Over the next few days, Dustin had gone from worried to seeming angry about something. I could not tell if he was angry at me or if something else bothered him. And every time I asked, I received a curt, “Don’t worry about it,” which made me worry more. Now I knew how Dustin felt because I would not share my own secret. But what would he say when I asked if he would allow me to try to initiate a soulbond? I had avoided looking into his eyes for long periods of time, knowing that soulbonds could form from such an act, and I also knew that my avoidance helped create some of this unbearable tension between us.
Would I let our budding relationship deteriorate simply because I was afraid? Could I let that happen? I still could not come up with ideas of how to ask him without sending my beauty running for the proverbial hills. I needed him as I needed air and food and water. He was my soul’s nourishment, but I wanted him to also be my sunlight.
Either way, I had to find something fun for us to do during the winter months. He would not be designing the gazebo for long and would soon be bored again. Plus, he needed time away from designing each day, and I could not expect him to sit around with nothing to do. It had already backfired on me once.
With those thoughts in mind, I headed into my parlor, where Dustin sat at my desk drawing up gazebo plans. The sun shining in through the windows gilded his hair, and my breath caught. His hair hadn’t been that bright before. It had been more of a darker strawberry blond, and now it seemed more like a beautiful wheat color, brighter. It looked so much softer.
How could that have happened? Hair was merely dead cells, so how had Dustin’s transformation changed his hair?
The amulet’s spell was starting to astound me, and as I stood there in shock, Dustin finished a few lines and looked up at me with an expression that told me to leave him alone, which hurt worse than severing a limb might. “What do you need, Cass? You okay?”
I swallowed hard and nodded. “I wanted to know if you might like to learn swordsmanship and how to fire a crossbow.”
Dustin seemed to think about it for a moment, his drafting stylus poised in the air, hovering over the holoscreen he had been drawing on. From behind, the image was blurry and reversed, but I could still see the gazebo, and it looked nothing like I had imagined. Roses would be weaved through lattice around the base, and wooden gutters would be installed around the perimeter except over the entrance. Holes would then be drilled through the bottoms of those gutters to provide a lovely waterfall effect from a fountain at the top, the plumbing going through a hollow wooden beam. The interior lighting looked to be fairy lights, with stronger lighting just a word away if necessary.
However, what caught my breath were the hand-carved beams with leaves and branches depicted in realistic splendor. I wondered if Dustin would paint those or leave them their natural wood color.
Finally, Dustin set down the stylus with a look of bland interest on his face and stretched backward in his chair. “That sounds like it could be fun.”
“I hope it will be.” When he left his chair, I met him halfway with a kiss and drew him out of the parlor. “We will be training with swords in the gym, as it’s too cold to do so outside. But for the crossbow training, I have set up targets in the side yard, facing away from the house and toward the forest.”
“You’ve thought about this for a while,” he said, and it made my heart feel a bit better to hear the fondness in his voice.
“Since this morning,” I said. “I had been trying to figure out what might interest you, and since you have the physique of an elven warrior, I thought you might enjoy training. Though, even magi train in these arts in case their magic gets depleted during battle. It is a necessary skill.”
“Necessary?” He glanced over at me with a raised brow. “Why?”
I gave him a patient smile. “There are beasts and beings that roam the forest. We try to leave them in peace, but if they attack during a journey, we must be able to defend ourselves.”
“So, it’s not for war, but to protect ourselves from animals?”
“Oh, we have the occasional battle between elves, but it is rare. Much rarer than it is here on earth. The vampir race has attacked us in the past, and the bashkai from the third plane occasionally breach the veils and attack. They are a barbarian race who have severely overpopulated their world and stripped it of much of its resources. They battle each other to the death to gain their opponents’ possessions, rations, and to thin out the population.”
“How overpopulated?”
I wrinkled my nose. “Several hundred times more than the earth is overpopulated. There are no stretches of land there without a home or feeding plant. Every ‘spare’ bit of land is either used for housing or growing food, whether it be crops or animals. There are also no free animals. They are all penned and bred for food or sport.”
Dustin shook with rage, and I tried to soothe it by wrapping him up against my side. “We cannot help them, my beauty. We can only do our best to eradicate those who make it through the veils and strengthen the veils against them, so they do not do the same things to adradis and earth.”
He still did not look happy, but Dustin nodded and kept up with me as we made our way to the training room. It was separate from the gym but linked by a door and set up much the same as a dojo might be, though much bigger than any I had seen. Come to think of it, I rarely did anything “small” in life.
