Destined to the Reaper (The Shadow Realms #2)

Chapter 4

Kali

I frowned, the suspicion that had begun to abate surging back with a vengeance within me as I stared at the ghost-like form of the Reaper when he failed to answer right away.

“You do realize that magic circles serve different purposes, correct?” he asked in a mysterious tone.

That took me aback. Why this sudden change of topic when I demanded the final pledge that would ensure my safety once I stepped inside? Had he been trying to fool me all along?

“You haven’t answered my request,” I replied in a stern voice.

“I promise to answer in a moment,” he said with a dismissive gesture, his disembodied voice beautifully haunting. “But please indulge me by answering mine first.”

My frown deepened, unsure what the purpose of this all could be. Of course magic circles served various purposes. The main use was to form a protective barrier between the caster and whatever entity they summoned. But they could also be used to contain energy or form a sacred space as part of a given ritual.

“Yes, I am aware of it,” I conceded, my voice making it clear I failed to see the point of this question. “They are mostly used as a containment field during summons or to form a magic well for a ritual.”

He nodded, the glow in his eyes intensifying as he moved even closer to the edge of the circle, the flowy skirt-like lower half of his body brushing against its very limit. All my senses went into high alert. I didn’t know what was about to happen, but my flight instinct was frantically rearing its head.

“This circle is neither. This is a portal, not a containment field. If what you fear is that I will harm you the moment you cross into the circle, then you are severely mistaken as to its protective capacities.”

My heart skipped a beat as my sense of unease grew another notch.

“What does that mean?” I whispered.

Pharos didn’t answer right away. Instead, he glanced to our right before pointing at a tall tree about eighteen meters away. One of its branches dangled at an odd angle after somehow getting snapped.

“You see this broken limb?” he asked.

I nodded, tension knotting my back. Seconds later, I gasped, and my skin erupted in goosebumps as a powerful wave of Death Magic shot out of the circle in the direction of the tree. Half a beat later, the branch didn’t just fall off but turned into ashes carried away like a dust cloud by the soft evening breeze, all lingering life force or energy sucked out of it.

Impossible!!

Summons couldn’t cast spells beyond the barrier of the magical circle confining them. My heart sank at the realization that he could also slay me right where I stood with no chance of escape. Horrified, I jerked my head back towards him, only to find him staring at me with a vicious expression.

Moving so fast it looked like a blur, Pharos reached out to me over the magical line, grabbed my neck, then yanked me inside the circle. He glided back a few steps as he did so, taking us to its center. I collided against his chest, my scream of terror dying in my throat as my entire body froze, paralyzed.

Flesh Magic…

This couldn’t be happening! It shouldn’t be happening. I attempted to cast a disruption spell only to find myself unable to tap into any of my magic.

“Calm, Kali,” the Reaper said in a commanding voice. “If my purpose had been to kill or harm you, I would have done so a long time ago. Portals offer no protections to the summoner and aren’t constraining for the summoned entity. Never forget that, should you ever attempt this again with another being.”

To my shock, his arms holding me tightly against him released me, and the paralysis keeping me locked in place lifted. I couldn’t scramble out of the circle fast enough. So much in fact, that I stumbled back and would have fallen hard on my ass if not for his kinetic magic propping me back up.

One hand pressed to my chest, I gaped at him, too stunned to speak a word or otherwise react. The mocking smile that stretched the partially defined features of his wraith form made me snap out of my traumatized daze. My cheeks heated with embarrassment upon realizing that storming back out of the circle had been prompted by the lingering illusion that remaining outside would keep me safe.

“Now to answer your previous request, Kali Jenkins, I swear not to harm you from this moment forward, during whatever interactions we will have inside the circle, or after you have left it. I hold no malicious intent towards you and seek a mutually beneficial collaboration with you to be freed of Cornelius. Does that response satisfy you?”

Despite the sense of relief that washed over me, I couldn’t help still glaring at him for that little stunt. I gave him a stiff nod while muttering my annoyance as my heart continued to try to settle back in my chest from the scare he just gave me.

“Yes, it does. But you didn’t have to make your point in such a flamboyant fashion,” I grumbled.

