by Sam Hall
“You can tell?” I asked.
“You kinda bloomed the moment we walked in here.”
“Bloomed? Why does everyone keep using terminology I don’t understand?”
“Didn’t get brought up in the fold, huh? That makes this doubly tough. Well, we’re a bit primal. At least some of us are. Take a deep breath.”
“What?”
“Take a deep breath, and tell me what you can smell.”
I shook my head, having no bloody idea what that meant, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt. I was wrong.
“I can smell him,” I said with a croak.
“OK, come a little closer.” I stepped in. “Now breathe me in.”
It took a bit to discern the difference, but there it was, like a sweet oriental themed perfume, a bit like amber and sandalwood. It was a thin scent, but she nodded when I got it.
“Now, I’m not going to do anything, just come in close and that’s it. But tell me if you can smell the change in my scent.”
I felt instantly shy as I moved close enough to feel the heat radiating from her skin. She was all briskly helpful beforehand, but now this felt insanely intimate. I felt her breath fan over my collarbone and was completely aware of how small the gap between us was.
“Now, I’m going to imagine just what it would be like to bury my head between those plump little thighs and feel them give under my fingers as I run my tongue…”
Her words faded away as I was hit with what felt like a cloud of that self same scent. Richly floral with a deep woody undertone, I could just about taste it. My head spun momentarily, and her strong hands caught me as I stumbled. My reaction was instantaneous, my nipples pulling tight and a flush of pleasure between my legs, something that was completely on display as I stood there naked.
That realisation hit me hard, forcing me to step back and out of her grip, and she grinned when she saw me shake my head.
“Really hits you, doesn’t it? That’s the bloom, baby. Doesn’t give anyone permission or any of that bullshit. Well, not now. But we’re a kinda instinctive race. You’ll emit it involuntarily sometimes, if you’re attracted to someone, or you can draw upon it with a little effort if you want to lure someone in, particularly a human.” My eyes jerked to the door, and hers followed them. “The sentinel? Oh, he’s on your hook already, love, but he’ll be a tough nut to crack. Lemme know if you break that down, because I’d give a week’s gold to see that. A sentinel falling for one of us…” She tapped her lip for a second, then smiled impishly at me. “But you must be getting cold. Let’s take these measurements and then get you bundled up.”
Vervain’s mood shifted lightning quick. Now she was all business, her hands and tape moving around my body, each measurement taken down in a little golden book. She talked to me about my preferences, expecting me to try some of the garments on the racks she’d brought, and snorted when I said I wanted jeans and band shirts, but nodded and said she’d take care of it.
“Now tomorrow, you’ll want something special. It’ll be your first presentation to court, your introduction. With your colouring, I was thinking scarlet and a lot of draping—”
“What happens if I go in jeans and t-shirt?” I asked.
“Well, nothing, but—”
“That’s what I want. I did the dress today because Jen and Marlow made it seem important, but if tomorrow is about me, I want to be comfortable. Jeans, t-shirt, Chuck Taylor sneakers. Black, if possible.”
She stared at me over the top of her little book and then shrugged. “Well, if you insist. What kind of t-shirt you want?”
“There’s an old black one in my bag. It’s a favourite. Just make me one of those that’ll fit, and I’ll wear that.”
She shook her head, but took down the details when I described it.
“All right, my love,” she said, moving towards the door. “Sleep well, and I’ll be back with your new wardrobe in the morning.” She hesitated as I reached for the sweats and tugged them on. “You gonna be OK tonight?”
I paused where I was, glancing up at her. “You’re the first person that’s asked me that.”
She moved in and wrapped an arm around me, drawing me into a hug.
“I remember my own transition. Was fucking worse than coming out to my Mum. ‘Hey, I’m a lesbian’ was a whole lot easier to swallow than ‘hey, I’m not human.’” She ruffled my hair and then let me go. “Find a preceptor that can protect you. That’s my advice. One that’s strong, that has the backing of a strong court, but isn’t under the thumb of their lord. That, or stick bloody close to your boy out there.”
She went the way she came in, breezing out the door without a look over her shoulder.
Mark pushed himself off the wall and walked inside, regarding me with a cool gaze before saying, “You’ll need something to sleep in.”
He walked over to his cupboard and pulled open a drawer, then handed me a t-shirt worn smooth by washing. My nostrils flared as I caught that combination of sun, soap, and him.
“You want me to sleep here?” I asked, looking at the bed. I did too. It lured me closer with its warm musky scent. Vervain was right, I did want to rub my body all over it, cloaking myself in his scent, as apparently, I wanted to do with everyone I found attractive. I scratched my arm. I’d have been lucky to find one guy in six months that I liked the look of back in town. Now I had an embarrassment of riches, and I was the embarrassing part.
