Bloom (If I Don't Know Who I Am, How Do I Know I'm Not a God?)

by Sarah

  Nimble arms wrap around my neck as we turn at the same time, watching a flurry of flamingos skim the surface of the sea. Half take off into the plum-colored sky and half settle back down, while two blacker than black shadows fly even higher, crossing the two peach moons while two timorous hands slide and clasp their way into my hair.

  It feels so good my lids almost close, but softer than anything shivers hard. Emanating a scent as warm and irresistible as my next breath, she looks at me with eyes wider than the night itself, and I don’t know why she’s so uneasy all of a sudden. What’s making her pulse panic or how her little trembles can feel like such inviolable invitation.

  But they do.

  And the closer I gather her, she only gives me more.

  “Hey,” she urges, gently at first, then a little firmer as she shifts in my arms. “Hey-” nudging my shoulders with all the force of a dandelion puff. “Maybe we should head back?”

  I tilt my head, confused as she tries to make space between us.

  “To Inner City … Magnus … Remember? Magnus … We left him with those halfharts … He’s probably worried …”

  Memories surface and sink, sink and fade as I search her eyes for something it feels like I already know.

  “Why?”

  Baby unforgettable nips her bottom lip, searching my eyes in turn.

  “I just mean … ” Glancing up, she scans the murky sky and struggles to swallow. She’s still trying to make space, but against her effort, her hips don’t stop or slow.

  “He’s probably wondering where you are and … There’s so much to do there. We could get a drink or … Something … ”

  Opalescent eyelids crease closed, and sigh-soft thighs shake around my waist as she struggles to keep herself from me.

  “It’s just … Aren’t you … ” Her voice is delicate. Seeking. Nervous. “Hungry?”

  The word unfolds like thunder between my lungs as she peeks back up from under cautious lashes, and I slide my hands down her sylph-lithe sides. Finding hips she’s straining to still, I guide her back to me and ease her slowly lower. Showing her where we fit. Where I'm hers without end. Where she can ride her forbidden little heart out when she's ready.

  Keening as her cadence catches up, taking her over and making up for time lost, baby blushing like a bride whips her wings as I fasten her in one arm. Then my other. Holding her in place as I take off my jacket.

  She isn’t wrong.

  I’m starving, and it isn’t just my stomach. There’s this low, rolling growl creeping through my veins, insisting something is missing.

  Something I need.

  “Hey - If we’re doing this - Hey, if we - ” Rocking right where she needs to, so intently it’s taking her breath away and coming for mine, she trades back and forth between patting my shoulders and clutching onto them. “Brand new - you have to be easy - ”

  Nodding, I let my jacket fall, and the force of Fawn’s nerves lifts her upward, but she doesn’t get far.

  “Easy,” she echoes, pleadingly sweet, running her hands through my hair, cupping my face, keeping our eyes together. I nod again, brushing my nose along her nose. Across her cheek. Down to her chin, showing her that I am.

  I will be.

  I know.

  I remember what Magnus said.

  But it sinks and fades too, barely another echo as I shift to my knees, and lay the one thing I’m not allowed down onto black satin.

  My jacket doesn’t give beneath her meager weight.

  And neither do the flowers beneath it.

  Wanting a better look, I try to lean back, but little illicit clings to me. Softer than sea foam. She grips onto my arms like she doesn’t want any space, anywhere between us now. So I keep my hands on small sides as I pull easily from her grasp. Just barely. Just enough to see skinny green stems, unbent beneath her. They hardly even sway.

  Until barely veiled hips lift, searching, and I tilt my own low enough for her to brush against if she rises high enough.

  As she dips back down, adrift on the taste of contact, the crush of satin and stems beneath her fills my ears.

  “Easy,” she chants. “Please.”

  But I’m not doing anything.

  Wrapped from her dew-kissed hairline to curled-tight toes in a blush so deep it redefines need, Fawn’s the one arching her back and opening up to me in magnetic little waves. It’s borderline torture, sharing only the shadow of my own need while she bruises orchids with hers, but I hold myself up. Easy. Just like she asked. I stay still while she feels what’s between us, and watch her try and try-not to ride it.

  Feather-soft and supplicating, she clenches fistfuls of my tee shirt, and I smile.

  I can’t help it.

  The way she’s moving. The way she can't get enough of my eyes. The reticent hint of worship in her begging - please, god, please … god -

  I feel just like one.