Instead of the mocking snort I expected, Pharos took on a serious expression. “Yes, I did. Time is of the essence. You and I are about to make great sacrifices that could cost both of us the ultimate price. If we are going through with this, trust—or rather the lack thereof—will be our undoing. I am not the entity you should fear. You need to know beyond any doubt that no harm will ever come to you from me, not because I can’t, but because I choose not to.”

I almost argued that this could be just a trick to get me to lower my guard before he stabbed me in the back when I least expected it. But I kept my peace. If even disembodied he’s so easily nullified my magic, I could only imagine how much more powerful he could be. Reapers possessed many powers, including elemental manipulation and illusion. He could easily make me do what he wanted while fooling me into thinking those were my choices.

“Why do you stay inside it then?” I asked with genuine curiosity. “If it doesn’t constrain you, couldn’t you simply go to your body?”

He shook his head. “The magic of the portal keeps this form whole. The moment I step out, I start losing some of my integrity. The only way to maintain it is by expanding magical energy. The farther away, the greater the strain. If I go too far without the power to maintain myself, I will eventually get sucked back through the portal into the vessel that was hosting me before the call. But long before that happened, Cornelius would feel the strain tugging at the tether and know something is amiss.”

Without another word, I gave him another stiff nod and began to strip out of my clothes.

I still had mixed feelings about this whole situation. While sex was often used as part of certain rituals, I dabbled in the type of magic that didn’t require such practices. Many dark arts practitioners actually sought it out not only because sex with occult creatures was usually off the charts, but it tended to enhance the human partaking in it—assuming their otherworldly partner wasn’t evil aligned.

I wasn’t prudish and didn’t have moral qualms about what would soon take place between us. I’d simply never been the type to share my body with anyone that I didn’t intend to form a committed relationship with. Right or wrong, I fell squarely into the category of people who couldn’t help but form an emotional bond with the person they became intimate with.

The intensity with which he observed me as I finished removing my clothes and setting them in a neat little pile next to me was beyond unnerving. When he first suggested this coupling, it struck me as ludicrous since he didn’t possess a corporeal vessel. With traditional summons, the entity entered the circle with its true body, not just its consciousness. And yet, this portal had somehow made his soul tangible.

The feel of his body, when I crashed into him, came back to the fore. It had been firm and yet soft. Spongy wouldn’t qualify as an appropriate descriptor. Maybe pillowy? But more importantly, an unexpected warmth radiated from it, and it lacked the horrible stench of death and decay that I dreaded.

My stomach fluttered with a feeling I couldn’t quite describe as I stepped back inside the circle. It was the oddest mix of fear, anticipation, and curiosity. Now that my distrust of him continued to steadily wane, my mind could finally focus on appreciating the strange being before me.

Pharos had something elegant and noble about him—not words I ever expected to associate with a type of wraith. He was extremely tall, nearly seven feet, although I suspected that his long skirt made of white smoke, and the fact that he slightly hovered over the ground played a significant part in this. His body wasn’t exactly covered in a white robe. It was just the white smoke or glowing aura around it that created such an illusion. The features on his face were too undefined to be able to say what he actually looked like. It was as if a sculptor created the basic shape of a face with the eyes, nose, and mouth, but didn’t complete the work. The generic mannequins some fashion stores used to display their garments would be an apt comparison.

Moving slowly, as one would with a frightened animal, the Reaper carefully drew me against him. A shiver coursed through me in reaction to the sharp contrast of the cool evening air and the unusual warmth of his ethereal body. To my shock, he leaned forward and pressed his lips to mine.

As I normally never indulged in these types of activities with otherworldly beings, I hadn’t really known what to expect. Foreplay had certainly not featured on the list. For a reason I couldn’t explain, I instinctively sensed that he was trying to ease me into it, as if he knew of my inexperience with one such as he.

That messed with my head.

The part of me grateful for that consideration also acknowledged it meant things could drag on longer than I might want or prefer. However, how much time this took largely depended on my ability to let go and open myself to the process.

The more tense I remained, the tougher the psychic barriers erected by my subconscious would be, effectively acting like a repellent. There was a reason consent was so important in many rituals. Granted, in most cases of possession or dark magic, the victim or sacrificed couldn’t have been a less willing participant. However, there were multiple ways to break down someone’s resistance, pain, doubt, and fear being chief among them.

