Chapter 21

It's about four when I get back to my room from below the water tower. Ultimately, I agreed with Rhys that starting cave exploration today would not be wise, partly because we need proper equipment for it and partly because I did tell Khysmet that I would tell him before doing anything. I'm not sure where he is now, but I'll plan to intercept him later.

First, I take a bath to wash off both the dirt smell from the cavern and the scent of Rhys that I'm sure is on me from when I hugged him. I have a feeling that if Khysmet smelled it, he'd exact some sort of retribution, and I would rather avoid that unnecessary altercation.

Once I'm clean I head down to the kitchens for an early dinner, snagging some of the things that were made in advance for the dining hall tonight. I'm buzzing with energy and struggling to stop myself from explaining what I'm so excited about, but fortunately the cooks aren't talking too much to me, since they’re all prepping for tonight’s meal.

Then I stop by the library to find some books on certain subjects I am suddenly very interested in, specifically underground exploration and map-making. I have a feeling that if this tunnel does connect to the catacombs, it's not going to be a straight shot. I'll need to keep track of intersections and changes in direction and maybe even altitude, and I'm sure there are techniques and equipment that can help me with that. I just need to learn what they are.

Armed with a few promising tomes, I decide to just wait for Khysmet in his private study. It's almost mealtime, so he should be going to the dining hall shortly, then he's probably going to come back here. I flop down on his couch, settle in with my books, and wait.

After a couple hours, I hear the doorknob turn and immediately spring off the couch to greet him. He opens the door and looks distinctly not at all surprised to see me waiting eagerly for his entrance. I’m wiggling in excitement as he closes the door behind him quietly.

“I have,” I say, “insanely, extremely, and unbelievably exciting news. You’re not going to believe this. Go on, ask me what it is.”

He chuckles weakly and looks at the ceiling.

“News so exciting you’re waiting for me outside my bedroom in the evening just to tell me, huh?” he asks, a strange edge to his voice.

I nod earnestly. “It’s that good,” I assure him.

Instead of asking me more, though, he looks back down and stares me in the eye, his expression raw with hunger and desperation, and starts stalking toward me. I instinctively start to backpedal, intimidated despite myself by the intense aura radiating off of him.

"You know, Cat," he says with a hint of mania in his voice, "of all the things you've done to test my patience during this little game of yours, I must say, serving yourself up on a silver platter at night in my bedroom is really a masterful stroke. Well played, truly."

He leads me all the way across the room until I feel my back hit a wall. Still he comes nearer, placing his hands against the wall on either side of me and standing with his entire body mere inches away from touching me. His tongue flicks out just barely avoiding my face.

“You win,” he says, voice already ragged, breathing heavy. “I give up. I submit. I’m begging you. Please, just let me touch you. I can’t stand it any longer. I’ll do whatever you want. I need to run my hands all over your body.”

I blink. Huh. I got so excited about my discovery that I kind of forgot that I was doing this. I’m not going to brush off my hard-won victory, though. I grin eagerly. My news can wait.

“Whatever I want, huh?” I ask. “Anything at all?”

“Anything,” he pledges.

I hum in consideration, as though I haven’t already planned on what I’m going to ask of him ages ago.

“I want you,” I say, “to stop telling me what to do all the time.”

“Anything but that,” he replies without hesitation.

I pout and give him a withering look. “That’s not really how this works, you know," I explain patiently. "You’re the one begging, so you’re hardly in the position to be making demands.”

He shakes his head feebly, panting with either desire or the exertion of not touching me.

“It’s not a matter of making demands,” he says. “You’re asking something of me that I know I won’t be able to give you. I would be wholly unable to suppress the urge to tell you what to do in perpetuity. If I promised that to you now, I would be knowingly lying, and I can’t abide by that. I beg of you, ask something else of me.”

I think about that for a second. It does make sense. I suppose I can throw him a bone and lower my demands just slightly.

“I want you to stop telling me that you’ll ‘allow’ me to do things.”

He cocks his head. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that when I say I’m planning on doing something, I don’t want you saying ‘I’ll allow it,’ like you’re generously permitting me to take actions that I’m going to be taking anyway.”

