Vanessa, heir to the master perfumer (and hoarder) Sylve, is landed with the monumental task of sorting through a lifetime’s worth of priceless artifacts and a heaping pile of junk. She just wants to get the house and anything worthwhile ready for auction, but the place isn’t making it easy for her. She takes a break in the only nice room in the place, and finds a paradise tended by a fey gardener, who is a delight to the senses but who cannot be touched without pain.
Vanessa swore under her breath as a perilously stacked pile of half empty containers and craft supplies tumbled on top of her as she tried to shuffle past. Her arms were already full of brittle plastic bags that needed sorting and she was already covered in a fine layer of the dust that clung to every surface in the old house. The wind that had brought it inside from the desert hills had not ceased for a moment since she had arrived to her late Aunt Sylve ’s house a the day before, and if Vanessa remembered correctly from the few visits she had made in childhood, it would not let up again until spring. Once she managed to extract herself from the pile, Vanessa found that it had effectively blocked the door out until she could clear the way again. She was hungry and irritable with poor sleep, so instead of doing the mature, sensible thing of clearing a path again, she chucked the bags she was carrying as hard as she could against the opposite wall so that they plot open, showering scraps of paper, spools of ribbon, and several in opened packs of socks over the junk heaped there, She needed a break and a snack and though she hadn’t yet made it inside, she had seen a sunroom at the back of the house when she had pulled up, which looked at least functionally clean from what she could see from the road.
After all the dust and debris Vanessa had spent the past day and a half shoveling into contractor bags, walking into the sunroom felt like walking into paradise. It was immaculately kept - the glass clean inside and out and the plants did not look at all like they had been abandoned for the better part of a year like the rest of the place. Regardless of the illness that had so weakened her, Aunt Sylve must have found the energy to keep it long past when she was no longer wiping counters or tossing the junk mail. And even better than the bright, must free cleanliness was the heady scent eminating from the white blossoms of a potted tree in the center of the room. With every deep draw of air she sunk into a mellow peace and Vanessa didn't actually know how long she spent in there, sitting quietly on a bench in a patch of sun and staring at the flowering tree, but the shadows had grown long by the time she stirred from the hazy stupor and trudged back into the house.
Vanessa collapsed that night in the space she had carved out for herself on the floor among the piles of debris that littered the study. She had called the city to turn the water and power back on after she had arrived late the first night after a long trip to neither and so she could manage a hot sponge bath, even though she wasn't desperate enough to trust the suspicious stains in the tub with any skin contact. At first when she had arrived, she assumed it would be a physically taxing but otherwise simple enough job. That was until she'd discovered loose pages of precious first-and-only edition esoteric texts and her aunt's personal notes interspersed with half completed crossword puzzles and magazine clippings. Sylve had once been something of a great lady, a famous perfumer, patron of music, and lover. Underneath the residue of her decline, artifacts of those years remained in abundance. This meant that everything in the house, unfortunately, had to be carefully considered and the fatigue of several thousand decisions in the first room alone was enough to give Vanessa a headache before noon. She was grateful that Aunt Sylva had kept no animals and that the mouse infestation had been surprisingly minor. Vanessa fell asleep thinking not of the work that still remained, but rather of the sunroom and the fragrant tree within.
She returned to it in her dream. She walked over the threshold and into the the glimmering light refracted through the windows and into a veritable jungle - plants lush and dripping with the moisture in the air and glossy and blooming with good health. The room seemed bigger than it had in life and she searched for some time, though she wasn't sure what she was searching for. Vanessa caught the scent in the heavy air and turned around to see, in place of the blooming tree, a man with skin the color of milk and dotted all over with pale gree, more exquisite than any creature she had ever seen. In the dream, he was not aware of her and stared out of the glass walls, into nothing but a bright light, no ragged desert foothills beyond to see. Vanessa, who had not been able to shake the allure of the scent from the sunroom during the day, was overcome in sleep with a desire to be closer, to feel, and, as she reached out unbidden by her own mind to brush the beautiful man's arm with the tips of her fingers, a desire to posess utterly. She so nearly touched him in that dream, but woke instead to swirling dustmotes in the light of morning and sick with longing.
Two more days passed and the remaining burden the house represented became just a bit lighter with every bag Vanessa lobbed into the dumpster and every unburied square inch of floor she could now see. Much of the musty smell was gone, and though she constantly kicked up more dust as she moved things around, the fresh autumn air through the open windows made the place feel like less of a biohazard. She kept all the doors propped open for airflow and was pleased to find the light floral scent from the solar had carried even into the back rooms. The kitchen and bathroom were both in decent enough order to actually use and so the frantic cleaning for utility's sake slowed as Vanessa focused on making sense of Aunt Sylve's personal effects.
