Domestic Bliss
For the first time in a decade, Matthias was content. Even happy. He never would have expected to discover that settling into a domestic arrangement would produce that result. Hell, even when he'd been engaged to Rielle, he'd never contemplated that sort of life.
But now?
Now he had a small house near the westward gate of Monsford. And sure, it didn't look like a "traditional" house - not with one room turned into a laboratory and another into an armory, but it was his. Theirs, really. And that was what made it so perfect. Every morning he woke up next to Aurianna, sometimes still tangled up with her. They made meals together, did chores together, talked together of the things they did during the day –helping with the rebuilding, training the town militia, working to reconstruct the dam, getting rid of the lava that choked the streets.
A lot of those conversations ended with them tearing each other's clothes off and fucking for hours. Their bed had seen a lot of use. As had the rest of their furniture. It wasn't the only part of their relationship he enjoyed, but he enjoyed that part enormously.
The part he didn't enjoy was the demon.
He knew he was the perfect prison for it. After all, there was a hole where his soul used to be that it fit in. What he hadn't anticipated was the way it fought the binding endlessly, how nightly he had to reinforce the runes that held. How it still experienced everything he did, and mocked him with that knowledge. How it described in lingering detail the things it would do to Aurianna when it got free, things that it –that he– had done to hundreds, maybe thousands, of men and women when he'd served Baath-Me'el.
***
“It’s good news,” the Oracle concluded, sitting across from the Lord Commander in his office. She’d been reading the letter than had arrived in advance of the return of group sent to find and bring back Aurianna and Clara “She is alive and safe, in Monsford.”
“She’s not coming back,” Mykel objected, with his back to her.
“Is that really a surprise? She doesn’t feel safe here,” Oracle explained. Mykel flinched as if the words were an attack on him.
“You should have told me,” Mykel rasped out, clenching his fists.
“I did what I could to prevent it, but it was the will of the Goddess. Some things I can only see, and not stop.”
“You should have told me!” he roared, turning back towards her, “I would have prevented it!”
“You would have punished seven paladins for a crime they might commit?” Oracle challenged. Mykel’s face remained hard, and his gaze sent chills through her spine. Clearing her throat, she tried another line logic, another attempt to keep him from leaving for good, “Isn’t it a little late to play the role of father to her? After years of choosing to be Lord Commander instead?”
“Don’t you dare judge me. This was where I could keep her safe! Keeping the Order strong was the best way to protect her.” As he spoke, he was strapping on his great sword and shield.
“Where are you going?” Oracle asked, but she knew the answer, and she knew nothing she could say now would change it.
“To do what I should have done when he first hurt her. I am going to kill that son of a bitch.”
***
Matthias woke one night to the sound of thunder, a loud blast that seemed to shake the windows. As it faded, he listened to the torrential rains lashing the walls and hammering the slate shingles. Heart racing from the sudden wakefulness, he snuggled back into Aurianna's sleeping warmth. His arms wrapped around her, her skin soft and warm against his, and he drank in her scent as he breathed. She still smelled of their lovemaking, and the memory made his cock twitch and stir.
One hand cupped her breast, toying with her nipple and stirring it to hardness. He began rocking his hips, rubbing his hardening shaft against the firm globes of her rear. His teeth scraped gently over the back of her neck, and he moaned faintly as need flooded through him. He had to have her, now. His hand abandoned her breast, fingers parting her slit and playing her clit.
She stirred at his touch, her body responding even as sleep clung to her senses. Gently, he rolled her onto her back, and she spread herself for him, open legs letting him tease her further.
One finger slid inside her, their mutual pleasure still warm inside her, and growing warmer still.
“Matthias…” she murmured and writhed under his caress. Her eyes fluttered open when his lips whispered against her cheek and over her lips, and her eyes closed again as her mouth opened to his. Another finger joined the first, going deeper and harder as their kiss deepened, and soon he drank down her moans and sighs, feasting on her ecstasy to feed his own desire.
The kiss broke with a wet plop, her eyes now wide open and lips parted. He smiled down at her, but keep up his momentum, drawing out her bliss with insistent fingers. Her trembling cries were intoxicating, combined with the slippery fluttering of her smooth channel.
Heaving breaths seemed to wake her up fully, but she still stared up with sleepy disbelief on her features. “You want more?” she managed to rasp out.
"Do I want more?" Matthias echoed playfully, voice husky with desire. He pressed her down into the mattress with his weight, his body hard and heavy against hers as he found her lips. His tongue thrust into her mouth as his aching cock, trapped between them, smeared precum on their stomachs. "I want as much of you as I can get, Ari." His hands fisted in her hair pulling gently, and he groaned against her skin as his teeth scraped against her throat. "As much as I can get, as often as I can."
