Demon's Delight (20 page)

Apparently, she had more sensual features he couldn't see. Even as they fed on each other's mouths, she rose to her knees and tipped his erection toward her. She fit it against her entrance before slowly, torturously, pressing down on him. From kissing her vulva, he knew she was aroused, but the incredible, devastating sensation of her pushing that tight, hot wetness over his cock brought him to the edge. He didn't expect her to fit all of him—she was built too lean—but when he thought she'd taken all she could, she closed her eyes in concentration and something shifted inside of her, making room.

“God, yes,” he gasped as the last hard inch of him was engulfed.

This time she smiled, a tentative curve—for all he knew, the first deliberate smile of her life. Her hands roved down his back to caress his rear. He'd never known a woman this bold about sex. His balls felt unnervingly ready to explode.

“Don't rush,” he pleaded, despite his body's urging to do just that.

“Oh, no,” she agreed throatily, her thighs beginning to tighten for her first rise. “This is far too good to rush.”

 

Khira had little choice but to admit it: This was what she had been wanting from the moment she saw the human in that seedy pub. To ride his maleness. To take his human fire into her. She ran greedy hands over every part of him she could reach, wallowing in the drugging evidence of their difference, letting her body grow so needy she knew there'd be no turning back.

“Fuck,” he breathed as she made her inner muscles ripple over him. Khira tensed, but, “Do that again,” he demanded.

She hid her thrill of pleasure in his corded neck, gripping him even tighter a second time. The idea that he could dictate to her was foolish, but she liked him trying all the same.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “That's wonderful.”

The tension in him shifted, his cock pressing up higher inside of her. His hand slid from her hip to cup the back of her skull. “I'm tipping you back now. Don't let go.”

He laid her beneath him as carefully as if she were glass, then braced above her on straightened arms. She could tell he liked this position, and she certainly didn't mind once he moved again. His hips beat more freely against her, no faster than the pace she had set but with an extra push at the end to reach deeper. He watched his cock go in and out of her—wet, thick, red from friction and excitement. The sight clearly wound him up. He groaned quietly with need.

“Do it,” she said, her hands rubbing urging circles around his hips. Her body was as eager to go as his. “Take me as hard and fast as you want. Trust me, you won't come before I do.”

He looked at her. “Trust you,” he repeated with a muffled laugh. “You have no idea how close I am.”

She didn't have to argue. Her body did it for her. His body stroked in one more time, and she came apart, the orgasm strong. She made a choked and helpless whimper as her neck arched up.

“All right,” she dimly heard him say. “Hard and fast it is.”

It was hard and fast and
loud
, not only from their bodies slapping together, but from his groans and gasps and muttered curses of delight. The sounds, so foreign to her experience, pushed her over a second time. His thrusts turned wild then, his expression pained. Desperate for more, she pulled at him with all her inner muscles' strength.

“God,” he said, slamming into her so hard the crown of his penis seemed to jolt her heart. “God, God—”

His words dissolved into a long, hoarse cry. This was the end for him. His testicles slapped her buttocks with the final quickening of his thrusts. He came with his body clenched to his toes, straining, shooting, his lips pulled back from his teeth in an orgasmic snarl.

Khira wasn't prepared for what his peak did to her. The flow of energy from him to her was already strong, and she'd forgotten it would flare with climax. Ecstasy seized her as his sun-bright aura flooded into her. Her very fingertips seemed to come. She moaned at the forceful spasms, utterly unable to hold the exclamation in. On and on it went, until she struggled to comprehend how she could hold so much pleasure. Harry must have felt it, too. He shuddered one last time into her.

“Ahh,” he sighed, long and low, sagging onto her. His body relaxed as completely as it had previously been coiled. “Khira, that was sweet.”

Acting the gentleman, though there was no need, he rolled onto his back with her on top of him. His hand stroked lazily down her hair. Happily, the floor was sealed and warm like the walls. She squirmed into a more comfortable position atop his chest, which roused him momentarily.

“Do you want more, love?” he asked, his palm sliding meaningfully around her left buttock.

She blinked, her eyes stinging unexpectedly at his endearment. She reminded herself that anyone could be “love” to one of Victoria's citizens. And that, as a dignified Yama, she wasn't supposed to enjoy such things.

“No,” she said, snuggling her blushing face into the crook of his neck. “I am content.”