He’s quiet for a while, just hovering over me and heaving ragged breaths. Eventually, however, he responds.

“Agreed.”

I smile darkly and tug on the front of his shirt, pulling him forward and leaning in until my lips are ghosting against his cheek.

“Then what are you waiting for?”

Khysmet’s hands are on me in an instant, wrapping around my back and pulling my body flush with his, his hips grinding against me with desperate fervor, letting me feel the hardness there. His tongue flicks against my neck, my cheek, my chest, devouring every inch of my bare skin, drawing little whimpers from me. I wrap my arms around his back and melt into his touch.

He puts one knee between my legs and forces them apart, and I groan in response. Instinctively, I lift one leg, trying to wrap it around his hips and pull him closer. He chuckles low against my skin and reaches down to my ass, then physically lifts me off the ground. I make a startled noise before wrapping my other leg around him too, my skirt hiking up high to my thigh, locking my ankles behind the small of his back. He holds me suspended in the air, my back against the wall, rolling his hips into me and panting against my skin, and I hungrily pull him in with my thighs to meet his every thrust.

“Hold on tight,” he instructs.

I don’t have time to ask why before he’s leaning back, lifting me off the wall and fully supporting my weight. I squeal and hold on as tight as I can while he walks us across the room, taking us through the door that leads to his bedroom. I’ve never been through this door, but I don’t really have the time now to look around and examine his decor choices as he slams me down onto the waiting bed.

Before I even realize what he’s doing, he takes his left hand and claws a long tear down the front of my dress. Not just a slightly indecent one, but one that exposes most of my torso and frees my breasts completely.

I make a loud frustrated sound. “Stop fucking doing that!”

“I wanted to see your tits,” he explains, unconcerned with my indignation.

“There are ways to remove clothing without ruining it, you know!”

He demonstrates a perfect understanding of this concept by standing up and pulling off his own shirt.

“If you want to protect your underwear from the same fate, you should remove them now,” he advises.

I hurry to comply.

“Real quick,” I ask, “is it even possible for you to get me pregnant?”

He starts to frantically untie the laces of his pants. “Yes, but it's very difficult and also doesn't matter right now because it’s been three weeks since your last period.”

I furrow my brow. “How do you know that?”

“I can smell when you bleed, Cat.”

I groan and lay my head back on the bed to stare at the ceiling, trying not to process this information.

When I hear the sound of his pants falling to the floor, I look back up, eager to satisfy a burning curiosity that has plagued me for a long time now.

From the brief glimpse I get, I can see his cock is thick and pink with a rounded head, curved slightly upwards toward the end, seemingly slick with its own moisture, and with a ridge along the bottom from base to tip that has small spikes all along it. No external testicles. That’s about all I can see however, before he’s between my legs, lining up, and shoving it inside me all the way to the base in one swift movement. I cry out at the sudden intrusion, which fills me completely and slams against the perfect spot deliciously deep inside my pussy.

He chuckles darkly. “Oh no, I don’t think so, Cat. If you wanted to gently explore my body, you shouldn’t have teased me relentlessly for two. Fucking. Weeks.”

He punctuates each word with a brutal thrust, wresting feeble mewls from me in tandem with the motion of his hips. When he pauses to let me recover, I laugh and use my legs to pull him in again.

“Don’t hold back, okay?”

He smirks as though saying that that was never an option, then starts fucking into me hard, setting a punishing pace that I'm struggling to meet with my hips and eventually just have to hold on tight and surrender to. The impact of his thrusts slamming into me all the way to the hilt every time sends shockwaves through my clit that are taking me places fast. I was worried when I saw the spikes along the bottom of his cock, but they're not rigid and painful as I feared they might be; they just provide an interesting texture as they rub along my entrance and inner walls. I'm clawing at his smooth back, scrabbling for a purchase to help ride out the onslaught, and I have to dig my nails in hard to hold on. When I do, Khysmet growls appreciatively in response.

His hips stutter for a second.

"It's so hot inside you," he pants. "Like fucking into an inferno."

When he resumes his pace with renewed vigor, he changes angles slightly and the new spot he's hitting has me seeing stars.

