"If you squeeze my cock like that every time, Nanaya, we’re both going to need to find work-from-home jobs, because I’ll never be able to stop fucking you."
His hips picked up speed afterward, teeth catching at her ear, tusks dragging against her skin, and she’d never in her life wanted a mirrored bedroom more, regretting her inability to see his back, the round globes of his ass and his strong thighs, the relentless way he hammered into her. When he’d released into her, not long after, she’d felt the contraction of his stomach muscles and the way his lungs hitched, the involuntary jerk of his hips and the hot pant of his breath in her hair, his lips pressing to the back of her neck.
"You made me work for that one," he groaned against her skin, flattening her against the headboard. "I think I just ejaculated part of my spine."
"If your spine and your balls have been negotiating space with each other, that has nothing to do with me."
He groaned again as she laughed, his tusks pressing into her shoulder.
"Note to self: jerk off twice before a Ris Rendezvous," he grunted before he withdrew himself slowly, the condom he’d filled pulling out of her with a pop. Despite the carnality of the night they’d spent together, she never found herself feeling like a piece of meat.
When the local university’s film festival began in the middle of the following week, she texted him on a Wednesday, asking if he was interested in seeing the foreign film she was planning on attending, about a beleaguered Kikimora housewife and her dreams of emancipation from a cruel husband.
"This place is fun, what a good vibe," he remarked jovially, clinking their bottles together after Ruby left their table, the normal hum and buzz of Gildersnood and Ives providing a white noise backdrop to their conversation, making her beam. They'd spent the evening debating the hidden meaning of the film, whether it was indeed a domestic treatise on the way women were treated as household slaves even in a modern age, or else whether the Kikimora herself was a stand-in for the war-torn region where the film was set. He'd not stayed the night, citing an early work morning, but then she’d received a text from him mid-morning, as he looked up the film festival from his work laptop.
There are like three things on this list I want to see! Do we want to make a weekend of it? We can wear skinny scarves and horn-rimmed glasses and pretend to be very serious film aficionados. I’ll park in town so your neighbors don’t vote to kick you out of the development.
She’d grinned, quickly responding that she would pick him up at the municipal lot on Main Street so he wouldn’t need to hitchhike like a vagrant. He drove an enormous vintage muscle car, all shiny black and silver chrome, which had been a result of "Tate and Rukh shopping with my money," so he’d claimed, but the car fit his aesthetic. What ithadn’tfit was any of the parking spaces in her pixies-and-goblins tract condo complex, and he probably wasn’t wrong in his assessment of the situation if he stayed the weekend. She’d taken him to her favorite sushi place after his Friday evening arrival, to the Black Sheep Beanery on Saturday morning to people-watch as the whole of Cambric Creek came through the establishment’s doors, and to the best greasy spoon the town had to offer for breakfast on Sunday, which was neither greasy nor uncrowded, but completely worth the wait for a table.
The day that she’d left work early and visited Cambric Creek’s small art museum to look at a visiting collection of ancient Elvish artifacts, she’d sent him a selfie in front of the display and was unsurprised when her phone rang a moment later. She’dnotbeen expecting it to be a video call, however.
"You can’t just tease me like that! I want to see everything!"
The sound of his voice, deep and smiling, sent a thrill of warmth through her skin, every single time. They’d toured the exhibit together, him on the phone, oohing and ahhing over delicate bits of jewelry and examples of fine Elvish bladecraft.
"This is what I want you to do with me when I die," he said cheerfully as they stood before a row of carved columns from the first age. "Put my brain in a jar and upload my consciousness onto a server. You can wear me around like a Go-Pro and we’ll tour every museum in the unification after you retire."
Talking to him through the week — trading pictures and texts, playing games and discussing their respective days — didn’t compare to hearing his rich laugh in her ear. She’d begun snapping photos of things and places she thought he would find interesting, sending him smiling, cocktail-accompanied selfies of herself at happy hour with Dynah and Silva, receiving snaps of him backstage in various small clubs where his bands were playing or his sly smile and towering mohawk, crowded around a bar table with a heavily-tattooed orc woman and his terrifying friend from the black-bricked pub. They kept each other up-to-date on movies they’d seen and places they’d gone and books they’d read; were engaged in a non-stop game of what he called "deathmatch scrabble," and Ris had begun to wonder if she’d ever had as much fun with any of the other guys she’d been involved with over the years, already knowing the answer was no.