Then I looked over at Dustin and was glad to see him in his old jeans and a t-shirt instead of the more expensive clothes I had purchased for him because there was a chance he would be destroying clothes if he missed a step. I had no training swords, so we would be training with real, sharpened blades until we could acquire some made of dull-edged wood or simply unsharpened swords.
Once we made it inside, I stripped off my shirt and tossed it over a railing that lined the left-hand wall. I motioned for Dustin to do the same, and once we were both bare-chested, I led him over to the racks on the right-hand wall that held my collection of swords. For now, I would only be teaching him the short sword, but I could already see him eying the long swords.
“Why are you going after the short ones?” he asked.
I was not proud of my snort of laughter. “Because I—”
“Nope.”
Unable to help myself, I snorted another laugh. “You are a trial. Fine, we will train in longsword forms, instead of short swords.” I grinned as I drew down my personal blade and another less ornate one, which I handed to Dustin. “You are acting just like—”
My entire body seemed made of lead as I realized what I was about to say. Dustin sensed my distress and took my sword from my limp hand, putting them both on the floor before hugging me tightly. “I know you miss him, Cass. I’m so sorry.”
That he would snap out of whatever worry or anger he had to offer me comfort made me feel a glimmer of hope that he was not as angry as he seemed. I rested my forehead on his broad shoulder and sighed. “I am sorry for this. It has been so long. I should not still be so affected.”
Dustin stroked my hair and kissed the side of my neck. “Grief doesn’t work like that, kitten. Not everyone gets over that kind of loss, and even if they do, it doesn’t mean it won’t come back on occasion when you least expect it.” He shrugged and squeezed me tighter. “When I lost my parents, at least I had closure. The guy was caught, I attended my parents’ funeral, and I can visit their graves when I want. You don’t have that. You never got your closure, so it’s okay to still be affected. No one will ever, ever, ask you to ‘get over’ your son, especially since he’s still alive. And if they ever do ask you to ‘get over it,’ I will deal with them in ways that won’t be very polite.”
I shook in his arms, unable to stop the torrent of grief and self-loathing that ran rampant through me. But with Dustin’s care, it was more bearable than normal. I was able to pull myself out of the depths of despair faster than I ever had before. And as I slowly calmed, Dustin kept petting my hair, kept murmuring soft, encouraging words in my ear until I was calm and relaxed.
“Are you okay now?” he asked.
I nodded and nuzzled into his neck. “Much calmer. Thank you.”
He pulled back and smiled at me, a timid thing because he most likely knew I would not be at one hundred percent for a while. “Hey, you didn’t cry this time.”
His realization made me laugh. I hugged him tight and picked up our swords once I released him. “I can thank you for that. You are such an empathetic soul.”
Dustin took his sword from me with a cheeky grin. “Only when it comes to you and kids.”
That drew another laugh out of me, and I led him to the center of the mats. “You truly are of elven blood, then. It is ingrained in our genes to adore all children because we have a very low fertility rate. When you are eternal, it is necessary for us to have such a safeguard, so we do not end up overpopulating our world as the humans and bashkai have done.”
“But I was human for most of my life,” Dustin reminded me. “I may not have such a low fertility rate.”
“Perhaps, but I should hope you won’t be fucking any women or other omegas while you are dating me,” I teased. “Though I would not mind having other children. Especially if they looked like you. But until you are ready, I will remain magically sterile. I can reverse it at any time.”
The sappy grin on Dustin’s face told me I had hit my mark with the romantic notion. I leaned in and kissed his smiling lips and motioned for him to follow my lead as I started slowly working through the sword forms.
“Why are we doing these?” he asked. “I thought you learned by sparring.”
I shook my head, and to my surprise, Dustin continued matching my motions through the forms. “No. You learn the forms, so when you get to sparring, the motions make sense. This helps you create muscle memory because it goes through nearly all the movements you will use during a battle. Then you get to sparring so that you learn to anticipate movements you have not learned in sword forms so you can become versatile.”
Dustin snorted. “Oh, I’m versatile, all right.”
My nose was beginning to hurt from all the snorting I had done in so short a time. “Dustin! Behave. We are wielding sharpened metal, and making me laugh is not conducive to keeping blood off the mats.”
He gave me his most innocent look and went back to mimicking my movements. But now that he had insinuated his sexual preferences, my cock decided to take notice, making a good many of the sword forms uncomfortable to achieve. Five words, just five little words, and I was rendered nearly useless. One man should not have such power over me. Not when I had been an unflappable king for millennia. Not when I had been so in control of my emotions and bodily reactions for all that time.
By the time we finished, we were both sweaty, panting, and I could tell Dustin was sore by the way his arm trembled as he lowered his sword from our last form.
