No lightning strikes. No mist rises. The coldness of his palm thrills through my entire body, and I am certain for a second that I am about to drown in his eyes, but that is all.
It’s quite disappointing, I must confess. I don’t know what I had imagined, but this wasn’t it. And then afterward his stony touch drops away from me and he just waits, as though I told him a moment earlier that a wagon would be along soon and we should both catch it, if we hoped to be home before morning.
It’s a dull, mealy, mundane sort of moment, made more so by my own littleness. A greater woman would know, I’m sure, what should be done here. She would reach up and offer the price he asked for, rather than just standing here in a cloak too big for her, eyes downcast, everything in her saying Go on, go on.
Only then I do go on, and it’s all wrong. I know it is before he’s even said a word, because as I reach up on tiptoe toward his strange but beautiful face, he shies away from me. Not enough to be rude—oh dear me no, a godly creature such as him could never be rude—but certainly enough to make it clear.
He does not really want me to kiss him. It’s some other kiss he meant, or maybe…yes maybe it’s the kiss of another person he’s after! These devils are all known for making tricky bargains, and what would be trickier than asking me for a kiss from someone else?
I think about my still-lovely mother. My other sister, Luvia. In fact, I’m still thinking of both of them when he finally explains, in a voice that stills my blood.
“The kiss I have asked for is not one you can give with your mouth.”
Or maybe it’s the words that still my blood. The ones that tell me I have made a grievous error. Of course the book told me that he might change one word for another and mix me all around. But it seems that I did not listen—or at least, I did not listen half so well as I thought I had.
I thought I was clever. But I have to admit I cannot think of a kiss I could give without my mouth. I’m not clever enough for that. And even if I were, I’m not sure I’d ever want to know. A kiss without mouths is undoubtedly something so rude, so illicit, that no mortal woman should ever be allowed to think about it.
Though somehow it still comes as a surprise, when he says:
“Lift your dress, Ren.”
I consider many things, then. How he knows my name, how I’m supposed to do what he has asked, how a mouthless kiss can happen with me bare below the waist. But none of them help me in the task I now have to perform, not even the slightest bit.
My hands are shaking as I stoop down to grasp the hem of my dress, but I do it anyway. Because I have to—I swore. I shook hands with the Devil, and even if the Devil meant something else entirely by kiss, you can’t go back on it.
He might poison my sisters if I go back on it. He might poison me. He might look on me with his stone-eyes now bright with the light of a thousand years and put his hands on my face as though I am suddenly something precious, and say:
“Do not fear me.”
And I wish I didn’t, I do. But the funny thing is, I don’t think this would be half so thrilling if I were not so afraid. I can smell him now like the forest and like something burning, and when he drops to his knees my mind swirls with all the things he might possibly do.
Because of course he said kiss. And he said that I might not do it with my mouth. But he didn’t say anything about his own, or all the possible places he could press his lips, or how tremulous and on the cusp of something wicked I would feel, the moment I felt him there.
I try not to make a sound. The road stretching away on either side of us is silent, but in this moment of bared legs and strange hands on my thighs, it feels as though a million eyes are watching us from the forests.
And it grows steadily stronger when he leans forward quite suddenly and gives me that kiss he promised.
Of course, I have no idea why I use the word promise. He didn’t promise me. I promised him. And yet it swims up inside me anyway, unbidden, as he lays his mouth on the warm, wet split of my sex.
Maybe because it’s like a gift. It shouldn’t feel that way, I know. I should be crying out over my womanly virtue, but instead I cry out in a different way altogether. He’s found some secret heart between my legs, some well of pleasure, and the water from said well flows up and up inside me until it comes right out of my mouth.
And then my whole body sways and I simply have to touch him, I have to—if only to hold on. Though of course once I’ve done it—once I’ve put my hands in his hair to steady myself—I can’t help but marvel over the feel of him.
The tangles are like the roots of a plant, I think. Like grass, so cool and slippery between my fingers. And when he kisses me more deeply—more deeply than he should be doing, oh far more deeply—I dare to do more.
I feel out the little rough humps of his horns, to remind myself of what he is.
And then he kisses me harder, wetter, oh god he uses his tongue, and I don’t pull away. Lord forgive me, I don’t. I know I should, I know I should think of the word maiden and not make a slattern of myself, but I can’t help it.
He spoke so ill of this, when he called it a kiss. I’ve seen kisses—they are not like thing he is giving me. I’m swooning—though I keep my footing—and when his narrow devil’s tongue slides through my slit I feel every fold and whorl he uncovers. I feel all the things I didn’t even know existed, including a sweet little swollen spot right where everything begins or ends.
I’ve never known this. I didn’t understand that people could do things like this—though likely as not people don’t. It’s just him, it’s just creatures like him, and now I’m going to hell right along with all of them because he’s licking that little stiff point and oh it feels so good.
How could I not have known that such pleasure existed in the world? It swells and gushes and bursts through me, so all-consuming that it’s hard to imagine a time when it didn’t exist. Every lick sends another wave through my body, until I’m sobbing, I’m sobbing.
