Erecting Barriers Page 3

  Her tongue thrust back against his, creating a dance which sent her senses reeling. She couldn’t get enough. She twined her fingers through his rogue curls and tugged him ever closer, devouring all he had to offer. She whimpered in her throat. There had to be more. Nothing this powerful could stop here.

  Her body slid to a prone position. Her arms, entwined around Kulla, dragged him down, and he threw one leg, possessively over her thighs. She writhed up and found a hardness she’d never encountered before.

  “Oh.” She drew her head back, stunned. His manhood strained behind his breeches, and she felt every glorious inch pressed to her hot, needy core. She rocked from the realization. This mimicked how the barnyard animals coupled. It came to her in a flash of understanding that people must do the same. What a heady thought to set her afire. Could she do that with Kulla?

  “No.” Her gasping lover jerked back. He sat quickly and drew up his knees to hide the evidence of his desire from her curious wide eyes. “I will not have our first time be in a cart, whilst anyone could come by and hear us.” Obedience doubted that anyone would be out in the storm, but as her senses returned, she understood Kulla’s concern. Something very special grew between them, and he would not cheapen it by culminating whatever would happen in a hurried fashion.

  Obedience knew that pure love shined out through her eyes as she regarded him. Kulla draped one arm around her gently, drawing her close once again. An odd, red glow suffused the cart, but she dismissed it as a strange weather-related anomaly, and instead, blurted out the question foremost in her mind. “Do people do this thing”—she waved her hand about, vaguely in the direction of his groin—”in the way of animals?” She knew he wouldn’t make fun of her ignorance, and waited anxiously for his answer.

  ****

  Kulla raised his free hand to his brow, and rubbed it down over his face. He’d been around for thousands of years, and he felt poleaxed. He’d found his Chosen and he wanted nothing more than to throw up her skirts and bury his rigid cock deep within her. But as he suspected, Obedience remained a complete innocent. Not just a virgin, but a woman who’d never been told how things went between a man and a woman. Now, instead of bringing them both to Heaven, he must tell her how sex worked. He blew out a long breath. This would certainly be interesting.

  ****

  Present Day

  Obedience continued to look down on Kulla from her window high above, and chuckled, remembering. Kulla had been so uncomfortable, and so patient with her. His cock had to have been near to exploding that day, and she had been full of questions and curiosity. To give him his due, he answered everything evenly and with great care, holding back nothing until she asked if she could see his manhood. Yup. That’s what she called it. His manhood. She remembered Kulla going beet red and scrambling to his knees, peering out into the late afternoon air.

  “Not today, Obedience,” he’d said. “The storm’s nearly over. We should make haste to pack up.”

  And they had. Creating plans to meet the next week, at the next market. Obedience recalled her curiosity had not relented thereafter, nor had it allowed itself to be put back in a safe little box. It hadn’t been long before the summer progressed in a manner she would never forget.

  Chapter Three

  Kulla employed Jake’s help in the nighttime forays to the Quincy Quarries to remove the needed stone to build his edifice to Obedience. The DEA boss and newly made god romped like a puppy with a fresh toy, checking out his immortal powers and strength again and again. He begged to do just about anything to test his limits, marveling at all the skills open to him from that of extraordinary muscle, to mind-speak, to a keen sense of smell and hearing. He found particularly impressive, his ability to acquire things, and his deftness at ‘compelling’, a skill used on humans to make them do one’s bidding.

  Unlucky Ken Dunsky―Jake’s only fellow DEA agent to accompany him from California―felt compelled every morning to give up his breakfast to his boss. The head agent would wait until Ken dug in and take the food from him. The joke remained ongoing and wore thin on the otherwise affable agent nicknamed Dunce. Everyone waited to see where that one would go next.

  Marduk insisted that Kulla and Jake take whichever blue man became available on their after dark stone cutting adventures to keep an eye out for rogue demons or Beletseri. They’d just returned with their fifth load of the week, and so far, no enemies in sight.

