Demon's Promise: a high fantasy femdom novella by Em Shimizu Page B

be mimicking.
    “Please,” gasped Nairee. “Oh, please.”
    Please what? Continue groping clumsily at her soft
mounds? Kiss her again? Or was that a signal for him to go ahead,
pull down her trousers, bury his shaft into that hot, secret
womanly place between her legs?
    Well, why not. He certainly wanted to. And she wasn’t
stopping him…
    It was getting difficult to control his breathing. He
wished it weren’t so damn cold. That he could strip her entirely,
admire her naked body, lithe and brown, feel her softness against
his bare skin –
    Suddenly, silence swallowed them both. Ruen froze as
he realized he could no longer hear Nairee’s panting, or his own.
Not even the sound of his own heart beating.
    Nairee looked at him, worried confusion in her face.
She pressed his arm and her mouth moved, but no words formed in the
air between them.
    And in the shadows beyond the soft glow of their
lightglobes, something stirred.
    Something’s there , he tried to say, but his voice was lost to him and he did
not know if she heard. He tried to point, then, but Nairee was
babbling at him now, clinging to him, the confusion in her eyes
replaced by sheer terror.
    Coiling black vines spilled out from the cracks in
the walls, reaching for him. He flinched, scrambled back, but there
was nowhere to run, and how could he leave Nairee?
    The vines touched him. Circled his limbs. Stuck to
him like an inky mass of slime, pulling him down, dragging him
under.
    Inexplicably, his fear transformed into a low,
boiling rage.
    It wasn’t fair. He couldn’t die. Not here. Not like
this. Not when he hadn’t even begun to live –
    The spirits of the shrine should have left long ago.
This place was no more sacred than the courtyard outside his
window. Those silly old tales were nothing but fibs told to
frighten the children on a dark winter’s night. On a night much
like this.
    He and Nairee were surely not the first to disturb
the peace anyway. Why should they choose now, of all times, to be
offended?
    It wasn’t fair.
    Energy surged through him, flaring at his fingertips,
pale and blue, crackling through his very skin. Through the inky
mass he thought he saw a ghostly white stag turn its head, staring
straight into his own gaze.
    A lulling sense of familiarity swept over him. Tears
filled his eyes. His chest felt like it would burst.
    It wasn’t fair.
    He reached his hands out to the stag. Saw then that
its neck was collared, its feet hobbled by the same black vines he
was struggling against.
    It wasn’t fucking fair.
    Come! he
screamed into the silence. Come to
me!
    The stag reared, snorting back at him. Its horns tore
through the mass, but Ruen could see the vines tightening around
its neck, slicing ugly stripes along its hide.
    With the strange detached observation of an
uninvolved bystander, Ruen realized his own body was spiked with
pain too, mixing with the searing remnants of desire. He quivered,
every last patch of his being thrumming with fury and hatred and
vulgar, desperate yearning.
    He didn’t care if he died anymore. It was only to be
expected. He’d waited for this day to come since he was a child.
Dreaded its arrival, not knowing when, how soon. Resented it,
knowing its inevitability, the futility of struggle.
    But that stag. That beautiful wild thing. So strange
and yet so familiar.
    It was wrong for it to be destroyed here, like this.
Trapped, bound, confined.
    Wrong. Utterly wrong.
    Pressure built inside his head. Beneath his skin.
Running through his veins, his bones, his hair. Crushing his heart,
his throat.
    The darkness shattered. The bubble of silence popped,
and he heard Nairee screaming and screaming and screaming, and
power surging and crashing all around him as the walls crumbled and
snow hissed to steam and it wasn’t just Nairee, he could hear the
hired guards shouting, deep gruff men and sharper-toned women, and
the sky swirled overhead as if he were flying, or maybe tumbling
back down to the earth.
    He