I hardly care that anyone could hear me. I don’t even care that it’s this beast between my legs, making sounds so hungry-seeming and abandoned that I couldn’t call it anything but obscene.
He is obscene, and I am damned, I am damned. Because when he leaves one last wet kiss on the swollen bud at the top of my slit, I give in to him. I do. I give in to the kiss he fooled me into having.
I don’t mean to go back again, I swear I don’t. But Eladria’s prince comes and then Luvia cries all day and all night and I have to, I simply have to. It’s not fair to do it for one sister and not the other, after all.
And yet he still looks surprised to see me. I’m not sure how his great, still face even manages to show surprise, but it does, and then I am not sure how to ask. Clearly he thinks I should be feeling all the things I know a proper lady must. I should be outraged and horrified, ashamed of the wicked kiss he gave me.
But instead I am here to trade another part of myself for my sister’s happiness.
“Come again, have you, maiden?”
I try to think if this is the first or second time he’s deviated from the words written down in the book, but I don’t know. I’m not sure it matters anymore. I’m not sure I really have to explain—stating my request flatly and without much embellishment seems to be enough.
“I have come for my other sister.”
“The same need?”
I nod, even though I know there are two possible interpretations of the word need.
“Then you were happy with the gift I gave you?”
Again I think of other interpretations, dual meanings. We could be talking about anything now, but I carry on with it anyway.
“Very happy. More than happy.”
“And if I ask a similar price of you this time you will give it to me freely?”
He’s offering me the chance to take my leave now, I know. To understand completely what our transaction may be and refuse it before it goes too far.
But I only say:
&n
bsp; “Always.”
And I continue to mean it when he tells me what he wants.
“A touch is my price,” he says, and though he could be suggesting almost anything I clasp his hand. Only this time the cold of his palm goes straight to my core, to that place where all feeling bloomed the night before.
He is not natural, I think. He is almost unreal.
But those things have ceased to matter, I know. Instead there is just the expectation of his hands on me, of his fingers brushing over my swollen mound and between those lips he kissed last night.
So it’s almost a disappointment when he doesn’t do it. I feel it burning at the back of my throat and behind my eyes, and it lasts all the way up until he takes my hands in his and lays them on his broad, hard chest.
And then I don’t know what it is I feel. It’s something like apprehension, but heavier and yes, sweeter, too. He has tricked me again, though I hardly know how. I understood the way he works, I saw his trickery clearly, and yet here I am with my fear in my throat, waiting to find out exactly what he meant this time.
He is the Father of Lies, I think, but oh I live for every one of them.
“Tell me,” I say to him, and he does. He tells me with his hands over mine, pushing me to explore the strange landscape of his body. I’ve never touched a man like this before, and the very fact of that is enough to set my every nerve on edge.
But then I remember he is not a man at all, and that edge gets sharper, steeper, more impossible to traverse. I feel how marble-like his skin is, and how alive and strange the hair grows beneath my fingertips, and I can hardly bear to carry on.
I can hardly bear not to. He’s so firm—why did no one ever tell me how firm a man could be? And when I slide my hands down over his taut belly he makes a sound, so soft and whispering I’m sure I’ve imagined it.
How can a creature such as him react like that to a woman like me? I am so small and slight in front of him—so small and slight that for a moment I am sure I’m about to blow away. My body sways beneath a different kind of pleasure as I curl my fingers through the fur between his legs, and another touch will send me over, I’m sure.
But he keeps me steady. He clasps my shoulders in his long-fingered hands, and murmurs to me to go on, go on, do not be afraid. And I confess that I am not, anymore, not in the slightest, though the anticipation remains.
I search through the fur looking for I know not what until I feel it and then I understand so clearly. I see the men of my village capering naked in the river, something soft and sleeping between their legs. But the thing my beast-god has is not like the thing they have; it is long and thick and stiff, as stiff as the little bud I have between my own legs.
And when I touch it, when I run my fingers over the shaft of it, he shivers the way I do. He shivers and whispers my name in a way I never thought I’d hear it—like the sound of the forest sighing or a maiden swooning.
So I touch him again, and again, stroking over the only place on his body that feels fever hot and thick with life. Following instinct rather than knowledge, of which I have none.
Though if he understands this, he doesn’t show it. He bucks into my twisting grip instead, body suddenly strung taut, eyes as bright as they were once dark. He’s enjoying it, I think, and the thought spurs me to greater daring. I cover the tip with my palm, just to feel the slickness growing there. And when he moans—so deep and long it’s like hearing the world turn beneath my feet—I fall to a rough kind of tug. Back and forth along the length of him, everything getting more slippery by the moment.
Things are reaching some sort of crescendo, I know. I’m not quite sure what I expect—something like the feeling that burst through me, perhaps—but the reality is so much more thrilling. So much earthier, somehow.