Where religious people often used their faith as their shield, making them waver on even a single aspect of their belief often sufficed for a demon to create the breach necessary to get in. And once fear kicked in, whatever defenses they possessed crumbled at an exponential rate. Similarly, pleasure—especially when all-encompassing—drove the person receiving it to either open themselves wider to receive even more, or it overwhelmed them so much they lost themselves to it, leaving them ripe for the reaping.

That thought should have frightened me. But the unexpected flame of desire sparked low in my belly as Pharos’s hands started roaming gently over my naked body. Tilting his head to the side, he deepened the kiss in a gentle but dominant fashion. Once again, relief washed over me in the absence of foul taste or smell. It was too subtle for me to pinpoint it exactly, but aniseed popped to mind.

The texture of his tongue against mine also messed with my head. It was smooth, silky, almost creamy in its softness. Where his body was hot, his tongue felt cool. I wouldn’t call it cold, despite the slight tingling it triggered without falling into numbing territory. Simultaneously, his hands on my body, and mine on his sent me down a spiral of sensory exploration like I’d never experienced before.

It took me too long to realize that his touch was more than just physical. The tingling that seemed to seep deep into me, down to my bones, was some form of spiritual response. Considering he was the embodiment of a soul, it utterly made sense. But it was the way my body was responding to him that retained my attention.

I was more than turned on. Within the handful of first caresses, my nipples hardened, my breasts felt heavy, and a dull throbbing manifested itself between my thighs. When his palms glided over the curve of my behind, I instinctively found myself pressing my pelvis against his. I wanted him to hold me more tightly, to be entirely surrounded by his ethereal essence.

It made no sense, considering that only moments ago, I’d been ready to run for the hills, horrified at the thought of coupling with a being like him. And yet, something inside me completely flipped around the moment he kissed me, as if a switch had been turned on.

He felt right.

For a split second, I wondered if he was using one of his potent magical abilities to trigger this response from me. While undeniable power swirled around him, engulfing us, none of it was targeted directly at me. For a reason of its own, my body wanted him in a way that transcended basic lust.

I quickly cast out the thought that having been celibate for a while could explain this reaction. Curiosity at mating for the first time with a spirit also didn’t feel like the justification for it. As a necromancer with respectable skills in Soul Magic, it was the unexpected beauty of his soul that ensnared me.

It sang with the most delightful melody to my ears even as it vibrated all around me. Standing outside the circle, I had not perceived it, likely because I’d been too frazzled by everything else to pay attention. But now that I was wrapped in his embrace, he was all that I could feel, and I couldn’t seem to get enough.

Stop overthinking. Why not enjoy the moment instead of treating it like a chore?

Before I could even acknowledge the wisdom of that intrusive thought, Pharos’s hand slipping between my thighs from around my behind made me gasp against his lips. His fingers boldly rubbed against my slit before dipping inside me. He moved them in and out of me a few times, then his middle finger settled on my clitoris. He flicked it a couple of times, drawing a moan from me, followed by a yelp when the ground dropped from under me.

I felt myself falling backward. However, instead of crashing onto my back, I glided down like a feather twirling in a slow descent. I realized then that Pharos was lowering us onto the grass-covered ground inside the circle. With his fingers still moving in and out of me at a gradually increasing pace, he broke the kiss to brush his lips along the sides of my neck, and down to my breasts. He lingered there for a few moments, each lick of his otherworldly tongue on the hardened bud of my nipple sending a lightning bolt of pleasure directly into my loins.

With a will of their own, my hands settled on his head, all but vanishing in the white smoke that surrounded the more solid part of his ethereal body. It wanted to feel like hair, but it was too intangible to give me any real grip.

As I parted my legs to make room for him to settle between them, it suddenly struck me that I had not felt his shaft—limp or otherwise—when I had pressed my pelvis against his earlier. Did he even have a cock in this form?

His lips gliding down my body to take over where his thumb had left off had me crying out as a bolt of pleasure hit me so hard I nearly climaxed. My back arched as his mouth latched onto my clitoris. I never expected him to go down on me, but all rational thought fled as the tingling sensation I had felt on my lips when he kissed me now acted like electric sparks all over my engorged little nub. Each one struck me as a micro-orgasm building into an even bigger one ready to send me over the edge.

And then it did.

