Page 54 of Curse the Fae

His mouth charts a path toward my jaw and hovers millimeters from the place where it meets my earlobe. Tingles ricochet down my spine, his words blowing hot air into that sensitive place. He rasps thickly against my jaw, then switches to the other side, along my throat—and I let him. This precarious and pivotal moment distorts all rationale, my body becoming unrecognizable to itself.

I’m not the only one. Elixir trembles, his body a volcano—massive, explosive, and on the brink of something so apocalyptic, it will burn for an eternity afterward.

“Tell me,” Elixir mutters, his tone feral, furious, and faint all at once. “I would see what you see.”

A whimper curls from my lips, the sound fluttering into the space. “Your joints are quivering, and your tendons have risen, and your scales have tinted with threads of scarlet.”

He utters through his teeth, “There would be more, if we allowed it.”

“What more?” slips out before I can stop myself.

“I would sketch you from behind,” Elixir swears. “I would trace your flesh, mark a path to your breasts, and thumb them until your nipples become ruched.”

My hips squirm. They jut against the water pressure, greedy for friction, for relief. It’s either that or buck my backside into his tail, into the spot where his pelvis should be.

“I would suckle your throat until you are wetter than this bath.”

It’s all I can do not to reach back, tangle my digits in his mane, and clasp his nape for balance.

“And then,” he says. “I would take you like this, soaked and with your spine bowed. I’m of The Deep, and so I would fuck you that way. My cock would lunge into you until the pleasure hits your scalp. I would blind you with rapture, if not with magic. I would show you darkness. And you would take it so thoroughly, so genuinely—but not so purely.”

“How do you know?” I keen.

“The way your mouth forms words. How your voice pours from your lips. The delicate slide of your lisp. They prove you have been tasted before.”

Yes, by the cobbler’s daughter. But what Elixir describes goes beyond a kiss and several attempts at fondling, which my sisters don’t know about because I’d been too sheepish to tell them.

“What about you?” I murmur, recalling what Puck had said about Elixir never being ridden. “Have you been tasted? Have you been taken?”

“No,” he hums without reserve. “I have not.”

He’s incapable of lying, yet this can’t be the truth, no matter what that satyr had claimed. How can this specimen be a virgin? How can Elixir describe such fervid acts without having experienced them?

What’s more, how could he have lived this long without satisfying his appetites? Who has that much willpower? And why is his confession all the more enticing?

Elixir seems to read my thoughts, because he intones, “Granted, I have a rather knowledgeable, and rather vocal, satyr brother. But Faeries are graced with certain sexual capabilities, such as sensory perception and stamina. If I were to fuck you, I would know what to do. And I would last as long as you wish.”

Oh, Fables forgive us.

My back arches. I lean into him, the position shoving my breasts higher, the points of my nipples erect. We’re relentless and mindless, yet not a single inch of him has made physical contact with me.

Mist laves our skin. The cascades simmer with cobalt and emerald. We quiver on a precipice, savage and turbulent.

My pendant taps his ribs. We go still. Then we shatter apart, breaking free from the spell. Sultry air rushes through and dampens my mottled cheeks.

What have I done to myself? What has become of me?

The pendant’s weight lifts as Elixir plucks and raises it high. “What is this?”

I fortify myself, wheel toward him, and submerge my nipples under the whirlpool, preserving what’s left of my modesty. I don’t care that he can’t physically see me. It hasn’t stopped Elixir from doing so, in other palpable ways.

We’ve given ourselves enough space to maneuver, but only just. My back presses into the rocks, and with every inflation of his chest, we’re still in danger of colliding.

Elixir winds my pendant to the front, rolls it between his fingers, and discerns its shape. I steal the bauble from his grasp and drape it down my spine, where it’s secure. Instead of telling him the pendant is my heart, my refuge, and my love, I answer, “It’s why we can’t do this.”

But the Fae detects what I leave out. He hears my impassioned, protective tone, and it stokes the gold in his irises, which jump all over my figure with no place to rest. Confusion stares back at me. This being grasps the emotions, but he can’t identify with them.

As I gaze at him, the question emerges unbidden. “Why is your name Elixir?”

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