Chapter Sixteen
Dumuzi came slowly awake, and without opening his eyes, he sniffed. Wet dog? Nope. He shifted his weight. Shit. It wasn’t Archie snuggled up to him. The god lifted a hand to the warmth smashed up against him, and his fingers curled around…fuck. Was that the underside of a breast? Gods-dammit, this wasn’t his dog. It was…shit and fucking no way. It was Verrie. Was she crazy? Had she confronted his swamp-side? Did she have a death wish?
He tore his eyes open and found himself staring into her bright, swallowtail-blue depths which at the moment held more than just a hint of…amusement? What? Was she frigging kidding him? He had to be hallucinating. She hadn’t really entered his cell and confronted his alter-self, had she? Dumuzi blinked, then groaned when she flashed her teeth in a wide smile. Hell yeah, she had. And that pissed him off. He pushed her angrily off of his, ah shit, naked lap.
“What the fuck were you thinking?” He stood up and backed away from his future mate, reaching for the jeans he’d shed the previous night before morphing, tugging them up his legs. He gave Verrie what he hoped was a hard, cold stare.
“Well good morning to you too, sunshine.” She moved gracefully from the floor and without meeting his word challenge, brushed dried mud off her shirt—his dried mud. Dumuzi groaned.
“Is it?” He found his volume rising. “Is it really a good morning? Did you ever consider last night you might not be around to see one?” He picked up his t-shirt and pulled it over his head.
“Don’t be silly,” she began, but Dumuzi was on a roll.
“I won’t have this, Veronica. I won’t. You have no idea the kind of danger I pose. Mate or not, you will never again sleep in the same room with me. And the advent of you entering my life will not make me give up the calm personality I’ve worked so hard to achieve.”
“Calm personality?” Her voice rose an octave to match his tone. “Calm personality?” she repeated. “Oh, do you mean your detached personality?” Verrie’s eyes sparked up at him. If she were taller, she would have damned well tested him nose-to-nose, completely unintimidated. “It seems since the moment you saw me, you’ve had a hard time holding on to that threadbare old security blanket, haven’t you?”
Before he could respond, Emesh spoke up from outside the cell, yawning. “She has a point, Muze. I’ve certainly never seen you this jazzed even back in the day when we were constantly being dismembered in Hell. I mean, shit man, the rest of us always craved what you’d been smoking to help take the edge off. Sucked for us that it was just your own natural-avoidance-high. Where’s all that non-attitude now, swamp-boy? Funny how it seems to have gone bye-bye.”
Dumuzi glowered. His fists opened and closed. Emesh’s sunshiny face was about to get pulverized and…argh. There it was again. Feelings. Anger. He looked down at a body suddenly clenched. His dick was hard again. Lust. He turned and gripped the bars of his cell, attempting to slow his racing heart.
“Why don’t you just go fuck her and get it out of your system?” Matthew’s face moved between the bars of the nearby cage to taunt him. “Then maybe you can get back to stoner-central where you belong.”
Dumuzi’s vines appeared again from his very human-looking arms, shot through the osmium bars and across the narrow hall to grab the god by his throat. He felt the tips of his fangs punch down, positioning themselves to tear flesh. Matthew’s silent laugh taunted him.
Go ahead. Bite me, you freak. I’m a god, so I’ll heal, but what about you? Will you ever get back to the way you were?
Oh, Matthew was really good at head games, Muze glowered.
Will you ever heal from whatever’s had you running and hiding like a baby for thousands of years?
Dumuzi dropped his tendrils as though they’d been burned and backed away. Without turning to look at Veronica, he wrenched open the door to the cell and bolted down the hallway. He couldn’t get away quickly enough.
“Well, hell. He was a lot nicer when he was the swamp-beast,” Veronica’s whispered words followed him to the elevator, and Muze groaned in pain.
Why? Why did he have to sense emotion again? He wanted nothing more than to escape to his room, to go back to being calm. This roller-coaster of feelings his mate provoked in him wasn’t good. It was just as Matthew said, he had been hiding for years, and it had served him well, better than anything else ever had. But now, there intruded the titillating words and soft body of his woman, his Chosen. No. Stop letting her in. He needed to get back to his happy place, his haze of existence. And dammit, he would. Nobody would stop him. He hit the button, and the doors opened, then closed silently behind him. Done.
The elevator came to the main floor. Dumuzi exited the lift and strode determinedly across the large foyer, ignoring the call from Huxley who had come in through the front door, juggling three large bags of bagels. He took the grand staircase two treads at a time. He’d do his duty. He’d undergo the amulet ceremony with Veronica—the sooner, the better. He’d even complete the gods-damned ritual with a mating—a single mating. Then he’d be done. He had every faith Marduk would figure things out for Veronica and Sienna, and Lahar and Shamash would come back from the Middle East with answers. They just wouldn’t involve him. No way. No how.
