Calavia laid back, letting her legs fall to the side as she listened to the minotaur’s exerted breaths, suddenly feeling exhausted as the pleasure crashing through her ebbed.
If this was what mating could be like, she was happy she had waited for him to arrive before experiencing it. She had not expected the pleasure. It was worth the discomfort.
Astegur’s bull’s cock pulled out of her slowly, making her whimper and bring her knees to her chest as she turned to hug them to her. She ran her gaze over his lumbering, bestial form.
“Astegur,” she whispered.
A hand petted her hair back. “Rest.”
“I really am human,” she mumbled through the haze of sleep that pulled her under. She briefly wondered if their mating would change anything. But then she squeezed her eyelids closed and forced the notion away.
There was too much at risk. She pressed her hand to her mouth, her nose, and breathed in.
He grunted from behind her as his body curled around her back, shielding her from the world.
Tomorrow, she decided, feeling sleep come on. She would answer his question tomorrow.
Chapter Ten
The crackle of blisterbark woke her. Her eyes snapped open. There was no firepit in her altar room. Calavia blinked out the glare and found the source of the noise—her hearth in the old kitchens.
Astegur was nowhere in sight.
The flames popped up into the air and warmed her skin, and she peered down at herself.He must have brought me here when I slept.
She was still naked, but now on a bed of linens and old clothes she had once stored. Beneath that was a pallet that she’d kept hidden in an alcove of vines behind her altar. She searched the linens with her fingers before moving them to her flesh.
Her skin was no more marred than it usually was except around her hips and thighs. Bruises mottled her usually pale flesh, and as she moved her hand between her legs, she expected pain or blood loss from her innocence. But only a deep-seated ache met her fingers from the mating hours before.
Her eyes caught sight of a bowl beside her pallet, filled with crushed cove and water.
He attended me…
She lifted her fingers to her nose and smelt its earthy musk.
The cove was a gift from the labyrinth, an herb that grew abundantly wherever the mist was at its thickest. It could be ingested or applied to flesh to numb any hurt.
Calavia moved the bowl closer to her and scooped out the rest of the mixture, applying it liberally to her breasts and sex, and before long, the minor aches that were left faded away altogether. Whatever she had remaining after the reapplication, she drank. Though the concoction took away the majority of her aches, the pain she’d endured for summoning him still festered deep within—though it had lessened with each passing day.
She spread her legs and returned her fingers to her core, assuring herself she had not been changed in some way, and that Astegur hadn’t ripped her in two. A weak smile slipped over her lips at the absurdity, but she pressed her fingers inside to make sure, then closed her legs tight as the memory of his cock returned.
Hooves thudding across the stone sounded behind her. She pulled her fingers out of her sex and twisted around, finding him standing in the doorway.
His sharp horns glinted in the firelight. “You are awake,” he grunted. His eyes flicked from her hands to her face.
“The fire startled me.”
“Do you not sleep beside one at night?”
“Only on the nights that are the coldest, but even then, there is a limited source of the bark here in Prayer. The thralls have to travel outside of my protection to procure it. I do not like risking them for something so small as my comfort.”
Astegur moved toward her as she spoke, holding several long pieces of rotting wood in his hand. She dropped her hands into the linens and curled her fingers around the fabric.
“You will have an endless supply soon.” He sat down on the stone at the edge of the hearth, pulling a blade out from the belt of his leathers.
She glanced at the crux of his furry legs where his cock was hidden before she lifted her gaze to meet his. “Will I?”
“The centaurs will have supplies, and once the mist gorges on their blood, they will be ripe for looting. We will keep the hearth roaring each night.”
