by Sam Hall
I just stared at him, wondering how he could see what he saw in me, but then he placed his hand in mine and all was right with the world. We were capricious things, faeries, our moods moving faster than my still partly human brain could follow. But I will catch up, I thought as I moved to kiss Marlow.
“How about a little pampering?” he said when we finally pulled away from each other. He pushed a strand of hair behind my ear. “Your nails are a mess, and even beautiful fae locks need protein treatments.”
I paused for a moment as he inspected my hands, talking about cuticles and the fact that I chew them with chiding words, but for the first time, I started to see beyond what he was saying to what he meant.
Let me care for you. Let me take care of you. Let me soothe you and stroke you. Let me show my love for you.
My eyes burned as I just stared at him, watching him stroke my skin, talk about all the things he wanted to do to me, to demonstrate to me that he loved me. I didn’t know Marlow, hadn’t seen what he was like in the morning, what he was like when he got angry. I didn’t know his parents, how he’d landed in Australia, with the Rutherglen. He was a heartbreakingly beautiful mystery. But he yanked at my heart, twisting it in my chest, making me desperate for more of the sweetest of pains.
But that didn’t change what this was. He’d mentioned the L word on our first morning together when he’d… My thighs tightened as my clit throbbed, remembering how his hard length had felt going down my throat. His eyes jerked up when he caught scent of my bloom.
“Yes,” I said, not knowing what I’d agreed to and not caring. I could trust Marlow. He would look after me, no matter what. We were going to talk, I remembered that, about what he’d said. Maybe we could today if I gave myself up to him.
That kind of unconditional surrender seemed to make him happy, his smile so fucking radiant. “C’mon. I’ll get the sentinels. Let’s get off this damn bus and I’ll show you a good time.”
There’s a singular pleasure that comes from being cared for by someone you’re into. If I ever had to go to the hairdressers again after this, it would be a whole other experience. Sentinels were summoned with a call—thankfully, Mark wasn’t among them—and they escorted us across the carpark into a room in the very rear of the backstage area. The hum of activity and the sounds of instruments being tuned all faded away when he shut the door. Now it was just him and me and a whole room full of clothes, makeup, perfume, and accessories.
“Through here,” he said, opening a door on the opposite end of the room to my gasp.
Inside was a large white porcelain bath, filled with sweet smelling, bubbly water. Steam coiled up from the surface in a series of little waves.
“How did you…?”
“Magic, darling. Now get out of my shirt and into the water.”
I didn’t question it too much, the sight of such a luxurious thing making me yank the shirt up and over my head, but when I went to unclip my bra, Marlow was already there. He had it off in a few practised moves, pushing the cups forward, his fingers grazing the sides of my breasts for a moment before being pulled away. We worked together until I was naked, and then I stepped into the bath.
“Oh my god,” I said as I settled into the water. The temperature was the perfect heat to send shivers through me. He came and sat on the rim, soap and a face washer appearing from nowhere. “It’s only been days, but I’m already sick of showering in the bus.”
He smirked and patted his lap. “Put your foot up here.” I looked at him quizzically. “Let me wash you.”
I lifted my closest leg up, and he took the heel, anchoring it on his knee before lathering the soap into the washer and then rubbing it with long slow strokes along my leg.
I knew this was supposed to be a comforting thing, but I was lying in the sensuous warm water, smelling of night blooming jasmine, my legs parted before my lover. It was sweet, but it was also really hot.
Did he know? He worked with a quiet efficiency, on my feet, my legs, conjuring a pumice stone when he needed it, then a nail file to shape my nails to his satisfaction. A trolley appeared when he wanted to set them down.
“What kind of magic do you have?” I said, watching this all take place.
“My magic’s almost entirely domestic. In Anglo-Celtic terms, I’d be a brownie.” This made him smirk as his eyes jerked to his skin. “In other cultures, I’d be a house spirit. I can make you nice meals and clean your house and make you look fabulous without too much effort. It’s just anything else that becomes a problem. It’s why I’m seen to be weak. I can’t control the weather or set shit on fire. Well, unless it’s kindling in an actual fireplace.”
“But that’s bullshit. So only offensive magic is valued?”
“It’s all about power. You have the ability to set someone on fire? Your words are gonna carry undue weight.”
I groaned as his thumbs dug in to the arches of my feet, stroking any tension left in them away.
“What a load of crap,” I said, laying my head against the rim of the bath, my eyes falling closed. “You’re the strongest man I’ve known. You don’t let anyone’s shit get to you. You have the most amazing eye for detail. Your skills as a stylist are beyond any I’ve ever seen.”
“I’m a man with powers that are traditionally seen as feminine. Most of my initial sexual encounters were with men, because it was just assumed that would be my proclivity. I don’t mind dick sometimes. There’s something harder, more immediate about fucking men, but I’d say I swing about seventy thirty in favour of women.” He let my foot drop back down into the warm water. “There’s something about you, sweet smelling and dangerous as fuck, that just makes me want to bury myself inside you.”
My eyes jerked open to see him moving, taking up a position behind my shoulders. He smoothed the soap over me.
“I had to stroke one off, thinking about you, all bound up in that dress. You’re going to look like a fucking goddess, Kira.”
