Buttercup looked absolutely ridiculous sitting at my gaming desk, with the two monitors, the glowing keyboard that slowly shifted a rainbow of colors, and the posters of LOTR or Star Wars on the walls. I really wanted to put my headset on the dark demoness, or djinn, or whatever she was in reality. Harbinger of doom. Sower of chaos.

“I cannot speak the orders,” she said.

I showed her how to put her claw-like Nakamamon fingers on the keys. “Just type the words out onto the screen. No speaking required.”

She cocked her head again, blinked several times, and peered down at the keyboard.

“The glyphs… are familiar to me.”

I grinned at her. Of course, I could make my psychic projection compatible with her experience. We weren’t on earth, after all. There was no reason I had to follow the rules of earth. We could be doing this while floating in a magical rainbow colored castle made of marshmallows… upside down. Gravity was just as pointless here as the glyphs she used to type out what she couldn’t verbalize.

Claudius had bound her with a number of different stipulations. So many, in fact, that it was almost impossible to carry them all out. First and foremost was that she could never harm him by any means, including giving away his location. She couldn’t contravene his orders. She couldn’t find a being and persuade them to harm Claudius. She was to report her actions to him every week at a certain time. She was to report any actions she had undertaken that might constitute a danger to him. She could use her powers on any task he set her to that was labeled an order. She was encouraged to inflict pain and torment and terror rather than kill, but she could make the choice to kill if she wished.

There were more: places she could and couldn’t go. She couldn’t go to Claudius’s location unless summoned. She absolutely couldn’t give that location away under any circumstances. People she could absolutely, under no circumstances, interact with. Powers he gave her as part of their bond, including the time stops and the telepathy, which weren’t ordinarily things she could do. Times she could use those powers. Times she couldn’t. Places she could and couldn’t use them.

“This guy is paranoid,” I muttered, looking over her shoulder at the screen.

It brought back to mind the story of Joseph Stalin’s final days on the earth, where he’d cultivated so much fear and paranoia amongst his closest people that no one was brave enough to go into his room and check on him when he had his stroke or heart attacks. You pissed of Stalin you could end up shot in a room with a rubber floor.

When you had enemies everywhere, they lived in your head.

“Healer…”

I looked down and into her huge, inhuman eyes. Buttercup, even though it was a stupid name, seemed vulnerable now, much more… human. Or rather, relatable, since she wasn’t even remotely human. No longer evil. The way she’d spoken that single word: shaky, unsure.

Then I followed her huge eyes to where my hand rested on her shoulder, and it clicked. I’d been in a similar place, with no one to reach out and touch me for so long. My parents wrapped up in their own situation and not seeing my pain.

“Been a while since someone touched you?” I asked.

Her voice came out in a raspy whisper. “Centuries.”

“Oh… come here then. Hug time!”

I took her by the hand, spun her around once, and wrapped her in a tight hug.

She froze. “What… is happening?”

“You can hug me back, you know.” In this psychic projection there was no way she could hurt me. If she caused me psychic pain, I’d just drop the environment and activate my new Spirit of Purity ability.

Her fingers prickled my back, since they were claws. I knew her eyes closed, because this was my psychic projection, and I felt her body sag with relaxation and relief into mine. Her whole body vibrated from within, like a contented cat purring away.

“I have a whole series of abilities that allows me to change myself to suit my partner’s body,” I told her, “and the ability to do likewise for my intimate partner.”

She pulled back and looked into my eyes. “This… you offered your body for me to use for my pleasure before. This is what you meant, this hugging?”

“In here, I could take you as you are… but in the real world, I’d have to adapt to your body so you don’t hurt me.”

“Hurt is the way of things,” she said uncertainly. “Everything is pain and difficulty and danger. Why would you shy away from it?”

I smiled down at her. “It doesn’t hurt now, does it?”

“The hurt is a good one,” she said. “My soul knows I cannot have this always. I cannot experience happiness for but fleeting moments. Pleasure and happiness… go against my aspect. But it is acceptable to cause myself distress and misery.”

Yikes. This dark aspect Nakamamon had just tied herself in knots in order to allow herself a sliver of enjoyment.

“Do you find it acceptable for me to call you Buttercup?” I asked.

She chuckled darkly. “It is humorous. A buttercup cannot sow chaos or wade through the destruction towards more misery. Darkly humorous. I approve.”

Buttercup’s current orders were for me to flush out Jocinda so Claudius could invade her thoroughly protected wilderness fortress and kill off whoever she found up there. A den of Druid acolytes who had been among the first humans to head in after the two system makers. Claudius wanted Jocinda for himself, to tie her up and make her watch as he tore apart whatever she had up there. Then, since he couldn’t kill her, she would be sent back through the portal and held in an Agency cell until she died.

