Moon Rise Ch. 11

I was nude and sitting in the middle of my bed, about to give in to my mildly annoying habit of talking to myself, as I was prone to do when I felt like I was losing the fierce control that I kept over myself slip away. When I feared someone was going to die.

I closed my eyes and tried to keep my mouth shut, letting my inner monologue of self-hatred bleed through the earlier feelings of comfort I had been experiencing only minutes before. What, me, a self-sabotager? Why ever would you think that? Get your shit together, Moon! I mentally yelled at myself. You can't kill him... well, not easily, at least. And when was the last time someone you could say that about even turned your head? Made you feel?

"Should I have included leaving your shame at the door in my orders, princess?" Naberius had removed his coat and left it in the front room. He was sliding the crimson tie off of his neck and unbuttoning his black spidersilk shirt, and I couldn't help but watch, enrapt, as he exposed more of his flesh to my hungry gaze. How quickly his presence overwhelmed me! I couldn't think of any other that I had been with that was so clearly my superior in a number of ways, that also had tasted me but not been instantly subservient to my needs immediately thereafter. I think that was part of what made me so bored with most lovers; they fucked me and then the craving for me became less and less attractive because I knew it wasn't a choice. I always felt like they willingly gave me their bodies... but I raped and stole their souls in ways they could never have imagined.

But he already knew what he was climbing into bed with. If he knew my mother and my father as well as he seemed, he had no illusions about what I could do to him. Still, he came to me willingly, fearlessly. But so had so many others, so certain that their power over themselves would survive the first touch of my body. So often were they wrong. So, so wrong. And that was if they lived to develop a taste for me. One might have wondered why I craved human souls the way I did, knowing that almost every one would not, could not, deny the addictive taste of me. One would be very frustrated to know even I didn't have an answer to that one, really. I wanted to be loved by them... but I honestly doubted my own ability to return that feeling. It was the true curse of being what I was. I craved love like a drug. Others craved me the same. But it was never really reciprocal. They usually died before I could really find it in me to love them. Or went mad. And yet I, selfish creature that I was, continued to seek out the same over and over, hoping it would end differently this time. Who was the truly insane one here, then?

"Not shame, per se," I said, trying to sort through the inner tumultuous waves of emotion frothing under my skin. "Fear. Worry. Hope. Fear of that hope." I sighed. "I'll get it under control. Really. I just... need to tell my brain to shut it."

"You spend far too much time trying to temper yourself, princess," he said as he slid the shirt from his shoulders and my mouth went dry, looking at the pale flesh above the black suit pants. At some point, he had removed the expensive dress shoes and whatever socks he may have been wearing, standing before me clad only in those well-tailored slacks. His chest was like marble, eons of dangerous work making him strong and muscular. His human form was pristine, a work of art as created by Michelangelo himself. But I could see no shadow of his natural form flickering, telling me he was in control of himself utterly, and his walls were up, though not impenetrable. I knew he could scent my lust for him, and while that fact alone was enough to make my heart skip a beat, that he had already touched me as he had and was wise enough to keep himself reserved from me a little made me feel far more at ease and more than a little hot for him. He was saying without words that he respected my power and abilities enough to know that he should filter what he could. To not give into my will so easily, like so many others. Others whose names I couldn't even remember anymore. Did that make me a horrible monster? Maybe Ezra would have thought so... but Naberius wouldn't have judge me for it. I could see that.

Without another word, tie in hand, Naberius came to me and looked down at me kneeling in the center of my queen-size bed. I met his eyes, almost daring him to tell me I had nothing to worry about. To order me not to worry for him. Instead, he took my hands and raised my arms, crossing my wrists before me, and began to wrap that tie around them, binding them together easily. If they had been plain silk, satin, or any common human fabric, tearing out of them would have been a simple thing, even for me, a creature that really didn't have inhuman strength or speed. Buveur D'âme aren't like fictional vampires. We aren't lightning fast or colossally strong. We can't read minds, but we can often taste emotion, particularly if it is tied to lust. Our power lay in enslaving someone to their own lust. In making them want to be owned by us.

