your friendly neighborhood waterchild

Elain

“You’re late.”

The low velvet of Kiran's voice caught Elain off guard as she stumbled into the main room of Selene’s upstairs suite. Chest heaving as she struggled to catch her breath, she turned to where he sat in repose, a dark, guarded look clouding his clean, sensual features.

Adjusting the pins in the pale, honey-golden hair of her assumed identity and feigning detached interest, Elain took in the solid breadth of him–intimidating, with a hint of tension causing his shoulders to strain against the crisp white linen of his shirt. Sombre and intense, he watched her from a chair set before the hearth and turned to face the door from her dressing chamber. 

His eyes skittered over her body and Elain felt overheated, could feel the path they brushed over her already oversensitive skin. Swirling his glass in one deft hand, he took a deep pull, eyes never leaving hers.

A glass of amber liquid, now half empty, dangled from the tips of his elegant fingers and he raised it to his lips, taking a long pull. Mesmerized, she could only watch him.

Sure, she was nervous. She was overwrought, she was desperate–overcome, even. But despite that, despite the dark, angry smoke in Kiran’s eyes, despite every unanswered question that filled her with rampant anxiety, she felt a consolatory surge of rightness wash over her the moment she stepped in the room. 

They were still strangers and furthermore, the clever disguises they wore meant they would never truly know one another at all, yet something about being in Kiran’s presence felt as natural as breathing.

Mind you, her breathing was quite laboured at the moment. 

She should have recovered by now from her midnight scamper through the streets of Velaris, but it was as if she couldn’t quite fill her lungs completely, her heart thumping wildly in her chest.

In an attempt to soften the fury in his gaze, she schooled her face into a mask of coy innocence, coating her words with sweetness and flirtation.

“What was that?”

Huffing a laugh that belied his anger, Kiran’s mossy green eyes narrowed and a jolt of arousal struck her like an arrow.

“I said. You’re. Late.” The roughness in his voice was like the twist of gravel beneath the heel of a boot.

Unsure of how she was meant to respond, she reached up to toy with a rogue curl and hoped that he didn’t notice the tremor in her hands, not from fear, but something that fluttered in her stomach and burned hot and honeyed in her veins.

Elain took a long breath, willing her heart to slow its frantic pace, willing the tingle beneath her skin to melt away and lend her some semblance of normalcy.

Humiliatingly, she was late–by almost an hour. 

It had been a singularly exhausting day, and besides that, the time spent acting as though she was unaffected by the company of her mate left her with a pulsing ache between her legs, a craving so powerful she couldn’t stop herself from sating it.

When sleep took her, it took her deep and hard. She had risen out of sorts and scurried to the rooms above the apothecary, pausing only to drink down her tonic. As she ran through the darkened cobblestone streets, the same barrage of thoughts that had brought her to sweet release with her hand between her legs, circling and sure, bombarded her again.

Lucien, offering her a hand. 

Lucien, with fluffy white flakes against the burning copper of his hair, an expanse of brilliant white snow behind him. 

Lucien, bent to examine the earth, the strain of his trousers pulling against muscular thighs. 

And yet. 

Here she was with Kiran, the flickering candlelight and banked fire doing nothing to hide the dark desire in his gaze, the thrum of sensuality that told her more about the type of man he was than any of the handsome trappings that held him. 

Elain felt as though she had never been under such intense scrutiny in her life, and the sensation burned beneath her skin. She looked away, trying to find something, anything in the room that was as captivating as him and quite frankly, failing miserably.

“Don’t play coy with me, Ayla.”

“I… was held up.”

He only hummed in response, eyes tracking down her body while she wiped her sweating palms on her skirt and reached to tuck an errant, honey-blonde curl behind her elegantly pointed ear.

“Leave it,” he was firm and direct. “I like the look of you a little… undone.”

And undone she was, by her adventure with Lucien that afternoon, the building pressure of time spent in his presence almost too much to bear. Even after taking matters into her own hands and finding her release, Elain’s skin felt oversensitive, her nerves on edge.

