Angel Dark

{Author’s Explanatory Note: In this universe, Goethe are angel-like humanoids, with two forms, the winged

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form and the wingless

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form, distinguished in the latter from the Naldas, or humans, by the presence of down-feathers instead of pubic hair, and “down-patches” behind their shoulders, where their wings sprout; there are also two sub-races, one with white wings and white hair, the Visi Goethe, and one with black wings and black hair, the Ana Goethe. They are different from the other races in one other point. Though they eat and drink regular food like the other races, they are sexually stimulated by the scent of “compatible blood” from a fellow Goethe, and made fertile by the taste of compatible blood. They do not drink blood for sustenance, only for hormonal stimulation and for combat purposes. Or, as the Satyrans (satyr-like humanoids, and notoriously horny little hoofers) like to put it, a Goethe only bites you for two reasons: They’re either really mad at you, or they want to hump you.

{This particular story takes place with the main character, Nina, blindfolded and being ‘teased’ with the scent of blood from many different men in a mating game her people call “Blind Man’s Blood”. She is attempting to find her compatible blood-mate for procreation purposes, while her companion, Lucian, already knows they are compatible. But since he’s of a different race than her, and the two races are at war, he feels he has to play a little trick on her to get him to mate with him, and…well, read the rest of it for yourself! ~Lotm}

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He was almost to the line of women seated on the stools in the center of the chamber, and readied his vial. Nina was the fifth one down, in the line of eight women trying to catch a whiff of passion in the bottles held by the Goethe men. Shuffling forward as the queue moved, Lucian passed the glass tube and its crimson contents under the first woman’s nose, letting it linger just as she inhaled her next breath. An exhalation accompanied the shake of her head, and he moved down the line. A breath…and regret. Two more women to go. Nerves made his hand sweat against the glass tube and its crimson contents.

When Nina smelled his blood, and took off that blindfold—the next woman in line inhaled with hope and exhaled with disappointment as the line of equally hopeful men shuffled forward once more—and saw his face, knowing Lucian was a Visi in Ana disguise, knowing he had caused, directly and indirectly, so many deaths in the war between their subraces…he wasn’t sure what Nina might do. He only knew that he couldn’t risk being rejected again…and that he could no more have avoided trying to mate with her than he could have avoided trying to breathe. If she wanted blood-compatibility, he’d give it to her.

The woman between him and her inhaled, sighed in disappointment as the scent of his blood failed to raise her lusts, either, and waited patiently for the vial male in line behind him.

I can’t let her take off the blindfold,

Lucian decided swiftly, as Nina inhaled sharply, curiously, before he could shuffle forward that last, fateful step. His vial wasn’t yet close enough to her nose, but her sudden, sharp interest in the air currents of the room had him offering it to her, just as her questing hand caught and gripped the back of his hand. She brought the vial up to her nose, breathed in…and let out a groan. Her lips pressed feverishly to his knuckles, and her other hand, the one gripping her own vial, reached for the blindfold.

Quickly, Lucian caught it, and found he, too, could scent her blood from several inches away. Allowing her to lift it to his nose, he inhaled, felt the thrill of desire rushing back into his veins after a week-plus of dormancy, and kissed her own fingers in return. She released his vial-hand to remove the blindfold, and he quickly caught her hand. Pressing them together, he passed her his vial, and leaned in close to her ear, holding her wrists in place.

“Don’t remove it,” he whispered almost soundlessly in her ear. Disguising the familiarity of his voice. “Leave the blindfold on. Please.”

“O…okay,” she breathed back—and squeaked in surprise as he scooped her off the stool and into his arms. The men cheered and laughed and called comments after them that made Lucian’s ears burn almost as hot as his loins.

“That’s right, sweep her off her feet!”

“—Until you can get yourself between them!”

“Watch out, lady, looks like he’s after your heart, too, with such a romantic gesture!”

“I think he’s more after her mind, keeping the blindfold on!”

“Remember, don’t taste the blood ‘til you’re safe in your rooms!”

“Yeah, we’re not Satyrans, you know!”

“We’re not interested in seeing it, unless we’re interested in doing it!”