My spine seized as I cried out. A wave of searing heat shot through me from my core outward. My body shook from spasms of bliss as Pharos continued to devour me. However, even in my daze, I realized the burning sensation inside me—strange but pleasant—wasn’t a physiological response to extreme pleasure but a foreign presence seeping into me.

Pharos was sharing a part of himself with me while ecstasy had me fully open to him. Even as he kept me flying high with his expert tongue and hand, I fleetingly felt cheated that he could accomplish it while going down on me instead of by riding me. This should be a relief.

And yet…

As I began to come back down to reality, instead of pulling away from me and calling it done, Pharos climbed on top of me and claimed my lips in a possessive kiss that had another bolt of lust surging through me. I didn’t understand my responses to this stranger. I didn’t even try to question it. Spreading my legs for him to settle more comfortably, I caressed the odd texture of his back as his tongue plundered my mouth, and his hands kneaded and explored me with a growing urgency and possessiveness.

Where he’d been eerily quiet through our encounter so far, the Reaper started emitting a low growl that resonated straight in my clit. Moisture pooled between my thighs, and my inner walls contracted with anticipation when I finally felt something hardening around his pelvic area. I couldn’t tell if he had extruded or if he could somehow summon it. In truth, I didn’t care.

The ache to be filled was quickly growing almost too painful to bear. As if sensing my need—or simply giving in to his own—Pharos pushed himself inside me almost brutally. He swallowed my shocked gasp in a voracious kiss. I couldn’t even begin to describe what that initial penetration felt like. It burned and yet didn’t quite hurt. My body resisted even as it yielded. It was as if that strange hardness wrapped in the even stranger pillowy outer texture of his body had initially shrunk itself only to expand a split second after he was fully sheathed.

Pharos immediately setting a frantic pace wiped out any possibility for me to ponder the matter further. His otherworldly cock was wrecking me. With each thrust, he grew ever-so-slightly thicker, filling me to bursting. Unusual protrusions along his length provided additional sensations against my inner walls that just fanned the flame of the inferno raging in my loins.

In no time, I was writhing beneath him, his thick cock pummeling my sweet spot with a deadly accuracy that had me seeing stars in no time. I threw my head back and cried out, once more swept away by ecstasy. To my shock, the burning feel of the reaper’s hand closed around my neck, in an almost savage choke. He didn’t constrict my airways but forced my head back down.

Without slowing the unbridled way in which he pounded into me, he crushed my lips with his, reclaiming them angrily. Another wave of searing heat flooded my body, this time through my mouth, down my throat, and spreading outward in my chest as he breathed more of himself via that otherworldly kiss.

I was drowning in too many overwhelming sensations, from the insane heat of his body around me, his essence within me, his hands and mouth claiming me, and his cock fucking me senseless. I didn’t fight or question any of it and gave myself over to my lover.

Before I could even recover from that second devastating orgasm, Pharos suddenly pulled away. A powerful shiver coursed through me at the abrupt loss of his heat with the sharp contrast of the cool evening air over my feverish skin. A startled cry escaped me when the clearing spun around, and I found myself belly down onto the soft grass. The Reaper yanked my hips up and rammed himself into me in one powerful thrust that had me shouting again.

He immediately started pounding into me hard and fast, setting an almost punishing pace as if he had lost all control. It should have frightened me. But the pleasure pain of his brutal possession had liquid flames coursing through my veins as my inner walls greedily contracted around his length, wanting more of his savage passion.

I attempted to push up on my arms to get on all fours so that I could rock back and meet him thrust for thrust. To my shock, Pharos’s hand closed around my nape and pinned me down to the ground, my left cheek pressed against the grass as he continued his intense sensual assault on my more than willing body.

Over the endless string of moans pouring out of me as another peak of ecstasy began building inside me, Pharos’s low growls mixed with rumbling moans took on a deeper, darker edge that almost sounded like they were emanating from an elder beast escaped from the deepest levels of the underworld.

As with every other irrational response the Reaper stirred within me, this threatening sound prompted a mix of fear and lustful excitement. I attempted to turn my head to look at him over my shoulder. But Pharos tightened his grip around my nape, and a threatening growl made it clear I was to remain still. As if to reinforce the warning, a prickling sensation in my left butt cheek hinted at claws sinking into me. Despite the strength of the sting, I couldn’t say for sure whether he had broken skin.