"Yes, Khysmet, right there!" I howl in pleasure, hanging on for dear life as he drives into me. My back arches into him and my toes curl as he hits the same spot over and over, building me up more and more and more until I hit my peak, coming unraveled around his cock and screaming his name like a prayer.

I expect him to slow down, to let me ride out my orgasm, but his pace remains unchanged, still punishing, nearly bruising my pelvis with each violent thrust. My voice grows more frantic as I quickly become overstimulated, held at my peak for too long with nowhere else to go. It's exquisite agony, and the longer it continues, the more I start to lose control, losing grip on him with my hands and legs and starting to babble incoherently – things like "oh fuck", and "please", and "I can't", but also "yes", and "more", and "harder", and most of all "Khysmet", over and over and over.

“And here I thought you were loud in my office,” Khysmet pants between thrusts. “Let’s see if I can’t make you really scream.”

That’s all the warning I get before he leans forward and sinks his fangs into me, and I wince at the pinch in my shoulder for a moment until my senses kick into overdrive.

If my overstimulation was agony before, this is excruciating pain the likes of which I've never before experienced. I'm no longer capable of forming words – just whining at a feverish pitch wavering in time with Khysmet's relentless pounding. Impossibly, the venom seems to have unlocked a second peak that I'm rapidly careening towards now, the pressure mounting uncontrollably until my second orgasm tears through me in agonizing white hot waves that wrack my whole body, blowing out my nerve endings and blocking out every other thought and sensation. As my cunt spasms, clenching around Khysmet’s cock with extreme force, his hips stutter, and he finally finds his release, spilling deep inside me with a desperate, ragged groan that thrums into my chest.

Since I’m no longer actively being drilled, the sensory overload starts easing to a much more manageable level, and I'm able to start getting my frantic breathing under control, concentrating on sucking in deep, centering breaths while my body shakes with the aftershocks of my orgasm. Then suddenly, without warning and without pulling out, Khysmet collapses forward on top of me, squishing me under his full weight, his usually cool scales warm from sustained activity. I squeal and wiggle a little, startled by this development, but as I lay under him for a few seconds, I find it’s honestly not too uncomfortable. The pressure is oddly soothing, and his skin feels nice pressed against my own. I allow him to lay on me and recover for a moment, rather enjoying the feeling of his chest expanding and contracting as he breathes.

After a while, though, I want to move again. I try to push him off, but he ignores my attempts and just lays there like a dead fish. I huff in irritation and pick a different strategy, instead concentrating on the muscles in my womb and squeezing hard around his softening cock. He jumps and curses and scrambles to remove himself from inside me, then rolls to the side, allowing me to finally move and stretch.

“That was just unnecessary,” he says.

“You could have just moved when I tried to push you,” I point out. “You forced my hand.”

“Your cruelty knows no bounds.”

I smirk and turn onto my side to face him.

“You know, you surprised me,” I say. “Given how sexually frustrated I made you, I thought you wouldn’t last half that long.”

He laughs dryly. “I’ve been fucking into my fist twice a day for the past two weeks, Cat. To be honest, my nerves are kind of shot.”

As I lay here looking at him, my smile falters when it occurs to me that this might be the awkward part. Does he want me to go? Stay? Do I even want to stay? Although, considering my dress is completely destroyed, I really can’t leave the room…

I don’t have the opportunity to think about this for very long though, before Khysmet is reaching out for me and tugging me closer, pulling me into him until my back is flush against his chest and wrapping his arms around me tight. He even tangles his legs together with mine. Then I feel something else snake around my leg, nearly making me jump out of my skin until I recognise it as his tail, which wraps snugly around my thigh a couple times.

He hums contentedly, and I can feel the sound thrum pleasantly against my back.

“You’re so warm,” he says. “Like my own tiny sun.”

I furrow my brow. It’s far from cold in here. I’m not sure why he’s clinging to me for heat.

“I thought Sungians weren’t actually cold blooded?” I say.

“Not completely,” he replies. “We run a lot colder than most mammals, though. It’s why you’ll find fireplaces in most rooms, even though I’m sure you’ll consider our winters rather warm.”

