Page 101 of Curse the Fae

Time blurs. Sometimes the days float by like gentle streams, whereas other times they rage by in waves. It’s painful when we’re together because there are so many places to touch, so many places that make him groan and me cry out, so many body parts to taste and fit together, yet there are never enough hours. We savor them in slices, in fragments of dawn and dusk, in my chamber or his den, in light watery gulfs or dark corners of The Deep.

In shallow pools, we practice crossing weapons, which usually ends in a toe-curling kiss.

In shadowed recesses, we drown ourselves in one another, whispering and confessing and moaning.

When we’re apart, it’s no less excruciating. I feel the separation like a wound. I feel the loss of him in every place his mouth has been.

I know he feels it, too, because the instant we reunite, the air crackles, and the humidity thickens. His eyes smolder. In seconds, Elixir is on me, and my clothes are reduced to ribbons, and his cock is lunging inside me before the garments have fluttered to the ground. I cry out to the rhythm of his thrusts, my body aching everywhere, feverish and intoxicated and insatiable, as if I’ve consumed one of his sinful brews.

I take Elixir while overlooking The Kelpie Rapids, straddling him on the vista point and riding his cock. My fingers skewer into his mane, and my other digits splay over his taut cheek, holding his face to mine. Our pants beat together. Elixir clings to my hips like he wants to either yank on me harder or surrender himself completely to me. Spurred on, I batter my waist on to his lap until he loses his voice.

Another time, he fucks me naked against the wall in a pitch-black tunnel, where vertical sheets of water cascade down the foundation. As the deluge slides over us, he hitches my right leg over his waist, grips the facade overhead for leverage, and pounds his hips hard and fast, his wet buttocks slapping, his prick rushing into me. Like that…and that…and, Fables forbid, likethat.

He covers my mouth with his. This way, he devours my hollers of pleasure, keeping them from trembling down the passages and fracturing into pieces, keeping my orgasm between us, keeping it secret and safe and—

“Mine,” he growls.

“Yours,” I keen against him.

And another time, we take each other in the lily pond, where I bend over a bank and press my upper half flush against the grass. Under the water, my backside snaps into Elixir’s stiff length, and he rolls his hips, thrusting from behind. The sensuous and repetitive lurch of his cock jostles me upward. I reach back, clutching his nape while he cups my breasts and thumbs the nipples into tight buds, and we pant into blue-white cave, and there’s nothing else but this, and this, and more of this.

Always, it’s long, fierce, and desperate. Always, it isn’t enough.

***

In between these interludes, we become a single force. We band together, striving to find another way to save this wild. Elixir wants me to preserve my sleep, so I maintain my human routine, slumbering at night and sneaking out when the crickets stop chirping.

Elixir sends the same boat to The Sunken Isle, so I don’t have to struggle against the water’s pull. Through the secret tunnel, down the waterslide, and at the landing of an uncharted channel, that’s where we meet. While the river Faeries dream or bed their mates and lovers, Elixir and I journey into the remotest confines, the arteries connecting populated caves with areas less traveled.

We note shifting water levels, leakages that give Elixir pause, and the sounds of nearby currents he doesn’t recognize from previous trips. In certain terrains, the foundations are crumbling, liquid spritzing through the nodules. The water bodies appear to be thinning in places and rising in others.

“The river is not merely draining,” Elixir realizes. “It goes beyond that.”

I watch a brook fork around us. “The waters are changing course.”

It’s affecting the faunas’ habitats, disturbing the environment’s natural order and, thus, forcing the animals to migrate. We discern this while roaming amidst the dwellers. We swim amongst sharks, sturgeons, stingrays that double in size, and reptiles that bring miniature dragons or leviathans to mind. We breaststroke through lime-colored reefs and groups of whiskered fish. Half of me is petrified, the other half is mesmerized.

Sometimes Elixir’s able to communicate silently with the creatures. Other times, not. It depends on the animal. Even so, a crocodile leaves us alone, content to float in its corner, so long as we don’t get too close.

Occasionally, we sit near the animals and observe them. Elixir gives me ample time to watch this world live and flourish where it still can. I laugh, and he smirks as a raft of buoyant otters slides in single formation down a liquid ramp. They waddle back to the starting point and plunge again, and again, and again.

Whenever we say farewell, Elixir kisses me until my mouth is so swollen and my hair so mussed, I feel his mark until the next day.

***

I’ve sought high and low for my necklace. Elixir has searched on his own, swimming to depths that he says I won’t manage without holding my breath for hours.

It’s no use. The necklace is gone.

While perched next to him, with our legs in the water, I give up. Resigning myself, I hunch forward and weep.

For a moment, Elixir doesn’t move. Then he clears his throat. “May I…can I…hold you?”

I bob my head. “Yes, please.”

Most of my life, I’ve been the one holding the people I love, bracing them from collapsing. Seldom have I reached out for the same relief, apart from when I last saw my sisters. Even then, our little huddle had been for mutual comfort.

But now, Elixir slides his arms around me and tucks my head into his chest. And he doesn’t let go until I’m ready for it, which isn’t for a very long time.

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