I arched up under his hand, feeling the rough fabric rub against my aching nipples. But he didn’t stay where I wanted him to be, moving lower and lower, as my fingers grabbed the edges of the bath hard.
And then he pulled away.
My eyes flicked open to see him smiling down at me, hand dripping.
“Lean forward, I’ll do your back.”
He knew what he was doing to me, but he continued on with the charade, scrubbing my back, then washing my hair, forcing me to give myself over to the sensual stroke of his fingers. When he was finished, he held out a hand for me, and it took me a few seconds to realise this part of the evening was over. His eyes took in every soaking inch of me as I stepped out of the bath. I was exfoliated, scrubbed, shaved, and plucked, and ready for what came next.
He held out a towel, keeping a hold of it when I moved in closer. His eyes stayed on mine as he dried every bit of me, even getting to his knees to do my legs. He looked up as he patted my feet, smiling when he saw my expression.
I wanted to hook my calf over his shoulder and force his head between my legs, have him lick up what seeped between them, but instead, I stayed still, waiting to see what he’d do next.
“Come through here,” he said finally, hanging up the towel and leading me back into the original room. There was something decadent about padding through a strange room naked in pursuit of my clothed lover. Power motivated everything, people said. Well, he held the reins here. He grabbed a fluffy robe, but rather than put it on me, he laid it along the seat of what looked like a manicurist’s chair. He gestured for me to sit, watching my body as it settled down.
How could anyone see anything feminine in him? I thought. He had this completely masculine swagger as he moved in closer, looming over me. Then he leant down, brushing his nose down the side of my neck and breathing me in.
“Mmm…I’ve got just the scent.”
He flicked through a road case, pulling out slim bottles nestled between dividers of foam, then settled on one. He sprayed it into the air, then
nodded.
“Arch that head back for me, love.”
I did and felt the sharp sting of perfume on my pulse points, inside my wrists and on my breast bone.
I’d always liked citrusy perfumes before this, but that’s not how Marlow saw me. The scent was thick, rich, intense. All ylang ylang and sandalwood and jasmine and amber—it created a cloud around my head.
“It’s full on, but it settles real nice for the right person. Let’s let it dry down. Now, feet up.”
I blinked, almost to clear the haze the perfume had created, and put my feet up on the footstool. He straddled a stool, looking down at my toes, then his gaze strayed up.
He could see straight through the gap between my legs to my core, something that was made easier when he repositioned my feet wider apart. How did him just taking a look make me wetter? He noted that with a cheeky grin and then conjured a bottle of scarlet nail polish.
“Hold still,” he said, and proceeded to carefully apply layer after layer of the polish.
Is this deliberate? I wondered, forcing me to focus entirely on him. People would have described this as menial work, but why? It was difficult—my messy attempts at putting polish on a testament to that—required skill to do well, and took concentration, like any other job. I watched his muscular hands move, realising halfway through that he probably could have done the job with a wave of his hand. But he didn’t, he bent himself over my foot and lavished care over each nail. By the time he’d moved on, wheeling the stool around to my hand, I was so fucking ready for him.
“Marlow?” I breathed rather than spoke his name.
“Yes, love,” he said, propping my arm up and applying his brush to my thumb nail. “Don’t wriggle. I’ll mess this up.”
“I’m wriggling because—”
“I know why you’re wriggling. It’s why I put the robe down.”
“Because I’m fucking leaking here. Because I want you to put down the nail polish and…”
I started out all bossy, but my voice just trailed away as those teal eyes locked on mine. He made a mockery of his previous focus, moving onto my next nail and applying polish without even looking. His mouth quirked as he saw me recognise that.
“You’re going to sit still and let me finish your manicure, then I’m going to blow out your hair and put some product in for just a little bit of extra volume. Then I’m going to make your face a mask, completely and utterly remote and untouchable, so beautiful it’ll make onlookers cry. I’m going to slide stockings up your thighs and strap you into a fucking gorgeous dress.”
“And then?”
“And then I’m going to slip between the specially designed front slit, pull you on top of me, and fuck that pretty little cunt of yours.”
I whined at that, my restive movements earning me a censorious look.
“We could do that now, and in the dress.”
“No.”
“But Marlow—”
“No.” His hand clamped down on my wrist, forcing me to be still.
I knew then the bite of another’s flesh into mine and how it could be kinda a turn on, understanding what Jake got from it. This was Marlow. Sweet, loving Marlow, who just wanted me to look fabulous and fuck me. But right now, he was some kind of iron-willed demon, watching me get all flustered with a small sneer on his face. That uncharacteristic cruelty without any actual malice was so fucking hot. I ignored his decrees, rubbing my thighs together, needing something, anything to get me off.
He stopped what he was doing with a faint hiss of frustration, the look he gave me both long-suffering, irritated and amused all at the same time. There were echoes there of the way people had regarded human me, which struck fear and was somehow exciting as well. For a moment, I’d lost all the privileges that had been heaped upon me since I’d transitioned. He leant down and, with exaggerated care, planted my ankles wide on either side of the footrest.