  Tugging white cotton from her hands, I take off my shirt, and bask in soft-spoken fingers, stumbling up and down my sides. Searching for the best place to hold on. Drawing a rumble from somewhere deep and dark in my starving. Somewhere that makes star-filled eyes open wide, and the heart I covet pound so hard, I swear I smell it.

  Pinning fairy tale flowers under my hands, over her shoulders, I loom lower, bringing us chest to chest, and leaving enough space between our hips so baby pink and dying for it still has to lift to feel what she wants. As she wraps her arms around my neck, I trace the curve of her hip to the supple slope of her backside, and love watching her work for it. Pushing herself up. Trying to pull me down by my rib cage All her strength a teasing tickle that makes the growl inside me hum.

  Serrated.

  Bottomless.

  “Easy -” she pleads, damp lashes brushing my cheek as they open and close.

  “I’m not moving.” Tilting my head as I say it, I seek her eyes. They look lost as they dart from mine to look between us. The absence of space there steals all her air, making her middle shiver and dip, while needful little hips remain. Totally devoted. Locked to my own and rocking with unsubtle intent.

  “See?” I whisper, watching her brows furrow and her mouth open a little wider as she watches herself. I drag my lips gently along her cheek. “You be easy.”

  Red-gold waves splash against white flowers as her head falls back. Her wings flutter like crazy, and she spills skittish little cries between staccato-small inhales while soft hands, softer hips and her soft, all-over heartbeat all beg my restraint. Making me feel how warm she is. How sweet she’ll be. How deep she needs me.

  “I can’t,” she sings. “I can’t help it - ”

  A tear slips, wandering wayward down her cheek. I let it slide to the corner of her lips before I take it, and Fawn tips her mouth under mine. Helplessly open, she chases breath after shallow-shaky breath, like all she needs is a real one.

  Full and deep.

  So deep she won’t ever have to take another.

  Brushing my lips over hers, I’m this close to giving it to her when her voice slips between us.

  “I’m blooming.”

  Half in her mouth, half in mine, the words feel dreamy and dire. Urgent like a confession and enchanting as a promise.

  “I never thought it would happen. I didn’t ever want it to, but …”

  She’s talking fast, and I’m drunk on the cusp of her kiss. My lips ache while fervid wings press baby filled with heartbeats unambiguously into my silent chest. My empty stomach. My tense hips. Her pulse purrs for more, and it feels so good I can’t help leaning into it.

  But she’s patting my shoulders again.

  And her hands are getting frantic.

  “Wait wait wait - I’m opening for you, look. Look.”

  Fighting everything intuition demands, I lift up, and fairy hips slip from mine. When I reach to bring them back, baby against the rules lays her hands on my hands, and edges closer. Ruffling the flowers under my jacket. Trailing sheer lace up.

  Up.

&nbs
p; Showing me herself.

  Lush and blushing.

  Bare and brave.

  And she’s right.

  Shifting her without another thought, resting her bottom on my knees, I press gleaming thighs slowly apart until I hear her whimper.

  “It only happens once,” she yearns. Brittle-voiced and pausing between breaths it’s breaking my heart not to slake. Tipping and rolling her hips in my grip. “The first time. So I can bind to you. But I didn't … ”

  Her voice breaks too, a shamelessly lustful sound pouring out as I start to touch between her legs, looking closer where she’s familiar to me in the most human way, but infinitely more delicate. More layered. A single brushstroke pinker than the rest of her skin and tightly laden with countless little petals.

  Barely beginning to unfold.

  Blooming, just like a flower.

  Adrift, she breathes out, awe and ecstasy floating around me, “I didn’t know it would feel like this.”

  I press pearlescent thighs gently back, high and wide, until her knees meet my jacket.

  “You promised yourself to me.” Low-toned and neck-deep in longing, I slide my hands down her legs again and use both hands to part where she’s pinkest. Making her sing more base little notes. Carefully opening folds that slip from lush to soaked the more I touch her, until she’s arching without reservation. Panting hard. Giving me the quickest glimpse of her smallest anomaly.

  But the more petals I unfold, the more protective they become.

  “Baby,” I whisper, opening her soft little bloom as deep as I can. Holding her open just for a second. Just enough to see the strangest and most endearing part of her.

  Two little clits.

  Side by side.

  Shaped like the tiniest heart.

  When I try to touch her there, silk-slick petals slip and close around my fingers while the rest of Fawn comes desperately undone. She reaches out, hands grasping orchid stems and her legs shake as she strains to open for me. She circles her hips while her lips part too wide to ask for anything but more, and my whole body fills with insistent heat. My grin grows, and my curiosity hardens into bone-deep instinct.

