by Sam Hall
“He’ll come back to himself. Marlow did. It can be a hard thing, particularly for a man,” Aen said, her voice a deep velvety purr. “They are not allowed to experience vulnerability in the way we do, though I see your first mate has adjusted remarkably well.” She brushed a thumb over Marlow’s cheekbone, causing him to go completely still. “Let go of the theatrics, little herald. It is but a skill, not the sum of your worth. Join them, because I can’t yet. They need you.”
She disappeared in a flourish of black fabric, just leaving a wide-eyed Marlow in her wake.
“Do you?” he asked.
“Always,” I said, and opened the arm not around Johnno for him.
This was a pleasure I’d never expected to experience—the feel of two incredibly hot guys lying pressed up against either side of me. A heavy kind of quiet had settled over the bus, now that the crowds had gone home and court was being set up. We didn’t have long, but I made it last forever, just focussing on each breath as they came and went. A million thoughts clamoured for attention—about what this meant, who I was, where things were going with each man, and what did I want from them. But they got pushed to one side for now, something I was getting damn good at.
I knew when we were being summoned by the uncomfortable prickle on the back of my neck. Johnno groaned in response to it, shifting on the bed, then sitting up. He fished out his phone, clicking on the screen to accept a call.
“We’re on our fucking way. Yes, I know. I… Fuck, you have no idea what you’re asking. You don’t know. No, you think you do, but you have no idea. Fuck you, Liam, fuck you.”
He threw it down on the bed, raking his hands through his hair, then stiffened when I stopped them. His eyes flicked from my eyes to my mouth and back again, so I kissed him, something that had him softening again. His breath came in a sharp intake, his arms going around me, holding me hard against him as our mouths opened, tasting each other, keeping that for later.
Because he was going to have to leave me to my fate.
“Johnno—” Billy said, appearing in the doorway.
“Yes, I fucking know,” he snapped at his bandmate, but when he turned back to me, he was all soft and golden. “Court’s insane. I…I don’t know how to prepare you for it. Just remember, no one can make you do anything you don’t want to within Hartley. Stick close to Billy. Don’t let anyone separate you from him, because no one is getting past him. Keep Marlow by your side. He’s not ours and…”
“And I’m not strong like you. I usually avoid court for that reason. Sick of people fucking manhandling me,” Marlow finished for him, the last bit little more than a mutter.
“But you’re mine,” I said, liking the flare in those green eyes. “I don’t want other people touching those that’re mine.”
That seemed to please Marlow, if his slow smile was anything to go by, but Billy let out a hiss of frustration.
“Kira—” Johnno began to say as he pulled on a t-shirt.
“It’s OK. Go see what brother dear wants. I’ll school our newest member on court politics,” Billy said with a wave.
Johnno moved towards me automatically, like a husband kissing his wife on the way to work. I felt my cheeks flush at that, causing him to pause. I grabbed and drew him in, then placed a slow, chaste kiss on his lips, loving that he melted into me, though he had to pull away quickly enough. The cramp at the base of my skull obviously affected him too, if his scratching hand was any indication.
“You’ll be here tonight?” he asked as he went to the door.
“We will be,” I answered, shooting a look at Marlow, who grabbed my hand and rubbed his thumb over the knuckles.
“Come on,” Billy said with thinly veiled irritation. “I left Jakey chained up outside, and he’s just as likely to start pissing on the wheels when bored.”
“What?”
“C’mon!”
“Hey Kira.”
Jake had indeed been tied to the front of the bus, though admittedly on a fairly long leather lead with a collar fastened around his muscular throat. He grinned impishly when I took that in, and what little else he had on. It was bloody cool out, you could see it in the way his pale nipples had pulled up into tight buds, because all he wore was his collar and a kilt.
