Chapter Eleven Lover #3
Gordon remains oblivious to the drops on the table and his shirt.
Chopin bats a paw at the table, hoping for more accidental gifts.
“I didn’t think I was supposed to tell you I loved you until much later.
My parents... My parents did not love each other, but my father was a good provider and a good leader.
He made smart decisions. My mother did not like him, because she didn’t agree with the decisions. ”
“I’m sorry, baby. I don’t want us to be like that. We can make decisions together, and you can tell me anything at all.”
“I would like to stay in tonight. I would like to stay here, or you stay with me. Almost all of the time. If that’s allowable.”
“It’s very, very allowable.” I let my hand drop to his knee. “But you should know that girlfriends can get clingy. They can want a lot of attention. Physical attention, like hugs and kisses. And other stuff. You just have to tell me if that’s okay.”
Gordon licks his lips. His tongue flicks one tusk, and polishes it in a nervous swirl.
God, that’s a talented tongue. Slightly more pointed than a human’s, but much wider.
Oh, damn, I am so not supposed to be thinking about that tongue exploring me right now. I try hard to keep a calm, reassuring smile on my face.
“Are boyfriends allowed to be clingy? Want your touch all the time?” Gordon asks, lifting my hand and showing me how the shiny red skin is now almost back to normal thanks to the balm he applied.
“In my case, yes. I want that. If I want space, I’ll tell you.”
Gordon nods, speechless, but this time I think he’s a little bit awed that love and talking just... exist here. That touch, and music, and cuddling are something easily shared.
And it also makes me acutely aware that my boyfriend is not experienced in physical intimacy, and that worries me, just a little. What if I mess up in “teaching” him? What if I gross him out with the things I want to do?
Time to change the subject. “This food is amazing. And you say the chef is an Orc?”
Gordon nods with a contented smile. “But his wife is a human. She owns Cakes by Claire, and they have a little baby now. Well. Not very little, because Georgie Fenclan is about my size.”
I listen, still rubbing my hand against Gordon’s knee. Fears slide away as we eat and talk, and the cat purrs between our feet.
Andrea’s feet are so much better. She insists on walking around the apartment in soft teal slippers, and she plays the piano for an hour before dinner. I work on my report and my investigation, studying images of claw marks, sketching them, and sending them to the people who might recognize them.
An upbeat piece plays—ragtime, Andrea calls it, and I study some images Mr. Minegold has sent over, pictures from an old text of “magical” creatures.
Four claw marks. Close together. I keep sketching as I smell the wonderful ginger-garlic smell of whatever Andrea is making for supper. She comes over between numbers, resting her hand on my arm, kissing the top of my head, her breasts pressed into my back.
I want to feel that soft body in my arms again.
Naked, this time, without water washing over us, or towels in between us.
I know how humans and trolls mate, how most sentient bipedal races mate.
I just don’t know if Andrea will be disgusted by how badly I want her once she knows how perverse my infatuation with her has become in just the space of a day.
Since she told me she loved me.
I want to prove my love, to give her every pleasure, and I don’t think I know how to do that. All I know is that I want to be pressed against her—inside of her. To taste every inch of her skin. To see every inch of her body.
I have to stop thinking like this, because I’m very much afraid it sounds like I’m consumed with lust, that my sexual desires, long buried, are now coursing through me as if I were possessed by a—
“Succubus!” I shout.
Piano chords crash. Chopin opens one annoyed eye from where he’s sitting on my nap, upside down and dozing, his little paws flexing in the air.
“Four claw marks close together, as close as a human hand’s fingers. Sparks. Sulfuric smell. Succubus!”
“Succubus. Like... Sexy dream demon things?”
“They can invade dreams, yes, but they have a physical form. I know that these corporeal forms can live in our world and seek redemption, just like... Just like my kind. There are some peaceful trolls in other parts of the world, or so I hear,” I end with a wistful note in my voice.
Suddenly, I’m not thinking of a reformed stranger.
I’m wondering if my brothers ever realized there was more to living near humans than simply avoiding the stone curse and not getting caught or hunted down. I wonder if Matthew is some lonely hermit in a wood someplace, hunting and fishing.
I wonder if maybe Hugo, my little brother, the youngest one, the weakest one, the “runt,” ever managed to leave. Move out west. He used to dream of raising sheep in Montana.
“How would a succubus exist if she’s reformed?
