Tigerlily Page 3

  What? Magic? Demonic possession? Infection by an incubus? All seemed possible, in light of her fear of the sex that was about to leak out.

  “Do you think there’s something wrong with the naked body?”

  He probably had escaped from a nudist colony. One of those cultish ones, that recruited people by being really handsome and painting hallucinogenics all over themselves, before wandering in on some poor unsuspecting lonely and depressed loser.

  “No—I…are you drugging me? I bet you’re drugging me, aren’t you.”

  “I don’t think so. But it’s hard to tell. I don’t understand all human words.”

  “Stop saying human! You’re human, okay?”

  Yes! She had made it to the hallway. Any second now, and she’d be back in reality.

  “I am?”

  Lord, have mercy. Why wasn’t he sure? Human men should definitely be sure. It was practically a rule, written in, like, the Bible. And ye, men shall verily know that you’re not donkeys or goats. You’re definitely human. Okay? Love, God.

  “Yes—you’re human. Definitely, definitely human. Unless I’m imagining you, in which case, I need to lie down.”

  She had her back to him, when he next spoke. He sounded softer, graver.

  “Are you all right, Mae?”

  She thought, immediately, of the hospital bed. A nurse standing over her—are you all right, Mae?

  “I’ll be fine, in a second. Just…you carry on washing yourself, okay?”

  She thought of his thick curved cock, in his big hand. Being ’washed’.

  It wasn’t a shock that a sudden wave hit her, at that. But it was strong, and her legs turned to jelly that wouldn’t hold her up, and her sex swelled, to fill up her entire universe. Clearly, her subconscious was really pissed at her, for denying it sex for all of these months. And years.

  She wanted to cry at it—but I’ve been really sad! It’s hard to want sex when you’re really sad! Though apparently not so hard when tall, hot fantasies wandered in your front door. And the back door. And just everywhere, really.

  “Here, let me help you,” he said, and she knew what he was going to do, before he did it. Of course he was going to do it! He probably had other fantasy men credentials, too—like the ability to manfully ride an imaginary horse with his shirt open, or the need to thrust his big sword into—

  Still, she let him pick her up. He swept her into his arms, no problems. Breathlessness: optional. Feeling of intense familiarity: definitely present. Especially when she put a hand on his face, and felt the very real glacial smoothness of his skin. Followed by the much less familiar feel of his bristling stubble.

  The urge to ask him if they’d met before grew overwhelming, but somehow she couldn’t make herself say the words. Saying them made it real.

  “You’ve messed up your hair,” she said instead. Before stroking it back from his smooth, strong forehead. It felt as good as it looked, soft as anything and still ever so slightly damp.

  “Do I feel real, now?” he asked, and there was really no answer to that. Mainly because he was carrying her into the spare room. He was carrying her into the spare room. This did not seem like a good idea.

  “You feel very real.”

  Her voice sounded so tremulous and drooping all over him, even to her ears. Likely as not, she was swooning. And God help her, he definitely deserved a swoon. So much so that when he laid her down on the bed, and the urge to kiss him grew too desperate to fight, she simply had to pick up the phone on the bedside table, and call Susan.

  Chapter Three

  He didn’t know how to use the phone. She could tell he didn’t—the way he tried to find the person speaking to him from inside the receiver was a definite giveaway. And all the while she could hear Susan saying hello, hello, are you there, hot guy?

  He asked her what hot guy meant, but luckily she was spared the embarrassment of having to explain. Mainly because a sharp electric thrill zipped through her body, when Susan said from the tinny confines of the receiver she was holding out to him, “Oooh, he sounds delish! You sly dog. Is that what’s been keeping you away from work? Because you know, any time you’re ready to come back—”

  She brought the phone back to her ear, though her gaze and everything else in her remained on him. He looked so guileless and gorgeous, just sat there waiting, on the end of the bed. Trusting her, even though he didn’t seem to understand what she was doing.

  “Susan, I have to go. I have important business to attend to.”

  She didn’t feel in the least bit bad, about putting the phone down without waiting for a reply. He was real. Someone else had confirmed it. He was real and had probably sex voodoo powers and came from God knows where—the back of her memory, most likely.

  “Are you a demon?” she said, because it was the first thing that came to mind. “An incubus of some kind?”

  He squinted, and strained for an answer. Really, such effort should have looked bad on him. But not even narrowed eyes and a perpetually confused look could pull it off. Apparently, he always looked good—no matter what and on pain of death.

  Her death, most probably.

  “I don’t think so. Demons are evil, aren’t they? I don’t think I have any evil intent.”

  “And yet you’re now on your eight millionth erection.”

  He squinted even harder, at that.

  “You mean my staff,” he said. Then grasped himself.

  She tried to look at the ceiling. A chair. Other innocuous things.

  “Do you think my horn of plenty is evil?”

  Oh Lord. Horn of what now?

  “I think the fact that you call it that might be—look, we have to figure out what to do with you. You’re obviously more than my tiny brain can comprehend, so I’m really not sure what we should be doing. But it’s definitely not…talking about…your thingie.”

  “There’s nothing evil about desire. I’m sure of it.”