“You did exceedingly well,” I said. “We will come here for sword forms twice a day once your arms stop trembling so. Unless you want to try for twice a day now.”
Dustin groaned and handed me his sword, but I refused. “Now we clean them. Since they are metal, we need to polish them after every use to keep them in good condition.”
“Slave driver.”
I chuckled and kissed his damp forehead. “I am.” I handed him a cloth and took one for myself, dripped a bit of oil on them, and showed him how to buff the blades without cutting off fingers, and clean the leather grips. “Besides, if you are to have your own blade one day, I wish you to know how to take proper care of it.”
He perked up at that and grinned. “My own sword?”
“If you enjoy learning, I will either give you one from my collection, or we can take a trip to the Netherdark on Adradis to barter for a new blade that you select.”
My beauty seemed to think about this as he cleaned his blade and worked the oil into the leather to keep it soft. Then he handed the blade to me to return to the wall rack and said, “I’ll be fine with one of yours. The last time we went to Adradis, you nearly collapsed. I won’t put you through that again.”
His stare made me drop my gaze and fidget with my shirt as I debated putting it back on or going to shower before we went out for crossbow target practice. In the end, I decided on the shower because I hated being so sweaty, and it was a chance to get Dustin in the shower with me, which I would never turn down.
“Thank you, Dustin.”
He just gave me a small smile and led me by the hand to my bedroom and into the shower once he stripped us both naked. As much as I wished to, I avoided entangling myself in Dustin’s arms. We were both hard and aching, but I wanted… I was unsure exactly what I wanted until Dustin dropped to his knees, looked up at me from beneath his thick, dark blond lashes, and licked me from balls to slit before I had a chance to bathe.
I fell against the wall with a groan, my hips jutted out toward Dustin’s hot mouth, rutting against his cheek until he took pity on me and swallowed my dick whole. My hands clutched at his hair before my brain registered the movement. I could not take my eyes away from his, lost in his spell. And then he opened his mouth wider. Tightened his lips. When he reached behind me, grabbed my ass, and jerked my hips forward, I lost all control. I fucked his mouth and throat as if I would never get the chance again. Dustin sucked so hard, it felt like he was drawing my soul out through my cock, swallowing it down with his whimpers and moans each time I pulled out long enough for him to catch a lungful of steamy air.
My orgasm rocketed through me faster than it had since I was a youth, my shouts echoing around us, bouncing off the glass and tile. And like a cat licking cream, Dustin drew off my softening dick with a wet pop and licked his lips with satisfaction. “Turn around, kitten.”
Gods, I would not survive. On trembling legs, I turned around and pressed my hands to the shower wall, more for support than anything else. If I moved my hands, I would be pressing my face against the tile. But that sounded like a supremely good idea, and I let myself fall forward as Dustin started eagerly eating my hole, his whorish moans turning my already weak legs to jelly. Slick rushed down my thighs whenever Dustin couldn’t drink it down fast enough.
He took pity on me and nipped my skin in a long line from my hole to the nape of my neck, and held me there with his teeth as he shoved his cock deep inside me in one long, fast thrust that rocked me up onto my toes and made me cry out as he hammered against my prostate. Dustin set a furious rhythm as if knowing that I needed to feel him, fast and hard. My cock started to wake again, and I groaned as each thrust of Dustin’s hips shoved my swelling dick against the cold tiles, giving me so many sensations that I almost could not process them all.
I did not have to guess if Dustin was close. He proved it to me by reaching around and taking my dick in hand to pump me as fast as he fucked me, bringing me straight to the brink, ready to topple off with him. Our moans married, harmonized in the shower until I felt sure the entire estate’s staff could hear us and the slap of wet skin against skin.
Just when I thought I would combust from the delicious friction, Dustin bit down on my neck, just below my ear. His hand tightened around my cock, squeezing it just right. And with a shout, I came, painting the black marble tiles with stripes of cum while Dustin grunted and emptied inside me.
We both panted, Dustin hanging his head over my shoulder, hooking his chin there as if he needed me to hold him up while we caught our breath and tried to calm our racing hearts.
“Do you feel better?” Dustin rasped against my ear. It made me shiver, and I pressed tighter against him, feeling his cock twitch where he still had it lodged in my ass. “Or do I need to give you a third?”
I laughed, startling myself and making myself laugh harder. “If I come a third time, my beauty, I may see if my immortality is immune to being fucked to death.”
“Then now that you’re thoroughly dirty, let’s get clean and get to crossbow practice.”
I grinned against the tile. “As you say.”
