Page 15 of Bought By the Void Walker
I need to clear my head. Need to think without his proximity scrambling my senses.
But when I finally return to my quarters that night, sleep brings no peace. Only dreams of shadow and silver, intertwined in ways that have nothing to do with violence and everything to do with hunger.
YORIKA
The dream starts as memory.
I'm in the training room again. Nezavek circles me like the predator he is, those burning eyes tracking my every movement. But when I raise my blades to fight, they dissolve into shadow.
"You don't need weapons," dream-Nezavek says, his voice reverberating through my bones. "You are one."
He moves closer, and I realize I'm naked. I should feel vulnerable, exposed, but instead I feel powerful. My skin glows with silver light, the same light I saw in that fragmented memory he shared.
"Show me," he commands.
I reach for him, and this time when my hands touch his shadow-form, he solidifies completely. Not the partial solidification I've witnessed before, but fully corporeal. His skin is pale as moonlight, marked with veins of darkness that pulse with his heartbeat.
"Is this what you wanted to find?" he asks, pulling me against him. "What makes me solid?"
"Yes," I breathe, but it's not about the mission anymore. "You're beautiful."
"You're lying to yourself." His hands span my waist, lifting me easily. "But not about this."
Tendrils manifest from his back, wrapping around my wrists, my ankles, spreading me open. They don't restrain. They support, caress, explore. One slides between my breasts, another coils around my thigh, and I arch into the sensation.
"This is what you really want," he says, lowering his mouth to my throat. "Not death. Not revenge. This."
When he enters me I come undone, the sound of my shouts strange to my own ears. The tendrils pulse with his heartbeat, stimulating every nerve ending while he moves inside me. I'm overwhelmed, consumed, claimed.
"Mine," he growls against my skin.
"Yours," I agree, and in the dream, I mean it.
The sensation builds, impossibly intense. The shadow tendrils tighten, his thrusts become harder, deeper.
I wake gasping, my body clenching around nothing.
My quarters are dark, silent, but my skin still tingles where his dream-tendrils touched. Did he feel that? Did he share the dream?
My skin bears no marks, but I can still feel everywhere the shadow tendrils touched. Between my legs, I'm wet, aching, empty.
"Fuck," I whisper to the darkness.
This is bad. This is very, very bad.
I can't want him. He might be my sister's killer. Even if he's not, he's my captor, my enemy, a monster who bought me like property.
But my traitorous body doesn't care about logic. It wants what it felt in that dream. Wants to know if reality would match fantasy.
I need a cold shower. I need to run until I collapse. I need to fight something.
Instead, I lie in the dark, trying not to think about shadow tendrils and burning eyes and the way he said "mine" like a promise and a threat.
Tomorrow will be harder now. Tomorrow I'll have to face him knowing he might have felt my desire through our connection. Knowing that my body's betrayal is no longer secret.
The door unlockswith its usual grinding sound. I dress quickly, choosing pants and a tunic. Armor against whatever this day brings.
Mikaere waits outside. His expression is unreadable as always, but something in his posture seems... amused?