“Turn his legs to jelly!” a woman called out encouragingly as they reached the atrium and strode along along the balcony

She made a tentative motion towards the blindfold, and Lucian hitched her higher on his chest, dipping his head to her ear.

“Keep it on,” he encouraged, breathing against her ear. She shuddered in his grip and bit her lower lip, though not quite hard enough to draw blood. Lucian stared at her flesh, wanting to do that for himself. He shook his head to clear it and moved faster, heading for the guesting hall as quickly as he could walk without uncomfortably jostling her. If he’d dare use his powers, he could have launched both of them into the air, carrying her in

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form. But never more than right now was he so keenly aware that he was Visi, and that she—and this whole city—was Ava. Whatever protections were prevalent at Starclaw would probably be doubled for this Night-ruled city.

“…Are you scarred, or something?” she asked him out loud.

Lucian was tempted to tell her yes—if nothing else, his trust had been cut so deep, it had scarred into a deep and very slow-healing ugliness by the Dark Bitch—but he whispered in her ear instead, “I want to seduce you. Leave it on.”

That, too, was the truth. From the way she shivered in his arms and wrapped her own around his neck, she could tell it was the truth. It was not easy, walking and carrying the one woman in three hundred years who made his senses spin and his masculinity prominent and hard. Somehow he managed to mount the right set of steps closest to their rooms, and managed to balance her in his arms just enough to free the hand with the bracelet, opening the door of his guesting suite. It wasn’t large, not by the standards of the Sun Tower, but neither was it as small as the room they’d shared in Olandar. There was a decent-sized refreshing room, a table with two chairs, a wardrobe for clothes, and a comfortably large, heavily pillowed rim-padded bed. A proper Goethe nest, unlike some of the places he’d slept, lately.

The room was windowless, but by now he was used to that. He’d left one of the two lightglobes in the room half-light, and in the glow it cast, laid her on the pillows of the nest. Reaching up to the bedside globe, he tapped it very lightly, reducing the illumination in the room even further, until he could just barely see her with the ongoing night-vision spell she had given him a couple weeks earlier. Just in case the blindfold slipped at some point.

And then, with trembling hands, he stripped off his clothes impatiently while she lay on the bed, carefully cradling the vials upright, panting as the scent of their blood slowly permeated the room. If he did this right, if he could seduce her before she saw who he was, maybe she could accept him in spite of his past, and his subrace…

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Nina was going insane. She wanted to see the man whose blood had roused her lusts, but at the same time she wasn’t really sure she wanted to see his face. Not when, shameful as it might be, a traitorous part of her kept trying to picture Lucian’s dark-dyed features attached to that gentle whisper. It wouldn’t be fair to her blood-mate, picturing another male as they copulated. When they reached one of the guesting rooms—his, since it was his hand and its bracelet that opened the door—she knew she had to distract herself from imagining she smelled Lucian’s scent under the blood-boiling aroma coming from the vials in her hands. When he laid her on the bed, finally setting her down, she heard him rap against something, and the narrow sliver of light at the bottom of her blindfold dimmed until it was barely at the level of lichen-glow.

So he didn’t want to see her face, either. Resting in the nest of pillows where he’d placed her, carefully keeping the vials from spilling, she bit her lip again as she heard the sounds of cloth rustling and being cast aside, and the sound of something heavy and metallic being placed on the bedside stand. Unable to stand the silence between them, asked aloud, “Do you want to know my name, first?”

“Later.”

The whisper was a confident thread of sound, as if there would be time for other important matters, but that there were none quite so important as this moment. She felt his fingers come over hers, liberating the vials from her grip. A moment later, she heard the clink as they were set on the table, but no telltale swallowing sounds. She reached up in uncertainty, and felt her unnamed, unseen lover catch her wrists. Turning up her palms, he pressed a kiss into each one, then climbed over the low rim of the nest, joining her among the pillows. Warm, bare skin brushed against her arms, her legs. Warm lips brushed against her mouth, and that lightning-twist stabbed through her flesh again, rousing her blood with the scent of his perfuming the air from the abandoned vial.

His lips travelled down to her throat, pressing here, licking there. For a moment, his teeth grazed her skin at her neck. Nina arched her head back as that rushing flame of desire came racing back, making her heart pound with desire, with anticipation. But though his teeth lightly scored her skin, they did not break through its surface. Instead, his mouth trailed further down, following the low-draped neckline of her tunic. Leaving both of them scented, and aroused, but as yet unblooded.