She'd gone to the roof of her condo after returning home that afternoon from the museum, clutching a mug of hot tea, wrapped in her thickest cardigan. It was already too cold to spend any length of time out of doors, and she mourned the inability to do her sunrise yoga from the rooftop, but that afternoon she wanted to feel the sun on her face, even for only a few minutes. The sun was already beginning to set, earlier and earlier as the winter solstice approached, and it sat in a raspberry smear at the roofline of Cambric Creek's downtown, the encroaching indigo sky spreading overhead. She wasn't entirely sure why her eyes pricked with tears, because she was certain she was happy, and then she thought that perhapsthatwas why — because shewashappy. She wasn't sure if she had fully realized howunhappy she had become until that moment. Unhappy with herself, unhappy with the rut she had allowed herself to settle in. She couldn't make him responsible for her happiness, she already knew that, but he was a good reminder that she liked herself — she was smart and interesting, and wasn't afraid to do things on her own. She thought maybe she would sign up for a ballet class at the new studio that had opened next to her nail salon, and would treat herself to days like this more often. Her eyes were puffy by the time the cold drove her indoors, and she cut razor-thin slices of cucumber to lay on her closed eyelids as she settled on her sofa with a fresh mug of chamomile, content in the direction she was now moving.
She'd been invited to meet him at a little jazz club one evening, where they'd been joined by a tall Orcish woman with short, colorful hair and even more colorful tattoos.
"I'm going to order a bunch of the small plates," the orc woman announced. "I want to have a tapas menu ready to go by spring, so I'm sampling everyone else's." Her name was Elshona, and her eyes sparkled in mischief as she ordered half a dozen items from the club's small menu, winking at the server before the girl left their table.
"Please don't tell me the crux of this latest knock-down-drag-out is something as petty as menu aggression."
The other woman scowled at Ainsley. "Is that your way of taking sides then?"
"I'm not taking anyone’s side, because this argument doesn't actually have anything to do with me. I'm simply pointing out,yet again, that I don't enjoy being put in the middle."
"Well I don't see him here tonight, now do I?"
"You don't, Shona, but rather than insist on that being a personal slight, which is the way you seem determined to see everything lately, I’m able to recognize it for what it is, which is depression. If you refuse to see that, at this point, I think that says more about you than it does about him."
Ris watched the exchange with wide eyes, staying as silent as a church mouse, biting her lip when the orc woman rose, pushing away from the table to stalk across the dimly lit space in the direction of the restrooms. Ainsley sighed, rolling his eyes dramatically at her exit before knitting his fingers with Ris’s beneath the table.
"Sorry about that. Sometimes it's not easy being the filling in a friend sandwich, especially when one of the pieces of bread is determined to pick fights with the other. In this case, the piece of bread doing the picking is a piece of bread. And the piece of bread she's picking on is actually a switchblade. I am just an innocent pickle, trying not to get knifed."
Ris laughed at his analogy, having a feeling she knew exactly who the switchblade was in this scenario. "I happen to be very fond of pickles," she smiled, leaning up to press her lips to the side of his jaw. "But I'm sorry you're being put in the middle. I'm sure that sucks."
"It sucks less with you here. You’re like a tasty, tasty milkshake, reminding me of all of the other fun things there are to be had in the diner."
When she wound up back at his apartment that night, he’d pulled her to kneel upright on the center of the bed, flush against his chest once more, the tight press of him within her feeling even more pronounced at the angle, the mirror on the other side of the room giving her the opportunity to be a voyeur to her own pleasure at last. His hands had wandered over the long expanse of her plum-colored skin, cupping each of her breasts and rolling her nipples between forefinger and thumbs, tugging them as his hips pumped into her, deep and slow. Ris had watched spellbound in the mirror when he released one of her breasts, hand moving down her body until he stroked into her heat, using all four fingers to rub at her clit. She watched Ris in the mirror shudder and moan, gasping when the doppelgänger's nipple was pulled, reaching her own hand down to scrape her nails gently against the thick snake of his cock as it disappeared into her over and over again, watching her twin in the mirror do the same. It felt decadent, giving him access to her entire body — his tongue in her mouth, his hand at her breast, his other fingering her to orgasm, watching her own reaction in wonder when she shook apart in his arms. The next morning, she’d learned the endurance of his tongue as he laid back on the long, orc-sized bed, insisting she straddle his face. She discovered she had the best traction against his tongue when she was facing the wall behind his head, although that left precious little opportunity to stroke her nails down the endless expanse of his green chest and grip his thick, pink-edged cock.
"It's not a pickle at all. I’ve been with pickles, andthisbeast is not a pickle. It’s like a giant anaconda made of watermelon candy," she insisted once she switched positions, marveling over the color gradient from root to tip.
"If it tastes like watermelon, I need to visit the clinic." His chuckle broke off on a groan when she pulled back his foreskin teasingly to lick over the shiny, pink head of his cock. She watched herself suck him into her mouth; watched herself kneading his big balls, swallowing him as deeply as she was able. Watching her mirror twin suck him was exhilarating, nearly as much as watching herself come on his face, against his tongue, and when she stroked him to an eruption, she was able to see the way he pulsed, how exactly how the thick, white ropes of his release coated her small breasts, running down her stomach to pool against her thighs.
