After the Sacred Whale Betrayed Me, I Contracted Poseidon novel · Chapter 3 of 24
Chapter 3: What a Contract Eats
In Bryn's boathouse the bond needs more than touch, and Ilsa gives it everything; at dawn he can stand, but the harbor bell rings and the Trial is now.
Bryn's boathouse stood on stilts over the harbor, and at night the tide breathed under the floor.
There was a cot, a stove, a lamp, and nets hanging from the rafters.
"I'll sleep on my boat," Bryn said at the door.
She looked at Oren, who had not let go of Ilsa's arm once, and she grinned with her broken tooth.
"Try not to sink my house."
Then she was gone, and the door clicked behind her.
Oren sat down on the edge of the cot in Bryn's oilskin coat.
His hand was still wrapped around Ilsa's forearm.
The glow on her wrist had dimmed, and his face looked thinner than it had on the pier.
"The blood held me for an hour," he said.
"It will not hold me through the night."
"Then what will?" Ilsa asked.
He looked at her for a long moment.
"A contract feeds on the mage, and the deepest feeding is the body."
"Every old bond works that way."
"The Hall teaches you to be ashamed of it, so nobody says it out loud."
"I'm not ashamed," said Ilsa.
It was true.
Since the pier, a low heat had been moving under her skin that did not belong to her alone.
It came through the mark on her wrist.
She could feel what he felt, the hunger and the effort of holding still.
And under both, steady and sharp, she could feel that he wanted her.
He lifted his eyes, and she knew he could feel it too.
"You feel that," he said roughly.
"I do," said Ilsa.
"You are going to use it, then."
"I am."
"I am twenty-two," she said, "and I am choosing this."
"I look thirty-one and I am older than your Hall," he said roughly.
"I want you, Ilsa."
She stepped between his knees, pushed the oilskin off his shoulders, and let it fall.
He was beautiful in the lamplight, long and lean, with a scatter of old scars across his chest.
She ran her hand down the row of pale round pits along his ribs, and he drew a hard breath.
His hand came up to her waist, and it was shaking.
She took off her mage's coat and dropped it on the floor.
She pulled her shirt over her head, then her boots, then everything else.
Oren watched each piece go, and the sea under the boathouse gave a low slow swell.
"Ilsa," he said, almost a warning.
She pushed him back onto the cot and climbed over him.
His cock was already hard against her thigh, thick and hot.
When she wrapped her hand around it, he made a sound she felt in her belly.
"Gods," he muttered.
"I did not expect to be this hungry."
"Good," she said.
She rose over him and sank down in one long slow slide.
He was bigger than she had thought.
She gasped as he filled her, her pussy stretching around him, wet and aching and so ready that it embarrassed her.
His head fell back against the pillow.
His hands closed on her hips so tightly she knew they would leave marks.
"Move," he said.
She moved.
She rocked her hips and took him deeper.
Each stroke sent a bright pull up through her wrist.
The lamp flared.
Oren's breath came ragged, and his skin grew warmer under her palms.
The cot creaked, and the nets overhead stirred.
"More," he said, and she gave him more.
She ground down on him until her clit rubbed against his body, and she heard herself cry out.
He watched her face.
"Look at you," he said.
"Mine."
The word hit her hard, and she clenched around him.
He swore under his breath and sat up, one arm locking around her back.
He rolled them over in one smooth motion, so she was under him and the whole length of his body pinned hers to the cot.
Something had changed.
His arms were stronger, and his weight was solid.
His eyes were bright, the sea-green gone deep and dark.
"You have fed me," he said against her mouth.
"Now let me give something back."
"Then do it," Ilsa gasped.
He did.
He braced one hand beside her head and drove into her, deep and hard, the cot slamming against the wall.
She wrapped her legs around his waist and dug her nails into his back.
Every thrust hit the place that made her see white.
The water under the boathouse was rising now, slapping at the pilings, and she did not care.
He bent and took her nipple into his mouth, and she arched under him, crying his name.
"Oren," she begged.
"Oren, please."
"Say it again," he growled.
"Oren."
"Louder."
She said it so loudly the lamp rattled, and he thrust again and again, right where she needed him.
Her climax broke over her like a wave, her pussy pulsing around his cock, her whole body locking tight.
She felt him follow her.
He groaned into her neck and came inside her in long hot pulses, shuddering, holding her.
The mark on her wrist blazed white, then settled into a soft steady glow.
For a long time neither of them moved.
Then he lifted his head and looked down at her.
His hand was no longer holding her arm.
He had not touched her wrist in several minutes, and he was still a man.
"I'm still here," Oren said, almost wondering.
"You are," said Ilsa, and she pulled him down to kiss him.
They slept tangled together on Bryn's narrow cot with the tide quiet under them.
She woke to grey light in the window, his arm heavy across her waist.
Oren was already awake, studying her.
He stood and dressed in the clothes Bryn had left folded by the stove.
He walked across the room on his own two feet, and he did not wobble.
"I can last until noon, I think," he said.
"After that I will need you again."
"Then I'll make time," said Ilsa.
His mouth curved.
She was reaching for her coat when the harbor bell began to ring.
It was not the dawn bell.
It was the Hall's war bell, rung three times, slow.
Bryn burst through the door with her hair standing on end.
"They've moved it up," she said.
"The Trial is now."
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