As Vanessa spent time among the various journals, artifacts, and love tokens, she almost regretted, distantly, that she had not taken up the offer to train under the eccentric woman as a child. She had declared the business 'frivolous’ while still a girl frustrated at not being taken seriously when she was more than happy to cut out any interest that suggested she was a young lady as well as a promising young mind. By the time Vanessa had made peace with womanhood, Sylve was mentally too far gone to teach and Vanessa too established to come back and learn. Now, the rows upon rows of handcrafted glass bottles in a hundred hues and styles, the jars of fine powders, the cabinet of resins and talismans, and scraps of paper were as mysterious as they were intriguing.
She made do with her limited knowledge. But the more Vanessa read, the more she suspected some key piece had been left out of the notes entirely, not at the any stage of perfumery, which all seemed astonishingly normal, but sometime before; a secret ingredient as part of the process of growing the floral ingredients possibly, mentioned obliquely in passing sometimes as 'resin' or 'blood of mercury,' but also spoken of as if it were alive or even sentient.
That interested Vanessa far more than any business about top notes and carrier oils, though she could not find any corresponding material on the workroom shelves.
She had finished washing an entire cabinet’s worth of glassware when, for the fifth time that morning, Vanessa wandered into the sunroom to take a break. She found herself there every time she was not actively thinking of something else, finding no place so quickly soothed her irritation at her work and rested the ache in her muscles so quickly as the warm light, the delicate fragrance, and the tranquil greenery that filled the enormous room from ceiling to floor. She ran her fingers inquisitively over the fine engravings etched deep into the grilles of the windows; stylized vines entwined with the symbols of gold and earth, quicksilver and iron, patterns which she saw repeated throughout the room though stylized so differently that she had not first noticed they were the same. Mosaic set into the floor radiated out from the center where the beautiful tree grew on a pedestal. She dozed for awhile until a fragrant breeze across her cheek and the sound of tiny distant bells woke her, so sweet that they must have been a dream.
That night, Vanessa fell asleep easily, but woke before she dreamed and could not sleep again. Instead, she wandered the long shadows of the moonlit house, half conscious that this time she was going to the sunroom on purpose, grieving the loss of the dream. The shadows of palms and monstera and anthurium loomed dark and claustrophobic, so unlike the day, that she almost turned back, until she caught the scent in the air. She moved forward past the veil of palms until she saw, not the blooming tree, but the pale man she had seen in her dream, pinching dead blossoms from a trellised vine.
And oh he was lovely.
He was naked as he had been in her dream, with translucent skin of white flecked with celadon green and soft pale hair that curled around his ears. He turned away from his work, expression quietly satisfied and then seeing her, startled backward into the trellis with a crash that woke Vanessa out of whatever stupor the sight and smell of him had worked over her brain.
"It's ok, it's ok," she said, trying to keep the alarm out of her voice as she saw the man - not a man really, a least not a human one - panting and with wild eyes as he struggled to free himself from the pile of twisted metal and vegetation.
"Here, let me help you," she said. He shook his head, but his wiggling only made his predicament worse.
He was so small and she loomed over him as she tried to help him get free. She grasped his ankle with a hand as she bent the frame clear and he jolted, letting out a cry like a golden bell when she touched him. Her hand came away with a powdery white residue and his ankle bore swiftly blooming burns, pink and weeping, though her hold had not been terribly firm.
"Ah, sorry, sorry, here..."
With a little more careful effort, the creature was free again. He drew his legs close, shuddering. Vanessa resisted, with difficulty, the desire to scoop him up in her arms, instead staying in a low crouch in front of him. When she did not come near again after some minutes, he relaxed a little, eyes not meeting hers and panting against the pain. He opened his mouth to speak, but the sound was again the tinkling of silver bells. Vanessa cocked her head in confusion and though he glanced at her and tried again, more slowly, she only shook her head.
He paused a moment, then with trembling hand, pressed two fingers to his lips, then crawled forward. Vanessa did not dare move, barely even dared breathe, as he came close. When she was near enough to touch again, he leaned forward, wincing as his ankle pressed against the tiled floor, and closed the distance between them with his lips feather light on hers in a kiss.