I sigh and allow him to leech heat from me. It’s rather cozy, actually. I inhale deeply his bergamot and mahogany scent, which is now a little musky from sex, but not in an unpleasant way. I’m just starting to get really comfortable when his tongue suddenly darts across my neck. I almost cuss him out for sniffing me, but then realize I was just essentially doing the same thing and decide to keep quiet and let him lick me.

"What do I smell like, anyway?" I ask, curious.

"Like lilacs and petrichor," he replies, flicking his tongue across my skin again. "Utterly intoxicating."

"What's petrichor?"

"The smell of the earth after a warm rain. Indescribable. Earthy. Beautiful in its transience."

I smile and hum happily. That sounds nice. I snuggle further into his arms and enjoy the sensation of his tongue on my neck.

Then, all of a sudden, I feel a headache start to form at my temples. It swells rapidly and I grunt softly at the sudden onset of pain.

“What’s wrong?” Khysmet asks.

“My head just hurts,” I say. “A lot actually.”

“Shit, I forgot to grab you antivenom. One second.”

He releases his hold on me and gets up out of the bed, pausing on his way out the door to pull out comfortable-looking pants and throw them on.

“Don’t you dare move,” he commands. “Unless you want to take your dress off, if it’s uncomfortable. The rest of the way off, I mean. I’ll have someone bring a new one by tomorrow morning.”

Then he leaves the room to head into his study.

I sit up gingerly and rub my pounding head. I guess that settles one issue, I think as I start to remove the remains of my dress. I’m not going to be heading back to my own room tonight if Khysmet has anything to say about it. Which, given the fact that he can prevent me from getting new clothing, he absolutely does. Might as well get comfortable.

He returns after a short while with a little cup and container. He hands me the cup, and I reach for the container as well, but he holds onto that and opens it himself. While I drink, he applies the salve with gentle fingers to his bite on my shoulder. Immediately, my headache disappears and my skin heals up.

"So,” Khysmet says as he climbs back into bed after putting the salve away. “What was the exciting news you wanted to tell me about earlier?"

"Oh yeah,” I say, perking up immensely. “I found my secret tunnel."

He blinks at me wordlessly for a few seconds.

"You're kidding," he says.

I beam at him smugly, relishing his stupefied expression.

"When are you going to learn to stop doubting me?" I ask.

He reaches out to tug on my arm and pull me back into his tight embrace.

"Does it actually connect to the catacombs?" he asks as I get comfortable.

"I don't know,” I say eagerly. “I'll have to explore it and find out."

He scoffs. "I don't think so."

I furrow my brow deeply. "What the hell does that mean?"

"It means,” he says, “that exploring uncharted caves is ridiculously dangerous and I don't want you to die doing so."

I try to twist away from him so I can look him in the eye when I tell him to fuck off, but he holds me tight. I can barely move. I huff with irritation and resign myself to arguing with my back to him.

"I'm doing my research, you know,” I inform him. “I've already taken out books on caving, and I'm planning on asking your chemists for tips and useful supplies they might have. I’m sure they have experience in going underground for ingredients. I'm also going to be mapping the tunnels as I go, so they won't be uncharted for long. And I'll bring Rhys every time. I'll be careful."

“Oh, like you were careful in the dungeons? He pauses a moment to let his words sink in. “Yeah, I heard about what happened.”

“I was careful,” I maintain. “I didn’t get hurt, did I?”

“No, I suppose you didn’t get hurt, did you?”

He's quiet for a long time. I listen to the sound of his breathing for a while, then try once more to wiggle out of his embrace. No dice. His tail wraps around my thigh again and squeezes tight. Fucking snake.

Khysmet sighs and nuzzles his snout into the top of my head, breathing in and out deeply.

"Always let someone know when you’re going in,” he says. “And I don't want you down there for more than a few hours at a time. Please, Cat."

I grin. Victory.

“I guess I can do that,” I say. “I would of course prefer to go down there for days straight, perhaps never seeing the light of the sun again and becoming a cave-dwelling hermit, but I suppose I’ll agree to limit my time.”

He chuckles into my hair. "How kind of you to put your hermit dreams on hold for me. Oh, and be sure to pick up some giant spider repellent before you head down. They won't eat someone of your size, but they still might give you a nasty bite."

Every hair on my body stands on end.

"Please tell me you're joking."