There Are Worse Secrets, Right?

I think I know where I'm going from here. In addition to continuing Eternal, I'll branch out into more genres, ranging from Incest to Gay Male. When I've gotten enough practice, I'll continue Cold Steel as an e-book. (I think I wrote it badly the first time around, but the setting still has potential.)

This story is a standalone in the Cold Steel universe, and true to form, the sex will be really, really kinky. Reader discretion is advised.

*

Ellen had expected Dan to crack three days after they moved in together. She was disappointed that it took six.

It was evening when it finally happened, and both were almost ready to rest after the day's work. Lying in bed, she played with a chunk of coal, using her magic to call light from it and cast patterns on the wall. For ten minutes, he watched her intently and silently from the bed by the opposite wall, and then--"Ellen, I have something to tell you."

"You've been afraid to admit it to anyone," Ellen said, still playing with the coal. "The question of whether or not to tell me weighed on you constantly. But we'll be married in a year, and now is the time to reveal our secrets and learn to understand each other. You respect soulcrafter traditions, and you want to follow them, despite your secret--that you're not a soulcrafter at all."

Dan stared at her in disbelief. "You already knew?"

"I don't have to be a thoughtcrafter to read you like a book, Dan. You never say a word about where you lived before you came here. I've never seen you soulcraft, not even to light a coal. And sometimes, when you're really surprised, you say that word--'nichira.' It's a brute word, isn't it?"

Dan was starting to look scared. "Please tell me you haven't mentioned this to anyone else."

"Not a peep. But I think I can fill in the rest for you. 'I was just another brute in the Tyrant's army. Then I angered the Tyrant, and he cursed me into this form. Now I'm hiding here, because this is the only town south of the capital that's big enough to have indoor plumbing.' Did I miss anything?" She set the coal aside to blow a kiss at him, and was surprised when he turned away from it. "Don't worry about it! They say brutes don't have souls, but I've been around you long enough to know you must have one. You're the nicest guy I've ever met, even if we're different races."

She couldn't tell what he was feeling now--she'd never seen this expression before--but he definitely wasn't scared anymore. "Ellen, I'd like to ask you to close your eyes and lie back on the bed. I promise what I'm going to do won't hurt you, and if you want to forget about it, in an hour, it'll be like it never happened."

Rather than respond, she did as he asked. She was unsurprised to feel him pulling up the bottom of her shirt--What a pervert, she thought--but he gave no attention to her breasts. Instead, his finger played with her belly button, tracing the rim, then sinking inside, just a little deeper than normal.

"Dan, what are you doing?"

"Please don't open your eyes. If you want me to stop, tell me, and I'll stop at any time."

She felt the first knuckle of his finger sink into her belly button. Once he'd pulled it out, he made his way onto the bed, and something much bigger than a finger pressed into her navel. A thoughtcrafter, she thought, woozy at the possibility. Then this is all an illusion-- Her belly button stretched wide, not at all pained by the intruding organ. Actually, it was starting to feel quite pleasant. --A very good illusion.

Ellen considered herself a loyal follower of the Water, and she knew its Word as well as any soulcrafter. Keep your numbers low, and you will always have enough water for all. Do not produce offspring outside the confines of marriage. She and Dan had messed around more than a few times, but they'd never done more than idly talk of penetration. If she'd been asked, she'd have said she wasn't interested in it anyways.

And yet . . . She couldn't stop herself from moaning. She could feel every inch of Dan's cock as he lowered himself onto her (and it was becoming increasingly apparent that there were a lot of inches to it), but the tightness of the fit only magnified her pleasure. She was rapidly becoming wet, and had she not been certain this wasn't real, she would have wondered why that wetness was echoed in her navel, guiding Dan deeper and deeper.

She was almost as tall as he was, but their position was awkward--from this angle, her lips couldn't meet his. Still, she felt that he heard her when she whispered "Keep going." He lifted and lowered in the famous rhythm, and she moaned in time to his movements. He's fucking my belly button, she thought, the incomprehensible idea suddenly clear in her mind. He's really fucking my belly button. She laughed and moaned together, the two sounds merging into one.

Their bodies shuddered in unison, and his wetness joined hers. When it was over, she opened her eyes, just in time to see Dan inexpertly attempt to roll off of her. He overestimated it and landed on the floor with a thump. "So much for being suave," he said.

She turned to the side to meet his eyes, eyes she knew as brown, eyes that were now blood-red. "I never knew my father, but I know who he must have been. He gave me a gift, and though I often wish I didn't have it, I've never found a way to trade it in. It's not a major part of who I am--I usually just use it for gardening--but it's the sort of thing we need to tell each other about."

Her silence stretched on, and they both lay still while he turned informative. "Soulcrafters are pretty resilient against fleshcrafting. That spell should wear off in an hour. But if you're embarrassed, I can undo it now."

It stretched on further. "Don't tell me you're scared of me. I'm the same Dan you've been dating all this time."

As her newest sexual organ leaked fluids onto the bedsheets, she finally found her voice. "Yes. You are." He was the man she was engaged to marry.