The pale man pulled away with a very pretty flutter of eyelashes and a little smile that had Vanessa chasing his lips until she remembered herself. Or nearly remembered herself, anyway. The smell of citrus blossoms, which had been lovely before, swelled in her awareness until it had her eyes glazing and her mouth watering.
"What..." she swallowed, "what was that?"
There was the silver bell sound again, but now Vanessa understood it. The creature was laughing, though bitterly.
"A fairy's kiss, that we might both speak and understand. So tell me, why have you been skulking about in my mistress's house?"
"Your mistress? If you mean Great Aunt Sylve, she's dead. The house I've been skulking about in is mine." It was hard to focus and she tasted warm honey and vanilla lingering on her lips and then, remebering what had left the sensation there, stared intently at his. They were red and swollen and not, she thought, wholly with passion. It looked more like they were going to blister. "Are you alright," she slurred.
"I will be fine," he said lightly, "with sufficient time and sunlight, if you permit it."
"Mm, that's good." Vanessa crept closer to the man, transfixed still by those lips. His eyes went adorably wide as he shrank away.
"Y-you are very tired and do not look so well yourself. Go back to bed. We will speak another time?"
Hm. Bed did seem like a good idea. What a clever little thing.
"Sure. See you tomorrow," Vanessa mumbled and stumbled off.
She slept late and did not see him again when she went to check before her trip back into town for supplies, but from the lingering tingle of her lips, she knew she did not dream their encounter.
When Vanessa returned, she sat eating a rather substantial Reuben sandwich on the sunroom bench, hoping to find the man from the night before, though the beautiful creature was nowhere to be found. It was pleasant enough to be there though and she felt some of that same hazy stupor as she watched the clouds through the panes of glass. It wasn't until she stood to go back to work that she noticed that the blooming tree was damaged. Petals had fallen to the ground and one slender branch dangled half broken from the trunk, weeping a pale sap.
Vanessa was no master gardener, but even she had seen people repair the branches of trees after a storm, and assumed this would be no different. She had seen some bandages for sprains in the bathroom she had already cleaned and tore off a bit to wrap around the branch as it healed again. She checked the soil and was about to water it when she saw what looked like a snapped piece of twine laying in the dirt. She picked it up and almost threw it away before she noticed that it wasn't twine at all. It was a braided lock of reddish brown hair which had once been tied in a ring around the trunk but somehow snapped. On it, a tag of silver with engraving too tarnished to read had been strung. Thinking it some kind of plant label, she pocketed it, watered the tree, and then went back to work putting Aunt Sylve's study back in order.
The next time Vanessa saw him, it was by lamplight. The heady perfume had wafted through the whole house by sunset and so when she looked up from where she was polishing the little tag crosslegged on the floor, she was startled to see him. It had been fogging up her mind again enough to open the window during the day, but now that it was cold, she had shut them. With the scent thick and everywhere, she had not been forewarned of his presence: even in her dreams she found him first by the fragrance he carried. The man stood in the doorway from the sunroom to the now mostly clean living room and leaned against the doorframe, watching her.
"Good evening, Miss," he said when he caught her glance. She blushed at the lovely sound. He looked bolder tonight, she thought, her fingers fidgeting with the tag.
"Um, hi," she said. "I looked in on you this morning and you weren't there. You look better." He did, at least a little. The pinky red marks on his ankle were no longer weeping and his lips were still flushed, but no longer so swollen. The rest of him was more perfect than she had remembered, naked and delicate as a blossom.
The man laughed. "Is that so? I'm glad. I never got your name last night. It would be good to know, since this is your house now."
"Hmm? Oh, it's Vanessa."
"Vah-ness-ah. Lovely." He laughed again.
"And your name?"
"Oh, call me whatever you like," he said. And then he touched his lips thoughtfully.
Vannessa's mind immediately leapt to the kiss they had shared and she took a deep, shuttering breath. She felt a throbbing ache of lust settle into her gut as warmth colored her cheeks. Her hands were sweaty and she gripped her work tight. It was too much.
“I want you to help me,” he said, hesitating a moment as he crossed the threshold into the room. “Your aunt kept me here so very many years. But I can just tell you won’t be cruel. You’ll help me go home.” He was close now, just across the desk. Vanessa preened at the thought of her own gentleness, at what she might do to help the lovely creature. She blushed to her ears at the thought of how he might thank her…somehow.
"J-ust a moment," she said, "it's very warm in here."
She stood and slid open the window behind her just as the man barked out "Wait!"