  Kulla, with a new supply of blocks, dismissed Jake and his bodyguard as soon as they returned to the compound. He stood in the cool spring night air, breathing in the scent of freshly cut stone. He really missed this. Running one hand over a newly-cut block, he felt the Earth energy reaching out to him. The granite warmed under his hand, and his whole being stilled with satisfaction. He stood, immobile, just feeling. He’d been born to build.

  The crack of a breaking branch snapped him out of his thoughts. Were those footsteps? A different sort of feeling went through Kulla’s body. He knew that hooking sensation, the trembling through his limbs that heralded her presence. Obedience. He discerned her nearness in the dark, and reached out with his need, locating her in the deep shadows no more than fifteen paces away. Did she sense him? Kulla thought not. Not here for him at all, she seemed absorbed in her thoughts.

  In the dim light of a partial moon, she caressed the laid blocks of his structure that now stood four courses high, and he almost cried out at the tug it caused deep within his gut. He reacted as if her small hands touched him, running their softness across his taught abdomen. He sucked in a groan.

  She mounted the few stone steps already placed that would reach up the face of the ziggurat, and paused, turning her visage toward the sky. He knew he shouldn’t watch as she chanted something under her breath, but he couldn’t draw his gaze away, nor get his feet to move. He held his breath. This was the closest he’d been to her in so long, and he savored the moment. Too soon, she’d walk away and leave the air around him stale with her absence.

  Kulla watched quietly as something changed. Obedience’s supple body tensed. She lowered her arms and bowed her head, then slowly turned in his direction. She raised her eyes and found him in the dark, pinning him with a glittering stare. He didn’t know how to respond, so he stood still as if confronted by a wild animal, unprepared when she spoke. She hadn’t addressed him in nearly four hundred years.

  “This place you build is powerful.” Her soft cadence brushed through the dark.

  “This place I build is for you,” he returned quietly. Did his voice shake? He felt he could easily be driven insane with emotion.

  “Me?”

  He heard the question in her voice, giving him leeway to talk. What would he say to her after so long apart? He needed to be careful not to blurt out the wrong thing, sending her away again.

  “We gods have different callings, and mine has always been that of divine architect. When the need arises to pay homage to a certain deity, or revere someone held dear, I am brought forth to erect a monument to that person.” He paused and waited to see if she would find his building laughable or offensive. He sensed neither. Since she remained quiet, he continued.

  “You refused to speak with me, therefore I resorted to the only skill I have which might reach you. I am pouring my soul into this edifice, Obedience. I want you to see and feel what I hold in my heart for you.”

  His witch didn’t move from her spot on the step, but tilted her head as if contemplating how to respond. Did Kulla want to hear this? Her posture held so much sadness.

  “It’s too late, Kulla.” She sighed. Her words lay like dark smoke between them. “Once upon a time I needed you…desperately,” she admitted into the night, turning her gaze to the skeletal trees. “And you weren’t there for me.” She clasped her hands in front of her body, her voice full of regret. “I gave you the most precious gifts I had; my love and my body. I thought you loved me as I loved you, but when I asked if you would run away with me to keep me safe from the witch hunts, you
refused.” When Kulla moved to speak, she stopped him with an upright palm.

  “That is the larger crime. The lesser ones are even more puzzling, considering you seemed to enjoy the favors of my flesh.” She dropped back into the speech of the 17th century. “You didn’t trust to tell me you were a god, an immortal who could be with me forever if you so decided. You made no effort to seek me out with the aid of friends, or to even send missives when I erected a barrier between us. You fought not for me in any way. As if I no longer mattered. As if you’d disappeared from the face of the Earth. And what was left to me? Broken promises…and a broken heart.”

  Kulla wanted to speak, but her words came at him so rapidly, he couldn’t find a way in.

  “Do you know how long I stayed in Salem, waiting for you to send word that you’d changed your mind? How long I trusted you to realize your mistake, and imagined that we’d laugh as you whisked me away in your arms? I even lowered my barriers against you, certain that you would come. How I fooled myself. I remained with my horrid guardians long after it became unsafe for me to tarry in my village, worried that if I left, and you finally came, I would be gone.”

