Page 9 of Mischief Maker
“If that’s what you wish.” I make another tally mark in the air. “Ninety-seven.”
She lets out a resigned sigh. “Thank you.”
I don’t need to be thanked again, but I don’t bother correcting her as I head toward the house.
Work on the house. It’s such a general instruction that there are plenty of ways for me to interpret it. I know what she wants, of course—the stairs repaired, or the window fixed, or many of the gaps in the walls closed to keep out the heat. But she’s left it so wide open for me, I have no choice but to seize on it.
I perform one of the tasks I know she wants done—repairing the balustrade that goes up the stairs—and then set to the other half of my work. I laugh to myself as I do it, at the puny mortal who has summoned me to serve her.
What a weak choice of words. She was more careless than I expected.
When Faela returns around sunset, she stops in her tracks and her face slackens. “What are you doing?”
“What does it look like?” I hammer in another nail next to the hundred others I’ve put in the wall. “Working on the house. Just as you asked.”
Her face tightens as she peers into the bucket of nails, which is now almost empty.
“You used... all of them? Every last nail?” She sighs and buries her head in her hands. “This is my fault. I wasn’t specific enough, was I?”
I just shrug and hammer in the last nail I had held in my hand. She takes the bucket away, murmuring chastisements to herself.
“Stupid,” she mutters. “You’re so stupid, Faela. Always so stupid.”
This earns my attention. I would hardly call her stupid. It was a thoughtless request, sure, but everyone who’s summoned me has made a few of those. And usually they blame me, not themselves.
She leaves me there, taking the bucket to the tool shed, and doesn’t return for a long time. I sit by the wall, examining my handiwork, but I no longer feel the same mischievous joy I felt while doing it. Her drawn face, her disappointment, has stirred a shimmer of regret inside me.
Perhaps I should pull the nails out again. But immortals do not take back the choices we’ve made, especially not ones that punish mortals for their foolishness and arrogance.
When at last Faela returns, her expression is hard though her eyes are red. She walks past me without a word, carrying a squash and a few more soft carrots into the house. The door slams closed behind her.
It seems as though I am not welcome inside any longer. Since when has that stopped me? And yet, I don’t barge in.
Instead, I examine the animal pen where all the livestock are safely closed in and check the gate. It’s firmly closed this time, the latch now repaired. The dog runs up to me, tail wagging, and I kneel to scratch her head.
Night falls, and still the door to the house remains closed. A candle is lit upstairs, and I wonder what Faela is doing in her room. Is she removing that old dress that seems to be the only thing she owns? I imagine what her sun-kissed flesh looks like underneath it, bare and inviting.
Bah, what am I thinking? This woman would never make a request like that. But if she did, I certainly wouldn’t mind. I rather like her angular face, with the pointed chin and high cheekbones. She has such a slender neck—too slender, really—and a generous bosom for how thin she is.
It’s been centuries since I pleased myself in any form, but clearly those desires still exist. I head into the barn, where the chickens all scatter when I enter, and find a cozy place to sleep on the few bales of hay that remain. Once I’m settled, I pull my loincloth aside and, to my surprise, discover that my cock is stiff and alert.
Hmm. It can’t possibly want this small slip of a woman, can it?
I’ve had hundreds, if not thousands of partners in my immeasurable existence, gods and mortals alike. When my hand drops to my shaft, I summon my memories of them: a beautiful man I found tilling a field. A forest nymph who discovered me gathering in the woods on an errand and rode my cock until she was pink and full of my seed. The widow who needed companionship and respite. Perhaps I even had children out there once upon a time—half-mortals who lingered on this plane for two or three hundred years before the sands of time took them. There’s no way to know.
And yet, as I try to picture the forest nymph’s sweet cunt around me, a young woman with hazel eyes and dirty brown hair appears in my imagination. Faela’s face is blotchy red as gasping moans fall from her full lips. I imagine how tight she would be for me as my hand slides up and down my thirsty cock. It’s easy to picture her breasts bouncing as I ram into her, and I think she would have pretty pink nipples with broad areolas. This pleases me.
I keep pumping, imagining her cries and moans and the pinch of her belly as she raises her hips to meet mine, participating enthusiastically. I might even turn her around, press her flat on her stomach and take her from behind so I can bury my face in the nape of her neck.
Physically, I’m satisfied when it’s over. As I sprawl across the hay and it pokes roughly at my backside, though, I wish I hadn’t made her so angry. It would’ve been far more pleasant to sleep in a bed knowing she was in the next room.
I sigh and close my eyes. No sweet young maiden like Faela would open her legs for a creature like me. She is probably a virgin, all alone out here at this farm, shunned by the other villagers.
Ah, well. What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.
Chapter Four
Faela