The fresh air, unscented and crisp, cleared away some the fog of desire that had settled over her senses. Vanessa panted, now aware of the effect that lovely scent had over her and gradually wariness replaced lust. She wasn't yet ready to look at him and instead looked down at the bit of silver in her hands. It was legible now, after the polishing she'd done and she held it up to the moonlight to read it.
"Clement," she murmured.
There was a low, heartbroken groan. Vanessa turned to look at him, her mind suddenly really clear for the first time since the kiss. The word buzzed on her lips.
"Oh. That's your name, isn't it?” There was a flash of white in her peripheral vision. “Oh no you don't! Stay right there." He bolted anyway, or tried to. His ankle was less swollen than it had been the night before, but the burns lingered as dark greenish spots where Vanessa's fingers had touched him. She darted after him, cornering him easily. His scent was heavy again, but Vanessa was not so easily placated now.
"You've been trying to, what, seduce me this whole time? Is this," she gestured at the air, "some kind of enchantment you have been working? Answer me, Clement."
"I wasn't! I can't control it. Please, please don't touch me. You'll hurt me."
"Hmm. I'm not that much of an idiot. You might not control this scent, but you kissed me, remember? That wasn't just so you could speak to me. If I hadn't been lucky enough to find this," she held up the charm, "I'd be drooling at your mercy on the floor right now."
Clement swallowed hard and would not meet her eye, bare chest heaving with his shallow, panicked breaths.
"Please..."
He was still lovely, even lovlier actually, now that she could actually focus on him instead of the hazy affection.
"You were right though. I'm not a monster," Vanessa said, "I'm not going to hurt you on purpose, not unless you force me to. But I can't trust you either. Don't move."
Vanessa yanked out strands after strand of her black hair, then plaited it into a cord quickly, then slipped the silver tag onto it.
"Wrist," she said. Clement flinched and did not move. "Give me your wrist or I'll hold you down and grab it. Your choice." He obeyed and she tied the cord on him, touching him as little as possible. He cried out when her hand brushed his as she finished the knot. "There. Now you're mine."
Vanessa tossed the very last black garbage bag into the dumpster she'd rented and stretched, her back popping. After a solid week of work, she had the house ready for the appraiser to come and assess whatever Vanessa didn't want to keep for herself. Those things she had stacked in the spare bedroom to move into the old pickup she drove when auction day finally came. All that remained was figuring out what to do with Clement.
Vanessa was now nearly certain that the mysterious substance Aunt Sylve had referenced was something taken from Clement, likely rather painfully given how Clement was willing to burn his own lips by contact with her skin in order to escape whatever he had been subjected to. She hadn’t confirmed it, of course. They had been avoiding each other since the night she had discovered his name and he half of hers, though she caught glimpses of him sometimes through the window as she worked. Her anger had cooled, but even without the scent of him heavy in the air (she kept the windows open and the door to his room shut as a precaution) she found that she couldn't shed the possessive desire she had first felt for him. If anything, her anger with his attempt to enspell her had made her pleasure at his binding that much stronger, though it had maybe given her affection a crueler edge.
Driven by both curiosity and desire, she entered the sunroom and saw the locus of her affections dozing in a patch of sunlight by his tree. He was curled up on his side, the cord and tag around his wrist glinting as it dangled from his outstretched arm. Was he now always visible to her, or had he simply given up on subterfuge? Vanessa didn't know, but she was glad to see him like this, lovely and unafraid. She did not disturb him, but looked over his tree, deadheading spent blooms, checking the little repairs to bent and broken branches. When she returned with a full watering can, Clement woke and sat up, sleep rumpled and blinking.
"Are you finished working for the day already, Vanessa?" He didn't come any closer, but neither was he so jumpy now. He seemed politely resigned.
"That’s Mistress to you, or ma’am. And yes. The appraiser will be here tomorrow, then the auction, then I sell this place and head home."
"You are selling the house? Mistress?"
"That is the plan...you sound confused."
"I just thought...you planned to keep me." He held up the tag.
"Yes? Is that a problem? My apartment doesn't have a room like this but I can get your tree grow lights until I move somewhere better. I know I can't really touch you, but touching your tree seems to be ok. It's already in a pot, though it looks pretty heavy."
"Yes, ma’am."
"Good, well, I'll let the appraiser know to leave you be, but tomorrow we are moving into the motel so do whatever it is you need to do to get ready. What's that expression for?"
"I've never even thought about going somewhere else in the human world. Botanical fairies don’t really travel.”
"Wait. Can you leave? I should probably check…Help me with this."