Humming, he wriggled his back against the floor as if his shoulders itched. “I am as well. Just be sure to wake me when you want to do this again.”

 

Khira waited until he was sleeping soundly. Then she picked him up and carried him to her room. Her chamber wasn't much different—also stark and white—but the bed was more comfortable.

She laid him in it gently, not troubled by his weight, but unused to carrying anything this large and limp. Harry could rest here until tomorrow when, hopefully, whatever bee he'd had in his brain would be forgotten, and she could continue with the business of saving his life.

What that saved life would be like she didn't want to think. She'd protect him as much as she could with whatever power her knowledge gave her. More than that, she couldn't do.

Harry rolled onto his side in sleep, his big, muscular body oddly vulnerable. Khira grabbed a soft, white blanket to cover him. Before she could spread it, her gaze was arrested by two blazing red stripes that had appeared along his shoulder blades.

“God,” she whispered, unthinkingly echoing his human prayer. Her hand went out. Her procedures
were
working. The modulator's DNA-altering frequencies must have gotten stored in his aura. When he'd dropped his mental guards to have sex with her, they'd been able to take effect.

Khira pulled her hand back without touching the inflamed lines. His shoulder muscles were shifting configuration, new bones forming beneath the skin. When she cocked her ear close to his back, tiny popping noises could be heard. In spite of all that remained to concern her, triumph bloomed in her breast. She had done it. She had brought a dormant portion of his genes to life. She dragged a chair to his bedside, unable to keep her eyes off the unfolding change.

Harry murmured and moved uncomfortably. Khira stroked his arm to soothe him, though she doubted he'd wake up. The human body had built-in safeguards to stress. Ask too much of it, and it would burrow into unconsciousness to heal, or, in this case, to grow. He'd probably sleep like a baby until this was done.

“Rest,” she murmured, pulling the blanket over his legs. She'd retrieve her medical kit soon. With luck, she'd be too busy easing his transformation to worry about how she'd break the news to him when he woke.

F
OR
once, Harry wasn't sorry to come awake with his cock as hard as bone. He lay sprawled on his back, propped on a stack of pillows over which an even softer throw had been draped. He knew this wasn't the bed in his room; it was far too comfortable. Best of all, a mouth he recognized as Khira's even with his eyes closed was doing its best to swallow his aching prick. She was bent down over him, kneeling between his legs.

She must have seen his cock rouse ahead of him.

He moaned, his hand combing down the silken spill of her hair. “I was wishing you would do this that first night.”

In truth, he'd been wishing he could wake up like this his whole adult life. Her mouth was strong, that dark, forked marking not the only difference in her tongue. Inhumanly agile, it flickered up the ridge of flesh beneath his shaft with a quickness that had his hips squirming uncontrollably off the bed. He gasped and gripped the curving leanness of her upper arms, needing something to hold on to that wouldn't entail jamming himself down her throat. Wisely, she held down his thighs when she applied that vibratory flutter to his swollen crown. The pointed tip of her tongue drew a circle of intense sensation around the well-stretched helmet, until he feared the next time she sucked all of him upward, he would explode.

“You'd better stop if you want to join me,” he managed to warn her, his eyes screwed shut with near-orgasmic enjoyment.

She didn't say a word. She cupped his testicles in one warm hand, shifted her attentions to an even more sensitive spot beneath his rim, and trilled her tongue again. Harry knew what her action meant. She intended him to finish in her mouth.

If he hadn't been gritting his teeth too tightly to speak, he would have thanked her. That she would be this warm to him, when she'd already given him what he asked, touched him deeply. In his experience, no woman let a man spend in her mouth unless she really wanted to. In spite of everything Khira had put him through, this gratified him more than anything had in some time.

That happiness—or at least his lust—continued to increase even when she finished her little tongue trick. She licked him once for good measure from root to rim, slid her palms up the muscles of his belly, then pushed the ring of her lips down his throbbing length. Having reached her limit, she sucked wetly, tightly up again.

After all her teasing, the feeling was incredible. Tears of pleasure squeezed from his eyes, while at the same time the oddest pressure knotted in his back, as if he were lying on a muscle wrong. He couldn't worry about it. Khira was pushing down on his shaft again. Her subsequent upward pull had his body tingling from head to toe.

When her fingernails scratched lightly through his chest hair, he felt as if his body had turned into one big cock.

