This is magic, said a different voice in her ear.If you knock at the door, don’t be surprised when it opens.
10
The evening spring sun hung over the sea like a spell.
Faye detected a faint smell of roses in the clean sea air. The rose smell had been here, before; Faye still didn’t know where it came from. If it was coming from anywhere at all, and not some kind of hallucination.
‘That’s some beautiful sky.’ Rav whistled as they stood there, taking in the view: the line between the heavens and the earth, grey-blue sky and sea that seemed to meet and merge seamlessly. There was an unusual hush on the beach. Faye felt the heartbeat of the land pounding through her toes. She took off her shoes and sank her bare feet into the sand. It was the spring equinox the next day: a time when the days and nights were of equal length, when a sacred balance ruled the land.
‘Yes…it’s…um. It’s bonny,’ she replied, without knowing how to say how she felt. She felt the surge of life in the earth under her: nature was waking up, and when she was with Rav, she also felt suddenly awake and alive and deep in her senses. Rav exuded masculinity, like a bestial, primal animal. He, too, was of the earth, full of strength and power and sex. The sunset cast his shadow onto the sand, looming over her.
Faye gulped, remembering the way he had held her, back at the house.
‘Cream and milk,’ she said out of the blue. ‘That’s what my grandmother said you should leave out for the fae. As an offering. And we should make an altar in your house, so they know you respect them. Shells, feathers, flowers, that kind of thing.’ She looked away awkwardly, feeling silly. But it had just popped into her mind; an old bit of fae knowledge from Grandmother.
‘Okay.’ He looked at her askance. ‘Whatever you say, my enchantress.’
They walked along the beach together, picking up shells.
‘I sometimes wonder what I’d have been if I hadn’t been a Morgan. An enchantress, as you say. I…I feel the legacy of my ancestors a lot, sometimes.’ She thought about her dream of Grainne. Faye bent down to pick up three iridescent blue mussel shells; there were so many on the beach that the small, broken bits of shell gave the sand a jewelled sheen in the twilight.
Grandmother had told her that Grainne Morgan, a beautiful woman – Faye had seen her, and she knew it was true – had ‘enchanted’ several local men so badly that she ‘possessed their minds, turning them aside from their wives’. That she was a witch was true, but her power – her magic – was intrinsically connected to her sexuality, and Faye had seen in her dream how much the people of Abercolme had resented it.
Grandmother said that when it came time for Grainne’s execution, an army of faeries had swept in with the sea, flooding the harbour at North Berwick.
Faye thought back to her dream, witnessing Grainne lashed to the stake. At her cursing the people who watched her die, who persecuted her for her power.I am no whore. I am Grainne Morgan, Beloved of the Good Folk.Then, the fae who took her hand and spirited her away.
‘Would you have been a witch, you mean?’ he asked.
‘I guess so, aye. I wonder that sometimes.’ Faye picked up a flat, round stone and skipped it into the sea.
‘I think you would. You just have…something about you. Something magical. Sexy. Alluring.’
He held his hand out for hers. Immediately, she felt a heat rise between them, even though the evening was cool and the wet sand was cold on her feet.
Rav’s gaze caught hers and refused to let it go; he leaned in to kiss her.
As he kissed her, Faye saw in her mind’s eye faeries riding on the waves towards them, laughing, catcalling, watching them kiss. She opened her eyes, startled, but there was nothing there except the setting sun gilding the soft waves with pink. She closed her eyes again and melted into the kiss.
She was suddenly filled with a kind of velvety, warm wickedness which dispelled any doubt and anxiety she had been feeling – about Rav, about Finn and what had happened on the faerie road – like a shot of morphine. A pleasurable lull relaxed her taut muscles; a sweetness filled her blood and she reached for Rav, wrapping both arms around his neck and pulling him to her. Nothing mattered now. Suddenly, it was as if a switch had been flicked again, but this time, it was her pleasure that had been switched on.
Faye wanted him badly. And, perhaps, it was the built-up frustration of all of the dreams with Finn that had taken her to the brink of orgasm and then denied her; she wantedsomeone, a man, and Rav was here.
Rav was here, and he wanted her, too. He looked down at her with unmasked lust in his eyes. She reached for him, desire hot in the core of her. Desperate to finally be satisfied, filled and physically dominated by a man – such a huge man – who could give her what she so desperately craved. Did she want Finn mostof all? Perhaps. But Finn was a spectre, a fantasy, not real, or, at least, continually absent from her waking life. Rav was here, and he was real.
Without saying anything more, she kissed him fiercely.
As she closed her eyes, Faye was overcome with sensation. Rav kissed her back, harder, taking control. She felt his barely contained passion.
His fingers stroked her cheek, and then came to her bottom lip. It feltright, delicious: the kiss became hot, slippery, wet. Faye had the sudden sense they were not alone; for a moment, it was as though they stood on a beach thronged with people. She heard laughter, snatches of speech she didn’t understand, giggling. But when she drew back briefly from Rav and opened her eyes, they were alone.
‘What is it?’ he asked huskily, his face close to hers still.
‘Nothing, I just…thought I heard something.’ The moon was rising already.
He kissed her again, and now Faye felt a sense of urgency thronging deep inside herself. All of those times Finn had worked her up to fever pitch and then refused to satisfy her; she had touched herself, but it wasn’t the same. She wanted…needed…to be taken, to be fucked, to be…she didn’t even know what she wanted. The things that Finn had said to her had been unlike anything anyone had said to her before.Just let me play with you like my own little doll,my princess, my queen, good girl, let me take what I want.The idea of a man taking his pleasure from her body – using her in exactly the way he wanted, bending her over and fucking her unceremoniously like an animal, or forcing himself between her lips – was so alien that she didn’t know where the hot delight of the idea came from. And yet all of the desire andneedshe had felt in those dreams with Finn returned to her now in a rush of sensation.
‘Come back to the house,’ Rav murmured against her ear. Faye looked up at the rising moon and shook her head; she wanted to stay outside. She knew that she wouldn’t feel safe in the house.