His back arches and that forest scent of him grows stronger, and richer. I lean into it—I can’t help it—and the moment I do I feel his shaft leap in my hand. A great groan moves through him, more powerful than the one that came before and certainly enough to turn the world this time, and then he clasps me tight.
He holds me to him, as though I am his lover.
I think it’s this that moves me more than any other thing. The feel of him in my hands—so hot and pulsing—is good, and it forms an ache in me like no other. And I admit I enjoy the spill of his seed over my fingers, so slippery and illicit.
But his arms around me…that is what I remember, later on. I think of my own girlish thoughts about love and not living without it, and I remember him holding me the way no man ever will, while pleasure made him weak in my arms.
And then I know. I know what I must do.
He does not say, “Come again, have you, maiden?” when I return. He doesn’t even use the word maiden—though I suppose that is fair enough. I am no longer pure, after all, and even if I was I’m not sure I’d hold to the title any longer.
There is something burning in me, something I did not see on my sisters’ faces when their princes came. I see it in my own mirror, though, and I have learned to recognize it inside myself.
It comes most strongly when he says just the one word:
“Ren.”
His face is different now, I see. There is something less than impassive about his expressions, and his eyes are no longer stones. They shine out brightly through the darkness, full both of a sort of hope and a sort of despair.
I understand why. I feel the same every day of my life—like I dream of beautiful things to come and yet know they never can. Or at least, they never can if I don’t dare everything. If I don’t say yes, when he asks me:
“Have you come to ask another wish of me? Any one person may only have three—you know this, don’t you, sweet Ren?”
I do, I do. The book said as much, and so I spent the night thinking and thinking of what I would ask for myself if I had the chance. I know what it is, now, but I also know I must be wily. I must be as tricky as he was, if I want my heart’s desire.
“Then strike quickly, if you would. I hear it in you, the whispering desire for that which your sisters now have. Did they seem gay, as they disappeared into the night with their husbands? Did they seem fair and fine?”
“Is this where you tell me that I must be careful what I wish for?” I ask, because I can see the warning in him. I can see what he is thinking—of false-faced princes, who sing of love and then prove themselves dastardly.
“I am not such a beast that I cannot tell you truly, Ren. The world of men is harsh and cold, though it may seem otherwise on the surface.”
“And the world you come from? The world of the forest?”
“Is red in tooth and claw.”
My heart beats wildly when he says it, but I cannot turn back now. I have decided, and it is time to make him my offer.
“I have a wish, He Who Has No Name. But much as you have kept the price for my requests from me, I ask one thing of you now. I wish to keep my heart’s desire from you until it has been paid for.”
His eyes glitter, glitter. I can see him considering, but of course things might go either way.
“And if I grant you this consideration—as vast and impossible as it may be—what do you think would be payment enough?”
I think of many things, then. My collection of gleaming beads, my dress of green velvet, my books. Though of course I know that none of them will ever be enough for what I ask.
“My maidenhood,” I say, and he takes a step forward as though he cannot help himself, just as I knew he would. Few offer such payment, and yet nothing will mean as much to him as this does.
Nothing is as precious to one such as he, because one such as he dwells in darkness—without love, without the touch of another, without the thing that burns inside me, even now.
“You would give me this gift?”
“I would,” I say, and he clasps my hand before I can take it back.
This time, he kisses me. He kisses my mouth, while I think about his warning over and over again—that people aren
’t always as they appear. That things may seem fine and fair, but really, underneath…
Oh underneath there is this, as sweet as summer rain. His mouth tastes like elderflowers, and when he spreads me out in the grass by the forest’s edge I don’t resist. I don’t have to be bought, or bargained for, or asked of. I only want to feel my beast-god between my legs, as rampant as I always knew he would be.
Of course there’s pain. Everyone speaks of the pain, and I knew it would come. And yet when he lays his hands on me—warm now, instead of cold—and cups my bare breasts against his rough palms, and kisses me again, again, the sharp sting melts away.
I think only of the root of him, working slow and steady in that place between my legs. Everything there feels so sensitive and so slick, and though he fills me to the point of bursting I find I like it.
I wrap my legs tight around his great furred body. I kiss him in all the places I’ve longed to, since the moment I laid eyes on him. And when he says my name I say his back—I say the one I know he secretly has, below all the myths and the legends and everything hidden.
He looks down on me, then, face as open as I’ve ever seen it. It sends a spike of pleasure through me, though I do not let it show. Not yet. I want him to rut against me, first, I want him to pant and throw back his head. And after a long, long moment he does.
He moans like a wild animal, teeth bared, back arched. And I feel him swell inside me, so good and so strong. It’s as though I’m being split apart and put back together at the same time, and through it all great shivers of pleasure run through me—far sweeter than anything my sisters have ever claimed, when they speak to me of lying with a man.
But then, he is not a man. He is not. He is my beast-god, my Father of Lies, everything about him so different to those sunny-faced princes.… And yet it is better this way, I think. Better to hear it in his name and see it in his face and know all perils that you might face instead of coming to them later.
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