Page 15 of The Fae Menagerie
"Do you ever want to change?" He asked. "Like … do you ever hope one day you'll meet someone, and your body will want to fuck them senseless?"
It was my turn to flop onto my back so he couldn't watch the fear dance across my face. I sucked at hiding my emotions. "I don't think I can," I admitted. "I … what if I'm asexual?"
I'd heard the word tossed around in our LGBTQ+ employee resource group meetings, and Bret had tossed it in my face a time or two.
"Some of the coolest fae I know are ace," Doyle said. "The florae reproduce from pollen. They aren't sexually attracted to each other, nor to the fae who come to pollinate them. It's … comforting. I know I'm doing what I need to do and what they need me to do without violating them."
"Is it sexual?"
"Pollinating flowers? Depends on who you ask."
"Do you use your cock?" I honestly didn't know.
He laughed. "No. We bathe in their pollen with our wings. Then, we fly over the lot of them, trailing pollen all the way. That's why some mistake us for overgrown pixies."
I rolled onto my side, and he rolled onto his stomach with his wing only inches from my fingertips.
"May I touch?"
"I have to warn you, I might beg you not to stop." His smirk didn't hide the flush of pink in his cheeks. "They're very sensitive."
I swallowed my apprehension and closed the gap between us, brushing my fingers along the downy length of his wing. It was softer than I'd expected. I pressed my fingers harder, eliciting a groan. Startled, I backed off, only to have Doyle whisper, "No, please. It's been ages since anyone's touched me there. Would you … the bases get sore from the burlap. Would you be so kind as to apply salve to them?"
When he asked so politely, how could I refuse?
He rolled onto his stomach again and directed me to a drawer in the bedside table on his side of the bed.
The salve inside the glass container was almost gone. I tried not to think about its other potential uses as I coated the base of each wing with it, and then the delicate gossamer wings themselves. Last, I coated the downy edges.
Throughout, Doyle had stifled happy noises with his pillow. He whimpered when I finally moved away and tucked the salve back in the drawer.
"Go ahead and shower," he said. "I'm going to need a moment."
After all that, my cock was still not on board, even when I hopped into the warm shower and spent more time than usual soaping it up.
All my life, I'd been trying to please people like Doyle, and they'd all grown tired of my lack of sex drive. Hell, Doyle wasn'teven trying to get in my pants. He'd been a complete gentleman, er, gentlefae as he liked to be called, this whole time.
I knew exactly what he was doing in the bed I'd just left. This wasn't the first time I'd gotten a partner riled up and left them to finish without me.
Once dry and back in my suit, I waited in the kitchen alone. I tried to focus on the words in my book, but I had reached the sappy declaration of love. I wasn't feeling it, though I had enjoyed the book until now.
I tried not to think of home, but memories of my mom and dad came flooding back, and I couldn't hold back the tears. Would they think I'd died? Would they blame Bret or reward him?
Breaking glass shattered my reverie. I glanced through the doorway toward the living room and the racket.
"You don't have my permission to come into my bedroom."
"Have you forgotten where you are?" Aidan's deep voice grated on my last nerve. I tried to rise from my seat, but the kitchen chose that moment to fix our breakfast. The chair hit me in the calves, and I slumped back into it. The thought of food trying to force itself down my throat still made me shiver, though the rest of the enclosure's magic seemed to ignore me. I picked up my fork and stabbed it at the eggs and bacon on my plate.
"You have no rights here," Aidan shouted from the living room. "Especially not privacy, not from me."
"I mean nothing to you." Doyle sounded as furious as the demon Bret thought he was. "Why can't you leave me alone?"
"Your grandmother demanded I keep an eye on you."
Doyle's mom watched the viewing every morning, but this was the first I'd heard of his grandmother.
"I'll never belong to you," Doyle said as he entered the kitchen. He was still naked and dripping from his shower. Acuddlebug child came running to the outside wall for a closer look, but an older sibling covered their eyes and dragged them away toward the grove of trees in the distance.
