14. Buttering Up My Favorite Drag Queen
Buttering Up My Favorite Drag Queen
SNOW
Iwake up to the sound of people arguing.
No. Not people. The Seven.
"We need to take her to the hospital." It sounds like One, sharp and trying to maintain control.
"We aren't going to the hospital. We can't be seen there." This personality is worried, almost timid.
"We'll just drop her off then." With that sardonic tone, I think it's Two, but my head is fuzzy and a tiny rude gremlin is beating the inside of my skull with a hammer.
"And dump her?" Another voice snaps in, hotter than the rest. "You always were the biggest asshole."
"I'm being practical."
"You're being a dick."
"She's bleeding," someone else says. Tense. Precise. "Head wounds bleed heavily, but she lost consciousness."
"Stop talking and move," a darker voice growls.
I groan, extending a hand to get his attention.
"Oh shit, she's awake."
"Pumpkin Coach Club," I mutter, but it comes out wrong.
"What did she say? Shmumkin Ho Fub?"
Well, that's rude. My head hurts terribly, and I articulated just fine.
I try again, until he says it back. "The Fairy Godmother. She can help."
Exhausted from trying to communicate, I slump back and give in to the dark, restful oblivion again.
I only vaguely process being carried or fluttering my eyes open to catch the neon Pumpkin Coach sign overhead. Then a familiar voice.
"Dammit Snow, why you gotta be a drama queen when you know that's my thing?" a deep voice says from somewhere nearby.
Cool spreads across my forehead, then sinks straight through my skull. The sharp throb behind my eyes lessens. The cotton stuffed in my head thins. I suck in a breath and find myself sitting upright, blinking at the room like someone switched the world back on.
The room has massive vanities, but thankfully only one of them is lit. Otherwise, the rows of bright bulbs would have likely burned my corneas out.
Racks of clothes covered in sequins, feathers, and rhinestones fill every corner. We're in the general dressing room at the back of the Pumpkin Coach Club, and Dame Kiki Eleganza hovers over me as I lie on a fainting couch.
Her false eyelashes are dotted with gemstones, and her wig is piled with almost three feet of perfect eggshell blue curls that contrast beautifully against her wide, warm brown face.
She dwarfs The Seven with her impressive height when she stands, and her strapless dress shows off her incredibly muscled shoulders.
"What in the hell have you been up to, girl?" Kiki demands.
"Oh, you know, I love to party," I say weakly as I get to my feet.
It's only then I notice One standing there, and the dark circles under his eyes and his haunted, wary expression makes him look like he’s aged ten years.
"I would give you such a verbal whooping if I weren't on in five minutes," Kiki scolds. Kiki is the top-billing drag queen at Pumpkin Coach Club, known for her intuitive insight and fabulous fashion. She’s also fantastic for bachelorette parties.
What most people don’t know is that she is a level four healing mage.
But seeing as she is my friend, I'd hoped that she would help me out since The Seven was having a meltdown about taking me to a hospital.
"Duh, I should have thought of it sooner, but maybe you could help him too." The Seven used to be one, but now he's fractured. Maybe it's something Kiki could heal. I'm genuinely impressed by my own genius.
Kiki pops her hands on her hips and raises an eyebrow. "Do I look like a paramedic service truck to you?"
"You look like the most gorgeous, powerhouse of a human being I've ever seen, with legs for days," I answer, fluttering my eyes at her.
Her defensive posture softens. "You always know how to butter me up, don't you?" she accuses with no real irritation.
"With skin like yours? Who needs butter?"
She blows a raspberry at me, even as we overhear the emcee announcing The Fairy Godmother as up next. Her eyes flick to One, an intent curiosity and wariness there. Kiki is helpful but not easily trusting.
"Maybe later, my darlings," she says, "The show must go on." Then she whisks out of the room in a tornado of feathers and fabulousness.
One watches the doorway long after the feathers settle. Then his shoulders drop and he looks back at me.
The world swims before my eyes as my stomach defies gravity, and I stumble back onto the couch. One is there before I can blink, helping steady me to sit.
