mesmerized and stuck on it as most human men would have been. Balna was looking at all of her back.

"Yes, Balna," she smiled as she spoke to him in his own language – the one that he missed hearing so much "It was I then, looking as my kind does with no illusion such as I show you like this. Would you like to see me that way now?"

His smiling nod meant a lot to her then, and after she'd shifted in that direction and begun to slink through and around the flames in her natural shape, she was so happy to see that his maleness responded to what came to his eyes.

For once in her life, Sha'senh was really proud of the way that she looked.

Balna didn't even turn his head when the one that he knew as Jake appeared beside him, seated just as he was and naked as well. It just felt even more like home to him. He just knew who it was and he listened as Abi asked him a few questions about what types of aircraft he'd worked on back home.

"Illyushin," Balna said in almost a whisper, and he recited the several types, his soft gaze never leaving Sha'senh. "Yakovlev", he sighed and spoke the names, "Zlin, and Tupolev, many of them."

"This one is one of many that I can command," Abi said in the same tones, "She is different from the thousands of others, Balna. She wants only you, and she does not want to cause you any harm. That alone makes her very different. She wants to BE in love, to feel it and live in it.

There was a time not long ago when she was prepared to die, thinking that as what she was, what she dreamed of in her heart could never come to her. She wants to be in love with you.

Does that interest you?"

Balna nodded slowly with a sigh, "What is her name, please?"

"Sha'senh," the wondrous female sighed to him across the flames, "I am called Sha'senh. What is said to you is truth. I have never had what I see in you, Balna. I want to live in your heart, if you think that you might want to live in mine."

He nodded again and she could have wept in joy.

She stepped languidly out of the flames then, almost gliding to him with the most beautiful expression on her face as she came to sit before him. Sha'senh wasn't putting anything into this. She wanted to show him herself just as she was.

Abi spoke more of the truth.

"Sha'senh can live with you," Abi said, "she can be as any human woman that you might like to see her as. Underneath that, she is this. You are seeing her as she is naturally.

If this pleases you, come and work for me," he said quietly, "I know that you have skill and many papers to prove it. The fools here will not allow you to work at what you know. They offer only courses which you will struggle at over the words of a new language, and have to fight yourself to remain awake as they do. They offer to pay for only half of the cost of those courses - after you succeed, knowing that you will almost need to work yourself to death to be able to afford them and live. Five more years, Balna.

Five more years of study – to be what you already were.

I accept your skill and your qualifications. I need no look to examine your papers. I can read them with my mind from where I sit. Come and work for me. Enjoy yourself with Sha'senh. My craft is none of the types that you know, but most of the same things make it fly, and those things sometimes need Balna's skill.

Come and work for me, and you can leave everything. You would live on my large craft with Sha'senh and others. She yearns to learn what you can teach her and together, you can help me and each other.

Say yes, Balna, and I give you to each other."

Balna sat for a moment in silence, though it was clear to them that it wasn't out of indecision. He was just, ... blown away, for lack of a better term.

"I have never seen someone like you, ... such beauty, " Balna said with a smile as Sha'senh rubbed her small leopard-like ear against his cheek. Her horns were small naturally and she could cause them to disappear if she desired it. But this was the way that she was and she wanted him to see her.

He reached out and touched her then and it made her sigh softly as her movements caused his fingers to glide over her skin.

There was no fur on her at all. Like this in her natural form, Sha'senh was pure soft and silky dark nakedness over shapely and strong musculature. Just to see her move before him could make him hard and he saw it as just another wonder about her.

"I wish to be yours so much," she whispered, as she licked his ear just because she really wanted to, "And you have seen me. I came to you in dreams, Balna. I came because I had to.

Say yes and I will live with you, as near as you like or not as I feel that you desire at any time. I will learn what you teach me, and I will be a good learner to you. In my turn, I will teach you all of the ways which I know to please you.

I am known by some as a lust demon, though I was never a very good one. We are not any kind that someone like you could truly love. But I am different, Balna. It made me very unhappy where I am from because I wanted to love someone."