“She has a rare disease that eats up her bones,” Buttercup said with a smile.

“If it’s one thing we humans have in common,” I told her, “it’s that we don’t generally wish misfortune on others. Compassion has been the catalyst for a lot of our more amazing scientific discoveries. People love to be loved and wanted. We like to feel good, and make others feel good.”

I took her back upstairs to watch my sister play with her son. My dad had joined them, and was currently playing the monster that Brayden needed to get away from.

She turned a sour look my way. “So this… plan of my master’s… you disapprove?”

“Just as you do,” I said, “but for different reasons.

We set to planning then, using knowledge of what she could do and what she couldn’t.

In the back of my mind, the possibility of making her my bond mate lingered. I didn’t like it. I didn’t want to. She was unpleasant and could only see things from the perspective of a dark aspect Nakamamon. McCauley Skulkins was just sneaky and conniving, but it was okay because he was cute. This creature mostly wanted to spread terror and cause pain and chaos.

In the end, we settled on a plan. It didn’t involve her doing much, because Claudius had her under so many magical restrictions, but as long as she didn’t do anything, that was okay with me. The less contact I had with her, the better.

“Now,” I told her, and stretched out a hand. “The offer remains.”

“Carnal connection,” she said.

“How about we start with a nice soothing massage?” I asked.

“I do not understand.”

I placed another hand on her shoulder and began to knead the flesh.

“It would be… undermining Claudius, in a way.”

And since this qualified as ‘intimate contact’ I started to use Adaptability and Pheromones to change the two of us. One, I needed to have no fear of the terrifying quasi-demonic entity before me. Two, I needed to pull some of that demonic dark aspect out of her the way I’d done with Chrysta’s ghost aspect. I’d need… enough.

She began to moan under my hands. I kept up a deep tissue massage, pressing my hands into the dark, spongy flesh that was her body.

“What… is this?” she gasped.

My hope was that the things she felt were pleasant and wonderful, and her body didn’t react badly to goodness the way a dark aspect Nakamamon would otherwise. I got her to lean forward so I could rub with my thumbs, lightly at first, but with increasing pressure. Then I worked lower into the muscles flanking her spine, and then the lats, and afterwards the muscles of her lower back.

She had a tail. It had an arrowhead tip, like the devil’s, and it swung back and forth lazily. She also had this dress of hers, and it was apparently made of razor wire, because it was cutting, prickling, and catching against my clothes.

“Shall I continue?” I asked.

“Hmm? Oh, yes. Do continue. There is no provision in my orders that prevents me from gaining pleasure from anyone.”

I leaned down. “Nothing in here is real in the strictest sense,” I whispered in her large, diamond-shaped ear. “We could do… anything.”

I snapped my fingers and made her dark, evil metal dress of torture vanish. In its place was a University of Southern California sweatshirt and a pair of boxer shorts with hearts all over them. She floated out of the computer chair at my command, with my hands still on her back, and over to a ratty old couch.

“What?”

I didn’t let her get much further than that, but instead began massaging the muscles of her thighs. Specifically the hammies, then her calves.

“You’re okay,” I told her. “Time doesn’t pass in these psychic doodles like it does in the real world anyway… we can think much faster than we can force our bodies to act.”

“You moved me…” she said.

“The power… to move you,” I said, continuing to press my fingers into her weirdly soft flesh. For a time we went like this, my hands traveling over her legs, lower back, upper back, her neck, and tiny circles at the back of her head.

“This is most wonderful,” she mumbled. The massage continued on, until finally she said. “Why have I said the word ‘wonderful’, Healer and Pleasure Seeker?”

“I used Pheromones to subtly alter your body, such that you can feel pleasure and goodness temporarily. You will be back to normal when I stop touching you.”

She was silent for a time, before she turned over. The sight of a being of pure darkness (with her eyes closed) looking something like a muppet and something like a cat, wearing a USC sweatshirt and white boxer shorts, was quite amusing to me.

“The massage was more effective upon my bare skin,” she said, and pulled the sweatshirt off. Her breasts stood against gravity, because they weren’t formed like human breasts, and I could see the dark purple nipples standing out. I’d gotten her aroused.

“Well?” she demanded. “You cannot stop at the massage of my back half only. Continue your hand sorcery at once.”

I smiled and put my hands back on her, flooding her with more Pheromones and using Adaptability to leech some more of the dark aspect out of her. The physical change that occurred turned her from coal black to a dark purple. Her skin was spongy to the touch, and quite warm.