"I'm okay, just a little dizzy," I say, already feeling better.
Okay...with his hand on my waist, I'm feeling a lot better.
"I should have been there. I would have been quicker. I could have gotten you out of the way before you got hit."
"It's not your fault," I say softly, then press a hand to his face. His eyes widen and then lower as he leans into my touch.
"Did I hear you and the others arguing with each other? Out loud?"
"It can happen. When we're stressed," he says quietly.
His thumb moves once where his hand still rests at my waist. "You can't keep doing this. Following me around. Throwing yourself into bad situations." My pulse stutters in my throat.
"I'll stop when you stop loving it." It comes out lighter than I feel.
His mouth opens, then closes. His retort doesn't come. "You're so unexpected," he says instead, and the words come out rough and low.
My chest pulls tight at the way he says it. For some reason I want to fill the silence, make a joke, take the weight off whatever this is becoming.
"Six said that too." I keep my voice easy. "He didn't say if that was good or bad."
"It's both." He holds my eyes.
The lightness I was clinging to slips.
That's kind of my thing, I guess. Good, but not good enough. And that stings more than he could know. It stings every day.
"I've never met anyone as contradictory as myself before," he goes on, quieter.
"You possess so many pieces. The laughter, the light, the violence and darkness that you think you can hide with the former.
But you can't. Not even close. The night-stalking, and the ridiculous need to help everyone you pass. The way you grin at a high-level mage like they’re an old friend and not a thing that could end you. "
I'm not sure if he means The Fairy Godmother, or if he is referring to himself.
One's hand comes up and hovers near my cheek for a moment. When he touches me, the warmth of it stalls everything. "But I look at you, and I can see how all of it fits. How every part works with the others. It's beautiful. You're beautiful."
I open my mouth. Nothing comes. For once I have nothing light to set down on top of it, no joke to make this smaller, and I just sit there staring at him with my heart slamming against my ribs.
I have spent most of my life envying what others could do and be.
Like a magpie, I would try to pick up little pieces that I liked and fold them into myself, but frankly, I always felt like a mess.
It never added up to a whole. It always feels like there's a piece missing, or like there’s a fire underneath, straining to be fed, and no matter what I throw on it, it stays hungry.
And he just looked at all those scattered pieces and called them beautiful. Like they belong together. Like they make me whole.
He leans forward, and a wave of dizziness hits me for a completely different reason as I read the intention on his tense face. One's hand slides along my jaw, angling my face before his lips touch mine.
Unlike Four, who was unbridled passion and heat, One is a massive ball of power and restraint.
His firm lips kiss me softly, almost reverently, but I can feel him vibrating from restraining himself. Like he's afraid of breaking me, or of what he’ll do if he lets himself off the leash he keeps wrapped around his neck so tightly.
He pulls back an inch, swallowing hard, and I can sense his fear is almost as great as his want.
I search his pale, white eyes and my heart does somersaults in my chest until I fear it will explode.
Setting a hand on his other cheek, I kiss him this time. His mouth parts only slightly, but I sneak my tongue past and taste him.
A shudder rips through my entire being at the contact. He tastes like ozone before a lightning storm. It plays with the fire dancing in my gut until it's burned out everything else and I'm running on nothing but him.
"Snow," he groans into the kiss. Like I’m killing him.
The couch hits the backs of my knees. One follows me down, mouth still on mine, body coming over me with so much heat I forget how to breathe.
I might die if he stops.
His hand slides over my ribs and cups my breast, his thumb brushing over the peak until my back bows off the cushion. I open for him, dragging him closer until the hard length of him fits right where I need pressure most.
I shove his shirt higher, greedy for skin, for muscle, for every inch of him I can get under my hands. My mouth finds his neck, and the clean cedar-and-steel taste of him hits my tongue.
His fist tightens in my hair. Not to control me.
To hold on.
One tears his mouth from mine and buries his face in my shoulder. His breath burns over my pulse. He stays braced above me, hard and heavy and shaking with restraint.
"You got hurt," he says.
