- THREE #2
I made my way slowly back toward the clearing, enjoying the solitude, relieved to have a break from the assault of her thoughts and feelings on my system.
She was a constant ball of nervous energy, of fear, frustration, irritation, and mistrust. It seemed that every single second of her life, she was freaking out about something internally.
It must have been fucking exhausting to live like that.
Hell, I had just been around her for a couple hours, and I felt drained.
I moved back into the small clearing where I had left Cece, my shirt pulled up to create a small basket for the blueberries and mushrooms I had managed to find, and didn't see her.
I didn't freak at first, figuring she had maybe wandered off to pee or something.
I put the food down on a stump beside her weird marks on the ground, moving to sit down.
But then I heard it.
It was almost nothing at first, just a whisper on the wind.
I didn't even recognize it for an embarrassingly long minute.
Then I did.
A flute.
And then I was running.
Guilt welled up strong and overpowering as I tore through the woods, the sound getting louder and louder.
It didn't call to me, not the way it called to her.
Because I was male. It didn't beckon me.
It didn't muddle my brain. But it would have called Cece.
It would have forced her to follow, to fall into the trap before she could even think to try to resist. Not that she would have, seeing as she was completely unaware of what a flute in The Green actually meant.
I tore into the clearing as the music started to hit a peak to find Cece's back to me, naked from the waist up, her body draped over the creature's lovingly.
Then the creature turned, his human half angling toward her, his gaze lowering.
If he looked at her... if he caught her eyes, it would be too late.
"Fuck," I growled, tearing across the clearing.
His eyes slowly started to raise from the flute as my hand clamped down hard over Cece's eyes.
My other arm went around her center, grabbing hard and yanking her backward as she initially struggled as the song hit the dizzying peak I knew was tearing through her body in the form of a powerful orgasm.
Then it did, making her collapse back on a throaty groan that, despite the shitty situation, I swear to fuck I felt in my dick.
I'd gotten to her just in time.
But I was pretty sure she wouldn't exactly see it that way.
--
Cece
My senses snapped back in a dizzying rush. There was a hand over my eyes and an arm around my center, just below my exposed breasts. A solid male body was behind me, dragging me backward slightly. My body felt weird, tingly, sated. Like post-orgasm contended.
Then. "Oh, God," I groaned, realizing that was exactly what it was.
"Get the hell out of here," Jasper's voice said behind me, his voice rough as if he was clenching his jaw.
"She's not yours," he added, and I heard a strange sighing sound and shuffling as if someone was moving away.
"Breathe," Jasper's voice said in my ear, sounding a little winded, like he had been running.
Running for what? To save me? After leaving me alone, unprotected in the woods to be led off by some... creature?
I felt myself snort, struggling hard against his hold. I needed him to let me go. I needed to pull my dress back up. I needed to go find a good place to die of complete freaking mortification.
"Let me go," I demanded, my voice a little shaky, but loud and firm.
Jasper's hand fell from my eyes, and both hands moved to snag the straps of my dress, pulling them up over my sensitive skin, covering my breasts, then pausing for me to slip my arms in the holes again.
As soon as they were through, I wrenched away from him, turning to face him.
"What the fuck is going on?" I demanded, maybe wanting the truth, and maybe just hoping he would lie to me.
To that, Jasper shrugged a little nonchalantly. "You almost became a sex slave to a faun."
I closed my eyes tightly, wanting to find some kind of rational explanation: hunger, exhaustion, poisonous gas, anything.
But I had felt the smooth, wiry fur beneath me.
I had heard the music with my ears. I had seen him.
I had felt him slip inside me in a way that had felt almost sexual, that had given me an orgasm somehow.
I hadn't been hallucinating.
So I needed answers.
And Jasper, unfortunately, was my only source for them.
"I'm sorry... what?" I asked, opening my eyes on a deep inhale.
Jasper nodded a little like he understood my confusion, but his words came out impatient when he spoke. "That was a faun. They're half-human and half-fae. They draw women in with their music."
I took a deep breath, trying to be open-minded. Fae? As in fairies? As in mythical creatures of mischief? That was completely and utterly insane.