His hands slid down to cup her breasts through the dyed silk of her tunic. She gasped at the heat of his palms, the gentle strength of his fingers. His thumbs caressed the peaks, finding and flicking the nipples that, for the first time in her life, ached and hardened from something other than winter’s cold. Desire flooded her veins as he covered one peak with his mouth, dampening the fabric with his tongue and suckling her flesh as soon as the silk was moist enough to cling to her flesh. She cried out, arching into his mouth, writhing in his caress as his hands stroked the curves of her body. When he released her, she fell back against the pillows, panting unsteadily.

Those pillows shifted, as he moved down the length of her body. Hands caressed her bare legs from the calf down, tickling her ankles and one by one, removing her soft leather slippers. Hearing them drop to the floor beyond the bed, she managed to clear her mind enough to remember her thoughts from earlier. “You should know that I have…”

“Shh,” he hushed, lifting her nearer leg in his hands.

“You should know that I have other commitments,” she managed to get out, plunging ahead anyway. She started to say more, and gasped as a hot, wet mouth closed around her littlest toe.

Moons, I can feel that right up to my groin!

His mouth retreated, his breath blowing cool against her dampened skin.

“Commitments?” he whispered, still without any backing sound from his throat.

“Y-yes,” she managed, as he took her littlest toe and the next one into his mouth. “I have…oh…I can spare a week at most, but then I’ll be busy for a couple months!” she blurted out as he licked at the digits she had until now considered necessary only for balance. He paused, considering her words, then deliberately thrust his tongue between her toes. Nina moaned, clutching at the pillows scattered around her, arching her back off the bed as he did it again. It almost felt like he was doing that to her nipples, and even more so to the place between her legs. She whimpered as he took another toe into his mouth, and tickled the space between it and its neighbor with her tongue.

His seduction was working. Nina wasn’t sure she needed the blindfold; her eyes felt like they had rolled up into the top of her head, as he captured the fourth toe and treated it to the same laving and thrusting as the others. A pause, a tickle of his breath, and he licked from her heel up her instep, to finally enclose her big toe. Never had she, ever, imagined that a foot could be so…so…! She was sure the Satyrans had a word for what she was feeling, but the life of her, she could barely remember the word that was her own name! Not that it was important, oh, no; not when he was nibbling on her ankle, and making her whole leg quiver in response.

His lips kissed their way up the inside of her leg, up past her calf, briefly teasing the underside of her knee, up along the soft skin of her inner thigh, until she could feel the heat of his breath panting against the damp silk of the short-drawers that were stitched to be a part of her thigh-length

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tunic. Her unknown blood-made had created that dampness, triggered by the scent of his compatibility, and encouraged by the sensuality of his explorations. But rather than continuing to kiss any higher, as Nina longed and craved for him to do, he retreated to her other foot, and began the process all over again with her littlest toe. Head thrashing at the pleasure, she almost cried out no, but remembered at the last moment that, according to the rules of the Gathering, if she said no, he would have to stop…and she didn’t want him to stop.

Unbidden, an image of Lucian kneeling in his place, suckling on her toes filled her mind, making her flush with secret shame and longing. If she could have bound him to her with blood and lust, but without shame or anathaema, she would have—the sensations of this, unloved pairing were overwhelming. How much more so would the sensations increase if they were done with the love of the heart and the love of the mind, as well as the love of the body? As he finished suckling her toes and kissed and licked his way up her right leg, Nina slowly sat up. Her unnamed, unseen blood-lover stilled by her knee as she reached up with her hands, but she didn’t remove the blindfold. No, she left that on; she didn’t want to see the face of the male making love to her. It was a peculiar kind of cheating, to be sexually excited by one man, yet long in her heart for another who literally could not arouse her.

Instead of removing the blindfold, she unfastened the clasp of her tunic, lowering it from her neck. Baring her breasts, just as he resumed kissing her inner thigh. His lips stilled while less than halfway to the point where he had stopped before, and a slow, ragged breath escaped him. It was none too steady on the intake, either, and the hands that cupped her leg shook with what she knew was desire. Trembling herself, she slid her hands down the sides of her breasts, then along her waist to her hips. Laying back down, she arched her back, and slid the silk past her buttocks.