I still.
One’s breath shudders over my shoulder. His fingers flex once in my hair, then loosen, like he caught himself gripping too hard.
"I'm okay."
"Your head was bleeding and you wouldn't wake up. We thought you might—" His words cut off, unable to finish.
This whole time I'd been trying to prove I was worth the tagalong. I had no idea my getting hurt could affect him this much. A hot, bubbly feeling wells up in my chest until the pressure makes it hard to breathe.
His mouth brushes the skin below my ear. Not quite a kiss. More like he can't stop checking that I'm still warm. "We didn't switch fast enough," he says.
My chest pinches.
"We should have had you."
My fingers slide under his shirt. His back muscles jump beneath my touch.
"I'm fine now. Seriously. You got me to Kiki. And I'm in one piece. Buuut," I draw the word out, "I could be in pieces...want to see my magic floating finger trick again?" The heaviness is too much, and I can't help but try to break it.
His laugh is quiet and humorless.
"Why do you make things so difficult?" he asks in exasperation.
"That's my brand," I chirp. "And I don’t think you could do easy. All of you would get bored too quickly."
My thighs tighten around his hips.
His breath catches.
"Snow," he warns.
"Stop holding back with me," I order.
As I suck and kiss along his throat, his head drops, giving me full access. His hips rock rhythmically into mine until the friction from our clothes starts to build pressure in my clit.
Though he's on top of me, there's something deeply vulnerable about how One buries his face into my neck.
Like he can't believe I'm here with him.
A wash of protectiveness comes over me. I don't want him to hurt, to always have to white-knuckle everything, to be alone anymore.
Though I suppose he's not alone. But as he shifts to deeply kiss me again, fingers tunneling into my hair to angle my head better, I realize it feels like he's giving me all his loneliness. And because of that, I give him all of mine.
All the late nights I can't sleep.
All the yearning to be more.
With him, I feel like I can be more.
It's absurd, of course. He can't be lonely with Seven people shoved into one, but I swear I feel the mirrored ache of it all the way to the center of my bones.
His hips buck faster into mine, and I gasp into his mouth as the pressure coils tighter in my lower stomach and center.
"Snow," he says, his voice husky and rough. "I want to try something. Will you let me?" Despite his low voice, there is a raw vulnerability in his question that makes my chest ache.
I can't find my words, so I just nod.
One goes for the button on my pants and misses it once before he gets it. A surprising fumble considering how in control he always seems. He slides a hand under my waistband and panties until his fingers find my already dripping slit.
The moan that escapes me is loud enough to carry, so he claps his other hand over my mouth, even though music pumps in from the stage.
"Fuck, Snow," he breathes. "I've never..."
I can't quite make sense of what he's saying while he runs a finger up and down my center, spreading the wetness all around before dipping a finger inside me. His eyes aren't on my face. They're on his own hand, tracking every twitch he pulls out of me.
Thank the fae lords, his hand is over my mouth because the sound I make definitely might be heard over the music.
He pumps in and out, and my hips rock as I chase his finger, wanting, needing more. Then he pulls away, and I let out a pathetic mewl in response.
One sucks his finger into his mouth, tasting me with a satisfied moan. I shudder, aroused nearly out of my mind.
"One," I beg. His hand slips back into my pants, finds my clit, and gently rubs it. Coils of need tighten and rise in me as my body falls into his touch yet begs for more. Sweat pops out on the back of my neck and between my breasts. I'm angled awkwardly, trying to chase his touch, needing more.
"Is this what you want?" he asks, studying me with intensity.
Oh. Oh fuck. Oh my fae lords, I need more. I want to come. I want to come so badly, it physically hurts not to.
"Yes," I gasp. "Faster," I add in demand.
He freezes.
I realize too late that I might have pushed him too far. One is the control freak of the group. He likes to be in charge. Maybe because he’s always had to be in charge of the others.
He raises a brow. "Faster?"
I squirm and buck, trying to urge him on. "Please."
"That, I can do," he says with the first self-satisfied smile I've seen him wear before his touch speeds up.