“One more,” he tried to say through his strangled throat.

Khira was already there. The next downstroke tensed him like a bowstring, and the sucking, tonguing upstroke shot him into ecstasy so abruptly that an actual twang of release jolted through his groin. Her head came down again, warmth wrapping warmth as his climax squeezed from him in a series of deep contractions. Dimly, he felt her kiss his penis as she slipped away. Though sorry it was over, he'd never been so satisfied in his life.

When his brain recovered its powers of higher observation, he realized the odd pressure on his back was gone. Indeed, he felt pleasantly floaty all over.

“What the—?” Khira exclaimed.

Her hands were gripping his hips from an angle he didn't understand. Too replete to puzzle out why her hold seemed wrong, he opened his eyes lazily.

He was suspended in the air above her head. He blinked, dumb-founded. Was this some new Yamish technology? He craned his neck to see Khira and tilted, still floating, to the vertical. Khira's hands were now planted indignantly on her waist. She was naked, which was rather nice.

“You're not supposed to be able to do that!” she snapped.

Harry couldn't help but grin at her. As he did, something rustled behind him, something big. He looked around to see what it was and gasped. A huge pair of wings was unfolding behind him: brown, feathered wings whose tops nearly brushed the warm ice ceiling.

“Ack!” he said, thinking some monstrous Yamish bird had been set on him. He began to twist, trying to get away, but only plummeted to the floor.

“Ow!” he said as his knees cracked the smooth surface.

Khira was at his side in an instant. The wings had followed him down. He swatted them in a panic, his arms weirdly heavy, as if he'd been drugged again. Khira grabbed his hands.

“Stop it,” she said. “They're yours. You grew them. You can't beat them off.”

“Oh,
God
.” He didn't want to believe her, but she was stroking the wing on his right. He could feel her fingers moving gently down each feather.

“See,” she soothed, moving behind him to pet the wings as a pair. “You're all right.”

The caress felt perversely nice, but his fear was stronger. “What did you do to me?”

“Well, I didn't hurt you. I just…altered you a bit.”

“A bit!” His response was a half-choked burst of outrage.

Khira's voice turned prim. “I didn't think you'd be able to fly. Your wings were supposed to be just for show. Birds have hollow bones. Your body should be too heavy to lift off. Then again, people say the same of honeybees.”

“Oh, then everything's all right!”

She was still fondling his feathers, too distracted to pay his sarcasm any mind. Of course, he was feeling distracted, too. Those wings must have had a lot of sensually connected nerves. Absolutely against his will, he made a cooing noise, his back relaxing utterly beneath her touch. Despite its recent pleasuring, his cock began to lift.

“Khira,” he growled a second before his body lifted off as well, not unlike a hot air balloon.

Startled, he flapped his new wings and nearly went careening face-first into the wall. He caught himself on his hands and tried a gentler motion. This time, he wafted perfectly over Khira's head. He laughed, forgetting his rather insane troubles in the unexpected delight of flying. The laugh sent him bobbing up another foot, with barely an effort from his wings.

“Oh, no,” Khira said and covered her mouth.

“Don't say ‘oh, no,'” he scolded teasingly from the ceiling. “What you did may be unforgivable, but it's fun.”

“But, clearly, you're flying because you're happy! The shift in your emotions must have changed your vibration, and faster vibrations mean lighter molecules—like steam rising.” She paced back and forth beneath him, muttering about
unpredictable correlated traits
and
shouldn't have turned that damn modulator up so high.
“They'll all want to fly!” she cried up at him.

Her deduction may have been right, because her distress sobered him enough to touch down.

“Who'll want to fly?” he asked from the floor.

“The
daimyo
. The bored royals the science minister thought would be a market for my procedure. If they buy wings, they'll want to use them, and they'll only be able to if they throw off every discipline our kind holds dear. Harry, this is a disaster!”

She clutched his arms. His wings seemed only partly under his control, so he wasn't positive how he did it, but his pinions curled around her in a sort of hug. “I admit, this isn't a change I would have invited into my life, but—”

“They'll want to fly,” she insisted, cutting him off. “They'll want to laugh and be emotional like humans. The fabric of high society will fall apart. The emperor will never,
ever
lend his blessing to that. He'll do anything to destroy the evidence of what I've done.”

