I grinned. “No. I just… never seemed to grow much down there, even when I was… alive. Only ever the lightest of dustings.”
“It’s really hot,” she said. “Can… can I…”
And I found her hand and put her fingers to me and closed my eyes, shuddering hard as she fumbled at my slick, wet parting.
“Oh,” she breathed.
I opened my eyes, stared down at her, at her little hard nipples and her flat, lithe little stomach.
I leaned forward and tongued her left breast; she shivered. Her finger moved and squirmed slowly against me; her inexperience was clear.
“Like this,” I breathed, showing her what I liked – how to slip her fingertip back and forth over me from the little fold of my nub down to the parting of my entrance. I shivered again.
“Oh my God,” she whispered, and I realised that my wings had joined the party.
“Fucking things,” I groaned. “Mind of their own.”
“They’re…. beautiful…” she managed. “Oh, oh wow, you’re so hot inside…”
I laughed, captured her nipple gently between lip and teeth.
“Never… put your finger up… in you?” I teased, words muffled.
“No,” she whimpered. “Don’t… like the idea of… being penetrated…”
“I love it, when it’s… fingers. Put your fingers in me again.”
And then I started to slowly grind along her, driving her curled digits in and out of me.
It felt good. She was nice, and warm, and alive.
I enjoyed watching the expressions on her face, the way she stared at my breasts or lifted herself to watch my lips move around her questing little fingers.
Something wasn’t right though; something was missing, my frustration was ramping up but not any… foreshadowing… of release.
No.
Not something.
Nothing.
Nothing felt right.
Nothing was as it should be.
No heat, no spices, no deep and sultry breath from this child of Man…
This was sex, not lovemaking.
“Need some help,” I gasped. “Nerves or something.”
I fumbled down, found my clit, started to finger myself as she probed in and out of me. She was panting now, mouth open, eyes wide and pupils dilated.
Lust, I thought to myself. She lusts for you, for this. Lust, but nothing else. Nothing more profound for us.
Base need. But nothing beyond that.
A shudder of something near to despair rippled through me; I gasped, fell forwards.
“Harder,” I begged, desperate to fend off the realisation of my catastrophic error.
She did her best, panting sweet little breaths as I rode and ground and used her, and between her and my fingers I finally found release of a sort – a brief, almost apologetic anticlimax, not even close to my usual run on, spasming loss of self with…
Jezebel, I almost voiced. And I bit down hard on my tongue to numb the pain with other pain.
Caitlyn didn’t notice. She was too consumed with the feel of me on her, with the feel of the nipple that trailed close enough for her to reach, with the sensations of the sweat beading on our inner thighs.
I stared down at her.
She was beautiful.
Truly beautiful.
But… it wasn’t my kind of beauty.
It wasn’t what I needed, deep in the heart of me.
I lowered myself, and tucked myself in against her, and wrestled my blackness away for a heartbeat.
I was still aroused.
And I could feel that she was, too.
And… it had been nice to have her in me.
Even in this deeply unsatisfying way.
I lifted myself off her and shifted back.
“My turn,” I breathed, doing my best to hide my change of mood. “May I?”
She moaned assent,
I gently lifted her legs, opened her, spent a moment admiring her. Her lips were tiny, thin like her, but blushing almost carnation red with her arousal.
A work of art; I caressed them briefly, amused by the way she flailed and moaned again.
I lowered myself to the bed and eased in next to her, managing somehow to make my wings slightly less present if not entirely gone. I hooked her leg over me, and tucked my face back into her neck, enjoying her racing pulse, her brightly-burning inner vitality, and using that to camouflage myself.
I could at least make her feel good.
I could give her that.
I fumbled for her, found her.
She was soaking wet now; the dark hair that lined her lips matted and plastered to her skin. I teased my finger along her, enjoying even in my disordered state the way she moaned and arched upwards from the bed.
She was so ready.
“Cait?” I whispered.
“Uh… huh…” she moaned.
“Tell me if… I do something you don’t like…”
And I parted her, and found her clit, and began to gently circle it with my fingertip.
She spasmed, clutched at my hand.
“Gently,” she gasped. “Gently, I’m… very sensitive…”
And she slowly guided my fingertip – tentative, cautious, almost like brushstrokes over her slick and sticky sex.
Not at all the way my lover loved it, came the traitorous thought, and I snatched a painful breath and bit my lip.