He kissed her again, gripping her hair to draw her face to his and drinking deep from her lips. "I can never get enough of you, Ari," he growled, biting at her lower lip. "Not if I live a million years." Again his hungry mouth found hers and his hands roamed her body, caressing her face and shoulders, encouraging her flesh and steel arms to hold him close as he gripped her hips and slid over her thighs. He shifted against her, rising up over her as he sank into her velvet depths with a long, slow thrust that drew a shuddering sound of pleasure from him.
Lightning flashed once more, casting stark light and shadow across their joined bodies for an instant. His eyes lingered on her even in the darkness, tracing barely-seen curves on the shadows. Reaching up, he caught her wrists and gently lifted her hands from his shoulders, pressing them to the mattress above his head. He leaned forward, letting her feel his breath on her face as his weight drove his shaft deeper into her. "I want you to scream my name," he whispered, tracing her lips with his tongue. "I want to hear you above the storm.”
“Matthias,” she moaned out, arching her back to meet his slow, deep strokes.
"Goddess," Matthias groaned as Aurianna clenched around him. "You feel so fucking good..."
Goddess? mocked a dark inner voice.
You abandoned Her years ago.
“Matthias, please…” Her sharp cries drove the inner voice back, just a touch. He focused on her voice, the pleasure dripping from her lips, “Don’t… don’t stop.”
He shifted his grip, pressing her wrists deeper into the mattress as he rose up over her. His grunts mingled with her gasps as his thrusts became faster, harder. "That's it," he groaned, his body responding to her desperate demands. "Goddess, yes. Beg me to fuck you." Her body bounced and rocked beneath him, moved by his thrusts as he drove himself harder and harder into her. She arched beneath him, screaming his name as her legs tightened around his hips and locked him in place, and then he uttered a wordless roar as he found his own rapture within her.
Gasping for breath, still twitching and pulsing within her, Matthias slumped down against her. "I love you," he whispered, stroking her cheek. I…" He bit the rest of the sentence off, suddenly troubled, and then kissed her. "Goddess, I love you."
Dark, mocking laughter echoed in his mind.
***
Mykel rushed to get out of the rain, finding shelter in an abandoned house. The thatched roof leaked in several places, but it was still better than being out in the open. Besides, after sleeping on the hard ground for nearly three weeks, his back ached for a bed. He really had been away from campaigning for far too long. Sinking into the water damaged furniture, Mykel let out a long sigh and the small dwelling brought back old memories.
He cradled a sleeping Aurianna in his arms, carrying the small child over to the bed. She stirred slightly as he put her down, brushing her hair out of her face and placing a gentle kiss on her forehead. For a few moments, he just stood over her and stared, the peaceful expression on her face drawing a deep ache form his chest. A deep sigh of contentment left him as he left the room.
Lyara finished scrubbing the last of the dinner dishes as Mykel came back around her, wrapping arms around her waist. She sighed approvingly as he kissed her cheek, and giggled as his lips traveled lower.
“She is so beautiful. Just like you,” Mykel remarked, rubbing his cheek against hers.
“Perhaps. But she acts like you, more than a little,” Lyara teased, trying to drying off the plates, even as he distracted her. “She isn’t afraid of anything. It terrifies me.” Mykel chuckled.
“I’m not without fears Lyara,” he corrected, “I worried about you every day I was away from your side. I still worry, even now.”
“Oh, but I have a big strong paladin to protect me now,” Lyara reassured him, turning to catching his lips in her own.
“I am but one paladin, “ Mykel countered, trying to be serious, even as her kisses ignited a fire within him. “Every day the demon’s claim grows larger and larger. We really aren’t safe here. Can’t I talk you into coming to the temple with me?”
Lyara sighed loudly, “I know you have a duty to the Goddess, and I can’t dispute that. She laid claim to you long before I did. But, Aurianna’s all I have. She can’t have you both, it’s…it’s not fair.”
She rested her head against his chest, and his resolve to continue the discussion nearly died. What she said made sense, but he still had to convince her.
“It’s not like they are going to take her the moment we arrive. Her training won’t start until she is eight or nine,” he explained, caressing her face.
“Eight? That is so young,” Lyara protested.
“That’s just the beginning of her training. They aren’t going to send her into the field until she is thirteen or so. And then she will be with an instructor. Maybe… maybe even me. I could be her instructor,” Mykel reasoned, holding Lyara tight against him, “It not unheard of for parents to train their own children. And I would never let anything happen to her.”
“You promise?” Lyara looked up at him, hazel eyes filled with uncertainties.
“Promise.”
Your support makes Blue Moon possible (Patreon)