Her lover growled and pulled the fabric down her thighs. Freeing the garment from her feet, he tossed it impatiently aside, then half-climbed, half-slid up over her, warm, hard male flesh against soft, silk female skin. Her hands quested over his hair, the sides of his face, his shoulders as he came into range. She explored his chest as he braced himself over her, feeling the jut of his arousal brushing the side of her thigh just a little ways above the point where one of his knees parted her own. She heard the sharp intake of his breath when she found and teased his nipples, and when she sat up a little, guiding her mouth to one of them, the groan that escaped his chest was more than a match for any of her own.

Pushing her down, he nudged her thighs wider apart, making space for his own. His maleness, hard and aroused, brushed against the wet slick flesh of her core. Teasing her as much as it no doubt teased him. It wasn’t enough, though. It wouldn’t be enough to stimulate the final stages of their desire until his blood burst through her mouth, filling it literally with the taste of her first climax. When he nuzzled the side of her neck, she arched it, baring it to him, longing breathlessly for that first bite—and bit him herself, burying her canines in the muscle that joined his neck to his shoulder. Too impatient to wait for him to start.

The taste of pure Goethe desire flooded her mouth, her throat, her veins as she licked and swallowed. His breath hissed out in shock and pain; in the next moment, he shuddered bit her back in the same spot on her own skin. Nina jerked at the sharp penetration, the first-ever penetration of her flesh by another of her kind. She shivered as pain transmuted into pleasure the moment he drew on her flesh, his hunger just as strong as hers. His hands gripped her hard against him, and hers wrapped around his shoulders, twined in his hair. Pulling his head aside for a second delicious, delirious bite. They grappled, nipping at each other, legs and arms and torsos writhing, until with a sudden thrust, he buried himself inside her, their hips merging in the time-honored need to mate, to procreate.

He kissed his way up to her jawline, and she nipped her way to his mouth. Their tongues met and mated, sharing the flavor of each other’s liquid desire. His manhood slid almost out of her, and thrust back in, echoed by the plundering of his mouth. She bit his tongue in a sharp little nip, and as sharp cinnin-musk flooded her tastebuds, he pierced the skin of her lower lip. Pain and pleasure, pleasure and pain; the stimulation squeezed her eyes shut as he thrust harder and harder, making her moan against his mouth. The flavors, the sensations, the scents, the friction—it built inside her until she was thrashing in his arms, fighting for something, for someone—

Stars burst through her blood, making her gasp and stiffen. Her head thrashed against the pillows, almost dislodging the blindfold, but with her eyes tightly shut, it didn’t matter, nothing mattered but pulsing, pounding pleasure, the spasming of his back as she squeezed around him, the ragged cry as he, too, climaxed. She felt it, deep inside her, the wet warmth pouring into her, like a heartbeat pumping an artery, and knew the mind-dazing, gut-deep knowledge that this was what it was for, this was what it was about:

Fertility!

Wrapping her arms around him, breathless with the aftermath of her desire, Nina held her nameless lover tight as he thrust raggedly, then more slowly, then finally slumped over her body, pressing her into the pillows. Her palms caressed his back, soothing him as they glided with permissible intimacy over his down-patches. She could still feel him, warm and thick, in that place between her thighs, and it was a good feeling. A soothing feeling. But he was shrinking already, for with each swallow between unsteady breaths, their mouths cleared a little more of the taste of each other’s blood. Finally, he slipped out, then rolled them onto their sides. His upper hand cupped her back, stroking her own down-feathers with blood-mated familiarity.

Exhausted by her first taste of passion, literal and figurative, bitten shoulder and nipped mouth aching pleasantly, she closed her eyes, uncaring if the blindfold stayed on or not while she slept.

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An unknown time later, thirst roused Nina from her slumber. Blinking, she pushed the now irritating blindfold out of her way and craned her head. At some point she had rolled onto her other side, facing the dimly glowing lightglobe. Deep, steady breathing from behind her told her that the man with whom she had shared the taste of true passion was still asleep…and that told her she had her chance to see him, before he could protest or reapply the blindfold.