But as I looked back over my shoulder to where said faun had been standing, I knew deep down to my bones that it was true.
"Go on," I croaked.
"Their music makes women... hot. Literally," he said, and I'd swear I detected a hint of humor in his voice. "Physically hot. But also... turned on."
Good God. I wanted the ground to open and swallow me right then and there. Because that was exactly what happened. And, at the time, it didn't feel weird. It felt natural. It felt like breathing. It felt amazing. But as I stood there with Jasper, the whole of what had happened settled down on me.
I had been turned on by a fucking goat.
Well, technically, half-goat, but still. There were definite goat parts.
Jesus Christ.
"You can't help it," Jasper went on as if sensing my embarrassment and trying to soothe it over. "It's the music. It puts you in a trance and draws you to him, makes you feel good so he can get and keep you close. And then when he has you..."
"Tell me," I demanded, needing to know what could have happened to me if he hadn't shown up just in time.
"When he has you, the music pulses through you until you come," he went on, not a hint of awkwardness at bringing up the topic of my orgasm.
"Then he lifts his eyes. And when he looks at you, you're his.
Everything normal and human of you slips away.
You no longer feel and think like you normally would. You become a living sex toy for him."
"Fuck," I said, shaking my head. A living sex toy to a freaking goat. With boy goat parts. That was so incredibly disgusting that I felt the bile rise up in my throat until I could practically choke on it.
And again, fuck fuck fuck men.
Of every species.
Every last goddamn mother fucking one of them.
I sighed hard, looking back up at Jasper, knowing I owed him gratitude, but hating that fact. "Thank you," I said, not sounding like I meant it at all.
Jasper seemed unaffected though and shrugged. "Come on, let's get some food in us. It's going to be a hell of a day, I can already tell," he said, turning and going back the way we had both came.
A few minutes later, both of us sitting on the ground, I popped a couple of berries into my mouth, wincing a bit at the bitterness.
"Here," Jasper said, holding out a few button mushrooms toward me that I eyed a bit dubiously. "They won't taste great, but they have protein, and we need all we can get," he said, popping one in his mouth.
I took them and held them up to the light. "Did you know that mushrooms more closely resemble meat in their make-up than plants?" I asked as I ate one, chewing fast and swallowing before I could really taste it.
"I did not," Jasper said. The silence stretched as we ate our small breakfast before Jasper suddenly declared, "You really don't have any questions for me?"
I knew I should have. Really, when someone has an auditory flute-music-induced orgasm from a half-human, half-goat creature, they tended to have questions.
But it had taken my brain all of twenty seconds to freak out and accept that all those tales I had seen in movies, had read about in books, they were all real.
"I guess there isn't much to ask. This 'Green' is like... some kind of fairy land. Creatures I thought were figments of writers' overactive imaginations are real. There's not much to ask."
"That's... an interesting way to think of it," Jasper said a bit cautiously.
"And you... you're a fairy too," I declared, making Jasper snort hard.
"I'm fae, not fairy. I am not six inches tall with wings."
I nodded as I reached for three of the last remaining six berries, knowing it was nowhere near enough to keep my stomach from growling until lunch, but knowing there was nothing else either. "And Jade too."
"Yes, Jade too."
"That's how you knew she was in The Green, then? Did she like run away here or something for some reason?"
"No," Jasper said, sounding guarded. "She would never come back here willingly."
My gaze shot up, my brows lowered at him curiously.
"Why?" I asked. When he didn't answer, I followed his lead as he took his feet.
"So she's here unwillingly," I said, feeling my heart clench hard at the idea.
Had she become some sort of slave? Had she fallen into hands of some half-human thing and couldn't get away, couldn't remember that she was supposed to want to?
"Yeah," he said, turning away and starting to walk. "And we better the fuck find her sooner rather than later."
Then we walked. In complete and utter silence.
Hours must have passed, and my thigh muscles objected to each step I took.
The further we walked, the warmer it got, the more humid, until every inch of me felt sticky with sweat, until I realized that a whole different ecosystem existed within the one that I had known complete with its own weather and creatures and foods.
Back in my normal world, it was fall. In The Green, it was the most disgusting part of summer.