By the time he hit his room, Archie had joined him, and the happy pup danced in circles, hoping for a walk in the woods. “Sorry, Arch,” Dumuzi reached down and scratched the dog’s head. “I need to get my calm on which means a whole lot of doing nothing.” He shut the door behind him with a firm click.
****
“Well that wasn’t very helpful,” Verrie wrinkled her nose and stepped out of the cell to join the group of four who looked at her worriedly.
“Crap, I thought you had him eating out of your hand until he freaked,” Candy shrugged her shoulders, looking as puzzled as everyone else.
Emesh draped an arm over Verrie’s shoulders. “First of all, don’t despair,” he advised. “We all had problems we couldn’t face until our Chosen came along to help us.” He reached his free hand toward Douglas who took it and squeezed.
“That’s right,” Candy agreed. “And some, like my husband, only let go of shit after kicking and screaming to the bitter end.” She joined Emesh and gave Verrie a big hug. “Don’t give up on him. As soon as the two of you are mated, he’ll be fine, and he won’t know what hit him.”
Verrie looked at the well-meaning group and instantly made up her mind. “You know what? I don’t want to have things resolve because of some magic, hocus-pocus chemistry thing. I want him to mate me with joy in his heart and his eyes wide open.”
“Not easy when you’re pretending to be stoned.” The voice of Matthew cut into the love fest, and Verrie actually laughed. As much as her hosts didn’t like this character, he’d jabbed a few home truths at Dumuzi, and she appreciated his candor. Making up her mind, she determined her secondary task while in residence was to see if she could help mend fences between the upper-story gods and their dungeon guest. That should give her mind something to dwell on when she got sick of beating her head against Dumuzi’s deep, dark, impenetrable forest of a brain.
“Matthew, if you stop being such an asshole for a second, you might get a little more positive attention,” Verrie shot over at him. “Listen, as soon as I go kick Dumuzi’s ass, I’ll be back to hear the story of your life. And don’t think you can pull anything over on me. I’m used to dealing with the worst of the worst—high-schoolers.”
The prisoner’s bark of laughter warmed her heart as she and her immortal entourage left the basement. Her session with the prisoner would probably be the high point of her day. Because she knew, at least for the immediate future, her interactions with Dumuzi would mostly suck.
The group rode in silence to the surface.
“What was that all about?” Marduk―along with a large backup group, all stuffing bagels into their mouths―stood with arms folded across his massive chest to confront them as soon as they cleared the lift. “Muze wouldn’t even look in our direction when he stormed upstairs.” Using the term “stormed,” Verrie knew, didn’t come lightly to the thunder god’s tongue.
“He was agitated,” Jake stated, grabbing breakfast from a nearby bag. When Marduk just looked at him, he qualified. “Yeah, agitated. That’s all.”
Candy filled in the gaps. “He woke up this morning to find he’d spent the night in his cell with Verrie, and it made him furious. Then he was completely pissed off to find himself furious. Apparently, the man hasn’t allowed a true emotion to seep into his viscera in thousands of years. Now with his intended in residence, he’s got more than he can handle.” She helped herself to food when she finished.
“And I plan on needling him as much as possible,” Verrie stated. If she had sleeves to roll up, she would have done so. “I know what he’s up to. He’s planning on mating with me, then ditching me so he can go back to being Mr. Apathetic. Well, I’ve got news for him—it isn’t going to happen. I’ve been married once, then jettisoned because I had voices visiting my head. Now this one thinks mating with me might get rid of the voices and will subsequently attempt to ignore me once we’ve been joined in unholy matrimony.” She looked around to make sure her daughter wasn’t in the room.
“Well, I say, fuck that,” she spit. “I want a husband who is man enough to stick by me no matter what, and if you guys say Dumuzi is it, then he sure as shit won’t be burying his head in a swamp while I’m around.” She looked at the god-audience who had amassed and ignored the bagels to concentrate on more important issues. “Now, who’s going to show me which room is his?”
Lenore danced forward. “Me, me,” she chortled, licking cream cheese off her lip. “But before we go up, if it hasn’t happened already, may I be the first to welcome you to Casa-del-immortals. And let me add, you are going to make one kick-ass addition to the Goddess League.”
“Goddess League?” Verrie raised her eyebrows.
Charlie, the demure little blonde spoke up. “Sometimes, when our husbands get out of hand and start throwing their weight around a little too much, we women have to step in and head them off at the pass,” she giggled. “So we created a group that intervenes. It’s not healthy if they get to make all the decisions around here.”
“Unless it’s in the bedroom,” Addie-May poked Charlie in the ribs.