  And oh, he really did seem sure. She could feel his surety pouring out of him, and flowing into her. It felt, unsurprisingly, like being really, really aroused.

  “You don’t even know your own name, Sam. How can you be sure of anything?”

  “I’m sure that you long for me.”

  She tried to make an expression that best said you’re crazy. But likely he wouldn’t understand. He used terms like horn of plenty. He was probably from the land of make believe. The land of fairies and goblins and elves and oh God, what if that stuff was real? Hadn’t he said something about the moon and the naming and all of those things from stories she had long since stopped writing?

  “I—that is—that’s irrelevant. Irrelevant. We need to focus on shoving you back through the portal to another realm.”

  “I’m aroused because you’re aroused. I think it’s what I am—it’s the core of my being. To be in desire and to be desired. To live in the flame of—”

  She could feel sweat popping out in weird places—like behind her knees. Sometimes a really big wave came off him, and it was like being drowned. She tried to cling to the dock, to a tree branch, to anything.

  But she was getting swept away, nonetheless.

  “Listen, Sam. I really like your sex poetry. I do. And you’re probably right—you’re very attractive and you make me…want to do things. But it’s just sex voodoo and heightened circumstances, and don’t you want to get back to where you were before? To the other writhing gorgeous sex demons?”

  “The writhing sounds good.”

  She evaded the knowledge that it actually honestly did. Nobody ever needed to know that writhing sounded good, in a situation like this.

  “Great. Okay. So let’s—”

  “I can smell the seat of your pleasure.”

  She bfffed out a sigh. Likely he was right about all that “I was made for desire” stuff—he seemed almost impossibly single-minded.

  “Now we’re just back to square one.”

  “I can see how your nipples have stiffened, through
your shirt. But even if I couldn’t taste and smell and see all of these things, I would know. Look, here.”

  He took her hand. She didn’t try to stop him. Though afterwards—afterwards she kind of wished she’d put up at least a token resistance. Who knew taking someone’s hand could lead to intense sex energy being pushed into your body via the fingers?

  This is all new to me, she wanted to say. But couldn’t, because of the warmth and light and desire of summer suddenly filling her body, just as easy as that.

  She thought of birds fluttering up to the sky, and saw them behind her eyes, sudden and beautiful. They flew out of a dark sky and into a light, with the scent of summer on their heels. She saw the boy’s face again, as sweet as it would one day be handsome, and he said, in her head, “Sing that song again, to me.”

  It took a long, long while to come around from. Her limbs felt slow and weighted down with syrup, and there was that glorious blissed out feeling that usually came after a huge orgasm. An orgasm the size of Brazil. An orgasm that made her shake, and want to collapse.

  So she was surprised to find herself still sat up, hand clasped in his. And he looked unconcerned, too, as though this sort of thing happened to him all the time. He looked as he had done, all those years ago when he’d asked her to sing. He had owned a little reed-flute thing, and he had played it high and sweet and she had sang…she had sang…

  I am the Lord of the dance said he.

  “It’s your turn, now,” he said, and he meant it. He wanted her to push back with whatever that thing was. To pour herself into him, or something similar. Which sounded crazy, but then so did remembering a boy she once played with in the woods, who hadn’t really been a boy at all.

  “I don’t know how. I haven’t read any pagan spell books, lately.”

  “You don’t need arda. Fill yourself up with your desires and your wants and everything, everything—I can take all of it. And then send it to me. Go on, Mae.”

  “You just talked to Susan, on the phone. She works at a debt collection agency. I worked at a debt collection agency. I drive a Ford Focus and like knitting.”

  “Are those things a part of your wants and desires?”

  “No. They’re just boring things that live ten billion miles away from sending magical sex waves. Because that’s what you want me to do, right? Send you a magical sex wave.”

  His expression turned almost feral. She would have been startled, if it didn’t suit his sybaritic side just fine.

  “Open to me.”

  He might as well have said “spread your legs”. It sounded almost unbearably filthy, either way.

  “Can we just kiss, first?”

  “You’re ripe, trembling.”

  “I’d really like to kiss you. I can admit that much.”

  “And your sex is slippery with want—I can almost feel it. Just push back at me.”

  He made it sound so easy! Even though it absolutely one hundred percent wasn’t. For starters, she was certain that doing it should only make a person see birds and feel like they’d had an orgasm.

  It definitely shouldn’t make them stop breathing, momentarily, while their hand welded itself to another person’s.

  She tried to yank her hand back, but it wouldn’t come free of his death grip. He seemed to be caught in a stuttering, breathless feedback loop, mouth open, eyes wide and disbelieving, though she couldn’t tell what, exactly, he was disbelieving about.

  Her thoughts tangled, briefly, and there was definitely some sweating and heaving going on, in her head. She remembered fragments of real things and fragments of fake, fantasies of sex while lying spent after the real thing.

  There was that time with Martin Sykes, when he’d definitely almost made her come and afterwards, she had dreamt of…well. Probably more than one man at once. Maybe even several. And there were lots of memories of several men all at once, and the tingling, slippery things they’d done to her in her head.