Her face was white with horror, her lips tinged blue. Harry dropped his wings, brushing the hollow of her cheek with his thumb instead. Khira shook his comfort off. “We have to get you out of here.”

“What?”

“Now. Before the guards find out what happened.”

Harry pressed a fist to his chest, unaccountably disappointed that he wouldn't have the year with her she'd said she required. He tried to make sense of the feeling as he watched her bustle naked about the chamber, stuffing bricks of who-knew-what into a small silk bag.

“These are medical rations,” she explained, though he hadn't asked. “Very high protein. You'll need extra energy for flying.”

“Flying?” She expected him to
fly
out of here?

She threw him a pair of trousers, which Harry automatically pulled on. “You'll have to manage without a shirt. We don't have time to rig anything to fit around your wings.”

“Khira, we're in the middle of the ocean.”

“There's an island ten miles east of here, and the mainland isn't more than twenty beyond that. Once you reach it, if you just keep flying south, you'll hit human lands.”

“This is crazy. I can't fly home. Even if I could, what would people think when they saw this?”

He spread both arms and wings, but Khira's jaw clenched stubbornly. “Maybe one of your human doctors can remove them. Anyway, I thought you wanted to be free. Surely you don't intend to throw your chance away.”

Dressed herself now, she grabbed his hand and pulled him to the door. Rather than push the button that slid it open, she peered at a lighted glass square on the adjacent wall, on which walked tiny, moving pictures of the lab's workers. Harry's mind was too numb to register this new wonder.

“The corridor is clear,” she said. “We can slip into the service tunnels at the end.”

They ran pell-mell down the empty corridor. Harry was surprised he could keep up with Khira, given the Yama's supposed thirty-miles-per-hour racing speed. He ducked into the small hatched tunnel no more than two paces after her. Like everything else, the tunnel had been carved out of the glacier's ice, its walls glowing softly blue. A single low metal rail ran along the center of its floor, possibly a guide for carts.

Khira was already hunched inside. She reached past him to close the hatch, the brush of her arm illogically welcome. “I don't think these tunnels have sensors. We can crawl from here to the landing pad where they leave supplies.”

None of this meant much to Harry, but he crawled after her, learning quickly to tuck his wings close so his feathers wouldn't bump the walls. He felt surprisingly good, considering what he'd been through—anxious and confused, maybe, but not tired. His thoughts were just coherent enough to hope Khira wasn't going to get into trouble for helping him escape.

You're getting out of here,
he reminded himself. He hadn't asked Khira to abduct him. The beautiful mad demon scientist could look out for herself.

“No one will hear your name from me,” he promised, worried all the same. “My government won't be bringing actions against yours.”

Khira blinked at him over her shoulder. “That would be kind of you,” she said after a moment's hesitation. “But let me see you off safely first.”

Five more minutes of crawling brought them to a second hatch. Khira pressed her ear to it, apparently heard nothing to alarm her, and pulled the lever to open it. Fresh, cold air burst inward, whipping Khira's hair and leaving Harry glad for the coverage of his wings. He might be a freak of nature, but at least he wouldn't freeze to death.

Khira climbed out onto a different, smaller landing pad from the one where they'd arrived. A large flying car, this one shaped like a hornet, sat unattended on the flattened ice.

“Quick,” she whispered, waving him after her.

They used the cover of assorted other mysterious equipment to scurry around a corner to a narrow ledge. When he saw the view, Harry clutched a jut of ice to save him from dizziness. He'd forgotten how high up they were.

“You can take off from here,” Khira said. Seemingly unaffected by vertigo or cold, she handed him the bag of medical rations and pointed to a black, snow-covered mountain rising from the ocean opposite their perch. “There's the island. Once you land there, your human eyes should be able to see the mainland.”

Harry tied the little sack of food around his wrist. More than anything, he wanted to kiss the careful blankness from her face. He knew he ought to be ecstatic about leaving, but he couldn't help thinking his and Khira's paths weren't supposed to part this way. He realized he'd never felt so connected to another person, nor could the rare pleasure they had shared explain it all.

In one heartbreaking flash, he saw the truth of her: that she was bright and lonely and gave too much to her work. That she wanted to be kind, but was afraid to most of the time. That she was proud, but not too proud to bend when her conscience demanded it.

These things were true of him as well. Different though they were, she matched him.

“I can't do this,” he said hoarsely.