But... I didn't really want to own anyone. I never had. Sycophants and toadies annoyed me to an almost violent level. At my worst, I longed to break them and end their suffering; like the poor, pathetic, weak creatures that they were. Deep down, I hated that they were allowed that vulnerability when I was not. I hated that they got what I often craved but lost the second I have sex with anyone; I wanted to be owned.

Sort of. I didn't want my will to be permanently superseded by my lover's... I didn't want to be a slave to someone else's desires to the point I had no choice but to do as they bid. Because then I would be as weak and pathetic as my own Thralls. But I did want to *choose* to *allow* someone to control me like that. I had had that with Dominic for a time. Then I had become what I hated most; an addict. A helpless Thrall to my own needs and his word. I had to admit with some worry I saw that being a possibility with Naberius. But unlike Dominic, I didn't see him using it against me. And I didn't see him abusing it.

Saying nothing still, Naberius bound my wrists together and I watched his implacable expression. When he was satisfied that I would not be soon wiggling free of my elegantly armored shackles, he bound them to the iron headboard of my bed, forcing me to lay down just to be comfortable. "I respect that you do analyze things as intently as you do," he said conversationally as he tested the bindings with a slight pull to assure himself I was going nowhere. "It makes my job easier; I know you aren't going to do something stupid without thinking it through first. Well, so long as you have the time to think it through. You do seem to be more than a little impulsive." He winked at me with a smile. "I mean, you are now naked and bound to cold iron by spidersilk while a creature you have known less than 48 hours who may wish - no, wait, definitely does wish - to do nefarious things to your body stands over your helpless, exposed body."

"Oh, well, if that is our barometer for stupidity, you'll find me to be a perfect airheaded bimbo," I said with a self-deprecating laugh.

His laugh was a deep, sexy rumble. "Well, perhaps we will have to see about that, later." He leaned over me, looking deeply into my eyes, and caressed my cheekbone with his tumb as he laid a gentle kiss on my lips, far too gentle and romantic a gesture for the current tableau of the room. "What do you truly fear, little one?"

"Being a slave to myself," I said, and was instantly appalled. I hadn't meant to be so brutally honest. I ordinarily would have at least obfuscated the truth with some humor or created an elaborate innuendo for what I truly meant to say. My eyes shot to his, but he gave no indication if this level of honesty surprised him, or if it was precisely what he expected.

"Then we'll make a deal." He sat beside me on the bed, not touching me at all, but his cerulean gaze never left mine, and I felt something in the atmosphere shift, as if there was something in these next moments that would change my life forever. "If you are starving, if you feel like you are about to lose control to the hunger... you come to me. You call me, summon me, or come to me immediately and I will sate you." He cupped my chin in his hand and I felt the immense nature of what he was all around him. Great goddess, he could snuff me out like a bug if he wanted. I felt it. He could surely save me from myself. Or I would rely on and crave him. Be just as bound to my lust for him as I was to physical need for sexual energy because he would always willingly prove it. What would a year of that do to him? To me? A decade? A century of drinking in this creature's energy and essence? He would own me. Body and soul. Or I him. But neither of us would get out of this unmarked.

"I would become a slave you," I said softly, and something about admitting that made my body ache deliciously.

"Would that be so terrible?" He asked with a roguish smile. "I'm promise I will be a kind and gentle Master." He meant it to sound teasing but I heard the utter sincerity under his words; he genuinely desired me to yield to him. He believed he would always be able to control his lust for me. It would always be a battle of wills with us.

But how much did I yearn to yield for him? But I didn't wish to be weakened by him. And I don't think that I would ever survive the self-loathing I would possess if he were weakened by me. As I tried to read the unspoken in his incredible eyes with their sooty lashes that on any other face would seem too long and dark to be masculine, but on his well made, angular face it just made him all the more attractive to me, he again caressed my face and bade me softly: "Trust me, little one."

"We end this the moment one of us begins to truly not have a choice," I said firmly, in an almost helpless voice. Helpless, because I knew I would say yes. Hopeless, because I feared how this would end. One of us would break instead of yield.

