She turns away, and I curse, jerking myself off hard to the vision of fucking her face until she loses her voice and can never mouth off to me again. When my cum shoots out, I use a neat little spell to transport it right into Jaga’s brew, which she sips unknowingly. There. That’s what she gets for lying to my face.
When she puts the empty mug away, I come over, trailing my tail across her shoulders. “You just drank my cum, love.”
“Oh. That’s why it tasted so pathetic.”
“Good thing I didn’t fuck your face, then. That sharp tongue would have cut me into a mince.”
“Maybe next time.”
I wrap my shadows around her and take her away into my most secret space that even Nyja can’t enter, though she knows about it. When we step out of the shadows, Jaga looks around warily. This level is nothing but a perfectly even floor rolling away in all directions, black and matte. There are no cracks or spaces—it’s all made of one enormous slab of stone.
This level has no walls, and the light is uniform, casting no shadows. It’s so open and endless, it always makes me uncomfortable at first. Jaga shivers, and I take her hand, becoming Weles, because I’ve never done this with hooves and I’m not going to humiliate myself trying.
“Let me teach you my dance.”
Chapter forty
Dance
“I’m guessing to usethismagic, one does not need to have been born before time existed?” she asks with scorn, letting me turn her in a tight circle.
I remember our little trade back in the mortal world, when I promised to give her the secret of ruling time if she sucked my cock. I possessed more than one secret, which she now knows, yet I gave her the one that was completely useless. That was cruel of me, I guess, but then, shedidtry to stab me with a knife. My deception was her punishment.
“You caught me, love. See? The more time we spend together, the more truth you learn. Maybe I won’t have a reason to lie to you one day, because you’ll have discovered it all.”
“You can’t lie now.” Even as she says it, she lets go of my hand and grips the pendant with my blood hanging between her breasts. I lean in and whisper in her ear.
“No, I can’t lie. You are the most beautiful woman in all worlds. I adore you.”
She huffs impatiently and folds her arms on her chest. “Show me.”
I step away and dance the first few steps, a wide sweep of one leg, arching one arm over my head, a small leap to the side, feet tangling in a quick rhythm with a fast snapping of my heels, with my arms held gracefully at my sides, one a fraction higher than the other. When I stop, Jaga shakes her head with frustration.
“That’s complicated.”
“These are only the opening steps,” I explain. “You see, the dance is not a routine you just learn. That would be so much easier. The first part, which can take from a few minutes up to an hour or more, is designed to help you hear time and step into it.”
Her mouth is pursed, eyes discouraged, as she repeats flatly. “Hear time.Are you sure you’re not lying?”
I chuckle. “Think about it. Time has a cadence and a rhythm, just like music. Itismusic of a sort, a song that’s very subtle and present always, so you forget you hear it, because you don’t know a life without it. I heard it first when I stopped time one day and realized there was a certain… quiet. It intrigued me, and I played with the concept until I heard it all the time. Seconds and minutes, sun-ups and sun-downs, the melody of the moon traversing the sky. It’s all music.”
She hangs her head with a weary sigh. “This sounds like something that will take me centuries to master. Weles, we don’t have centuries. I can’t do it.”
“You already did it, love,” I say with a grin, because she keeps letting me call her that, and I take a depraved pleasure from it. Especially since we both know it’s completely true.
“Let me show you the first sequence, the one that helps you feel the music. It’s long and complicated, and then you repeat it until you find your place in time. The next part is harder. You’ll have to improvise and dance your way to the right moment in the past, then move throughbothtime and space to thatmoment. We’ll practice. I’m an excellent teacher and you’re a good student, so it won’t be too hard.”
Her eyes glitter with a challenge as she shrugs off her coat, approaching me.
“I’d say you’re a good teacher and I’m an excellent student. All right. Show me the first sequence.”
I repeat the first ten steps, and Jaga does her best to emulate me. I find great pleasure in correcting her stance, first with words, then with my hands. I let them stray, brushing her breast a few times, palming her ass when I correct the tilt of her pelvis, until she breathes from exertion, angry, frustrated, and riled up.
By the time she masters a small portion of the dance, we’re both hot and aroused, and I pull her closer, brushing her lips with mine. We’ve earned a reward.
Jaga bites my lip and turns away, creating a portal. “We’ll try again tomorrow,” she says with her back turned to me, her fists clenched at her sides. “I’ll cure your incurable disease in the meantime.”
The next day, I convince her to let me slip into her mind so I can correct her movements more precisely. The first time I try to move her leg a little to the side, she freaks out and pushes me out of her head, panting from fear as she grabs a knife and presses it to my throat.