I mean, obviously I never met a real one, or at least I don’t think I have, given I didn’t even know that ‘monsters’ were real and living right around us.
” Andrea stands beside me now, shaking her head and squinting at the screen of the laptop I brought with me from work.
“But don’t they like... have sex with someone while they’re sleeping and live off of their souls? ”
“That’s a good description, and not too far off.
Reformed ones have sex with willing partners in a physical state and feed off the sexual energy they get.
” I have heard that in some cases it’s the literal “life force,” too, meaning the essence of their partners that creates life, and I don’t know if that means they need to swallow it or the partners have to ejaculate inside of them.
I don’t think I want to discuss all of the precise nature of succubus survival with Andrea.
Andrea, who is massaging my shoulders and looking at the image of a feral, feminine form with clawed hands, flaming skin, and bat-like wings. Naked. Riding some man in an old woodcut image.
I quickly click the tab back to my report, throat tight and cheeks hot with embarrassment. “I was not aroused by the image. I was comparing the marks I saw with the beings who could make them.”
“It’s okay. I... I don’t know what exactly arouses you. If you tell me, that would make me feel better.”
“It would?” I almost fall off my chair.
“Then I won’t have to guess.”
“Oh. Right.” That makes sense. “You.”
“What?”
“You?” I try again, wondering how one word could confuse her.
“I what?” Andrea says, her tone equally confused.
“You are what arouses me. Or would. When you tell me the time is appropriate.” After I give her flowers, sweets, and jewelry, if I listen to Sunderland. In reality? I have no idea.
“Like now?” Andrea’s voice sounds breathless, and there’s a lilt in the middle, like someone stole her ability to talk halfway through.
This time, I do knock over my chair. I rise too quickly, heart going from restful to racing in seconds. “Oh. Now. Right now?” I’m not prepared.
That bed is going to break in half.
Oh, God. Andrea is going to break in half.
“Well, no, not this second. But... when you want to. I’m...
I would like to learn what you like. Maybe you know already, so you could teach me.
And I could teach you what I like. Together.
We could find out what we like together,” Andrea stammers, cheeks flooded to a pretty peach that makes me want to lean down and nibble on them.
Maybe I didn’t conceal that want very well, because Andrea is slowly sliding her hands up my chest, the best feeling in the world, and then she pulls my head to hers.
This time, the kissing doesn’t stop. It’s not fading into a satisfied, content sleepiness. It’s turning feverish. Andrea makes noises, these desperate, needy sounds, and it wipes out whatever thoughts I had about caution and restraint.
“Gordon. I don’t want to rush you into things,” she almost whimpers when my mouth finds her pulse and my tusk scrapes along her skin.
“Rush me. Please, Andrea, rush me,” I beg, lifting her.
“I want to touch you and be touched by you. I want to be close to you so badly I can’t stand it,” she confesses, fingers in my hair, holding onto me and keeping me in place at her throat, her delicate fingers as powerful as steel tow cables.
“It’s not a rush,” I admit, feeling heat sear across my skin when one of her hands skates under the collar of my faded gray t-shirt and down my back, her little nails lightly dancing down my spine.
“Thank God.” Andrea pushes away, and for a second, I’m confused yet again.
Then, she takes my hand and leads me towards her room.
Her bed.
I know I’m supposed to say something. This is special. Sacred. Momentous.
Instead, I make a noise in my throat, a wet click, and sit down hard on the edge of the mattress, ignoring the fact that the pillows fly off.
Andrea laughs. “My big, strong Gordon. Very big.” She stands between my legs, and when she stands and I sit, we’re still the right height to kiss.
“My small, perfect Andrea,” I whisper, hands on her hips. My hands can practically reach around her middle.
My hand could completely cover and hold her entire breast. Both of them, if they were closer together.
I’m so busy comparing our sizes that I miss the part where Andrea starts unbuttoning the gauzy pink shirt she wore today, something light and breezy, comfy for lounging around her apartment.
Now, it’s dropping to the floor, and there’s a pale peach bra staring at me.
Truly, staring, with two dark, pointed “eyes” straining the fabric.
Nipples, idiot. Not eyes.
Hard nipples mean cold. “Are you cold?” I blurt.
“Not with you to keep me warm,” Andrea pants.
So keep her warm, dummy.
I start massaging her back, and when my hands slide to the waistband of her loose black shorts, I run an experimental finger around the edge.
“Did you know skin-to-skin contact warms people up faster? Is that true?”