You Belong to Me 2

The first time Gina saw what he was working with came as a bit of a wake-up call. Like ‘Oh, yeah. Hey, I remember what that’s for. I remember what that does.’

It hung heavy like some kind of obscene party favor, but at the time they had more important things to worry about. Even after rescuing him, her casual remarks about him having “a good weight” were offered more so to lighten the mood than anything else. Still, she didn’t forget and as the days passed the shape of it plagued the back of her mind. Like some kind of venereal disease.

Little by little, those thoughts grew into insurmountable red flags that ate at her precious spare time. She knew she was too logical for the whole choosing thing. How was she supposed to pick a Chosen with everything she had seen? Everything she had done? More so, with all the possibilities the future dangled in front of her.

And to share her magic with some twerp, just because he had good genes. The idea of it was like listening to someone’s fingernails droll against a tabletop. But that’s what society expected of all good little witches. Pick a mate, breed him, and leave him. Well, at least at home to care for the next generation of witchlings. There was the option of going artificial, but who knew what kind of backwater hereditary oddities that would produce.

All this and more rattled in the back of her brain, forgotten. At least until one morning of no exceptional consequence. She awoke to the sound of birds chirping. A hue of gold through her bedroom window. The blanket half covering her body. Alone.

Not alone in a way that felt comfortable either. That was the natural state of things. This wasn’t that. This was, well, fucking irritating. Here she was at the tender age of twenty four. Probably the most awesome person that had ever walked the face of her dimension, and yet she was alone. She hadn’t even been able to snag a girlfriend in the past year.

Lauren had been able to. Even the little ditz of a succubus had managed somehow. And where did that leave her? No girlfriend. No Chosen. Nothing.

And the cause of all this—the man who had prodded her mind with his thing—had already managed to pair up as well. With a fucking ghost. A ghost who all of a sudden decided one day she wasn’t a ghost at all, but a fucking deity.

It wasn’t that Gina was all that hung up on him specifically per se. True, he wasn’t born with magic and despite that had been picked by said ghost’s brother to inherit magic all the same. No, not that. Maybe just the fact that the exact moment she found herself the slightest bit curious, the carpet had been ripped from under her. That stung.

“What am I even doing here?” she asked as she rolled from one side of the bed to the other.

This must’ve been what a saltwater fish felt like when it was bred in captivity and then for no reason at all thrown into the ocean. The world had seemed so small before, and now she was the small one. All the significance of everything was just…gone. Did that mean that she was suddenly and inexplicably insignificant as well?

Had her window been open, she might have felt the early November chill. Her room might not have been so warm and humid. She might have taken to sleeping with clothes on, as opposed to her normal ritual of sleeping nude.

As all of that wasn’t the case, what she felt as she rolled along her bed was the cool caress of her blankets against her bare skin. The friction of it against her nipples. The way it cupped her hips. The way it teased between her legs, another part of her that was now as equally frustrated as her brain was.

Gina wasn’t much one for ideas that nagged. If there was a benefit to it—clear and evident—then who the hell cared. Life was easier that way.

If Ehma wanted him, that was Ehma’s business. Just like whatever happened in Gina’s head was Gina’s. I’ll just take a few liberties, she thought between breaths, her hands already finding a way to occupy themselves.

Some witches were size-queens. Some preferred a Chosen who was so effeminate, they might as well have not been called men anyway. For her, stamina was probably more important. Even that paled in comparison to what really got her magma burning.

During her entire tenure in the breeding department, she had seen it once—maybe twice. The time that stood out the clearest was almost more profound than any other secret she had ever learned and the dance that ensued branded itself in her brain without fail. Even now it was a clearer memory than her recollection of the day before.