“Yes. I’ll need to keep watch over you. With the interest that’s been shown, coupled with the rumour mill, it’s difficult to know how the host will respond. Why?” Then his eyes fell to where I had pressed the shirt against my cheek, something I hadn’t done consciously. I dropped it hurriedly. “I’ll have someone come in and change the sheets. We’ll set up a roster, so it might not be me that’s here when you wake.”
It didn’t really help. While Paulie replaced the sheets, because I couldn’t be trusted to do it, Mark disappeared and got dressed in something…less revealing. His shirt worked well as a nightdress, almost coming to my knees, something he noted briefly before settling into an armchair in the corner of the room.
“Sleep, Kira,” he said as he flipped open a book, and like some kind of child, I settled under the crisp bed covering that still smelled of him and closed my eyes.
“Mmm…”
The purr in my ear was more than just a sound. It was a vibration I felt through my whole body, sending every hair on end, every nerve ending singing a song of pleasure along with it. Fuck, I’d never been so turned on.
When a velvety hand cupped my breast, it was almost superfluous, yet I squirmed within the grip of…what, I didn’t know. All I knew was my breast ached more and more as the hand moved, my gasps coming in short, sharp pants. My nipple was throbbing as a thorough examination was made of the curve, but the palm scrupulously ignored it, just washing me all over with that intense heat.
“Please…”
“That’s what I wanted to hear. So polite. All you have to do is ask, Kira, and I’ll give it to you. All of it.”
The voice was deep and familiar, but I couldn’t spare the time to work out who as those fingers closed around the place I ached the most.
Now, usually someone who knew their way around my body could provoke some intense reactions playing with my nipples, and the best was feeling the double-edged pleasure that felt like it tugged at my clit as well, but this was next level.
I flailed within the firm grip, almost trying to escape the piercing sensation that rushed through me. I felt a damp flush between my thighs as I moved, but the arm wrapped around me tight.
“No, little bird. There’s no escaping this. It escaped me beforehand, but it’s all become clear. You’re the one I’ve been searching the world for, right under my nose.”
His hand slid down, nowhere near my nose, but my teeth clamped together as he found my clit. His slick touch was so slow and ponderous, and it drew my attention to every square millimetre. Then his other hand pinch
ed hard on my nipple.
“Ah!” I yelped, my thighs splaying wide, something he took advantage of as he speared a couple of thick fingers in while my boundaries were well and truly down.
“Look,” he rasped into my ears, but it was little other than some vague sound as he jerked me higher and higher, the fire burning deep inside me flaring hungrily. My cunt twitched around his fingers, not coming yet, but the precipice he was pushing me up was so steep, all my body could do was spasm uncertainly.
“Look,” he insisted. “Look!”
That voice was less a feline purr and now a roar, and my eyes snapped open as the world spilled out before me. Or Gisbourne, rather. The valley spread like a map across my field of vision, this mysterious stranger getting me off rather effectively as we swooped in, while I was safe within his grip. I was clawing at his hands as we appeared outside my Nan’s cottage, the pleasure twisting my spine, threatening to short circuit nerves who had no idea how to cope with this onslaught.
I nearly sobbed with relief when he slid his fingers from me, leaving my cunt to close down on what was an awful emptiness inside me, but the relief was to be short lived.
“You love her?” he asked as Nan came pottering out of her house, her eyes glancing about everywhere but on me. Thankfully, she wasn’t able to see the spectacle he was making of me. She made that weird little gesture she always did when outside, then grabbed a handful of rusty nails from the old tobacco tin she kept on the porch. “You wouldn’t want any harm to come to her, would you?”
“What?”
He didn’t answer, instead, he moved beneath me until I felt his hard length parting my folds. Not pushing inside me, right now, he seemed content on rubbing his cock along my seam.
“You want no harm to come to your family?”
The velvet in his voice was being stripped back, the menace coming to the fore as his thrusts grew stronger. Small shapes moved in the grass and skittered across the roof as Nan went, peering down at her, and the sounds were all too bloody familiar. She walked on blithely, muttering some bullshit, not seeing the creatures that twined around the trunks of the trees she passed and that slunk through the foliage.
“You want them to live?”
It was a demand now, my view shifting and multiplying to show Mum and Dad sitting on the couch, watching the TV. There were skitters there as well, small creatures spidering across the ceiling, hiding away in the cracks in the wall.
“You want them to live, little bird, you come to me.”
Then the view shifted, showing Gisbourne, the whole valley, and then that all fell away to something much more intimate. I sat on a man’s lap, staring into a great oval mirror at my strange naked body straddling Dave Rutherglen’s as his thick thighs forced mine wide, the obscene jut of his cock wedged against me.
“Come to me in the morning, Kira,” he said. Then he clicked his fingers, and my body was shoved into a violent orgasm that just kept pulsing on and on, until the darkness hovering at the edges of my perception swallowed me whole.
“Kira!”
My hand grabbed the hand on my shoulder, and twisted until the owner started to yelp. My eyes snapped open to see Paulie standing over me.
“What the hell is going on?”
