Page 58 of Guarded By the Vodnik

She threw her head back, sweaty and deliciously flushed.

I fucked her hard, came inside her, and then fucked her with my tentacles until, five orgasms later, she gave in.

“Tabasco! Please! Tabasco!” she cried out desperately when I put my mouth around her swollen, pulsing clit right after I’d made her come.

I smiled, giving her a gentle kiss that made her jolt, and let her go, pulling out of her sated body. She lay buried in a bed of me, so relaxed, all her muscles were soft, her pulse fluttering madly in her bared throat.

And still, I could have kept going. I’d never been so insatiable before. But I was also satisfied in a bone-deep, glowing way that suffused my every cell. It felt so good, and in that overwhelming, ubiquitous ease, I found the will to tell her everything.

“My grandfather was a separatist,” I said, stroking her sweaty hair off her face. “One of the last ones. He believed in the separatist principles in a way that bordered on insanity.”

“What’s a separatist?” she murmured.

“Someone who believes organized society is based on flawed logic and weakness. Rot, he called it. According to him, vodniks were meant to live the way lamias do. In a way, he respected them. Lamias are anarchists. They have no laws, and since the law from the surface has little reach down here, our species govern themselves.”

She nodded. I thought she was sleepy, but her eyes were bright and curious as she looked at me.

“So, your grandfather chose to live outside society?”

I nodded. “He did. It was a stupid choice, considering lamias don’t care if the meat they eat comes from a sentient species or not. They hunt vodniks out here, but my grandfather was a zealot. Soon after his daughter was born, he took his family out of the city so she wouldn’t grow up poisoned by civilization.”

The tension inside me grew, anger buzzing at the unnecessary suffering my grandfather caused. It was all his fault, yet if not for his choices, I wouldn’t have been born. What an irony.

Zoe was quiet and still, the way I needed her to be. She didn’t even have to be prompted now. Gratitude welled in my heart, and I stroked her hair with affection.

“His wife was torn apart by lamias a year later. That shattered whatever was left of his sanity. He didn’t even see the fault in himself—lamias became the ultimate enemy. He brought up his daughter in total isolation, teaching her to kill lamias to avenge her mother. I don’t know how he was with her, because he loved her, but if it was anything like he was with me, it’s no wonder she ran away.”

Zoe breathed evenly, her eyes wide open, lips pressed together, her body soft and motionless. I sighed deeply, closing my eyes.

“She ran to the city. I don’t know what exactly happened, because grandfather never told me, but she returned to him a year later with a baby. She was sixteen. Fifteen when she got pregnant.”

Zoe swallowed thickly, evidently distressed, but I had this craving to bare the truth completely so she’d see what she was getting into. A morbid curiosity urged me on, too. Would she finally get disgusted and push me away? What would it take?

“He hated me from the start. I don’t remember much from that time, I was too young, but I have some vague recollections. Of hunger and cold. Of helplessness. I can’t say for certain, but over the years, I figured out either my mother didn’t want to care for my needs or didn’t know how, or, more likely, he forbade her. If she wasn’t allowed to feed me enough or hold me… That would make sense, considering everything that’s wrong with me.”

“There is nothing wrong with you. You’re perfect,” Zoe whispered hoarsely.

I shook my head, dismissing her.

“No, I’m not, but I will be,” I promised her.

She didn’t contradict me, and I was grateful for that. The way she listened was so helpful. She didn’t judge me for how I felt, and that allowed me to show her honestly.

“This house was his,” I continued after a moment of silence. “Living on land was a huge advantage. He had a few hiding spots, huts deep in the lake, but ever since he made hunting lamias his mission, they hunted him back. And since lamias loathe coming up to the surface and are much weaker on land, he pushed for us to live here. But I was too young yet.”

I looked around the cold room, instantly noticing the rusty cracks between the stones were the metal hooks for ropes had been lodged. I’d pulled them out once I claimed this house as mine, but the rust gave the spots away.

“I don’t know if you know, but baby vodniks can only survive underwater. It’s the same with human-vodnik hybrids, because the vodnik race is essentially a human-vodnik hybrid. That’s why we… can reproduce with humans.”

She said nothing, looking at me with steady openness that made me shiver. I took a bracing breath and stopped delaying the truth.

“Vodnik children can come to the surface around age five, at first just for a few minutes at a time to train their breathing apparatus. It’s discouraged for them to emerge completely, since their skin is too delicate to handle it.

“The first time my grandfather took me to the surface, it was already after my mom’s death. I was five. He kept me in this room for a full hour, completely dry. I was sick for two weeks after that.”

She shivered, her face tightening in pain, and I looked away, swallowing with difficulty.

“He kept extending the time. It was… Training, he said. He was getting old, and a few times, lamias banded up on him. He’d lost a tentacle, had scars that hurt from those fights. He wanted to stay up on the surface so they couldn’t ambush him, but I prevented that.

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