He caught her attention again and she was remiss to look away. His dark gaze was almost unreadable in its intensity, but beneath the tumult of passion there she thought she read a glimmer of vulnerability. It confounded and aroused her as much as his frustration, his power.

Placing his now empty glass on the walnut table beside him, Kiran rose and prowled toward her. 

“Take off your clothes.”

“I am not here to do your bidding, I am not yours to command.”  She tried to summon her own sharp edge,  but her tone was shaky and breathless.

“It wasn’t a question, Ayla. Take off your clothes, or I’ll remove them for you.”

Elain realized that she was fighting against herself as much as she was fighting against him.  Something in his tone, the heated, conspiratorial look he gave her made her long to do just what he asked, exactly when he asked it. But something else inside her urged her to put up a fight, to provoke his reaction. Could she push him to burn hotter? What might it feel like to be incinerated by the force of his anger, his desire?

Kiran grabbed her face, demanding her eye contact, then caressed the underside of her chin, drinking her in with a long, heated look. 

“There is an arrangement between us, a bargain. To take pleasure but also to give it… Isn’t that the way of it?”

“Something like that.” Elain again willed strength into her voice, but it came out as a whimper instead.

“Enlighten me then, why exactly are you here? I was promised pleasure and I intend to give what I take. Can you abide by that?”

Elain forced her chin higher, but Kiran’s grasp didn’t falter. She wished he would kiss her, that she could taste the astringent sweetness of whiskey on his lips and relish in the feel of him, but he didn’t dip his head, he only held her gaze, daring her to drop her eyes to his own plush lips and prolong the battle of wills that had somehow begun between them.

“Yes,” she whispered, and as she did she felt the pulse of want low in her stomach, the dew of her arousal between her legs.

“Do you trust me?”

He had asked her before, but she was touched that he was asking her again. The firm command slipped away for just a moment and she could feel his tenderness, his respect. His finger still stroked the soft skin at the apex of her throat.

“I do,” she replied, “but I will not disrobe for you.”

Kiran’s face nearly lit with a smile, but it disappeared before it was ever fully formed. All she could see was his dark, tightly leashed lust. All she could feel was the heat of his skin through the layers of clothing still separating them.

In response, he lifted her arms and she held them there, unbidden, as he trailed his knuckles along the swell of her breasts just visible above the neckline of her simple silk nightgown. Before she knew what was happening, he turned his hand to grip the fabric and in one sure move, tore it from her body, leaving her exposed. 

He stepped back to watch as the simple, layered chiffon of her gown fluttered to the floor.

Kiran watched for a moment, that hungry gaze skimming over her again, igniting her arousal like tinder to a flame. In a movement as quick and fluid as a spark catching dried straw, Kiran grabbed her wrist and spun her body until all she saw was the lush velvet design of the wallpaper in front of her.

The room was silent save for her stilted breaths, but she could almost hear the rent of fabric and her own surprised cry hanging in the air between them.

She whimpered, not from fear but from a sudden bolt of desire as he pushed his body against her. He was still fully clothed, but she burned like a stokehold where the firm ridge of his arousal pushed against her ass, her lower back.

He leaned forward, grasping her wrists lightly in one broad hand and pinning them gently against the wall above her. The graze of his breath against the untouched skin behind her ear tingled with pleasure, causing a knot of desire to twist painfully in her gut.  He whispered conspiratorially to her, his voice gravelled and rough with lust “Hands on the wall.”

Lucien

He had waited almost an hour, and in that time, had fought against every single one of his demons. Being unwanted. Being unloved. Being the cause for great suffering, being irredeemable.

It seemed unjust and yet somehow unsurprising that this journey in self-exploration Selene had set him on had led him here. Nothing was ever easy with her. Well, nothing was ever easy at all. Nothing was guaranteed and certainly never promised. Sure, she had led him to believe this would be a pleasurable experience, but didn’t she always proselytize the value of pain in the midst of it all?

