Page 16 of Married to the Mahr
Daylight made sleepers scarce, but Traeyr worked with unwavering resolve. His hunt for victims would not be discouraged. Towers of glass soared high into the sky,housing millions of cubicles with slumped sleepers. The next town over was populated by hundreds of square apartments with indolent humans. In the surrounding rural area that stretched farther and farther from Addison’s keyhole lay fields of innocent animals who believed themselves above his dark touch.
Nothing was above him this day. Hewouldride her chest tonight. He would not deny her again.
He’d never come so close to giving his name freely to anyone. In his many centuries, his name had remained safely guarded. It died with his body and then perished for good when all who’d known him passed away. There was no one left alive capable of trapping him. He vowed not to let his infatuation with this dreamer be the end of his travels. He would allow the beautiful mortal to bring him to new heights and show him just how much he was capable of feeling in his insubstantial body. After he gleaned the pleasure of her tight holes, he hoped that the infatuation with her saporous liquids and satiating nightmares would fade.
Power bristled through every strand of hair that coated his partially substantial form. He held his hands before him and watched the padding of his palms crease and flex as he curled and uncurled his fists. Even with this much nightmare residue, he did not have a fully engaged sense of touch. He leaned down to stroke the woolly coat of a sheep as he strode through the pen. The awareness of feeling was there, and the animal responded to his touch, but for Traeyr it was a phantasmal experience that he knew was a fraction of the real thing.
Not only would his plan tonight require a great amount of power in order to bring him the most sensation possible, it also required he keep his wit under rigid control. In having so much power stored, he put Addison at greater risk underneath him. He must remain disciplined even as he crested the waves of pleasure he wished to wring from his willing dreamer. A stronger man would not risk her in that way, but he was not a man and hecould notdeny her again.
A strong, unmistakable scent of musky earth and moldy dirt snatched his awareness the moment he reached Addison’s neighborhood. He followed the scent to a keyhole mere houses down from his intended.
The waning light of dusk cast long shadows along the curbside. With a flick of power, Traeyr banished the shadows to locate the putrid night hag under what light remained of the sun. The wraith hissed and dug her claws deeper into the siding of the yellow-painted home. Her head swiveled backward in a creaking motion before she scuttled over the roof on all fours and dove into an open window.
Traeyr snarled, then howled with a baleful promise, asserting his dominance to all night creatures in the vicinity. There would be no feasting anywhere near his dreamer’s scent. Her dreams were his alone.
He did not contain as much power as he’d set out to gain before their meeting tonight, but he would not leave Addison’s room vulnerable. To save what he had managed to gather, he shrank to his butterfly form, then he slipped through her keyhole. The undulating sensation of the crevice was a tease for what was to come.
When the sound of the lock mechanism clicking into place announced his dreamer’s arrival, he let go of his power and greeted her with a sly grin.
“Well, hello there,” she purred. She tossed a ring of keys onto the desk haphazardly, knocking over the wooden structure there. “Oh, sorry, Stevie.”
Charmed by her strangeness, Traeyr felt movement inside his black heart. It felt akin to the giddiness one found within a child’s untainted dreams, eager to learn and play. This peculiar feeling was something to examine later, but now, he just wanted to learn more about his human and play with their odd connection.
“I gotta say, it’s nice coming home to someone.” She fixed the wooden man and then busied herself around the room.
I could be here every night.The thought rose unbidden and he scowled at its unwelcome disturbance.This is a one-night entente.Two, technically, if he were to include the night before. It was all merely a ploy to get her out of his system; not a surrender to entrapment.
Then he read the unspoken words within her statement and realized it wasn’t about him being in her room at all.
“You miss your human lover.”
“Justin? No.” Addison’s face scrunched. She made a little retching noise. “He didn’t get so happy to see me. He sure as hell didn’t look at me likethat.”
She gestured to Traeyr’s face, her own tinting a complementary shade of pink.
“What do I look like?”
The pink of her cheeks enhanced and she gestured helplessly. “Like you want to eat me or something.”
“I plan to do more than eat you.”
He relished the way her eyes widened, her mouth opening as if to respond. His eyes lingered on her parted lips, his dirty thoughts turning to absolute filth.
“Stay here. I have to shower real quick,” she said with a playfully demanding tone.
She knew he could follow. He was aware that she’d seen him follow last night, that he’d witnessed her little tease. But this time he would obey, knowing that what shewantedwas for him to follow.
She would not always get what she wanted.
“Where shall we travel tonight?” he asked when she returned.
To his delight, she twisted a flimsy towel around her chest and jumped into bed. He followed and drifted above her, careful to keep steadfast control of his power and only allow enough of his body to be outlined for her to be at ease, to not feel like she was speaking to a disembodied ghost, and no more. His shadows whipped and clawed at the seams of his hold, but he remained keen as he straddled her torso and refrained from burdening her with all of his weight. Her hands immediately went to his thighs and traced them up and down with the tips of her fingers.
“You’re more…touchable than you were this morning,” she observed as her faintly ticklish tracing elicited a shiver through his restrained shadows. He closed his eyes at the sensation, tightening his hold before looking back at her face to witness the perfect rounding of her lips at his reaction to her.
I cannot give in yet.There was still a whole night ahead of him.
“I ate my fill so I would be better equipped for my plans tonight.”