“You like?” he said, swaying his hips. “Ease of access.” He flipped up the hem of his kilt, showing us a tantalising glimpse of a whole lot of muscular flesh. His cock was hard, and his grin was wide. He should have appeared like those distant god-like creatures he and the band resembled when I shot them before Jen’s party, but he didn’t. Had I seen it before or had it taken my own transformation to make me see it? I did something I never would have done before this—I moved away from the guys and ran my hand over that lean chest. There wasn’t a scrap of fat on him, his skin taut and unforgiving under my fingertips. But he wasn’t. There was a faint tremor that passed through his body as I caressed him, his eyes going wide and his smile unfocussed for a second as the mask appeared to drop.
“You look amazing, Jake. I’ll be proud to call you my proxy.”
I didn’t even know what that meant, but the words seemed to be the right ones. His hand slapped over mine, stopping it from going any further, holding it over his heart.
“Don’t,” he said, his voice wavering a little. “I’m already so fucking hard. I want to last for you, but right now, I’m only just hanging on.” He looked away, shaking his head, then laughing. “Maybe I should duck behind the bus and stroke one off to take the edge off.”
“That won’t be needed.”
We both turned to see Billy had taken ahold of the end of the lead, coiling it in his hands before handing it to me.
“This signifies that he is yours, that he will take your role in any tableaus people wish to engage you in. People will be very curious about you. You radiate power. We will be your buffers.” Billy swallowed, that still quietness he carried with him disturbed for a second. “I drained all the power you thrust into me so I can take anything you need drained from you tonight, but you’ll have access to the reservoir now that you’re Hartley. What the drainers did, those stones? You can offer them to people who want your favour and make alliances. Yours are incredibly high quality. You’ll be able to get quite a lot if you choose to trade them.” He turned and glanced at Marlow. “To keep him safe, you’d be better to collar him too. It signifies to everyone else that he is off limits.”
“He is off limits,” I growled, instantly feeling a hot flare of possessiveness, then I looked at the man himself. “Shit, I didn’t ask—”
“You don’t need to,” he replied, stepping up and putting his arm around me. “I want you to claim me, but collaring… I belong to Rutherglen. Making a statement like that without the Rutherglen’s permission would not be wise.”
“You’ll pay for it,” Billy said when I frowned. “You’ll pay for making a connection with one of his as it is, but you’ll pay more if you act like there’s a bond between you. You could put him with Liam, pass him off as his pet to keep him safe for the night.”
“No.”
“Yes,” Marlow said. “It’d be the smart thing to do.”
“Make a show of bartering with Liam for him. Makes him look strong, and it puts the relationship in a context that people can understand. You’ve still got the stink of humanity on you. There’s a gentleness…” Billy shook his head, shuffling uncomfortably. “We grew up in a fae court, just like your Jen, but we were on the opposite end of the social spectrum. Everything’s about power with fae. Who has it, who doesn’t, and what you can do to get more. We’re predators, Kira.”
I watched Billy make that shift again, whatever it was that lurked inside him swimming up to the surface. He was a gorgeous looking guy, all sharp cheekbones and full lips and beautiful dark brown eyes, and then there was this. His irises darkened, the surface growing harder, shinier, as if to repel any answering gaze. And with that, I looked into the eyes of an animal, one with fucking sharp teeth.
&
nbsp; “Even predators care for their pack mates, their young. You can blame behaviour on a lot of things, but what we are isn’t one of them.” I turned to Marlow. “Are you OK with this?”
Say no, say no, please say no, I thought furiously. I found that I could do a fair imitation of a confident woman most of the time—the transition had brought with it some drastic psychological changes along with physical ones—but right now, I was scared. He was the only one in this Machiavellian wet dream that didn’t seem caught up in this bloody network of alliances.
“It’ll be for the best,” Marlow said, moving in and smoothing my hair back from my face, my hands going around his wrists, holding him in place. Those eyes saw it all, what I couldn’t say, and they softened exponentially. “I’ll be here with you tonight. I won’t let anything get between us, I promise.”