It took Verrie a split second to connect that comment with the “special” room she’d seen in the basement. Huh. A nice couple of subbies? Wouldn’t they be surprised to find she was just the opposite? Some definite fun to be had in the future…but only if their husbands were up for some group playtime—not necessary but diverting to contemplate.
“I’d be honored to join your Goddess League once I’ve been properly accepted as a mate. For that,” she looked upward toward the doorways leading away from the staircase, “I’ll need to set things straight with my intended. So, if you’ll excuse me?” She looked to Lenore who didn’t hesitate to raise her palm for a high five before turning and leading her up the stairs.
Halfway down the hall, Lenore paused in front of a door and flourished a hand at its closed surface. “Your reluctant groom’s suite, M’lady,” she smirked. Before Verrie could make a move, Lenore raised her fist and knocked.
“Muze? You have company.”
A sleepy voice, completely devoid of emotion answered her query. “Go away, Lenore. I’m resting.”
Oh, so it was going to be like that. Minutes out of her company and he’d already wrapped his protective thicket around himself again. Well, screw that.
“Dumuzi, open the door. It’s Verrie.”
“Go away.” His voice acquired a bit of an edge. That was good.
“I’m not leaving,” Verrie replied. “Now unlock the door and let me in.”
“No.”
She almost laughed at the one-word reply. He was trying to maintain a hold on his impassivity, but it wouldn’t last long. She looked at Lenore.
“May I?” the platinum blonde offered.
Verrie didn’t know what the goddess had in mind, but she gave an affirmative nod, and damn, she wished she’d had her phone ready. Sienna would have loved this snap-chat. The five-foot-two spitfire, dressed in a hot pink micro-skirt and six-inch silver heels, raised one sparkly shoe, and let loose at the door with a resounding thud, smashing it in with one, well-placed kick. Executing a sweep of her arm, she smirked, “He’s all yours.”
“Thank you, Lenore,” Verrie couldn’t keep the shit-eating grin off of her face as she crossed the threshold. Damn. She was going to get herself some of those awesome strong-lady powers…and a pair of those killer shoes. She closed the broken door as best she could.
One glance to where Dumuzi lay on the bed and Verrie saw he’d somehow managed to ignore the wood-bashing incident. She snorted. Before she was finished with him, it was the only thing he’d be able to ignore.
“Dumuzi?” She let the full purr of the inner kitty―she now knew she had one from long-ago Sham―vibrate across her vocal chords.
“What?” He had one arm flung over his face, and he wasn’t budging.
“Are we still on track to get married?” She saw him flinch. Ah-ha, not the question he’d been expecting.
“Mated. But, yes, we are,” he grumbled lazily.
“Well, then,” she licked her lips. It was a shame his eyes were closed, and he hadn’t seen that. “Are we still going to…get naked together?”
Okay. A decided stirring in Mr. Swamp-master’s jeans.
“Yeah, I guess that’s going to happen too.” He kept his voice nicely devoid of emotion, but his pants were still busy tenting and wasn’t that a good “tell.”
She let the silence draw on for several minutes until he gave up his pretense of muteness. “Why are you asking?” The question barely trickled through his pursed lips.
“No reason, except…” She moved forward quietly and sat on the side of the bed. She felt him tense up at the mattress’s movement. “I think we ought to get the sex thing out of the way. Especially if you plan on ignoring me after the ceremony. I’ve been warned. The ladies say sex performed after the formal rite is almost unavoidable. And since you want to remain aloof, you can’t want that.” She shrugged, so the bed moved. “So, that being the case, you’ll be leaving me completely horny…which will make me want to jump your friends…or your friend’s wives. However, if we take the edge off now, perhaps I can behave myself.”
Was that a growl she heard from her aloof man? Just what she’d hoped for. If it was one thing she’d picked up on, the gods were very possessive of “their” women and couldn’t sanction intercourse with another male…or female.
“You won’t be having sex. Period,” he grated, and Verrie laughed, a light, trilling sound.
“Is that so?” she mocked. “I’ll have you know, I’ve got a healthy libido that has gone far too long without gratification, and if the ceremony gets me all ramped up, I’ll probably go on a tear.”
His twitchy cock looked mighty tempting. Verrie wished the maddening god would just give in already.
“So, you think it’ll help if you do it…now?” He tried to keep his voice cool, but Verrie heard the underlying heat. She let out a pent-up breath. Yes! He was going to comply.
“I do.” She reached for the button on his jeans, only to have his hand come down and clamp over hers to keep it from moving.
Now what? Hadn’t he just given things the green light?
“What are you doing?” his hitherto even voice broke like an adolescent’s.
Really? He was asking that? Never into head games, she had enough of his vacillation.
“Fine then. If you didn’t want to, all you had to do was say so,” she snapped. Verrie yanked her hand out from underneath his, scooted to the side of the bed and jumped up. “I need to use the bathroom if you’ll excuse me.” There, let him stew for a few minutes. It wouldn’t hurt.
