Page 98 of Forget Me Not

Ray was alive. He was here. He couldn’t leave if he wanted to, not even for whatever was going on in the kitchen. Not for gunshots. Not for City Hall.

He opened his mouth, but what came out was a rough, bestial sound—not sweet, not charming. Nonetheless, Cal’s wings shivered again, and since Ray couldn’t say the word, he used his mouth to bite. He nipped soft flesh, the delicate point of a fragile leaf, then used his tongue where he had put his teeth, and thought Cal smelled like flowers, like the way roses wide open in the heat of the sun should smell.

Ray had his answer, but Cal needed words. Ray looked up to eyes glowing bright in the mirror and stared until they were merely blue. He took a breath. His voice was hoarse, but he could be understood.

“Do you want me to hurt you now?”

Calpulledon the pocket. “Please.”

Ray bit him, like possessive, unforgiving weres in old horror films bit humans who screamed in fear that was too much like ecstasy. Cal clutched the sweatshirt, at Ray’s neck, clinging when Ray softened it. “No, no,” he said on a pained gasp that slid into a moan, “keep going.”

Ray licked skin hot with a bruise that would be deep and red in minutes, maybe sooner than that, purpling even before he was done. In early human movies, a bite like that made the victims into werewolves too, as though it was a disease.

Cal clawed at the back of Ray’s neck with his little blunt fingernails. “Come on, Ray.” He abandoned the sweatshirt pocket to curl his hand over the one Ray had at his throat. He moved Ray’s fingers to press them down into the bite mark, and the perfume of his scent and the breathless sound he made had Ray snapping his teeth.

Ray turned his head until a smooth, safe, freckled shoulder was under his mouth. Cal panted at the ceiling, twisting Ray’s hair in his grasping fingers. His blood was hot, just a trickle on Ray’s tongue. Ray was careful. He didn’t like to hurt Cal, but he liked to hurt him. He understood now, and growled for it because he couldn’t purr.

“This is where it happened, you know.” Cal told him things in a thick voice, a shudder working through him when Ray nosed at the impression of his teeth. He relaxed his grip on Ray’s hair to try to clumsily smooth it down. “Don’t try to remember. Just trust me. This is where you realized who I was to you. And this is where I saw you as you really are and wanted you so much. Still do.”

He tipped his head to the side, his eyes closed, and shuddered again, violently, as Ray traced the mark with his fingertips. “From the first time I saw you. From the first time I saw you shift. Your colors when you looked at me. They don’t get to take this.” He gasped for the open-mouthed kiss Ray gave each of the marks and slowly opened his eyes whilehurtanddelightrose from him in equal measure. “Whatever you want. I’m willing.”

Ray dropped his attention to the bulge in Cal’s jeans. Roses and not roses.Sweat/salt/lust.Yes/Cal—and a word Ray couldn’t say.

“You didn’t shift completely,” Cal carried on, seductive and coaxing like fairies were supposed to be. “That day. When you realized what I was. You didn’t shift all the way. Just enough to try to scare me off.” He laughed, showing teeth. “Come on, Ray. Show me again. My snarling werewolf who ran from me for two years. Show me what’s mine. Give it to me.”

Ray tore his hand away from Cal’s neck and dragged it across the countertop as claws emerged and hair grew thick. The sweatshirt caught at his neck. He ripped through it.

Soft fairy hands tugged away the remnants, then dug into the hair on Ray’s chest. “There you are.” Fairieskept, Cal said. Cal, who was Lis’ son. “My wolf. Now show me the rest of you.”

Ray lifted one clawed hand. Cal laughed again, giddy and mean. “Point taken. Allow me.” He slid from the counter and landed, wobbling, on his feet. He glanced up to take Ray’s measure, then reached for the fly of the khakis and shoved them down with obvious impatience. He did the same with his jeans and underwear, grinning when he tried to step out of them and stumbled because he had socks on and the jeans got stuck.

He saved himself from ruin by holding onto Ray, and once his feet were free, he looked Ray in the eye while he smoothed both hands down Ray’s stomach. “You’re beautiful,” he whispered, as if sparkles fell from his mouth too.

Ray frowned without any choice in the matter.

Cal put his forehead to Ray’s chest and laughed. “Yes, yes, you are fearsome and mighty and impressive, but also…” he swept his palms over Ray’s thighs, clawing through the hair on their way back up, “…beautiful.”

Ray had only met one were who might have been called beautiful, but that were was the exception, not the rule. Fairies were beautiful.Calwas beautiful. Ray reached out to put a hand beneath Cal’s chin to urge his head up to tell him so, but Cal turned around without seeming to notice, expression distracted.

He opened two drawers, pushing combs and unopened double packs of toothpaste aside in his search for something. “I know I…” he muttered, as absentminded as people said fairies were. One drawer seemed to have nothing in it but padded cuffs and a small, pastel purple dildo, but Cal apparently had no interest in those. He ducked down to open a cabinet door and crowed when he spotted the bottle he’d been looking for. “Ah ha—oh.”

Ray crowded him into the counter and the bottle of lube went skittering into the sink. Cal steadied himself with his hands splayed over the countertop, spread his legs, and kept talking. “This would be more like how it was the first time,” he informed Ray, matter-of-fact except for his faster breathing when Ray touched the bite marks and how Cal’s attention was riveted to that in their reflection.

When Ray pressed on them, Cal finally closed his eyes. He bit his lip, turning it a pretty color when he released it. “You were mad at me, and you wanted me, and neither of us wanted to stop. It was… like I wasn’t just a breakable fairy to you anymore, and you wanted to be inside me and mark me in every way you could.”

Ray put his teeth to Callalily’s delicate nape without biting down. Cal shuddered, his wings buzzing against Ray’s chest. His eyes fluttered open after a moment, fixing on Ray when Ray cupped his ass. “You still want to do that?” It was a question, but it was not surprise in the air around him. Ray nuzzled the tip of Cal’s ear, breathing in deep. “Ah.” Cal sighed in understanding. “The two conflicting Ray impulses about me.” He reached back to seize a handful of Ray’s hair. Ray met his eyes in the mirror. “But you know what I want this time.”

Cal’s blood was metal in Ray’s mouth, sugar-sweet, sharp. Ray hitched him back by his hips and leaned over him until Cal’s wings couldn’t do much more than twitch helplessly. Ray had already bruised him, and the sweet scent rose when he added more to Cal’s collection, hands hard on Cal’s hips as he thrust between his legs, tight and hot at his upper thighs, below his balls.

Cal was so very lithe and small and delicious. Ray wanted to feel him forever, to taste, smell. He added a bite over the first and held Cal’s writhing body still while he continued to fuck his thighs. Ray might keep him like this, pinned at last, whining, and paint him in come while he begged for more.

“Up here?” Cal asked, hands braced. “Or on the floor? In the shower? Hot water brings the bruises up faster. Imagine your handprints everywhere, a ring from your mouth at my throat.”

In the shower, Cal’s taste would wash away before Ray could savor it. But he would look pretty marked up and bitten. Ray snarled into his shoulder, and Cal, like a vicious, victorious pixy, laughed again, though it was breathless and strained.

“I talk too much?” Cal guessed, eyes bright. “And now you don’t know what you want? Poor Raymond,” he teased without any sympathy. He glanced down, and when he looked up, the glint in his eyes made Ray ease back warily.

Without taking his eyes off Ray in the mirror, Cal took the washcloth from the sink and put it into his mouth before biting down. Water dripped from his makeshift gag onto the counter below him. When Ray didn’t move except to tighten his hands, claws pressing without breaking the skin, Cal reached into the sink again.

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