Chapter 21

Tucking away handfuls of lemon ironbark into her bag, Linh continued to search the forest. It wasn't particularly edible, but she thought she may be able to stew it long enough to make a dull tea with the water mint she'd found a week ago.

Placing her hand to her brow, she noted the sun's afternoon location. We've travelled far from his pond today. They'd been foraging for hours.

Nathair slithered off to the side, and she followed. He only left her if he wanted her to check a new scent, something they hadn't encountered yet.

He brought her to some flowers, and she knelt so she could check them properly. They smelt sweet, almost like vanilla, and she gingerly pulled one of them from the ground by grasping its base. She assessed its tubers, brushing them of dirt, to check their colouring.

These are pale vanilla lilies. She tucked them into her bag and then hunted for more in the area. They wouldn't provide much sustenance, but it was better than only eating plums and fish.

Once she picked all the lilies she could, wanting to use both the tubers and edible flowers, Linh moved them on.

She followed the stream that took them further north towards the cliff edge. There are probably better plants south. She shuddered at the thought of heading in the direction of Bragg's bandit camp.

Still, she stayed near the stream and waited for Nathair to point out a new smell for her.

In some ways, she tried to ignore the hulking Duskwalker.

They'd barely spoken since the day they sat in the rain together. Linh had been introspective in their shared silence. My heart still hurts. Her ponderous mind wasn't faring any better, whirling wildly until she gave herself a headache.

Gosh, she felt so damn petty. She also felt insanely pathetic, weak, and... selfish. Use him? How the hell am I meant to do that when I now know what he wants? Her soul? She didn't want to sell her soul to any devil, no matter how much his scales felt sublime rubbing against her.

And yet... she wanted to crawl on top of him so badly, her pussy literally dripped at the thought.

I know I don't just desire him for the reasons he said.She hated that he thought so low of her.

There was something about his skull she found attractive, and she longed to lather it in kisses again in hopes he'd purr sweetly for her. She wanted to grab his horns, stroke them, see if he could feel through them since his skull was sensitive.

His humanoid torso... well, what female wouldn't be attracted to that? It was muscled, hunky, and covered in pretty black scales that gleamed with rainbows in the light. Even his dark-grey nipples often grabbed her attention, and she wished she had a shirt she could throw at him. Not to mention a skirt to hide his seam because she was beginning to want to pet it longingly so she could make his dual cocks spring from it.

They're purple,she thought, kicking a rock. Why do they have to be my favourite colour?

His tentacles were strange, but she wanted to explore them and know if they were firm or squishy, if they felt good to be touched or were just an external tool for something.

Then there was his waterlily-and-moonflower scent, both which could be found in her village. I think... he'd like my village. They had springs all around it and flowing through the mountain side. A waterfall literally flowed out to the beach a few kilometres away.

I like the way he looks.A lot. Enough to disregard what he was. He was a monster, something freaky – and sometimes freaky was too much of a hurdle to get over.

But Nathair was magnificent in all his Duskwalker glory.

He was a serpent in nature in so many ways. Even his mannerisms felt snake-like: lazy, territorial, calm until not, and always watchful.

His fins and gills just added to his beauty, and she'd learned the ones going down his sides really were soft. With a velvety texture, she thought they might feel nice rubbing against the softer parts of her, like her inner thighs. She liked that his entire tail would shiver all the way to his tip if she caressed them; the intense reaction stimulated her with tingles.

None of this was enough for Linh.

It was his patience, and his... mind. His deeply disturbed mind, constantly making him feel relatable. He was as messed up as she was, yet his problems were more physical than her own, more pressing and harder to break. To heal him of his voices? It felt impossible. All she could do was sing for him, and she did every day just to avoid talking to him.

Even when he didn't slip into a trance straight away, I didn't have a single thing to say.She'd had the chance to hear his deep, mesmerising, cocky voice again, and she'd missed it. All because she suddenly felt really nervous and unsure around him.

I wish he didn't tell me.She'd rather not have known the depth of his desires, that apparently weren't so two-dimensional like hers.

Nathair slithered off.

He brought her to a flowering shrub of melastoma affine – better known as blue tongue plant – and she lowered to inspect the ripeness of its berries. The soil must be loamy for these to grow so big here. Considering how little clay appeared to be in the moist, fluffy dirt, she wasn't surprised. The northern cliffs were plenty fertile for these.