Lucien scrubbed his hands over his face and relished the feeling of smooth, unmarred skin. He wasn’t normally the self-pitying sort, had taken every welt and scar with as much dignity as he could muster, but this whole, unblemished body was a curse to him as much as it was a blessing. It reminded him of everything he had lost. Love, once. his home. An eye, even. Every regret he held at bay churned in his gut as he waited for her. His pixie of the night. Sweet and delicious. Beautiful and unguarded. 

Cauldron above, but he felt more foolish than he had in decades, waiting in this room for a woman, a stranger, who might never come. Was the harsh bite of rejection really a lesson he must endure again? He thought of Elain, the mate who never wanted him, and his stomach rolled.

When Ayla finally stumbled into the room, cheeks flushed and chest heaving, he hadn’t meant the gruffness in his tone, but her cheeks had reddened with guilt and her eyes lit daringly, so he played into the command she might have heard in his voice. 

Before he knew it, he had torn the clothes from her body and pushed her up against the wall. Good gods, what was he thinking?

He’d never been like this during a sexual encounter before. Had never been so aroused. 

Finally, he was forced to acknowledge the unchecked truth of the cravings he had always held at bay, the passion he kept tightly leashed. He took a moment to wonder at the spell that they had cast in this room, that despite being more duplicitous than he had in all his years as emissary, he was at the same time the most honest he had been with anyone–including himself. 

He could barely stand the contradictions, the honesty and the illusions as tangled as the wards of Velaris, mystery and magic weaving through it all. For now, he was determined to lose himself to the pleasures of the body, skin against skin and a place where no words were needed. In spite of all the answered questions plaguing him, for now, it would be enough.

There was something familiar in her wide-eyed gaze that he couldn’t quite place, couldn’t shake. It might be part of the reason he had her pushed up against the wall now, facing away from him while he touched her fevered skin with hands that were too soft, too unmarred to truly belong to him. 

He would taste her again before their bargain was up. He would sip from her cunt like the wine of communion, he would relish her flavour as though it were the nectar of the very gods themselves.

But not tonight.

Tonight, he would touch her everywhere until she begged for release, but he wouldn’t take her.  As desperately as he wanted to push his length into her, to watch the sweet pink skin of her cunt take him- he couldn’t do it. 

He wanted to give her everything. He wanted to give her nothing at all.

After the day spent with Elain and the frustration he felt left waiting for Ayla to arrive, he couldn’t promise himself that he wouldn’t be too rough, driving his cock into the soft, yielding tissue of her slick folds with such intensity that he’d hurt her. She wasn’t ready for that. 

Not yet. 

Letting his hands wander with his thoughts, he twisted her nipples between his fingers while the other hand traced along the sensitive skin of her inner thighs. He shifted his hand, cupping her mound and feeling the moisture of her body coating his fingers. She bucked her hips against his palm, searching out the pleasure he wasn’t yet ready to give.

“Oh, you needy thing, trying to rush the process, are we? What do you think happens to those who try to bend the rules to their will?”

Ayla whimpered, desperate for release, eager for what would come next.

Lucien withdrew his hand and she muffled a sigh, trying so hard to behave for him. 

“Stay still for me and I’ll give you what you want, mon mystere.”

Her legs trembled, her breath laboured as she stayed in position for him, one hand braced on the delicious padding of her hip. He softly dipped a finger between her folds and dragged it upward, gently teasing the tissue surrounding her clit without touching it at all.

“So wet, so obedient.” Lucien’s voice was thick as treacle and just as dark, still holding himself back as he toyed with her, all his focus on the sensation of his lone finger tracing tighter and tighter circles toward the nub of her pleasure. “Now, that’s a good girl.”

At once, she broke beneath him, grinding her hips against his hand, her ass pressing against the hard, weeping length of him, still imprisoned within the cloth of his trousers.

Lucien withdrew his hand again, bracing it on her other hip and backing his body away from hers.

But oh, how he wanted to fuck her, to rip the buttons from his enclosure and sheath himself so deep he could forget the world and his place on it.

Instead, he drew back and slapped the round globe of her ass, once and then swiftly again, unable to stop himself.

Lucien felt more than heard her gasp, her entire body going stiff, her back arching and then releasing into a sigh, her body pliant once more.