“Stay. Still,” he said, clearly and precisely, then went back to what he was doing like I was nothing. Like my nipples weren’t pulled up tight and aching for a brush of his fingers, like the fire always simmering in my core when I was around him hadn’t come roaring to life. Like I couldn’t remember the stretch of my cunt around his cock as he thrust into me. This was still new, we had the heat of people who knew they were into each other and were sexually compatible between us, and I wanted it to burn me up.
He knew. He fucking knew as he finished off my nails and then set to work drying and styling my hair. His strong fingers raking along my scalp drove me bloody mad, tousling and working product, tweaking strands until they sat just right. He just smiled in the face of my scowl, tilting my chin up for what I finally hoped was a kiss, but instead, I was brought face to face with a makeup sponge. He was right—he was creating a mask, one which bundled the soft Kira that had gone all misty eyed over his love language and was now a picture of hungry perfection.
Putting on the dress, applying the tape to stop my tits from bouncing free, sliding the stockings up my legs to be clipped to a garter was like a knight putting on her armour. The dress flared out in a great sweeping skirt that would keep people away unless I invited them closer. When Marlow finally stepped back, he nodded, pleased with his efforts. Then he looked up, a lazy smile spreading across his face.
Confident he had my complete attention, his hands went to his belt, unbuckling it with a conspicuous jingle, doing the same with the button underneath. My lips fell open, despite my irritation, a gasp escaping when he pulled out his rigid length, giving it a few rough tugs before sitting back down on the stool.
“Get in the shoes then get on me,” he said, pointing to a very grown up Dorothy’s wildest fantasy pair of ruby slippers. But these weren’t slippers, they were sky high stilettos I had no chance of walking in.
“I can’t,” I said, eyes unable to look away to where he played lightly with his cock.
“No, human Kira couldn’t. Fae Kira has reflexes for days, and can stalk into court looking like a queen with my cum running down her leg and staining her stockings.”
My eyes narrowed down to slits, made more difficult by the mask of makeup.
“This isn’t you. What is this? Some kind of fucking lesson?”
“Put the shoes on and get over here, and I’ll tell you.”
“No. Why are you doing this? Stop playing games.”
He laughed at that, but it wasn’t a happy sound as he moved to zip himself up.
“No,” I said.
“No? Then do as I say.”
“Fuck!” I snapped, but he just smirked as I stomped over to the shoes, jammed them onto my feet, and clomped over to him. His hand went to my back, flipping the skirt of the dress open and pulling my legs over his. I needed every damn inch of them to straddle him. I could feel his hard length pushed up against my wetness, right where I wanted him, yet not.
“I’m gonna be your soft place to fall, Kira,” he said, nosing my neck, my décolletage. “I’ll always be that for you, but you’re fae, so you need more than that. Power plays get us hot, and you’re no different. You’re already sticking your toes in by taking on Jake. It’s who and what we are. And I’m not getting left behind. Now hold still, my queen, while I make all this better.”
I flailed when he shoved himself away, but he was right, my reflexes were on point. I was up on the points of my bejewelled toes and then balanced within seconds. Long enough to be balanced when he sank to his knees. He was like a child hiding under his mother’s skirts, but that similarity was soon wiped away.
“I need you ready for me,” he said, his voice somewhat muffled. “Your scent has been clawing at me. I still haven’t washed the clothes you’ve borrowed, and I’ve been snuggling up to them like a security blanket. I’m not going to last, Kira.”
I reached down, wanting to stroke his head and reassure him. With his refractory time, a short, sharp fuck would have hit the spot, maybe followed by something a little more leisurely. But all thoughts stopped when his tongue
flicked out.
He pulled me onto his face, and his tongue didn’t make a tentative swipe. Instead, he ran the flat up my whole length, capturing every damn drop of my slick. His hands went to my bare arse, he’d refused to give me underwear, and he dragged me to him like a man starving. “Oh, Jesus…” I panted as his tongue flicked rapidly over my clit, making the bloody thing sing, as one hand let go to slide up my inner thigh. “Yes,” I gasped, my fingers landing on his head. My balance might be a whole lot better, but he was making me weak at the knees. As if satisfied by the initial hunger, his caresses grew more focussed and slower, until it felt like I could feel every inch of his tongue as it passed over my clit.
“Yes…yess…” I gasped as his hand slid upwards, just brushing the very outskirts of where I ached the most, only making the fire inside me burn higher. I felt the vibrations of his chuckle when my legs spread further, my ankles at weird angles in these bloody shoes, but I was determined to hold the position if I meant I could feel him in me.
He knew, teasing me, brushing through my sodden folds with the lightest of touches, making me focus down on just that point. “Please, Marlow,” I begged.
Apparently, that was enough. He shoved two fingers in, sending a thrill of pleasure up my spine, something only pushed higher and higher as he began to move them. He caressed the front wall of my cunt, just questing, curious for the moment, and then when my pants had gotten ragged enough, he curled his fingers up and gestured for my orgasm to come hither.
And it fucking did.
My voice was little more than an incomprehensible babble, rent through with groans. I tried to ask him to stop, to let me have this moment with him buried inside me, to join with him. He responded by getting harder, faster, more insistent, until…