"I chose you the moment I met you," he said simply. "Dogs, you know? We're an amazing judge of character." He did allow his form to shift for a moment and I swear I almost saw those three heads giving me happy doggy grins. It somehow deeply endeared him to me, that he allowed me to see that. Reminded me that he was just as driven by what he was as I was. In this, we were in perfect alignment. His human lips smiled again when he felt my shift of emotion. Scented it in the air around my warm, excited body. If the sheer depth of my lust left any room for an emotion to be scented through the intensity of my pheromones.

"It will always be your choice," he said softly. "Always; I swear it on the River Styx." For a creature who spent as much of his life in Hades' Underworld, I knew, such an oath was sacred. And it undid me.

"Yes," I said softly. "I will trust you. Please don't ever make me regret it."

He nodded seriously. "I swear I will never knowingly or willfully give you cause to do so, Princess." Don't ask me how I knew he used my title in all sincerity this time, recognizing my rank to be, in some circles, superior to his own by nature of the potency of my blood alone.

Needing to interject some levity into the heaviness of the room. I twisted my lips into a wry smile and asked: "Did you want me to call you 'Master'?" I arched a brow at him mischeviously, all but daring him to say yes. And before he could answer, I also jokingly pressed on: "Oh, and my safe word is 'pfarfegnoogin'."

He almost barked out a laugh. "First, that is the stupidest safeword I have ever heard, and I would intentionally make scream it to prove to you how awful it is." I felt a blush creep into my cheeks at the mental image that provided. "Maybe by way of making you orgasm until you need a break so badly that you have no choice but to scream that ridiculousness just to make me stop." I felt my ears burn as my blush flamed hotter and he laughed, a deep, purely masculine, self-satisfied laugh as he ran a single digit over my cheek, down my neck and along the length of my body as it reclined alongside his, arms still bound above my head and having a moment to chide myself that if we had been intending to have more than simple, vanilla sex, we really should have negotiated terms before I was physically helpless... but, ah well!

"Let's face it," I sighed. "You're probably going to scent it long before I ever need to actually use a safeword."

His features composed themselves immediately into a serious, honest expression that left no room to think he was anything but being completely truthful. "You have the right of it, actually," he said simply. "If you become emotionally distressed in any way, I will likely know it even as you do. I have to trust you, however, to let me know if your endurance of what we do wears on you; I suspect you would hide your discomfort in your desire and I would not be able to pick one out from the other." It was such a simple, profound distinction, that I was grateful for the succinctness of tone. It made me respect him and not merely trust him. "That is the only reason you may need real safewords; I will know if you are exhausted or genuinely uncomfortable to a level that it begins to erode your desire. But up until that point, I have only you to tell me when you are reaching your limit, so that I do not push you unsafely beyond it."

I genuinely blinked at him. "You're better at negotiation and consent than most BDSM dungeon monitors."

At that, he laughed and it did very much sound like a bark. "Who do you think taught most of them? If they are in any way attached to the Cryptid Nations, these dungeons you have been to, then you should know I literally wrote the manual for correct conduct. Particularly if those dungeons also catered to human beings. Consent is one of the few things we can demand of all parties to keep security leaks from happening. If the human sees too much or is involved in something that might tear the Shroud, it allows almost all magic users to safely erase whatever they might have seen or done that might cause a breach. The rest is just clean up work for the PR people."

Part of me wondered if I should be appalled, but realized, once more that I was not dealing with a human being here. I was dealing with a creature millennias old who simply sought out the most effective tool to do his job. If it was more affective to simply wipe them out, he would likely have little issue choosing that option, if it was what he needed to do to keep the security of the Shroud in tact. And that was not something to be forgotten, I had to remind myself.

He scented the change in the air, and reached out to pet me again softly. I found I liked it, and couldn't help but think I bet he would like it so much more. His lips curled into a soft smile as he breathed in my scent again. "Tell me what you are thinking," he commanded softly, as his fingertips caressed my face and neck softly. "I felt the laugh you tried to hide there!"

I flushed but gave him his own honesty right back once more: "I was wondering if you liked belly rubs!"