Gods, she was responsive.

Venturing back to her hot little cunt, Lucien groaned when he realized she was wetter than before, his hand now coated in her dew, her body quivering beneath his hands. Slipping a digit into her entrance, he nudged the rigid column of his cock against her near-perfect ass, willing himself not to wonder what Elain would look like bared to him like this. Would she be so compliant, so tenacious?

Elain had a strength of conviction, a thinly veiled passion that lit her eyes from within. She was known for her sweet, demure nature but he had seen a fire in her. Lucien suspected there was a hot-blooded nature she kept buried deep within herself, and like the very roots of a tree, he couldn’t help but imagine it fortified her and made her much more strong and unyielding than others gave her credit for. What would it be like to know her passion, her desire? To be held in her hands and nurtured like a seedling?

He chastised himself for even having the thought, for thinking of her at all. And yet she was a part of him, as immovable and embedded as his very bones.

Mate . The word was so loaded, so dangerous. It was a bond he revered and resented. And how could he not? 

He couldn’t understand the confounding flurry of emotions that plagued him, couldn’t control them. So he sought to control what he could, and tonight it was her. The voracity of her moans, the desperation of her whimpers, the frequency of her release. He would cast all else aside and focus on that, only that.

Shaking himself free from the distraction of his thoughts, Lucien took his hand from Ayla and–unable to stop himself–he licked her juices from his fingers, a rumble escaping unbidden from his throat.

“Mother above, you’re like an over-ripened cherry, fresh from the tree.”

Returning his hand to her hip, he spread her cheeks wide and his cock twitched, growing harder even still, at the sight of her pretty pucker.

“Someday, I’ll fuck you here,” he ran his thumb over the place that had caught his interest, unfastening his pants with his other hand. The solid length of it sprung free, finally, and he was already wet at the tip, barely able to contain his arousal while mastering hers. Without thinking, he leaned over savouring the taste of her once more before he spat, letting their combined fluids fall on her rear entrance.  Running the tip of his cock over that elicit spot she moaned, her body shuddering at the contact.

Lucien watched, rapt, as the dark head of his cock disappeared between the perfect pale round orbs of her ass before reappearing, slick with the moisture of his saliva and the dew from her dripping cunt. Ayla whimpered as his cock brushed against her rim again, and he dug his fingers into the taut flesh of her hips, grinding harder against her and savouring the quake of her legs beneath her, the soft, wicked sounds of lubric flesh and mounting pleasure.

“You might,” her voice was choked and he longed to wrap his hand around her throat as he toyed with her. Alas, another adventure for another night. 

“But only if I let you.” 

A surge of lust flooded him at her defiance; she was strong yet submissive, taunting and timid in equal measures. He couldn’t have imagined a better lover, one more suited for the layers of need he felt building within him, ready to spill. 

Drawing his hand back again, he slapped his hand against her already swollen lips, right over the place she’d been begging him to touch just moments ago.

“Hush, girl. I’ll decide.”

She cried out, with pleasure or pain he wasn’t sure, but he had a mind it was a little of both. Her body quivering under his hands, he decided it was more the former than the latter.

Deciding he’d put her through enough, Lucien dipped a finger, then two into her tight, wet channel and stroked the pad of his thumb over her center, willing her to finally come.

“Someday, I’ll take you here” he continued, pushing the head of his cock over that secret, hidden place as she came apart in his arms “and I’ll have you completely.”

As soon as Lucien said the words, the world felt as though it had split in two. 

Mine. 

That word belonged to Elain and Elain alone. And yet, he had implied it–almost said it out loud. 

I’ll make you mine.

Here, with Ayla pushed against the wall, all his masks were temporarily discarded, and all his inhibitions were muted. Would it be so bad, just to pretend? Any guilt for the misdemeanour would be his, and his alone. Nobody would ever know, not even Ayla.

He closed his eyes and let himself get lost in the pleasure, the fantasy.

Elain

He spat on her.

He spat on her, and yet she never felt so unleashed, so uninhibited. Had never come apart so spectacularly.

