“I would like to show you with my lips,” Trey said, leaning down to kiss her again, parting her lips with his tongue slowly.
“Mm mm MMM mmm!” Daniella said around him.
He left her lips to kiss down her neck and find her sweet, smooth breasts, cradling one in each hand before he lay her back on the waiting bed.
“I would like that!” Daniella agreed as Trey unbuttoned her pants and slipped them down. He took each leg of the garment carefully off, tickling down and lingering at the back of her knees where she squirmed and giggled.
It was like rediscovering every part of his beautiful key, going slowly. Had they fallen to easily into familiar love-making patterns? Could she be bored with their usual coupling? This felt like an important break from the usual, like they were rekindling all their first passions simply by trying to.
He licked at her most precious parts, using his fingers and his mouth to bring her to heights and hold her there, until she was grasping at the sheets beneath her and begging with his name.
Only then did he rise to cover her, driving in with slow, sweet care to make her release at last. When she cried out in that moment of bliss, Trey was lost as well, and came achingly inside of her as she clenched around him and tangled her fingers in his hair.
They lay together, panting, for a long time afterwards, and then laughed together as Fabio, outside the door, gave a noisy mournful sigh of his neglect and abandonment.
Daniella kissed him and rolled away. “Happy Valentine’s Day,” she said. “I’m going to take a shower then and I’ll make us dinner.”
Trey kissed her arm to her fingertips and then let her go. Fabio greeted her at the door with his tail wagging so hard it hit the wall. Trey heard the sound of the shower starting, and rose to return to the scene of his crime. Fabio, who had forgotten about his existence, was waiting at the bathroom door for his mistress, and he went to Trey for pats and comfort.
Trey looked over the supplies and found a sheet of paper that was only slightly crumpled and stained. He set aside the lip rogue and found a pen before he folded a new card.
You are my Key, he wrote simply.I love you.
And at that moment, he felt like he understood Valentine’s Day.
BURNT OFFERINGS
“The world had better be ending early, Daniella,” Gwen said sharply, answering her ringing phone. “Because I was about to absolutely obliterate my highest score in this game.”
It was not Daniella at the other end of the line. “I am grieved to interrupt your obliteration!” Trey hollered as if he was trying to shout across the distance between them. “I have an emergency and desperately require your assistance!” A dog was barking frantically in the background.
Gwen pinched the bridge of her nose. “It’s a phone, Trey. You don’t have to yell.”
“Yes, lady warrior,” Trey whispered. “But please come swiftly.”
“Is anything on fire? Did you shift into a dragon in front of the neighbors?” Gwen set aside her keyboard and searched for her shoes. “Where is Daniella? Shouldn’t she be keeping you out of trouble?”
“She is laboring at the place of coffee and sandwiches,” Trey boomed again. He handled video calls better, where he could physically see people. “I have put the fire out and ah, silenced theloud ceiling circle. I did not feel that being a dragon would help in this situation.”
“No, it probably wouldn’t,” Gwen agreed. “Okay, it will take me about ten minutes to get there. Try not to touch anything.”
The tiny beat-up car that looked completely out of place in Ansel’s magnificent driveway got her across town in a little less than ten minutes.
Trey was wearing one of Daniella’s aprons when he opened the door. “Warrior Gwen,” he greeted her.
He looked less panicked than he’d sounded on the phone, and Fabio whined and tried to push his way out around the big knight while Gwen tried to get in without letting him escape. “Hey pretty boy,” she told the Afghan hound, who licked her and bounced happily. “Hi, Tinkerbell,” she added towards Robin.
Robin flipped her off from their dollhouse. The tiny, non-binary fable didn’t look concerned by whatever catastrophe Gwen had just missed, but Gwen also knew that they were still recovering from the recent battle with Robin and the knights’ dark faery land.
That’s what her life had come to: a faery—sorry,fable—and knights anddestiny. But her own knight was still missing, and her destiny felt murky and uncertain.
“What did the noble knight Trey do now?” Gwen knocked the slushy snow off her shoes and hung her jacket up by the door.
“He was trying to cook,” Robin explained. “It went badly.”
The whole house smelled like smoke and something wrong.
“What have you done?” Gwen asked, cautiously entering the kitchen.