“Here,” she said after a few minutes, grabbing my hands and placing them over her breasts. “These need the stimulation of the hands.”

I obliged her without a word, and enjoyed the way she wriggled on my ratty basement couch in my mindscape. She arched her back and clawed at the couch, rubbing her thighs together.

“This is most unusual,” she said as I worked. “You must continue this massage forever.”

“It won’t work like that, unfortunately.”

“Then you must remain in intimate contact with me forever.”

“And why is that?” I asked, pressing at the pectoral muscles over her breasts and kneading them in small circles.

“Pleasantness… is pleasant. It is good… to feel good.”

“I would agree,” I told her. “Would you like to feel even better?”

“Have we not begun the carnal connection?” she asked.

I continued the massage, not speaking. She rather enjoyed the massage of her hips and upper thighs, and spread her trim legs so I could get all the muscles. By now her dark purple had turned a dusky pink, one twilight color, and she was hunching her hips up and down. I went back to her lower legs, but she sat up and put my hands on her upper thighs, and soon again, moved my hands from her outer thighs to the insides. Later, she grasped the heart boxer shorts and ripped them apart. Literally, her clawed fingers shredded the underwear and tossed it over her head.

“The center,” she panted. “The center. Massage in the middle.”

“Buttercup,” I told her, very close now. “This is something lovers do. Are you prepared to become my lover?”

“Argh!” she cried out. “You have been designated a target! You have been made part of my task. I cannot… I cannot fulfill my tasks with you as my lover.”

The sound started low in her throat and built to a scream. I was thankful that the people upstairs weren’t real, but were just psychic projections. Buttercup started shaking her head back and forth, then slamming it back into the couch.

The poor girl.  I felt my heart ache for her. She was a dark aspect, and darkness was in her soul. Just as fairies were carefree and nice and wonderful all the time, and ghost aspects were dispassionate and disconnected from emotions, Buttercup here was tied to badness and cruelty. I wondered just how Claudius had found her in the first place, let alone convinced her to accept the bond between the two of them.

“Enough,” I told her. “If the day comes when Claudius is no longer your bond mate, I will become your lover, understand?” ᴛhis chapter is ᴜpdated by NoveI-Fire.ɴet

She grabbed my wrist and shoved my hand to the scorching hot, slippery slit between her legs.

“Just do it!” she commanded.

She would be violating her orders. “But—”

“I will be in agony with or without this,” she said. “Grant me pleasure, Pleasure Seeker.”

So I did what any man would do when faced with a beautiful, conflicted, order-bound being of near infinite power sharing a psychic projection with him: I lowered my head between her legs and started lapping away.

I don’t know how many people know what black licorice tastes like, but my father used to eat it purely on the merit of it being unpalatable to kids. Because my sister and I refused to eat it, it would remain in our house and he could have the sour black stuff. Buttercup’s pussy was like this, so I ramped up the Adaptability I gave to her until her whole body went from dusk rose to plain pink. The taste of her sweetened considerably, and it was easy to locate her clit. I was getting to be an old hand at cunnilingus.

Buttercup grunted and bucked her appreciation back up to me, and groaned in both pain and pleasure at the treatment she received. Those clawed fingers dug into my scalp and tingled, while her thighs slid up and down the sides of my face. Back and forth, up and down, until she got the idea that she could run her feet up and down my sides and back. Later, as her whole body began to shudder and clench with the pleasure mixing with the pain she was doing herself, her thighs clamped on the sides of my head.

I kept up a steady pace, licking at the sensitive nub where her lips came together, and soon adding a finger to reach up inside her. Then two fingers. I pressed against the patch, making that classic come hither motion, and got her to lift her ass up off the couch. The keening and wailing weren’t so bad when you had your head sandwiched in between two evil thighs.

She was thrashing now, her head swinging back and forth and her face screwed up in pain, while I gave her pleasure using my enhanced tongue and attributes. Licking this long would have made any normal person tired, but I used Stave Off and Durability and the extra muscles in my tongue to wriggle my taste buds over her most sensitive of places.

She came with a literal scream, her butt two feet off the couch cushions and her whole body trembling, with my face buried between her legs and her pussy gushing sweet nectar. I held her that way, cupping her ass, feeling her tail twitch and jump as she came down from the sensation.

In between all the panting, it took her a long time to say a single word, and the word was simply, “That…” She repeated it several times before freezing, and then vanishing out of my psychic space.

This is Christopher maybe in a lot of trouble.