Her vision blurred as her painful thoughts rambled.

Although it'd only been two days since the rain, Linh hadn't touched herself in front of him for days prior to that. She'd been so worried that all the intimacy was the reason he'd had an erotic trance, and had just been trying to gain the will to be okay with it if it happened again.

Waking up with a set of cocks pumping against her had set her back. She'd relapsed on her healing, and she wished it had a definitive end – that she could note down the time when she would be free from her inner turmoil. She'd been hoping to try again that night after the beach, but her stomach had been so sickly since then that she couldn't.

It would be unfair of me to lead him on when I don't know what I want.When a stick cracked under his tail, likely from him coming to see why she wasn't checking the bush for berries properly, she hastily jumped to do so. His shadow blocked out the little sun shining through the forest canopy.

Her lips tightened as her sinuses grew tingly. She quickly blinked to disperse any possible tears.

I hate that I think he's right. I like him because he's not human, because he doesn't feel human. It's wrong of me, isn't it? To be intimate with him to get over what happened to me?

But what had happened to her... what Bragg had done... how was she supposed to get over something like that?

Part of her wanted to tell Nathair. She wanted to let him know that what he sought from her was probably a losing battle. That Nathair wasn't the problem, and she was; she thought she was... ruined. Not physically, but within the recesses of her mind and heart, where she didn't know if she could be with anyone without constantly feeling afraid. Where doing anything intimate came with a stomach ache that was physical, despite her not eating anything unpleasant.

The only unpleasant thing she'd eaten were her own unspoken words that she swallowed as emotional lumps.

He said I was lucky I was pretty.Her ‘marriage' to Bragg was entirely political, and was a way to force her father into being compliant. If her father didn't do as he was told, the threat of her life constantly loomed over his head. She was a bargaining chip.

Of course, her father refused – which resulted in the intense spectacle of everyone watching each of his hands being clubbed. Even then, he'd still said no, as did her mother, as did everyone in the village.

As did Linh.

She never got that choice in the end. He'd ended up just taking her despite everyone's outrage, forcing her to pack at knife point, and then told her father to be thankful marriage was his choice.

He didn't love her, but he'd always given her a disgusting appreciative eye. He gave the same one to many women in the village. But his need for control was why it was her he'd taken.

Bragg couldn't destroy their homes, or they'd revolt. The promise they'd protect them from Demons, which they did, was the only reason they were even tolerated to begin with. The reason they didn't have soldiers was because they stopped them from reaching out to the south for aid.

But when Bragg asked for more – more crops, more clothing, more medicine – choking them of the supplies they needed to survive, the angrier everyone became.

And the more he set his sights on Linh, the more worried they all became. He kept hovering around her, kept finding a reason to be in her vicinity. A random scrape she needed to tend to, a concoction to help one of his men with a stomach bug, anything he could think of.

He'd even offered to take her and her mother personally out into the forest to find herbs they couldn't safely get on their own. He'd been rather forceful with his ugly attempts to woo her, but her mother's proximity had kept him at bay.

His patience had run out, even more when her father bartered too hard to protect their village. When her father had... tried to send a message to the south for aid against the bandits, and had gotten caught.

Bragg had grown enraged. He'd finally had enough of her father. He'd turned to Linh as his option for control, but she knew it was more than that by his continuous creepy stalking.

Death or pain did not frighten her father; he'd already proven that by his injured hands. It also hadn't frightened the men who fought back. They'd all constantly argued with Bragg's men and forced them back, tried to stop them from... taking her.

The moment her throat was in his rough palm, her potential death frightened everyone.

The last hug she'd gotten from her mother had them both shaking and in tears. Her mother had promised they'd find a way to save her, and all she had to do was live. Survive. To just get through each day and know they were trying every resource to bring her home.

But every painstaking day felt like eternity, and Linh had feared she couldn't survive the next as she promised to. That she couldn't bear it if her hellish life continued the way it did.

She knew no one was going to be able to save her. They hadn't managed to stop her from being taken in the first damn place. What chance did they have running into the belly of the beast – Bragg's camp – where there were more men, more weapons, and the potential for more Demons to sniff out the bloodshed?