And he bore a magic that had reduced hundreds of innocent men and women to screaming mounds of flesh.

---- ---- ----

They slept without discussing it further, and she woke to find her navel almost back to normal, though it stretched ever so slightly at the prodding of her finger. He'd gone to work early, tending the garden at a rich man's mansion, and she tried to cast her thoughts aside as she left for her own job. But as she compared ledgers and analyzed data, all she could think was, What if he gets bored?

She had never seen the Tyrant''s famous throne, made from the still-living flesh of traitors and criminals, and she had only heard the faintest rumors of his secret experiments. But every soulcrafter knew the stories of what he'd done to those who'd displeased him, or sometimes simply walked by at the wrong time. The luckiest were simply violated, their navel or nipples or even nostrils used for his personal pleasure. The rest were buried in mass graves. Had anyone desired to claim the bodies, no one would have been able to recognize them.

It was madness to expect constancy from a fleshcrafter. Dan loved her now, but the Tyrant had also claimed more than once to love some unfortunate girl, only to discard her as the seasons changed. If Dan ever decided he no longer wanted her, there were a thousand ways he could make her vanish--

"Hey, have you heard?" the new hire asked her.

"Heard what?" she tentatively replied.

"The Tyrant's dead! Someone finally managed to kill him! The brutes are trying to take control, but we outnumber them . . ." She shut out his words as she tried to think.

All it would take was a single accusation. "Dan is a fleshcrafter." Tensions would grow high in the coming days--she might not even need to prove it. He might be able to kill her, but he couldn't stop an entire mob. One accusation, and Dan would no longer be a problem.

And yet . . . The desert is harsh, and one cannot survive without companions. Do not betray those who trust in you, lest you find yourself alone. Many generations had passed since the soulcrafters left the desert, but the Word remained true, and she could not forsake it for her doubts and fears. Dan loved her now, and so long as he loved her, she would hide his secret deep in her heart.

For the moment, all she could do was to try and keep him entertained. When that failed, she'd think of another solution. Somehow.

---- ---- ----

When Dan returned that night, she was already bent over the stove. "Good evening," she called over her shoulder, trying to keep her voice calm.

"It's not your turn to cook tonight, is it?" he asked. "And while I'm asking, why are you wearing a dress?"

"I felt like doing this," she told him. "But I'd like to ask you to help me. Cooking takes skill and passion. I'll provide the skill, and . . ." She lifted the back of her dress. She wasn't wearing underwear. "You can provide the passion," she told him, praying to the Water that she sounded seductive rather than ridiculous.

"You're saying you want me to stick it in your ass."

"Don't spoil the mood, Dan." She felt she could risk that much.

"You know, I wasn't sure how you would take things. After last night, I was afraid you'd break up with me. I'm surprised you turned out to be so kinky, but if this is what you want . . ." He grinned evilly. "We'll need to clean it out first. I'll keep an eye on the pot while you deal with that."

"What do you--" A sudden urgency made her very grateful that the kitchen was just a few rooms away from the bathroom.

He was still smirking when she returned. "Now that's over with . . ."

She took her place at the stove, and she began to stir the pot.

Her anus was tight at first, but she felt it loosen around his probing finger. She stirred faster and faster, and grew wetter and wetter, as the hole began to reshape, new folds slowly forming. When he finally entered what should have been an exit, she came immediately and loudly.

He reached his hand around, feeling inside the unoccupied orifice, and she realized that the hole in back was now identical to the one in front. When he took it away, she looked over her shoulder to see him licking his fingers. "Dinner already tastes pretty good," he said, before he moved his hand back downward, stimulating both holes at once.

The second time she came, he came along with her, both barely attentive enough to watch the pot. The pleasure was far too much to hold, so she transferred a bit of it out of her soul, displacing it into the food. When they finally sat down to eat dinner, he remarked that it was the best she'd ever cooked.

"So, uh . . ." he began. "Do you want to do that again sometime?"

"Anytime you want," she told him.

As long as it keeps him happy, she thought. She knew he wouldn't hurt her yet--not while she was still fun to play with. And the way he'd felt in her . . . As much as she hated to admit it, she wanted to feel it again.

---- ---- ----

As the end of the week approached, she could tell he was already growing bored. They'd tried every theoretical point of entry below the neck, save the one she'd been told not to use until marriage, but he tended to each more out of duty than of desire. He'd rejected ears and nose--"I can change the chemical balance in your brain, but I'm afraid I might damage something if I changed its shape"--and she was almost out of ideas.

They argued, just once, and he told her she seemed obsessed. He asked her what she really wanted, and she said she just wanted to make him happy. He told her he just wanted to make her happy, and then he suddenly started laughing. He said he couldn't stay angry with her for long.

She pretended to laugh with him. Or perhaps she really did laugh. It was becoming harder and harder to tell what she felt.

On their shared day off, he woke to find her licking the implement that had penetrated her in so many ways over the past week. "How'd you like to feel this all day?" she asked.

"I don't know," he said. "Isn't this our big day to clean the house?"