  Kulla heard the tears in her voice, and remembered his own anguish which matched hers in intensity.

  He’d never had a chance to do all the things she’d wanted…all the things that he’d wanted. In the ensuing weeks after last he’d seen her, he and his god friends had failed in their appointed guardianship of the leader of Merrymount, and been rendered invisible. By the time they’d figured out the rules of their bodiless banishment, Obedience had vanished. No longer did she abide in Salem, and he feared the worst. Had she been put to death?

  He’d barely existed, torn to pieces over her disappearance, but finally figured out she couldn’t have died, or he would have, too. Obedience was his Chosen. His lit amulet declared it, and even though they had not formally mated and been bound by said law, being separated by death would have killed him. He knew it.

  Obedience had to be alive, but missing, and it resulted in a hundred years of the deepest depression he’d ever known. There were times he wished for death. And when he finally snapped out of it, he spent the next three hundred years scouring every inch of the planet for her, without success…because she’d erected the barrier between them again. He had to ask.

  “When I didn’t come to you, why did you resurrect your repellent field again?”

  She stood tall, throwing her shoulders back in the angry posture he remembered well from her fiery younger days.

  “Because if you were alive, and our paths crossed again, in my anger I would have killed you.” Her tone left no doubt as to the truth of her words. “You changed me, made me hard. You took away my ability to trust and to dream. I remained bitter for decades after, and knew my only salvation lay in a total purge. If you had come and I had done murder, your death would have been on my hands for eternity and I would have owned your soul. That I could not risk. It would have been too much to take.” She shrugged. “Easier to erect my boundaries and get on with my life.”

  Kulla needed to speak, to make her understand what had happened. At the time, he’d been forbidden by decree to tell anyone of his immortal roots, forbidden to leave the confines of Merrymount for more than a few days, but there were no such constraints now.

  “I was not dead, but nearly as good as such.” Kulla, too, found it easier to lapse into more formal speech. “There is much that you do not understand. It tore me to pieces having to deny you. I would but have you hear me out as to the circumstances.”

  The words caught in his throat as she threw a hand up toward him, using her witch powers to cut off his explanation. He nearly choked under her auspicious grasp, as anger washed over her. When she finally let him go and he could breath, he lunged forward, but his hands came up empty. Too late again. His witch had disappeared.

  Kulla’s frustration erupted into an intense madness he hadn’t felt in centuries. He screamed her name into the night, and grabbed the nearest sledge. Whirling about, he pummeled the twenty-pound hammer into one of the new granite blocks. He struck the stone again and again, wailing his frustration to the sky until the beleaguered granite split in two. Appalled at the strength of his despair, the sledge stilled in his hands, then dropped to the ground. Kulla sank to his knees and cradled his head in his hands. His sanity doomed, never to tell her what had happened. He listened to the night sounds, and slowly calmed.

  He rose quietly to his feet. Best to continue to build; construction the only thing left to him. He grabbed for the hoist, and fit it to a new stone. He would toil for Obedience day and night until she gave him audience to tell his side of the story.

  ****

  Tear-filled eyes watched him from the window above, flooded with love and hate, and worst of all, distrust.

  Obedience moved away from the sight of Kulla’s straining body. She could imagine her hands moving across his corded muscles even now, centuries after she’d last touched him. Why had he betrayed her? She couldn’t listen to him. He’d spin the same lies again, professing his love, and once he achieved the mating the gods deemed necessary to their survival, he’d leave her once more. Wouldn’t he? Behold his anger, the rage with which he split the stone. It was resentment because she resisted his advances in order for him to save his friends. And she would continue to hold out against his demands, which held no trace of the love he’d once proclaimed. Well, let him wait. In the end he couldn’t win. In the end he couldn’t get what he wanted. Impossible.

