Chapter 8 #2
“I’ve never treated a wingless angel,” she said finally.
Her voice had lost its teasing edge, replaced by a warmth that felt earned.
“The condition is rare enough that most fairies go their entire careers without encountering one. But I can’t imagine the scars that kind of life leaves behind.
Being different in a way everyone can see.
Having your body be the first thing people notice, and not in the way you’d choose.
” She shook her head. “Your Gabriella needs help.”
“Can you make something? A potion, something that would help with the nightmares, with the… the weight of it?”
She nodded. “I can brew a trauma draught. Specific to emotional wounds. It quiets nightmares, helps painful memories lose their grip. Makes the past feel like it happened to someone else, or happened further away than it really did. It doesn’t erase.
Nothing good ever erases. But it creates space. Room to breathe. Room to heal.”
Relief washed through me. “That’s exactly what she needs.”
“It’s not enough.”
The words landed between us. Lyra’s eyes held mine, and the healer in her was fully present now, the playful fairy momentarily set aside.
“A potion can dull pain. It can create space. It can give someone the breathing room they need to start healing. But emotional wounds don’t heal through magic alone.
They heal through connection. Through being seen, truly seen, by someone who loves them exactly as they are.
Without that, the potion is just a temporary reprieve.
The pain comes back, because the wound is still there, waiting for the medicine to wear off. ”
She leaned forward, her small hands folded on the table.
“She doesn’t just need a potion. She needs someone who makes her feel, in her bones, that she is whole exactly as she is.
That her body is not a mistake. That the thing that makes her different is also the thing that makes her beautiful.
Without that… the potion is just buying time. ”
I knew, immediately and completely, that she was right. I would be that person for Gabriella. Whatever it cost, whatever it meant, I would stand between her and the world’s cruelty and make her believe, absolutely, that she was perfect.
I didn’t say it aloud. I didn’t need to. Lyra saw it in my face, and her eyes relaxed.
“Good,” she said. “That’s the right answer.
” Then her mouth curved into that grin again, the playful one, the one that suggested the serious healer was stepping aside to make room for someone with different priorities.
“Of course, love means lovemaking. You do know that, right? The physical part. The part where you show someone with your body what your words can only approximate.”
I felt the heat climb my neck. “I kinda grew up with her.”
Lyra’s eyebrows lifted. “So? The heart wants what the heart wants, handsome. And unless I’m severely misreading the particular shade of pink currently spreading across your neck, your heart has been quite clear on the subject for some time now.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it. The protest died somewhere between my brain and my vocal cords because the protest was a lie and we both knew it.
I had dreamed about Gabriella. I had woken up hard and wet and mortified.
I had read her diary and felt something in my chest expand to the point of pain.
She was Angelina’s daughter, and I wanted her, and the two facts existed in the same body with the same urgency, and pretending otherwise was becoming increasingly difficult.
Lyra watched the internal struggle play out across my face with the delighted focus of someone watching an entertaining sporting event. Then she sighed, a theatrical sound that involved her entire small frame, and set her mug down.
“God, you’re attractive when you’re conflicted. It’s genuinely unfair.” She stood, her wings extending slightly, and floated around the table until she was beside my chair. “I’m getting turned on watching you wrestle with this. Is that inappropriate? Probably. Do I care? Not even slightly.”
She reached out with her wand and tapped it gently against my lips. The wood was warm, smooth, and the gesture carried an intimacy that made blood rush south.
“I’ll give you the potion,” she said, her voice dropping.
“The good one. The one that actually works. In exchange…” Her amber eyes held mine, bright and unapologetic.
“You give me an orgasm with that mouth. Right here, right now, on my cloud bed. Just your tongue and my instructions and the sounds I make when someone talented is paying attention. Deal?”
I looked at her. At the small, fierce fairy hovering beside my chair with her pink hair full of flowers and her wand against my lips and her dress stained with the evidence of a life spent making things better for people who hurt.
I thought about Gabriella. About the nightmares.