Linh thought she could bear to share all this with Nathair, but doing so was really fucking hard. It felt easier to just stay quiet, and hope everything slipped from her memories permanently.

The rest? She didn't think she'd ever be able to explain the way Bragg didn't want to mark her face and body, but it didn't mean he hadn't been unkind. He'd just found many other ways to be horrible. Violent in ways that didn't leave marks, and he was emotionally abusive until her spirit was crushed.

I was so scared I'd never want to be intimate with anyone ever again.She took in the towering, oppressive shadow of Nathair, and only felt calmness in his foreboding shade. The fact she'd found someone already who was constricting those anxieties away was a miracle. If he'd been a man... Linh would have never let him within ten feet of her.

Yet, with Nathair, part of her desire was intrigue. He was so different that it put her at ease. It made it less daunting and became erotic instead. Like her own virile, sinful god coming to shine his dark light on her.

Checking to make sure the melastoma affine berries had all broken from their pods, she tucked them away. She nibbled on a few, hoping to ease her queasy gut.

But he offered it, and I really do want to touch him.She wanted to see what it was like when Nathair let his unbending control slip under her power, rather than Linh be a shaking, needy mess.

Her inner walls gave a tentative pulse at remembering his big finger inside her. She'd been so soft around it. She didn't think she'd ever come through penetration before, and if she had, she'd completely locked those memories in a ‘do not fucking open this' hellish box because she knew she wouldn't be able to handle it. She'd dissociated herself from those scenarios to escape, and that came with memory slips.

She'd rather keep it that way.

Honestly, those two months had been a nightmarish blur, and she absolutely did not want to wade through any of her recollections for clarity. I wish he had the power to make me forget.

Linh had asked him if it was possible, and he said no. She knew he wasn't lying.

Once she was done eating until she was full, she turned to the Duskwalker, who had been staring at her back with his arms folded.

She tucked a few strands behind her ear, since her hair was a single braid swinging down the side of her neck.

I adore how sweet he is.In everything he did for her, he showed utter care and consideration. He appeared to be completely devoted to her needs, her comfort, while disregarding his own – often making her wish she could take the leap and meet him halfway. But he's also... funny.

Nathair was charming, but a little creepy at times with the way he stared at her, not to mention his intense mannerisms whenever she sat in his nest by herself. He'd stopped entering it when she'd tried to get out of it the first night they'd gone to sleep after the rain.

She'd wanted to sleep alone and put space between them, but he'd been very, very displeased by this. He'd literally carted her to his nest and then coiled around the outside of it like an additional wall.

She'd woken both mornings with his head plonked on the ledge, watching her like a weirdo. A pretty weirdo, with mesmerising orange orbs that seemed to want to inhale her into their fiery vortexes.

"I think I'm done for the day," she stated quietly, somewhat evading his orange orbs.

Now that she was done foraging, he snorted a deep huff and turned to lead the way back to his pond. Linh followed a step behind, and watched as his tail created a massive, continuous wave for metres. He'd folded his arms and lifted a hand to his cheek as if he was ponderous.

It made him come across as more daunting and grumpier.

I don't think he's grumpy, though.Brash, absolutely. Nathair lacked a filter for his movements, and sometimes she thought she could read his mind with them alone. He also didn't seem to be hiding his orb changes, even the purple of his arousal, and offered them freely.

She liked that he was kind of rough. His movements could be sly and smooth, and she thought that may be his serpent nature, but the Duskwalker in him was harsh, brutish, and jarring. He was also very direct when he signed, getting to the point despite possibly being insensitive.

I like that about him. He comes across as honest.

Linh eyed how he ducked underneath branches she wouldn't even be able to jump to graze with her fingertips. She even tried and almost stumbled when she landed on a damn stick.

Quickly righting her footing, she flushed. Of all the spots I could have landed, it had to be on a stick?! Come on, the universe was just fucking with her at this point.

A grunt caught her attention, and she looked up.

His dark horns and the back of his skull glittered gold in the dappled light before he turned it to the side to look at her over his shoulder. Orbs yellow, he signed, "I saw that."

Her cheeks flared with such a heat that even her ears went hot. "How could you see that?" she yelled, waving her arms up in disbelief. "Your face was turned forward."

"I see everything."