  Bee-Dee felt so torn apart. No way she wanted to let all these gods and goddesses, including her surrogate daughter Charlie, be separated from their spouses as the males were sent to eternal Hell. She would have given in to Kulla before that happened, if she had been able, but it lay outside of her power to relinquish all and submit. She lamented being the one to doom the entire group because of her inability to become a Chosen before the deadline.

  “I’ll be the one to blame,” Obedience grieved, speaking out loud.

  “To blame for what, my dear?” The comforting tones of the older witch, Addie-May, came from the open doorway of Bee-Dee’s bedroom. The young witch’s shoulders slumped. She didn’t want to explain. Every time one of the really nice goddesses approached, she shut them down. Confronted by another witch, Obedience didn’t think she could hold out.

  “I don’t want all the gods to be sent to the Underworld because of me,” she allowed Addie-May some leeway into her thoughts. “But I can’t fall into Kulla’s arms, even if he does really want me.” She tilted her pointy little witch chin up a fraction of an inch.

  Addie-May lowered onto the bed beside her. “Why does it have to be such a chore?” she asked gently. “Kulla wants you all right. It’s obvious to me that the god is crazy in love with you, and by your tears and the way you avoid him, I’d say the feeling is returned.”

  “You wouldn’t understand.” Bee-Dee couldn’t tell the witch of the humiliation she’d suffered at Kulla’s hands, and the obstacle that existed that made their union impossible. And she couldn’t let the quiet woman tell her she had it all wrong. “I don’t want to hear anything about what a paragon Kulla is, or why he deserves my trust. It isn’t going to happen.”

  “Then why don’t I tell you a story instead.” Addie-May rearranged her skirts and got comfortable. Obedience knew she had no choice but to listen, and her curiosity became engaged. She knew that this woman and her cousin Dorian―who currently helped the gods―had been together at one time and had produced a daughter, Angie, who also lived on the property. Perhaps their story abode sadly, too. After all, they had split, with Dorian retaining his youthful vigor and handsome looks, while Addie-May aged, as typical for a one-quarter human.

  “You already know that Dorian and I were married about fifty years ago.”

  Bee-Dee nodded her encouragement.

  “What you don’t know, is that we were crazy in love.” To the sound of the echoing sledge out on the lawn, Addie let he
r story unfold.

  “I started at Smith College as a young undergraduate in 1962, studying mostly herbology.” Considering the times, and the location of Smith in the happy valley, herbology most likely meant pot smoking. Obedience couldn’t help but give a little smirk.

  “Imagine me then. I had flowing red hair, like my daughter Angie, and you.” She reached out a finger and smoothed it down Bee-Dee’s straight silky tresses. “Although mine fell unruly and in waves.” She dropped her hand and continued. “Dorian had stepped in as guest lecturer for an outdoor class one fine spring day, and I immediately sensed his ‘witchiness’. Though half Laurelei from my father’s side, I am one quarter witch, my human grandmother having mated a warlock. My immortal blood knew Dorian’s heritage. He, on the other hand, because of my mixed bloodlines sensed nothing unusual about me.”

  “And you know your cousin Dorian. So uptight and dignified, that for me―full of piss and vinegar―it was like declaring open season. He gave a lecture that led us up one of the many trails on nearby Mount Tom. He described the burgeoning flora to a bunch of women who were much more interested in his dark good looks, his intense black eyes and the stunning silver dagger earring he wore―and still wears―so rakishly. I, on the other hand, being a bit impish and knowing about him, decided to play a few pranks to see if he’d loosen up.”

  Bee-Dee held back a snicker, imagining her straight-laced cousin up against a young Addie-May.

  Addie continued. “Every time he reached for a leaf on a tree, I’d conjure a snake or a chipmunk to poke its head out to spook him.” She giggled. “And when he bent to categorize a mushroom, I sent a small skink skittering up his sleeve, fervently enjoying―along with the rest of the girls―his need to shed his shirt to dislodge it. His fierce gaze swept the pack of us, clearly by this time onto the fact he’d been ‘had’. But I kept such a good game face, or so I thought, that he quickly gave up his perusal and continued his lecture. I behaved after that, but I’d already given myself away.”