My fingers clawed at him as he pulled away, but pull away he did. Fuck this, fuck this whole system that keeps dragging Marlow away from me. I watched him run across the car park towards the steps leading into the rear of the stage.
“Hey.” Jake chucked me under the chin, then smiled down at my sullen face. “Come with me and you’ll be in a world of pure imagination…” He sang the song from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, grabbing my hands and whirling me around. “No? How about something a bit more punk rock?” Then he started in on The Stooge’s “I Wanna Be Your Dog,” gyrating wildly on the end of the leash.
“He’s fucking mad, isn’t he?” I asked Billy.
“Jake is a creature made for court. He wants everything. Throws himself head first into every damn scenario he can and loves every minute of it. He’s a perfect proxy. He’ll be hard and gasping, no matter what he’s asked to do. But you need to be careful with him. He’s always on the leash at court, for his own safety. He doesn’t know how to say no. You need to do it for him.”
My eyes jerked up to meet Billy’s, warm and brown now. There was even a little sympathy there.
“Don’t worry so much,” he said, slinging an arm around my shoulders and moving us forward. “I’m your babysitter, you’re his. Got it?”
“And who looks after you?” I said as we walked into the night.
His laugh was a twin of the sound the Devil’s Rejects had used to open their show, something alien or feline about it.
“No one looks after me, butterfly. No one can.”
8
Welcome to Wonderland, bitches.
I’m not sure what I expected to see when I walked back into the auditorium, but it wasn’t this. The seating had been removed, packed away somewhere, as were all the instruments and gear, though I couldn’t work out how that had happened so quickly.
Nor this. The space had been transformed from a concert hall to a faerie court. Black walls and wooden floors had given way to long roping vines and twisted columns of old growth trees with bright purple morning glories twining around their lengths. Billy snorted as I stopped and stared, but fuck, the air was filled with tiny golden motes of light, autumn leaves slowly spiralling down to the ground.
“Is this…?”
I jerked my fingers back once I touched the trunk of one tree. It felt both reassuringly alive and throbbing with an alien energy that tugged at me.
“They are power manifested,” Billy said, kneeling down and placing a hand over a patch of nodding bluebells. It was a difficult process to describe, but it was as if he sucked the flowers into his palm, but instead of mashed up vegetation, there was a tiny glittering stone. He gave it to me, his touch warm and then gone again.
“Mmm…” Jake said, straining at the end of his leash, drawing my attention.
A few steps in, and I could see all the people here, milling between the trees in small groups, clustered up together on podiums or inside bowers. Some drank from long flutes or rustic bottles, a few chased each other through the maze of trees, giggling as they passed. Others took sips from great pitcher plants growing on the side of the occasional tree, then danced away, with the kind of loose-limbed careless movement only drugs could provide. Jake drew us deeper and deeper in, and I felt the weight of people’s eyes on us as we passed. Then he stopped.
“Oh,” I said. Because despite all the changes I’d made, I hadn’t changed so much that I wasn’t going to be shocked by the sight of some very pretty, not totally human looking people boning out in public.
The feeling of shock rippled through my whole body, the sound of Billy’s chuckle and Jake’s shuffling footsteps anchoring me in the here and now.
I’ve seen paintings like this, I thought, a random misfiring from my overwhelmed brain.
Looking like some kind of a Rococo painting, I was pinned to the spot as I watched what looked like a human girl recline back on a mossy podium, her skin as pale as milk, her pink nipples swollen and tight. Her legs parted the moment the men moved closer, sliding their hands up her thighs. Her eyes were wide, her breasts heaving as her breath came faster, but the men were slow and considered in their caresses by comparison.
‘Men’ was probably a loose description. These looked like those horned creatures I’d seen before at Jen’s place, and were now naked, their long lean bodies brown as a nut. They touched her almost idly, as if watching the contrast between her skin and theirs was just as satisfying as flicking her clit. They did that as well, ignoring her breathy little moans as their nimble fingers danced all over her.