Yes, it was, and if they put it off, the dust would pile up higher and higher. But there were a lot of things she was putting off dealing with--why not add one more to the list? "The house can wait, Dan," she told him. "Just do your magic. Make my mouth perfect for you, just like every other part of me."

He considered that. "That would be a difficult spell. I'm not sure I could undo it, and it would take until evening to wear off on its own. You wouldn't be able to eat anything."

"I'm sure you can do something to make your cum nutritious. Come on, it'll be fun."

He sat up and kissed her, and her teeth shrank into her gums. Her smile narrowed, only to widen into a vertical slit. But he'd left behind her tongue, and with it, she tested the new shape of her mouth.

I can't talk like this, she realized. I can't say the wrong thing. For the rest of the day, she wouldn't have to worry about making Dan angry.

Her new lips found their way to his cock. She pushed it past where her uvula had been, down a throat that had suddenly become sensitive to every inch of flesh inside it. How can I breathe like this? she briefly wondered, but she set the thought aside as she concentrated on polishing off her morning meal.

Another thought was harder to escape. I'm becoming a freak.

---- ---- ----

"Dan? Where are you?" It was the day after their mouth experiment, and she'd come home late after a paperwork emergency. She was certain Dan must be home by now, but she didn't hear him in the house.

As the front door closed behind her, she felt her perspective begin to shift. Am I . . . taller? she thought, staggering against the wall. She was too late to see her hands broaden and callus, but she had time to watch her chest flatten, and she felt the change as something new grew between her legs.

In the bedroom, she saw herself lying naked on the bed. "Good evening, Dan," the other Ellen said, speaking in her voice. "What would you like to do tonight?"

She came very close to questioning the situation, but the thought soon vanished from her mind, driven away by what she would later realize was a deliberate shift in her hormone production. She was horny, more so than she'd ever been before, and in a matter of seconds, she'd cast her clothes aside. The other Ellen didn't move a muscle as she pressed her new member against the belly of this familiar body.

She pushed it into the other Ellen's belly button, and it sank in to the hilt. She nearly laughed as she rocked atop herself, mimicking the pattern she'd always thought looked silly. When her job there was finished, she turned the other Ellen over, discovering to her delight that her member had no refractory period--it was hard and ready as soon as it entered the other Ellen's ass.

After the ass should have come the nipples, but she didn't continue the familiar pattern. Instead, she chose the hole Dan had only touched with his fingers, the hole she hadn't intended to use until their wedding day. She felt strangely natural inside herself, and to her surprise, the other Ellen responded as well, moaning with enthusiasm as, for once, the two moved in unison.

When it was all over, they simply lay together, her in Dan's body atop what she now knew was Dan in hers. "I hope you're not up for much more," he told her. "That spell took a lot out of me."

"Dan," she asked, "before you came here, you lived with brutes, didn't you? I hear they're much more casual about sex."

"You heard right," Dan replied. "I still don't really understand soulcrafters. But I want to. At least, I want to understand you." He sighed. "Are you still scared of the big evil fleshcrafter? Is that it?"

"I'm not much of a soulcrafter, Dan. If I wanted to, I could climb over the little fence you keep around your soul, but I wouldn't understand what I saw inside. But because I'm a soulcrafter, the wall around my soul is tall enough and thick enough to keep almost anyone out. Then you showed me pleasure that shook me to my soul, and a door in the wall swung open . . ."

Finally, Dan seemed to understand. "You're vulnerable."

"In love and in lust, others can control you, using their magic to force you to their will. The greatest pleasure should only be shared with the one you are bound to by marriage. Those words have been pounded into my head since childhood. They've become an instinct, and it doesn't go away just because you're not a soulcrafter." She smiled bitterly. "I guess some of my instincts go even deeper. I want you, Dan. I want your arms, I want your mouth, and I want your big fat cock inside me. But it's so much easier to say you made me do it. That way, I'm not letting my guard down, I'm just doing what I have to so I can survive."

"Then what do I do? How do I make you not scared of me?"

"Step one, we start talking. Honestly, this time. Where did you come from, Dan?"

"Well, I never knew the Tyrant," Dan began, "but I was told he was actually my mother. He turned himself into a woman, and a woman into a man, then had her get him pregnant to see what sort of magic the baby would have . . ."

---- ---- ----

She came home the following evening to the amusing sight of Dan in a dress. "It's my turn to cook," he explained, "so I figured you could provide the passion. I'll give you a cock again, and then my ass will be yours for the taking."

"Your ass is nice, but . . ." She reached under his dress, and ran a hand behind his balls. "I feel like using another hole tonight, if you'll open it."

"You're not worried about sacrilege anymore?"

"There weren't any fleshcrafters in the desert, but if there were, I think the Word would have allowed this. Just don't get yourself pregnant, and we'll be fine."

He obediently made the necessary preparations. "We're such a weird couple," he said as he got into position.

"The weirdest," she replied, "but it's more fun this way." Then she entered him, and moans sufficed for the rest of that conversation.