Our heads both whipped over to see the door thrust open and a bleary-eyed Mark stumbling in.
“She was… She looked like she was being visited by one of the fae, boss. She was all squirmy and crying out.”
Mark rubbed at his eyes. “Bloody hell, cadet. She was probably just dreaming. Take your hands off the girl and go back to your chair.”
“No…” I said, struggling to sit up. My heart wasn’t pounding, it was ricocheting around in my chest like a belted squash ball. “He’s right.”
“What? Who was in your dream?”
“Dave Rutherglen.”
Mark frowned and then nodded to Paulie. “Get some wards.”
“On it, boss.”
He sank down in the chair, that big body appearing to collapse into it, and he was very distractingly dressed in just a pair of grey stretchy sleep shorts. Don’t look at his dick, do not look at his really big dick just lying there on his leg, I told myself, not doing a very good job. I mean seriously, when was the last time I’d ever been in the presence of something like that?
When you watched the band getting sucked off, my mind supplied helpfully.
Yeah, that’s right. Weirdly, putting the camera in front of everything kinda made me feel like that hadn’t actually happened, like I’d been watching some fucking freaky porn or something. Good freaky porn.
Paulie returned, placing a little bundle above the door, then he reached over the bed and put one above the windowsill.
“Both windowsills,” Mark said.
“Oh, right. Of course, boss.”
“We should have put these up before the novitiate went to sleep, especially with the courts’ interest in her. It was an oversight of mine, don’t make it yours,” Mark said. “Go to bed, rookie.” Paulie nodded and left the room. “Now, tell me about your dream.”
“Because apparently there are more depths of awkward to be plumbed before the sun rises,” I muttered to myself. “I dreamed someone was…touching me up, I guess is the only way to describe it.” His eyes darted away, down to study the floor. “Doing a bloody good job of it, at first. Called me a little bird. Then, as he was getting me worked up, he showed me Nan, Mum and Dad, Gisbourne, and said if I didn’t want anything to happen to them, I needed to come to him in the morning. Then he made me come until I blacked out.”
He nodded, leaning forward now with his elbows on his knees, and I totally didn’t try to catch a look up his short’s leg. Seriously, it was puerile and silly, but how else was I gonna bloody manage this? What even was this fucking day? Even when I went to sleep, it didn’t stop. Staring at dicks was strangely reassuring and predictable.
“I’m going to need to contact the head office. This was absolutely an attack, an attempt to manipulate the process in their favour, but who?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
He smiled ruefully at that. “I bloody wish that was the way it worked, but it doesn’t. Your kind are a subtle, strange group.” I looked at him with a cocked eyebrow. “Well, you have that human taint on you, that’s clear. But it would be highly unlikely someone like the Rutherglen would trespass the laws of hospitality so brazenly. What would be his purpose? You’ll have to consider his suit anyway, being host along with your relationship with his daughter. He’d be better suited to just be the same man you’ve always known him to be.”
“I dunno, up until it got all ‘murder all your friends and family’ it was a whole lot hotter than ‘Daddy.’”
He snorted and shook his head.
“Go back to sleep. I’ve got some calls to make. You should be safe now, but I’ll send one of the men in to watch over you.”
“More blokes in my bedroom. Getting me ready for what’s coming, Sentinel?”
It was a shitty joke, and he didn’t laugh. He just stared at me for a moment, then got to his feet. And I totally didn’t look at that goddam, not so small dick flopping around as he passed. I stared up at the ceiling once the door closed, trying my damnedest not to revisit the agony and ecstasy of that dream. No good was going to come of that. So I lay there and stared until, at some point, I dropped off to sleep.
16
“OK, what the actual fuck?” I said. Man, I’ll say one thing for becoming a creature of myth and legend, I was a whole lot swearier. I turned back to the living room, where a bunch of cranky sentinel blokes were crammed into the spaces between the all singing, all dancing crap of the world that had been delivered over night. “What the hell am I supposed to do with all of this?”
I picked up piles of necklaces, then put them down, looking over mounds of gold coins, laptops in various shades—pink? Why pink?—and some weird objects. When I reached for one, one sentinel warned, “Don’t touch that one, miss,” with a
shake of his head, so their use remained a mystery.
“Well, I for one am ever so pleased I’ve been caged up like this for no reason, then.”
My ears pricked up, and I considered the now possibly sentient pile of crap in front of me.
“Um…hello?”
The sentinels frowned, moving towards the pile, hands going to guns. Whoa, hang on, guns!?
“Down here, you bloody idiots! My court saw fit to put me down the bottom of this mountain, and I’m starting to question the structural stability of this horde of riches.”
One of the dudes in the suits stepped up to the corner, gesturing for the others to come forward. Together, they drew out a beautifully carved…cat carrier? I ducked down, looking through the intricately carved door in the front of it, and saw a bloody big ginger cat inside. It watched me with emerald green eyes, its head moving to one side when mine did.
“Well,” it said. “Are you letting me out or what?”
