Guarding the Goddess Read online

  “About what? It looked serious.” Ty sat on the couch and patted the seat beside him. “Care to talk about it?”

  Ellina opened her mouth to say no, she didn’t—it was her habit to keep her secret thoughts private. But that was in the past—because she had no one she could trust to tell them to, she thought. Maybe with Ty’s help, she could figure out what was happening to her…and what had happened between them during the Ritual of Humility.

  “Well…” She settled beside him, trying to think how to begin. “I guess…I guess I’m thinking about what…what we just did,” she confessed. “What I did to you. And wondering…why I did it.”

  He arched an eyebrow.

  “I thought you were performing a ritual.”

  “I was, but…” Ellina bit her lip, hoping he wouldn’t be angry with her. “But, well…I sort of…took the ritual further than was absolutely necessary,” she admitted at last. She looked up at him quickly. “Does that upset you?”

  To her relief, Ty only shrugged.

  “You took it as far as you wanted to—as far as you needed to, my Lady,” he rumbled. “I was glad to be of service to you in any way you needed me.”

  “So you’re not upset with me?” she pressed, wanting to hear him say it.

  Ty frowned.

  “I should be, I guess,” he admitted at last. “I have been worried that our…relationship might move towards the physical at some point.”

  “Worried?” Ellina frowned. “Why would that worry you?”

  “Because…” He sighed and ran a hand through his still-damp hair. “I have a history of…” His forehead wrinkled, as though he was trying to think how to phrase it. “Of wanting to please and serve females—especially females in power. You might say I was born and raised to do so.”

  “You were?” Ellina was fascinated. “Is that how all Kindred are raised?”

  “To a certain extent.” He frowned. “We all have the inborn desire to pleasure and protect females. It’s just that my own instincts have been…specially honed in that area.” He cleared his throat. “Let’s just say that my desire to serve and submit to you is probably more intense than it should be, especially considering our respective positions.”

  Ellina wanted to ask him more, but before she could, he went on.

  “But I asked to talk about what was on your mind, little one,” he reminded her. “Not what was on mine. So go on—what has you staring into the fire with that puzzled look on your face?”

  “Well…” Ellina sighed and dragged her eyes from the flames, where they had returned momentarily. “I was just wondering why I did…what I did,” she admitted at last. “And why…why I enjoyed it,” she ended, almost in a whisper.

  He raised an eyebrow at her.

  “So you enjoyed making me come, did you?” he rumbled.

  Ellina felt her cheeks getting hot with a blush but she nodded, determined to be completely honest with the big Kindred.

  “I did,” she said softly. “But not in the sense that I felt powerful—although I did,” she admitted. “You’re so big and strong and yet you let me have control over your body. You let me make you come. That was…a very heady experience.”

  “For me, too I assure you, little one,” Ty murmured. “But tell me, in what other way did you enjoy touching and taking me?” he asked.

  Ellina tried to think how to describe it.

  “I…I felt tingly,” she told him at last. “Like tingles of actual physical pleasure when I touched you…when I made you come.”

  “Why is that surprising?” Ty asked, frowning. “Giving pleasure can be as intensely pleasurable as receiving it—at least in my experience. For instance, when I am tasting a female—”

  “Tasting?” Ellina interrupted him, frowning.

  His eyes went half-lidded in the golden glow of the fire.

  “When I’m on my knees before her, licking her soft little pussy open with my tongue,” he explained in a low voice. “When I’m bathing her sweet clit and delving deep into her honey well to taste her juices, well…that makes my shaft harder than almost anything else.”

  “You…you do that with females?” Ellina felt her breath catch in her throat and that strange tingling in the tips of her breasts and between her legs began again.

  “Well, I haven’t for a long time,” Ty admitted. “But when I do, gods…” He shook his head, his pale eyes far away in the firelight, as though he was remembering something intensely pleasurable.

  “You…you really like that? It makes you tingle?” Ellina asked.

  He nodded. “I do more than tingle, little one. Sometimes I fucking come just from the flavor of a female’s juices on my tongue and the sound of her moans in my ears. The pleasure of pleasuring is that intense—even without anyone touching me.”

  Ellina thought of the erotic sight of his seed spurting from the broad head of his shaft and felt the tingling in her own secret areas increase.

  “That’s…amazing,” she murmured at last. “I didn’t know it could be that way.”

  “You know now,” he pointed out. “You just admitted that touching me and making me come made you ‘tingle’ with pleasure.”

  “But that’s just the thing,” Ellina protested. “I shouldn’t be tingling with pleasure. I shouldn’t be able to experience any pleasure at all.”

  “What?” Ty gave her a startled frown. “Why not? Is it forbidden for a Potentate to have pleasure?”

  “Well, no—not that I know of,” Ellina said. “It’s just…I don’t have the correct parts for it, you know?” She blushed to speak of her deficiencies to the big Kindred but she reminded herself that he already knew about her mutation—he had seen her naked and hadn’t been repulsed.

  Ty looked her up and down, clearly confused.

  “You seem to have all the right parts to me,” he said at last. “Why should you not have pleasure from them?”

  “No, no…” Ellina frowned. “You don’t understand. I don’t have a third breast,” she explained. “Or a second sacred mouth—both of which are only for pleasure.”

  “They are?” Ty still looked confused. “Forgive me—I don’t know much about Chorkay anatomy,” he confessed.

  “It’s like this,” Ellina instructed him. “The two outer breasts on a Chorkay woman are for nursing a child. The inner breasts—the third one—is for pleasure only. For the nipple gives no milk—it only feels good when…” She felt her cheeks heating as she spoke. “When a man touches or licks it,” she finished in a rush.”

  Ty raised his eyebrows.

  “And I suppose the, uh, second sacred mouth—the one located just below a Chorkay female’s navel—is also just for pleasure?”

  “Just so.” Ellina nodded. “It has no secret entrance which leads to a womb like the first or primary sacred mouth—so there is no need for a male to batter it open. It is only for sexual enjoyment. So it doesn’t hurt when a shaft enters it and a male may spill his seed there as often as he likes with no fear of conception. Also…” She bit her lip, squirming a bit with embarrassment for a moment.

  “Also what? Go on, Ellina,” Ty prompted softly. “Don’t be ashamed—tell me.”

  “Also the, um, pleasure button of the second sacred mouth is very, um, pronounced and…and sensitive,” she finally managed to say. “It gives intense pleasure when touched.”

  “Are you saying that the primary sacred mouth has no clitoris? No pleasure button?” Ty asked, frowning.

  “Oh no—it has one,” Ellina assured him. “It’s just too small to give any pleasure—that’s all. Because the primary sacred mouth is only for breeding.” She sighed. “Some say that’s why females who have the Sacred Blue skin tone, like me, also only have the one sacred mouth—the one for breeding. Because the need to produce an heir is too great for the Potentate’s consort to waste his seed in a secondary sacred mouth.” She shrugged unhappily. “And so we have none.”

  Ty looked skeptical.

  “And so you think, because yo