She drew her slightly feline face away a little and looked into his eyes, as lost herself as he was as she looked, "I found you and now, after being with you in dreams, I want only Balna for me – if Balna wants me too."

"Yes," he breathed, and Abi and Sha'senh both had to think to be sure that they'd heard it.

"Yes," he said, still quietly, though with more clarity.

Sha'senh sat up to fling her arms around Balna's neck, hugging him in joy before she kissed him so that he thought he might fall over.

"Then I give you to each other," Abi smiled, "and I will make sure that you are not disturbed here this night. Before the morning light, you will both be in your new home together. Until then."

Abi made a subtle change in Balna then just as he left them. He removed the very slight tendency which he saw there to be a little overbearing. It wasn't much, but he saw that it wouldn't be constructive. A slight shift toward being just a little more, ... clingy also came with it, but that was only a temporary effect, and he knew that Sha'senh wouldn't mind it at the start.

He'd made the change for her, wanting them to really be happy, after all. The result would make things just a little sappy in his opinion, but it was what his lust demon would appreciate at the start and it would pass in a little while.

With that, Abi was gone and the trance was ended.

Balna found himself naked almost in darkness before his little fire again, wondering if it had all been the only the trance, somehow.

But then a shape came to him out of that darkness to rub herself along him as she passed to turn around and come back. Balna knew then.

She called to him over her shoulder after rubbing against him again on the way by the second time. Balna saw her slightly shy and coy look to him and he was just lost. He fell forward onto his knees and moved behind her.

The way that his gentle touch drank her in as he slid his hands over her lean flanks almost caused them both to shudder and he leaned down to kiss her back.

"Can I, Sha'senh?" he asked, as she felt his hardness against her opening.

He hadn't even nudged her there, she thought. What a sweet boy for her.

"Yes," she sighed with the slightest hint of a moan in it at the end, "Oh please, Balna."

This had been her dream, she thought, and such a nice way to begin it, as she felt him slide in a bit more with little thrusts. The last one was his long, slow withdrawal most of the way back, but then he slid in again, just a little faster and in a way which made her know as it began.

When she felt his balls pressing against her, Sh'honh moaned for him to tell him the way that it felt to her to be mounted and taken. She let him have his way then, bucking back against him now that they'd begun. Oh, the finest thing, she thought, to be fucked this way in the beginning. There was so much for her to enjoy like this, the sounds that he made back there and the feeling of his hands as they kept caressing her as far as he could reach.

And the slapping, she thought to herself with a smile, oh, just the quiet slapping of his hips against her haunches.

She felt inside him then, seeking to know if she was good for him like this or if she'd need to make any changes to increase his pleasure. What she found amazed her. There wasn't a thing needed from her.

Balna was happy fucking Sha'senh just like this.

He varied his speed. He changed the length of his strokes and the force which he used to drive her. Sha'senh was a little astounded. No one had ever done these little things this way to her.

She watched his rise very carefully in her feeling of him, wanting more than anything to arrive at the same point at the same time when he gave her his seed.

When it happened, Balna almost fell out of her. He'd never experienced anything this strongly. They both cried out together and he knew that she was offering her heart in it.

The only thing that he did incorrectly was something that he realized just after it had happened. He'd pulled back too quickly because he was done for the moment.

"No," he heard her chide him softly as he felt himself drawn back against her, slipping in with a completely unexpected and revived erection which felt even harder to him from his side of things.

He looked up into her sweet smile, "This, I can teach to you, Balna. Never just pull out. I am one who has many gifts for the one that I seek to love."

As he was drawn in once more, he groaned to feel her new tightness. It felt amazing at a time when he thought he was sated for at least a time.

She wouldn't hide it if he asked, but the inside of her was lined with small, wet little tentacles no more than a few millimeters long. They were connected to her nervous system under her semi-conscious control. If she felt good, they could move. If she wanted to make it really good, she could move them in waves along the pathway.