“Oh, oh wow,” she whimpered. “Oh, oh, this is so amazing, oh you’re so nice, oh… ”
And like the liar I was I lay there, and made all the right noises and said all the right things and held her as we played her upwards and over into a massive, rib-shaking orgasm that left her breathless and whimpering, curled up against me.
She arched in hard against me; I was almost quick enough to turn away.
Almost.
But not quick enough, for even in my confused and cold state I didn’t want to hurt her.
So… I let her kiss me. And pretended to kiss her back.
And lied with my body even if I told some truth with my words; telling her how special she was, how beautiful, how nice it was to feel her, how wonderful it had been to make her come..
And then I held her to me and stared up far beyond her roof and tried, very hard, not to think about Jezebel.
We didn’t move for quite some time; both breathing softly, thinking, the smell of us pungent in the stifling room.
Caitlyn’s mood also seemed to have changed; perhaps she felt like she’d rushed this, that she hadn’t been ready. Maybe the clarity of afterwards had come upon her and the madness of what we’d done had registered.
Whatever it was, awkwardness blossomed between us where before there had been understanding.
We tried to talk, to carry on.
Brave little gambits, some light touching, a bit of abortive flirtation.
But the moment had passed.
And neither of our hearts were in it any more.
We’d asked the great What If, and I’d found the answer not at all to my liking.
And so, in the end, I got up and pulled my frock back over my body, abandoning my bra as too much effort and letting it fade.
She sat on the bed, watching me, eyes dark and unreadable.
“Do I at least get a hug?” I asked, feeling downcast and filthy and utterly low.
And she came to me and hugged me and pressed up against me.
“That was nice. Perhaps again, sometime. See you,” she whispered, in as weird and stilted a manner as I’d ever heard her use.
“Yeah,” I managed. “Sometime.”
“Safe flight,” she said. She grinned a fake little grin.
I kissed her brow.
She stepped back, and I spread my wings, and shifted away.
It had been a week, and my guilt had grown unbearable.
I was miserable, tattered and torn, falling.
I was hiding from Jezebel, and I suspected she was well aware that I was far from okay.
I was also pretending hard to Lucius, but I knew that neither he nor Azrael were fooled.
I was running out of borrowed time, and the interest payment was coming due.
I knew that Lucius was following me; desperately worried that I’d do something… impetuous.
Instead, I just… sank into melancholy.
(It’s a hazard of the job for us.)
And so I’d decamped to Arcadia.
And the landscape picked up and amplified my depression.
I sat, wings wrapped partially around myself as a screen – so dramatic and moody, the newly-rejuvenated self-deprecating part of me was quick to sarcastically point out.
I stared around at the gloomy, desolate moorland that was today’s version of my world.
It mirrored my mood perfectly.
I’d… failed. I’d failed myself, and I’d failed Caitlyn. I should never have let her begin to draw me; I should never have given in to the tempting urge to… mingle.
I should never have touched her.
I should most certainly never have fucked her.
I’d destroyed absolutely everything I valued.
I looked out from the top of the small tumulus, gaze fixed on the far-flung horizon.
Curtains of rain moved over the distant hills, and the wind soughed through the long stems of grass, rattling the dry seed pods and leaves like old, long-dead bones.
Moss and lichen covered old stone, not even a bird moved through the bitter sky.
My sense of Caitlyn was still there; she’d spent part of the day after our… liaison… at her friend’s grave.
Probably confession.
And now she seemed have elected to roam at random.
I’d tried, desperately, to sink myself in work and alcohol. I’d rebuffed contact from Jezebel and Lucius both.
I’d snapped at Azrael and earned the terrifying manifestation of his Aspect for my temerity.
I was circling the drain.
So today I’d (metaphorically) prostrated myself before my master – begging him for forgiveness, asking for time. He’d stared hard at me but said nothing, merely nodding curtly in answer to my desperate request.
And I’d left his presence and fled here.
To sulk at first.
But, soon enough, to wallow.
To mourn.
I wrapped arms and wings around myself, miserable.
Gusts of wind ruffled through my feathers, disordering them – Arcadia once again mirroring my own regrets and internal distress.
A horrible task awaited me.
I had to tell Jezebel.
I had to tell her what I’d done.
I had to find the courage to… confess to her.
It was… killing me, as wrong as that word was, but… everything was a disaster and I needed her to know.