His dominance was startling, at first, but also completely, overwhelmingly arousing.

She felt wanton and wickedly sensual, like a blade to whetstone the heat of his skin had honed her desire to a sharp, cutting edge. It felt decadent and raw, and the honesty of her submission, her fervour was like nothing she’d shared with anyone before. 

All her focus was concentrated on the body she was gifted and her presence within it, any place he touched sparking with his attention.

Her collar bone, her spine, the untouched skin on the inside of her upper arm. Suddenly, her whole body was alight and she was conscious of the inherent sexuality that lay dormant within her, only waiting to unfurl.

Her body was caught in rapture, her head still reeling from release, and yet there was a part of her mind that existed on another plane, still capable of cognisant thought despite the overwhelming sensation coursing under her skin.

In that small part of her mind, she catalogued what she would remember about this night for the rest of her unnaturally stretched, immortal life. 

The lush feeling of velvet wallpaper under her fingernails as they dug into the surface in front of her, soft and plush like loamy moss.

The breath on the back of her neck, sweet with liquor and hot with exertion.

The wet between her thighs, the soft grate of fingertips against the most elicit, most promising parts of her body.

The rumble of his voice, coaxing pleasure from her in great, crashing waves.

And behind everything else, there was still the vision of Lucien, bundled against the cold and offering her a smile. Why couldn’t she let it go? Kiran filled her almost completely, his fingers plunging deep into soft tissue that was liquid with release and the rising crescendo of more. 

And yet.

Despite the looming idea of him , the thoughts of him locked into her mind that she couldn’t push away somehow–in the guise of another–she felt more whole than she ever had. Certainly in her fae body she had longed for a sense of completion, of satisfaction, but even as a human she now realized something had been missing from her life. It was the feeling of being seen and understood. Of feeling truly loved. 

She knew, though, that it was a mirage and the reality of it tore her asunder even as it stitched her together. The deception was too great. The loss, too heavy.

Instead, she would take what she could here and now.

Moving one hand from where Kiran had pinned it against the wall, she reached between her legs, stroking his thighs, palming the tight weight of his sac. He groaned, and she felt the friction of his cock against her forbidden place as he thrust his fingers into her with vigour, grinding his thumb against her clit until she cried out in yet another moment of full-bodied bliss.

She was barely aware of her place in space and time, floating weightless and awash in golden light, only grounded by the feeling of Kiran seizing behind her and then a rush of warm fluid coating her skin.

Still catching her breath and working up the nerve to face him after such an… explosive encounter, Elain stood trembling against the wall as he stepped away, mourning the loss of his heat, his touch.

He stepped back toward her only a moment later, wiping down her skin with a warm wet cloth before discarding it and tracing her skin with the light brush of his fingertips, as if committing to memory how he’d painted her back, her ass with his spend.

She turned and looked at him, her glance falling to the thick, half engorged length of him, nestled beneath a thatch of soft dark curls. It seemed to thicken beneath her gaze and transfixed, she looked up, meeting his eyes.

“I–I’m sorry,” he stuttered, and beneath the swagger of his veneer, she saw a wash of uncertainty, of guilt.

“I thought you wouldn’t come tonight and I needed to see you. To touch you.” The tenderness in his voice was unnerving and wholly unexpected.

She couldn’t think why he should be sorry. For inciting her desire? For smoothing over her rough edges? She had sensed during their previous encounter that as generous and passionate as he was, he had been holding something back. She couldn’t feign to know what it could be or the reasons for it, couldn’t imagine what knowing the full extent of his appetites would be like. But nonetheless, she needed him to know that it had been enough. He was enough.

Leaning forward, she wrapped her arms around his torso and held him close, breathing in his scent of petrichor and the musk of their joined bodies. The steady thump of his heartbeat made her think of Lucien before she pushed him from her mind, shifting her head a little more to the right.

“Thank you.” She whispered, not daring to meet his eyes.

He shuddered in her arms and Elain held him like that for a long minute, until the tremors of his body died and he wrapped his arms around her shoulders, encasing her in his warmth. “Thank you.” She said once more, and he pulled away from her.