Firm… oh gods, he’s grabbing my hand and placing it over his crotch. I can feel the rock-hard pillar of his cock beneath his pants.
I want him. But I also need to put him in his place.
“You can’t sleep with me,” I repeat. “But you can get on your knees and prove that you’re sorry for deceiving me.”
His eyes turn incandescent with delight. When I sit down on the low game table and part my legs, he kneels immediately and pushes me open wider. His lips graze the sensitive skin of my left thigh. My fingers splay against the table, rigid with anticipation as his lips move closer, kiss by soft kiss, toward the place where I need him. I love the titillating brush of his beard against the hollows of my thighs and the sensitive skin of my pussy.
He grasps my hips, pulling me toward his face, tilting my pelvis upward as his mouth sinks fully into my cunt. It’s as if I’m a chalice brimming with the most exquisite liquor, and he’s intent on sipping and savoring me down to the last drop.
When I’m with him like this, reality froths into glistening bubbles and swirls away, like soapy water draining from a bath. I float in a world of sensation and pleasure, of languorous licks and little sucking kisses. My head falls back, my hair pooling on the table, and my knees arch higher, my toes curling tight.
Nothing bad or dangerous exists. There is only the man who loves me, in the form he has chosen, swearing his allegiance to my cunt with fervent lashes of his tongue. My breath surges faster, heavier, and I whimper as he brings me up to the peak with delicate swirls and deep licks.
I don’t care where he learned his technique. I don’t care what he is. I only care that he worships me, that he adores me, that I’ve been the focus of his attention since I pulled him from that other realm where he was suffering so horribly.
He is the only person who has offered a reason or a purpose for my ability. With him, it transforms from something unpredictable and traumatic into something good, something beautiful.
“Come for me, wife,” he mumbles against my pussy, and his tongue dances with frenetic energy across my clit, whipping me into a gasping frenzy until I come like a burst of bright sun through clouds, like glittering rain, like a gust of wind shaking a forest. I tremble against him, and he holds me, soothes me, caresses me with his tongue until I’m fully satisfied.
I push him gently back, and then I rise from the game table on quaking legs. “I’m going to bed. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Part of me hates to leave him there, sitting on the floor, hard and aching for me. But I gave him all that I’m willing or able to give, for now. I need privacy, and he needs to respect the boundary I’m setting.
I cross the hall into our huge bedroom, and I lock the door behind me.
I know he has the key. He could enter at any time.
But I trust him not to.
15
I stand motionless outside the bedroom door. The ring of keys Sybil returned to me is in the game room where I left it. I could find the key to this chamber, unlock the door, and spend the rest of the night in my own bed, the one that was mine before I married her.
But she requested privacy, a temporary separation from me. I owe her that and more.
Countless times, I’ve pictured what would happen if my wife ever discovered what lay behind the blue door. I imagined her screaming, running from the mansion, never deigning to speak to me again. I thought perhaps she would try to assemble an army of local men to hunt me down and kill me. Beautiful and bold as she is, I wondered if she might even try to slay me herself. After all, I am an unnatural being with more than one dangerous form.
She should have abandoned me the second the wordmatagotpassed my lips. She should have killed me for devouring her mentor, Grandmother Riquet. Instead, she listened. She asked questions. She let me explain. I can’t expressthe depth of my gratitude for that fact alone. My love for her has deepened tonight, enriched by her kindness, her understanding, and her hints that she might still care for me, even after learning the truth of my existence.
I was foolish to keep the truth from her, but even in my home realm, beings of my kind are reviled, hunted, and regarded with suspicion. We are viewed as untrustworthy tricksters. Face-Thieves, we’re called. Soul-Eaters, Body-Stealers. It is legal for any resident of my world to kill a matagot the instant they are discovered. From our inception, we are taught to adopt a primary form behind which to hide our true nature. We never reveal ourselves fully to anyone.
A long time ago, I told my secret to someone I thought I could trust. That friend proved untrue and sold information about me to the wight, or the Barrow-Man, as Sybil knows him. He ensnared me and wove a spell to destroy my collection of forms, which also eradicated the knowledge and skills I had gained from them. For decades he kept me on the brink of starvation. I came so close to perishing that my mind nearly dissipated into irreparable madness.
And yet, I survived, because ofher. My savior, my Sybil, my wife.
She isn’t perfect, of course—I know that. She can be impatient and impulsive. No matter how desperate she was for knowledge, she should never have gone into the forest looking for the Barrow-Man. She said his name, and now he has set his sights on her.
Years of languishing in a cell within the wight’s lair taught me that he is as persistent as he is cruel. There are goals that he wishes to achieve with his work, but those goals aren’t the driving force behind his constant experimentation. For him, the pain is the point. He likes fusing parts of animals together, causing them agony and distress, hearing them scream and whimper, watching them writhe. He craves their horror and fearas much as he enjoys seeing the strange results of his experiments. Negative emotions and sensations fascinate him. The more intense, the better.
I hate that my wife is now the target of such a monster. And the irony isn’t lost on me that I, too, am like a monster to her. Yet while I may swallow souls, I also possess a soul of my own, as well as the capacity for love—something the wight can never feel.
Wind throws itself against the mansion, causing the timbers and windows to creak under the onslaught. I know it is simply an autumn storm. We are on the brink of winter, after all. And yet there is a shrill keening in the wind that disturbs me, as if the Barrow-Man himself is howling outside, prying at the edges of our dwelling, hunting for weak spots.
He knows what I am. He knows that I collect forms, and that without those forms, I will be helpless, incapable of protecting Sybil. If he does manage to leave the borders of the forest, he will come after my collection of bodies first.
I have two forms that I have permanently absorbed through consumption of flesh: the grotesque wolf and the ailing mare. One is powerful yet cumbersome, and the other is weak. Neither form is a suitable one for a husband.
Despite the habits of my species, I have obeyed one personal law. Other than the flesh of animals, I have only eaten souls. I have never devoured the physical body of anything that walks upon two legs and speaks with higher thought.