Jake made an inarticulate sound deep in his throat, drawing the attention of several of the men. They turned as one, looking down at us, silvery, mirror like eyes defying deeper inspection, their very alien visages picked out by the golden light. One man’s nostrils flared, breathing me in, another’s hand dropping down to stroke his cock.
And what a cock it was. Billy’s hand on the base of my spine was the only thing that stopped me from stepping back. I’d read about a whole lotta incongruously huge dick in romance novels, but this was on a whole other level. It was inhuman in length and breadth, but the girl lying there only squealed in pleasure when he spread her thighs wider.
“Don’t lose your nerve. Don’t show fear.” Billy’s voice was a low buzz in my ear. Ostensibly to those around us, we were just a couple watching the performance, taking our dog for a walk. When I turned to look at him, his eyes stared into mine, still a warm brown, his lips only centimetres away. I watched them drop down to study mine, staying there for an interminable amount of time, and when they flicked back up, he smiled lazily. “Don’t give anyone here power over you. Not pain, not fear, not anger, not need. Desire, it is easily traded, but the others…? They get their hooks into you, they’ll use every bit of it to get what they can. Now look.”
My eyes shifted obediently back towards the girl and her men, the others surrounding her stroking themselves or her with slow, considered movements, their motions languid compared to hers.
“Do we go closer?” Jake asked, a slight edge to his voice, the leash growing taut as he ambled over, almost drawn against his will.
Jake, Billy, they both looked expectantly at me.
“I…I don’t know. Does she want this? Will that even fit inside her?”
“No one is forced in Hartley. Pressured perhaps by circumstances or social standing, but anyone who truly does not wish to participate can’t be forced,” Billy said. “Now look at her,” he said, linking his arm with mine and drawing us closer. “Really look at her. Does she seem unwilling?”
I didn’t want to do as Billy said. My experience with Marlow, that sweet, lovely little snatched moment in the cocoon of the hotel was my idea of a good time, and for some reason, that felt threatened by what I saw right now. She didn’t seem to have any kind of connection to the men around her, her fingers stroking one massive cock after another, twitching and writhing as they touched her. Her pants grew louder, faster, as if us watching her made it all the more hot.
“Kira?”
“No.”
“Join us,” one of the men said, to no one in particular.
“
Kira?” Jake asked.
His eyes darted from me to the woman, his hand dropping to his cock, rubbing absently.
“What?” I said, my voice sharper than I’d intended it to, my focus split between those questing green eyes, the warm hand on my back, and the girl’s squirming.
“Do you want me to touch her?”
“Do you want to?” I replied.
Jake let out a frustrated breath, his brows knitting.
“That’s not how it works for Jakey,” Billy said. “He’s perfectly capable of climbing on that girl and fucking the shit out of her.”
“Oh, yes…” the girl murmured.
“But that’s not what he wants. He wants your hand on the back of his neck, forcing his face into her pussy or down on their cocks. He’s your proxy, your substitute. He’ll rush in to do the things you won’t, all to please you, and he’ll love every fucking moment of it.”
Billy’s voice was just as hypnotic as before, when I had the camera trained on him, though this time, it was sweet and seductive, like the taste of freshly made caramel. He made a small sound of amusement in the back of his throat when I just stood there.
“Climb on the girl. Do what you’d like to do to Kira if you got a hold of her luscious tits. Show her what it’d be like.”
Jake grinned, happy as a child, as he moved to the girl’s side and started studying her, like she was some kind of sacred text, taking in her responses, watching her body arch up to get closer to his. His smile didn’t falter as he reached out, brushing the back of his hand along the side of one breast, staring into her eyes as she shuddered in response. One of the horned men dropped down between her legs, licking her cunt in long, slow strokes, but she seemed not to notice. It was Jake she watched, his fingers she responded to as the tip of one circled her breasts in slowly smaller revolutions until he traced the puckered skin of her areola.