I swear I saw that open jowled puppy grin again, long canine tongue lolling out of a ferociously fanged mouth. Did real dogs have that many fangs? But it somehow made him look all the more adorable to my little black heart. I always joked that it didn't matter how terrifying and huge a canine-like animal was, it was, to my mind a "puppy!" Werewolves were often insulted by this. I wasn't sure how Naberius would feel, proud creature that he was. But he only chuckled and flicked the tip of his tongue across the tip of my nose. "From you? I would love it." And the way he said that didn't make me laugh. It made me throb for him. He was being so real with me, so open and so free from shame that it made me want to spend all the rest of my time in this magical world where he seemed to live. I never wanted to leave. Maybe that was his real power; to seduce me with just being himself. Yes, he was a scary, dark, brutal killer and wielder of justice. I didn't doubt any of the myths that I had heard of him. But he was also showing me what he likely did not when he was "on duty"; that he had a sense of humor, that he did feel deeply, that he wasn't the cold, implacable hatchet man that everyone needed to believe that he was for him to do his job properly. And he... captured me. I wanted to be owned by someone like him. Equals, but so very willingly not. And he understood it. Of course he did! No one but the Alpha bitch told the Alpha what to do! But in private...in private, she belonged to him. And while I wasn't literally an alpha bitch, as he was literally an alpha wolf, I saw that dynamic etched somewhere in my soul as being where I belonged. I think my mother saw this need in me as a genuine flaw. She felt lovers were best used and discarded when they no longer served. But the idea that she might let any of them touch her heart? Own it? Absurd. She had refused to give herself to anyone since the day she first walked the earth, having been told simply that she "belonged" to a man. Even if she gave me as a prize and brood mare to some asshole Incubus in Edom, she would expect me to control that husband of mine utterly, feigning my compliance to his will as suited me. She loathed that I longed for it to be real, and not a simple game for information and power that she could use.

"I want you, Tempest," he said simply. "I can see that you need someone who will understand you, who you can be unrestrained with." His eyes flicked up to my wrists on the headboard and his lips twitched a bit at irony of his words. "Just... leave your burdens for a time with me. Let me bear the weight that holds you down, trapped in your own shredded bonds of control. Let me help you fly free, for just awhile, safely tethered to my will that the winds will not carry you too far away."

"And when do you get to let go?" I asked, seeing so much of my own spirit reflected back at me through his stready azure gaze. He winked and said: "When you give me belly rubs, princess. I'll demand many of you, I assure you. And for the record, I haven't been, nor ever will be 'fixed' so those belly rubs may turn into other sorts of rubbing. I warn you now." My eyes widened at the mental image, and I felt my face burn at how my body reacted to it. He leaned down and growled softly in my ear. "If you're a good girl, my pretty princess, maybe we can discuss what it is to let me take you in my own skin. To feel my fangs on your delicate throat while your body stretches to take all of me... that is why I will need you to be very, very wet and ready for me, my sweet princess. I can smell it on you now... what you want, what your deviant little brain is picturing behind your exquisite emerald eyes. Your desire is peppered with more than a little shame that you find these thoughts to be sexually appealing to you... you aren't human, Tempest. Your desires aren't human. You keep trying to mold these mortal boys into what you need, when the truth is, you desire someone with the power to love you in ways that are distinctly not human, deviant to their short, narrow individual human existence. And I don't mean the filth of what Dominic Raines taught you; you aren't a sadist, at your core. You're too noble a creature to kill for the simple joy of destruction. But you yearn for something...more." He ran his hand back down my body, spreading my thighs to allow access by his sure fingers as he ran them over the still damp, flushed evidence of my desire for him. He brought his fingertips to his lips, inhaling my scent as he licked the evidence of my moisture from each, individual digit.

Gods, if it didn't feel like he had cut open my heart, pulled on the cord that led to my soul and laid me bare before him. And... I just wanted to be more exposed to him, to his power over me. I already found myself craving him; not so simple a thing as mere desire. A spirit-deep, all consuming ravenous hunger for him, and not just the alien, new concepts of distinctly socially inappropriate ways of having sex with him, based of normal, human societal constructs. But for the soul of the creature offering me such deliciously hedonistic ideas, himself. But he was correct, wasn't he? I judged all of my moral and ethical standards by what was considered appropriate in the human world. I wasn't of the human world, and by sheer definition at that point, inappropriate.