  None of which even touched on the things she could imagine him doing to her, right at that moment. They were the worst of her thoughts, she felt—the ones that included him, persuading her and touching her and doing all manner of things until it all gushed out of her and into him. She could tell it gushed into him, because he looked like he’d been electrocuted.

  It made her panic, but it was too late. She’d killed a man from another world with her sex thoughts.

  “I’m sorry!” she got out, which seemed to help her in the snatching-hand-away department. For a second her palm burned bright and hot, before all the rigidity went out of him and his eyes closed and he went back onto the bed, suddenly.

  Sprawled back onto the bed, really. If he hadn’t carried on breathing in harsh pants, she’d have been sure he was dead. Though it seemed unlikely that in death, you continued to have a huge curving erection that poked up at your belly, and leaked silvery tendrils of pre-cum all over your already glistening skin.

  Her sex ached, to see it. To see him, spread out and so delectable. She thought of his words—ripe, and ready—and the ache grew greater, impossible. Like death. The sex magic obviously hadn’t made her come, because she felt as though she hadn’t indulged for a thousand years.

  “Are you okay?”

  He moaned in response. Though it sounded more like a sultry, desirous moan, than a pained one.

  “I’m sorry—I haven’t done anything sex-wise in a really, really long time. I probably just whammied you with my repressed horniness.”

  When he finally spoke, his voice came out wavering and lust roughened.

  “It was beautiful. Do it again.”

  He turned his head, and opened his eyes. The pupils had grown so fat they were almost lost.

  “I don’t think I should. It looked like it hurt.”

  His hands found her wrists. When he pulled her towards him, it was hard not to go.

  “Just lay your hands on my body. Go softly, softly.”

  She thought of the way he felt, beneath her palms—firm and furred and ever so slightly slick. It made her bite her lip, and that, in turn, made him bite his. He bucked beneath her touch, and his eyes fluttered closed. This time, she could feel her own pleasure and need pouring into him, filling him up. Gentler, but still apparently intense.

  His hands slid up her arms, everything suddenly feeling so bare. Just the little vest and sleep-pants she was wearing, that were about to disappear, very shortly. He seemed to be urging her, but it didn’t feel like being urged. Everything remained soft and sweet and syrupy, and then one of those pulses came and she gasped, to feel it working through her already over-sensitised body.

  “Mae, Mae,” he murmured. He had her vest halfway off and her pants almost down her legs and God knew what else, before she’d even gathered her senses into something like order.

  And then his hand was between her legs, and that seemed somewhat embarrassing. Mainly because she was so wet it had slicked the insides of her thighs, and anywhere he touched soaked his fingers, easily.

  He moaned, to feel it. She knew he did, because an echo of his excitement pulsed through her—labelled, clearly, “your arousal arouses me”. He had his eyes closed, though it weirdly felt as though he didn’t need them open. His fingers probed and mapped out the soft folds between her legs, sliding slow over parts that didn’t need it, skimming parts that did.

  She could have cursed him, when he barely touched her clit. And cursed him louder, when he only let the very tip of his thick, rough finger press into her grasping pussy. But he seemed to take a shuddering, sighing pleasure in teasing and drawing whatever this was out, and she enjoyed that very much indeed.

  Just seeing his body under pressure of those little tremors—it looked so good she could have fed from it for a week. He rolled his hips, just once, and that looked even better. And of course, the better it looked, the more sensation slithered through her, and the more sensation slithered through her, the more he moaned and bucked and on and on.

  He was doing it all with aban
don, now. His big hands slid over her breasts, right inside whatever remained of her vest, and when they brushed over those white hot points—the sound he made was loud, very loud. He gasped for more and there was undoubtedly a very easy way to give it—sliding her hands downward would definitely improve what she could now feel pouring out of her.

  She ran them over his belly, and in response he cried out her name. And when she got to the root of his prick, it swelled beneath a touch she barely gave. It made her giddy, how excitable he was—though that wasn’t really the case, was it? He was feeling everything she did, all the ache and spin of pleasure that went through whenever she cast her gaze over his body, or felt him tug just right at one stiff nipple.

  It made her wonder if any of this pleasure was his. Until she slid her hand the length of his straining cock, and a wave of sensation rolled off him, and into her.

  It felt strange, to have a dick. Or at least, an echo of what it felt like for him, to have a dick. The pulse and strain of it seemed impossible, and she had to bite back on the urge to rub and rub and rub at something that simply wasn’t there.

  Instead, she slid her hand over the thing that was there. How hot he felt, to the touch! And even hotter, there, at the molten core of his body. The tip looked too swollen, red and glistening in the low light, and when she tugged at it, more clear fluid leaked from the tip.

  She couldn’t resist licking at that little bead of pre-cum. Though regretted it, shortly after doing so.

  The sensation seemed far too much for a normal person to cope with. She thought of her clit, when someone rubbed right on the most exposed part of it—and that was close to the feeling he pushed on her. But far away and distant, too, like experiencing an alien’s idea of what sex was. Of what pleasure was.

  “Do it again,” he said.

  He didn’t give orders, exactly. Nothing he said seemed like an order. But he was vocal, very vocal—maybe more so than any other guy she’d been with—and the words he said were far filthier and more direct, too.