  Leaning up instead of down, I roll my shoulders through a rush of satisfaction as the fae I’m not allowed to touch, coos and trembles as I softly stroke her.

  Slow and coaxing.

  Helping her open.

  Helping her bloom.

  Curling my middle fingers between deeply wet petals, I feel shaky legs start to close around my waist, drawing me in. Rose-pink tits beg for attention under her see-through slip, and she makes the prettiest sound when I palm one through the fabric. Dragging sheer lace down to her belly button, I expose her to me and the moons. Like an offering, she bares herself up as I cup small curves and circle sorely hard tips, and I listen as a flood of heartbeats swells under her skin.

  Until it drowns out all her keening and fluttering.

  And the growl between my lungs.

  The wind and waves.

  Her pulse is suddenly the only thing I can hear. Palpable and dizzying, and then red.

  Everything goes red.

  Fawn.

  The beach.

  Me.

  It takes a few hard blinks to turn her and the flowers pink and white again. Shaking off the dizziness, I lift my left hand from petals too soft, too many to open this way, and reach for my belt. But only get it through one loop before baby beloved whips her wings like chantilly lightning.

  It happens so fast I reel. My focus blurs. The ground unsteadies, and all I can think is if I hadn’t caught her, if I didn’t have a hold of her now, she’d have flown right up and disappeared.

  Again.

  “Where are you going?” Over the tender torrent of heartbeats, I barely hear my own voice, and only sips of hers come through.

  “Slow down …Brand new, you have to slow down … You have to … ”

  I do. I gather her with careful slowness, watching eyes like the cosmos search the night above us. She says something, but the flow of her pulse swallows it while I wait. Patiently. Letting her breathing ease and her anxious eyes settle back onto my own before I reach for my belt again. She helps, unbuttoning my jeans with her left hand, but then she’s patting my shoulder again with her right again.

  “We have to be careful,” she warns, feverish and far-away sounding. “I don't know how to do this, but if you hurt me -”

  I stop still, but the whole world keeps moving. Everything clinks and sways and throbs. So I make Fawn stop too, taking her fingers from halfway down my fly, but her hips persist. Unrelenting. Even when I press her up. Firmly against me. Needing her to be still just for a second. She bites her lip and can’t stop riding, and no matter how hard I blink, red keeps seeping into my vision.

  Pressing my forehead to hers, I search tear-filled constellations. “Why would you say that?”

  We’re so close now.

  I can smell jasmine and milk in her skin, and Eden in her mouth.

  Laying her hands on my cheeks, this total tease meets my confusion with a compassionate gaze. Wistful. Wishing.

  “You really don’t know, do you?”

  Fear and wonder fill her whisper. I search her eyes ever harder and she stays open for me. Staring right back. Searching mine too. Seeking something until it feels like I’m the one hiding.

  “What you are?”

  Her voice barely registers as a couple shadows fly over, startling her into my chest, and I feel myself go sweet on her trembling. Her lightness. The soft heat she can’t help. The immaculate scent I’d take on hell for just one hit of - the one she’s wrapped entirely in now, the one I know now is her fear - the one coming from her pulse, pounding fervently through her fragile frame.

  She’s all pulse now.

  All heartbeat.

  More heart than she knows what to do with.

  Turning her carefully over, I kiss from her neck to her shoulders. I kiss my way between her wings and down her back. I kiss two little dimples while I slide her slip away, and I place her hands on my jacket. Her knees in the flowers. She bends easily as I cover her entire body with my own, hiding her from everything but me, and she folds right up. Fitting herself so perfectly against my frame. The emptiness in my chest aches toward the overflow in hers as she nestles into place, and when she whimpers her need, the hunger between my lungs grows from a growl to a roar. So deep, I can’t tell if it’s inside me anymore or rolling through the sky.

  Closing my eyes, I swim in soft, warm red.

  When I open them again, Fawn’s arching for me while I breathe in from the bend of her neck. When I breathe out, she spreads her knees so wide they dig into the sand and she pushes her hips up. Leading me closer. Turning closer into a verb. Rhythm into gravity. The heaven of skin on skin into no longer enough.

  Lost in the sound and scent of her blooming, I find my place in her rising and falling. As we move together, intuitive possessiveness courses through me, and I fit strong fingers tightly between her fragile ones. I draw this soft little throb of pure warmth up to my mouth and lick between her quivering wings. Slow. Heavy. Making her heartbeats swell and soar toward my lips.