Embarrassed, she sneered before sticking her tongue out. She barely had time to gasp before he suddenly spun to her and grabbed the end of it. She froze with her tongue caught between his big fingers.

"It's..." He purposefully changed his orbs to blue and pointed to one. "Blue."

Crossing her eyes, she looked past the tip of her nose to her blue-black stained tastebuds. He let it go so she could talk.

"Well, yeah. The berries I was eating stain your tongue."

Seemingly curious about this, he dug into her bag and stole a few. He sat back on the base of his tail and pried a berry apart with his thumb claws. Then, to her surprise, he threw the rest into his mouth.

He instantly shuddered inwardly. All the way to the tip of his tail, his entire body convulsed in what she figured was disgust. He squished them, his jaw segments moving and parting, while his orbs flickered with black.

She giggled behind her fist when she figured this was a Duskwalker's way of cringing like a human might when eating something sour.

When he was done, he scraped his tongue clean, rather than swallowing, and poked it forward. His orbs didn't move, but she knew he was inspecting the way his purple forked tongue had turned blue-black.

He turned from her to lead the way once more, but he never drew his tongue back in. He even grabbed the forks and pulled them apart. Linh ran up beside him to watch intently, and something became apparent.

He's more curious than I thought.Because he could speak so well, spell, and just in general seemed to be knowledgeable, she often forgot he was a monster. He hasn't been alive for long – as he'd been dead for most of it – and I'm guessing there's not actually a lot he's seen and done.

And this monster apparently wanted to be very curious with her. He always leads so well that I forget that I'm the first... woman he's ever kept. Linh was his first.

She could be his first for many things, if she chose it. I want him. But becoming his bride... did that mean he wanted her to be his last as well?

How many souls can he bond with?Because, if Linh was being truthful, she'd rather not be one of many he kept. But with two cocks, he wouldn't have an issue pleasuring more than one person at a time. Was that why he had two? And did that mean all Duskwalkers did or just him?

She covered her mouth, suddenly feeling nauseous. She didn't want to give herself to him to have to deal with that kind of emotional anguish.

Rather than sitting in her sickly thoughts, she just asked the question. "You said your father can eat many souls. How many people can you bond with?"

As if he didn't care for the conversation over his stained tongue, he lifted a singular finger in her direction without turning his skull to her.

Okay. So just one.That did make her feel a little better. More for me, then? Her back stiffened at her thoughts. I-if I decide to, that is. She palmed her face. Oh, who am I kidding? Resisting his charm and barring touching just isn't going to happen.

It'd already been five days, and she was ready to squirm. She wanted pleasure, and he'd already shown her she could take it by her own hand, or around one of his fingers. And she really did want to erase all touch until she could only remember Nathair's.

His palms were so soft they were silkier than her own. They felt so nice caressing just her cheek, her neck, and from what she could remember, her breast.

I want to learn him, and see what happens when he learns me.The first woman he's ever touched. That should be scary, being with someone so inexperienced while she had trauma, but the idea turned her on so much it had to be a sin. To take his firsts with everything, like they were her own, but wanted, pleasured, revered.

He'd be her first Duskwalker, or the first male that had two cocks, scales, a forked tongue, claws, and no legs but a tail. So many firsts to have with him, when she'd thought she'd been all out of those.

She wanted his sexy, smooth scales caressing every inch of her body to the point her nipples hardened with hope that he'd scrape them too. She wanted him everywhere, all at once, and he was so damn big and long that he might be the only creature in existence that could do that.

Linh wasn't sure about sex, but why hold back when they both wanted to get closer, and could in other ways? I know that if I was to reach out right now... He'd cave within an instant and give her whatever she hungered for.

Because he hungered for it too.

So she did. In the most innocent of senses, Linh tentatively reached out to him and placed her palm on his humanoid waist.

Her heart nearly wept when he grabbed it, and just held her small, nimble hand in his overbearingly large one. His claws stabbed into her delicate wrists, but they didn't hurt. All her loneliness and self-loathing... all the unbearable, gut-twisting sick that had been haunting her for days, unravelled itself in his soft palm.

Nathair didn't do more than that. He didn't turn to her now that she'd given him an opening, didn't try to cart her into his arms. He didn't try to shove his tongue into her mouth or expect anything from her.

He just held her hand in a simple gesture, and her being radiated in tenderness.

It only made her want him more.