I didn’t care.

I was burning from the inside out, my mind feeling on the verge of fracturing as waves upon waves of pleasure crashed into me. Just as I was preparing to give myself over once again to bliss, a dark shadow spread over me. Pinned as I was, I couldn’t get a good look, but it seemed to show a large pair of wings spreading on each side of the Reaper’s shadow cast by the soft light of the moon. The shadow also appeared to grow, confirmed moments later by his hand on my nape, his cock inside me, and his pelvis banging into me feeling as if they were significantly expanding.

A blinding light exploding before my eyes wiped out any thought from my mind. A savage cry tore my throat as I tumbled down a bottomless vortex of ecstasy. My skin felt on the verge of combusting as a powerful beam of energy blasted through me. I vaguely heard a feral roar in the distance. A part of me realized Pharos had surrendered to his own climax, and that the overwhelming power threatening to burn me to cinders from within was his essence filling me. But I couldn’t think or otherwise react. For a split second, I wondered if I would die. It was too much and yet an insane little voice whispered that it wasn’t enough.

Another scream of pleasure-pain escaped me, then the tingling deep inside spread outward, growing in intensity until I felt myself falling out of my body. Then darkness engulfed me.

I didn’t know how long I was out. When I regained consciousness, I stared at myself in shock to find me fully dressed, cradled in Pharos’s arms. He had returned to his normal size, no wings visible. But his eyes glowed with an insane intensity as he stared at me.

On instinct, I pulled away from him and scrambled back a couple of steps, still sitting on the ground. The Reaper didn’t attempt to pull me back. He merely tilted his head to the side and gave me a ‘Are you serious?’ look that had my cheeks burning with embarrassment.

“Good, you are conscious again,” he said in a conversational tone. “I must go back before Cornelius suspects anything. As soon as I am gone, destroy this circle. We cannot risk anyone stumbling on it once your wards wear off.”

“Okay,” I said in a subdued voice, unsure how I felt about his matter-of-factly behavior moments after fucking me to an inch of my life.

But what did you expect? Snuggles and words of love?

He kind of snuggled me while I was unconscious. Was his distant behavior a response to the instinctive way I’d scrambled away from him upon regaining consciousness? It hadn’t been personal. I’d merely been startled.

He rose to his ‘feet’ prompting me to do the same.

“Stay away from Cornelius and his minions until I am free. You carry a part of me inside you now,” he warned in a serious tone. “If any of them come close enough to you, they will sense it, and all will be lost. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” I said, feeling inexplicably unnerved.

“Good. In that case, until tomorrow, my bride.”

My bride?!

I stiffened and gave him a baffled look. Before I could ask him what he meant by that, Pharos grabbed me by the nape and crushed my lips in a painful kiss. With a will of its own, my body melted against his, a spark of lust igniting low in my belly, despite the soreness lingering between my thighs.

To my chagrin, he ended it as quickly as it started, then nipped my bottom lip hard enough for it to sting, but not to break skin. I gasped, my right hand flying to my lips to cover the spot he had bitten, only to see him vanish in a puff of white smoke as he crossed back through the portal.

I stood there dumbfounded, alone in the clearing. Too many conflicting emotions swirled through me. What did he mean by his bride ? Had he screwed me in more ways than one? The power of his essence flowing through my body was undeniable. However, I didn’t feel anything else that could indicate potential foul play.

He pledged not to harm me in any way before, during, or after our encounter.

Although that thought appeased some of the worry trying to rear its head, at a visceral level, and in a way I couldn’t explain, I didn’t believe he would wrong me. Nothing about my reaction to the Reaper made any sense. Even now, I felt utterly bereft and cold, in a way that went beyond just the loss of his unusual heat surrounding me.

It’s his soul. You love the feel of it around you.

And I did. It was mesmerizing in a way I couldn’t explain. But then, Reapers were considered demigods. Could that be the reason for my response to him?

Heaving a sigh, I set down on the task of removing the circle and then disabling the wards I had set up around the area. There was no point dwelling on why I felt the way I did around this strange being. I was just grateful it turned out the way it did instead of being an excruciating nightmare.

Anyway, I was committed. Cornelius would pay for what he had done to far too many people.