He remains there for a second, like he’s contemplating many things, before he pulls away from me. “Come dress me.”
“I’m coming,” I say as I head out and gather some clothes. I slide a sleeve over his arm and enjoy dressing him while he watches me through Kit’s eyes.
“Does Kit choose where to look or does your bond tell her where you’d like to look?”
“A bit of both. The bond tells her what I want, but she definitely doesn’t have to do it and often decides to do whatever she likes. Which is fine. She is her own being, after all. But sometimes I feel like she knows where I want to look before I even know myself.”
I slide the pants onto him and tie them before drawing him in, wanting another kiss for some reason. It’s like an addiction at this point. He tips his head up toward me, but I hesitate, not quite sure what I’m doing or what this weird feeling is. I don’t know how to explain it, and in my thousand years as a god, I’ve never felt anything like it.
“You just going to stare at me with a blank expression all day?”
“I considered it,” I say as I let him go without giving him a kiss and gaze at the peculiar man instead. Is he somehow using his magic on me to make me addicted to him? But I thought he only had his three types of stored magic, as well as the magic of the last person he touched. And it’s not like succubus magic works on me.
“You’re still staring at me,” Riley comments while he walks out of the room, but Kit has turned around on his shoulder to stare at me. “Dress yourself and meet me in the library with food.”
“Right away,” I say as I watch him go, feeling even more perplexed.
I try to will my dick into behaving, but it seems like every time I think about Riley, it decides that it’s not going to behave. So I jerk myself off while my mind replays the moments we’d enjoyed last night.
There were many.
Too many.
In the bed, against the wall, in the bath after Riley declared we were done and were only getting in to wash ourselves.
I glance over at the tub and think about him bent over the edge, taking my cock in that tight ass of his.
And… now I’m even harder.
Fuck.
Once I’ve finished, I feel even more disgruntled and I’m not quite sure why.
I head down toward the kitchen, but before I reach it, I slip outside and kneel in front of Quill, frozen in time.
Pressing my hand against the side of his face, I question whether he feels colder than he did yesterday. The thought of that makes my stomach tighten.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper, feeling guilty that I’ve felt such happiness since leaving this place. I press my head against his and close my eyes. “I’m so sorry.”
I want to feel the coolness of his scales, the warmth of his mane… He’s the only being that has stayed by my side for nearly a thousand years, and I betrayed him for my own greed. He didn’t deserve this. He deserved so much more.
“Are you okay?”
I turn, startled that I hadn’t noticed the human coming up behind me. “I thought you were looking at books.”
“Kit was very concerned about her breakfast and ran off to find you before I could stop her. When she found you out here, I made her come back to get me so I could see what’s going on. You really miss him, don’t you?”
“It’s my fault he’s like this.”
Riley looks confused as he walks closer to me. “Your fault? Did you forget the whole thing about the man who came through the Door and killed everyone and took your magic? I’m more than confident it’s not your fault. You had no way of knowing what his magic would do. How would you have ever guessed?”
“Just like the magic that keeps this palace green, I had enough magic left to keep Quill alive,” I say. “It was just the two of us for the past two hundred years. I can’t tell you how much it meant to still have him by my side. No, he couldn’t talk; no, he wasn’t human, but he was living and he was the only thing that kept me sane. My boredom led to me reading every single book in that library, and that’s when, about fifty years ago, I learned how to open a Door.”
“And you didn’t open one the instant you learned?” Riley asks in surprise.
“The only magic I had left went into keeping Quill alive,” I say as I let my fingers travel down his neck. “He was all I had left. Iloved him so desperately… and I knew that it would take his life if I were to open that Door.
“I couldn’t do that to him. I couldn’t lose him. I loved him so much, and for so many years, he was all I had. But he was growing weaker… I knew my magic was failing me and that someday he was going to leave me too. And it was driving me mad. Having an animal by your side for nearly two hundred years might not be the same as having another person, but the idea of not even having him? I loved Quill as much or more than the people I had shared my life with. How could I not? He’d been by my side for nearly a thousand years. But what would happen when my magic finally failed and I was left all alone?