About the weight she carried every day that I could lighten, if only slightly, with a vial of something brewed in this chaotic, beautiful cottage.
“Deal,” I said.
Her smile could have powered the entire island.
She took my hand, her small fingers wrapping around mine, and led me through the cottage to a room at the back where the ceiling opened to the sky and a bed made of what appeared to be an actual cloud floated three feet above the floor, its surface rippling gently in the breeze that flowed through the open roof.
“Cloud bed,” Lyra said, releasing my hand and floating up to it.
“One of the perks of being friends with the weather fairies. They owe me favors. Many, many favors.” She reached for the ties of her dress and loosened them.
The stained white fabric slid from her shoulders, down her small frame, and pooled on the cloud beside her feet.
She was naked. Small breasts, pale pink nipples already hard in the cool air, a narrow waist, hips that curved with a delicacy that made my throat dry. Between her legs, a thatch of pink hair that matched the color on her head, and beneath it, I could already see the slick gleam of her arousal.
“Already wet,” she said, noticing my gaze.
“Told you. You’re very good at turning me on without trying.
It’s a talent. Possibly your greatest, and that’s saying something given the medals.
” She lay back on the cloud, her wings spreading beneath her, and parted her thighs.
“Come here, war hero. Show me what that mouth can do besides giving orders.”
I climbed onto the cloud. It held my weight the way solid ground holds weight, which made no sense and which I decided not to question. I settled between her thighs, my hands on her hips, her skin warm under my palms, and lowered my mouth to her.
She tasted like honey. Her folds were slick, already swollen, and when my tongue found her clit she gasped, her small hands flying to my hair, gripping with a strength that belied her size.
“Right there, yes, God, right there, don’t stop, don’t you dare stop—”
I didn’t stop. I used every technique I knew of, adjusting pressure, speed, the flat of my tongue against her clit followed by the focused point of it, my lips surrounding her, sucking gently while my tongue worked.
Her pussy was sweet. I parted her pink lips and moved the hair aside, then I licked her deeper and kissed her lips.
I kept it going till my lips and nose were slick with her honey, and Lyra came apart beneath me with a cry that shook the herbs hanging from the ceiling.
Her back arched. Her wings beat frantically against the cloud.
Her thighs clamped around my head, her hips bucking against my mouth, and I felt her pulse against my tongue, once, twice, a third time, each contraction drawing a moan from her that started high and broke into something deeper, rougher, the sound of a woman who had not been touched this well in a very long time and was making sure the entire island knew about it.
When it was over, she lay sprawled on the cloud, her chest heaving, her pink hair wild around her face, tiny flowers scattered across the cloud surface where they’d fallen free.
A streak of her release glistened on my chin, and she reached down with one finger, collected it, and brought it to her mouth with a smile that contained approximately seventy percent satisfaction and thirty percent mischief.
“Payment received,” she said. “In full. With interest.”
She floated from the cloud, retrieved her dress, and pulled it on with the casual ease of someone who had just been thoroughly pleasured and saw no reason to pretend otherwise.
From a shelf beside the bed, she took a small glass vial filled with liquid the color of twilight, stoppered with a cork sealed with something that looked like beeswax.
“The trauma draught,” she said, placing it in my palm.
Her fingers lingered against mine. “One dose. Have her drink it after you’ve truly loved her somewhere she feels safe, with someone she trusts completely.
The effects are gradual. By morning, the nightmares will be quieter.
Within a week, they’ll be memories instead of visitors.
” She squeezed my hand. “You’re a good man, Gabriel.
The kind who pays attention. The kind who notices what’s broken and tries to fix it, even when the fixing requires… unconventional methods.”
I tucked the vial into my jacket pocket, feeling its weight against my chest. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. The orgasm was genuinely spectacular. We’re square.” She kissed my cheek, her lips warm and slightly sticky with whatever potion residue had been on them, and floated toward the door. “Now go home to your lover. She’s been waiting longer than either of you realize.”
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