Verrie washed her face, found a toothbrush under the sink, and brushed her teeth before allowing herself a few extra minutes to relax on the toilet. Getting up, she straightened her clothes determinedly and walked back into the bedroom to stand over her reluctant mate.
“No more bullshit. If you want this, and I’m not allowed to touch your pants, you do it,” she ordered. “Unfasten your jeans. Right now.” She rocked her schoolmarmish tone and…bingo. Just as she surmised. Her poor Dumuzi looked almost relieved to have her making the decisions.
Without a fight, he popped the button to his pants and lowered his zipper. She already knew he was flying commando, and that worked to her advantage. She got a tantalizing peek at a lush, fiery trail that led southward, the material still shielding her eyes from his entire glorious nether-mane. Damn. She couldn’t wait to see her real redhead in all his glory. Their closet tryst had been too dark for a real look.
“Now, get off the bed and stand in front of me.”
The god moved quickly for someone who was supposedly disinterested, and when he stood no more than a foot away with his hidden penis still hidden she issued her next order. “Take your dick out of your jeans and hold it toward me.” Verrie was exciting herself, mouth watering with anticipation. She could hardly wait. She’d already tasted his salty sweetness once, and her panties were wet thinking about doing it again.
His shoulders finally relaxed, and he gave a reluctant but sultry grin.
Thank the gods, he was going to join in to play the game in earnest. He drew forth his turgid shaft with languorous agony, the bulbous head of his beautiful pink cock finally slipping free. Luscious. He stroked it competently.
“Lovely,” she breathed. “I see you’re really good at handling yourself, but can you handle this?” she taunted, dropping to her knees at his feet.
“Feed that big prick into my mouth. I haven’t had breakfast,” she teased. A groan escaped him and he moved closer. Holding his prick at an angle, he ran his rod of velvety soft steel back and forth across her lips. She opened for him, and he slowly pushed in. Verrie sucked hard, just once, then abruptly drew away. His dissatisfaction was demonstrated with a growl. She had him now.
“Put your hand on the back of my head and fuck my mouth,” Verrie demanded in her naughtiest voice, and the god moaned his approval.
She swallowed his exquisite length as he thrust, opening her throat, and taking him deep. He fisted a hand in her hair, first pushing, then pulling. On his withdrawals, she tickled her tongue up the underside of his solid shaft, teasing the long vein that ran from the base to just under the smooth head. She swiped at his creamy slit, then followed his drive back down, inhaling him again and again as he found his rhythm.
Somewhere along the way, she cupped his balls, and it didn’t take long before she felt them draw up into his body.
“I’m going to come, Veronica,” he hissed, attempting to pull away. She grabbed his solid ass with both hands, digging her nails into his flanks, forcing him to stay in her hot mouth. No way he’d deprive her.
Verrie closed her eyes, waiting, and relished the first spurts of his release deep in her throat. She moaned around him, sucking and listening to his now strident cries as he emptied himself, and she savored the taste and texture of his release. God, there was nothing better.
She drew away slowly, giving him some final licks and relishing his aftershocks. She’d been so excited, she’d probably marked his smooth ass with half-moons, but she didn’t regret it. And being a god, he’d get over it. She briefly allowed her eyes to close and inhaled his earthy scent. Okay. Marduk had been right. She’d certainly found her happy place with Dumuzi. There was something to be said about fate. She slowly began to work her mouth from his cock.
“Are we done here?” Dumuzi’s voice cut through her fog.
Her first thought was, “What the fuck?” He could dismiss her when he’d been sucked to satisfaction? Oh, hell no. They were absolutely one hundred percent not finished, and she was going to let him know it. “We are so far from…” He thrust his still hard dick between her protesting lips, effectively silencing her.
“Let me rephrase that,” he interrupted, his voice sounding not indifferent as she’d feared, but, well… pleased. “I meant that as a statement to say you’re done here.” He pulled his cock out and lifted her up from the floor in one swift motion. Her face was suddenly even with his intense, growling visage. “I’ve played this your way, and it was fun, but I like being in charge.”
Her pussy clenched, and wetness bloomed. Wow. She should have figured from what happened in the closet, Dumuzi wasn’t going to let her have total charge. Something new for Verrie. She’d been the sexual dominant with Dwight Dickhead, her one and only lover, until he’d booted her out because of her “freakishness” not only in the head but in the bedroom. Yeah. It was on him that in the end, he couldn’t own up to liking his natural submissiveness.
She’d always wondered how it would be… Verrie looked deep into Dumuzi’s firm and assertive eyes. Yup. He meant business, and she was going to have to submit. The thought actually thrilled her. The only question was, how was she going to “top” from the bottom?