Vanessa went and got a spare bedsheet that she tossed over the plant before enlisting Clement's help in loosely binding it. He shivvered a little at the sensation but seemed fine when Vanessa lifted the pot off the pedestal. He swayed a little as he followed her across the patterned tiles, but she was too focused on not dropping the heavy planter to pay much attention to him. She set the pot down in the bed of the truck, breathing hard with the effort, and looked around for Clement. He was openly weeping as he huddled on the ground in a transparent ball, the margin of his body indistinct where sunlight burned through him.
“Please. Please put it back, he groaned.”
Clement woke on a pile of coverlets looking up into the sunset filtered through the windows of the sunroom. He hurt everywhere - deep bruises bloomed on his chest and thighs and his head now had a gash clotted with the cloudy amber sap that constituted his blood. But he was back and in one piece and his tree returned to the stand in the middle of the room.
He sat up with a groan and rubbed his face.
"Good. You're up."
Vanessa set aside the notebook she had been reading and poured a cupful of steaming hot tea from a squat little teapot of dusky pink. She came to him, adjusted a blanket without touching him, and set the cup within his reach.
"Drink up. It's Sylve's recipe and she says here that it's good for regrowth."
He took the cup into his small hands and sniffed it delicately. It was actually something Sylve had made for him once or twice after a particularly damaging extraction session; it was a brewed herbal-compost tea that warmed his fey heart as much as it nurtured his botanical nature. It certainly soothed his raw throat. He realized he must have been weeping while he was out.
"You can't leave," said his mistress. "I don't know why, exactly. It should have only been your tree keeping you here."
Clement shrugged, then winced.
"Well, there's plenty of time to figure it out now. The sale is off if it means I can't keep you. Get some rest."
"Yes, ma’am,” he croaked.
Vanessa had been gone for two weeks while she sold her belongings, left her job, and said goodbye to the few people who would care that she had suddenly decided to drop out of the life she had so diligently carved out for herself. Now that she was back, her life was a whirlwind of introductions to local society and reestablishing the contacts Sylve had dropped when she was no longer able to keep up with work befitting her reputation. She was met with that mixture of genuine welcome and suspicion so common when the younger generation takes on the legacy of their elders, especially in businesses where craftsmanship and artistic merit matter so much. Sylve had left excellent notes, once Vanessa had actually managed to put them in order, and she was predatory beginning the process of recreating some of the perfumes she had been famous for, minus one ingredient; the resin of mercury.
For that, she needed Clement.
This was why her fairy companion was bound ankle and wrist to a table in the sunroom, full moon streaming through the windows. His eyes were half shut and he was making little mewling moans with every breath, the tea of golden poppy petals she had forced him to drink keeping him pliant and calm. Vanessa held a book in one hand, silver penknife in the other, checking over the instructions for the third time before she began. She poured water over his body from a shallow silver bowl, focusing on the places where his scent was strongest - his inner thighs close to the penis, the join of his jaw and neck, his wrists, just above the tie. He groaned and pulled weakly at the ties, but she only rubbed a soothing, silk gloved hand in circles over his chest before pressing the knife into his flesh, starting just below the left ear, and dragging down until his skin was split in a shallow cut, weeping chartreuse sap like blood. She pushed the silver bowl against his skin just beneath the flow, catching the rivulets she milked from his body with long massaging strokes. She did the same to the other side of his neck shushing his whimpers and admiring the jewel like tears, which formed solid little beads of milky amber when they plopped onto the table.
His wrists were next, and either the tea had begun to wear off or they hurt far worse than the previous cuts, because he thrashed a little, arching his back off the table in an attempt to dislodge himself and nearly knocking over the bowl of his blood sap in the process. Vanessa shoved him down more forcefully then, pinning him with her body weight as she made the cuts. There wasn’t much flesh to massage there, so when the streams dried up she let them be. Clement’s cries were becoming more coherent and more frantic by the moment, and Vanessa still had two to go.
“You are doing so well,” she murmured. “Almost done. So pretty for me, just like this. My beautiful Clement”
She meant it, too. He was the loveliest thing she had ever seen, a fragrant feast spread out open the table. She wanted to kiss him all over, to touch him all over, regardless of how the oils in her skin left welts whenever she touched him. She also wanted to take away the pain he was suffering at her hands, to bind his wounds, to wrap him in gauzy linen embroidered with charms and lay him in the dappled sun.
The fifth and sixth cuts were long and torturous. He screamed and begged as she traced the scar that Sylve had left as guide and wept bitterly as she milked the wound for sap until at last she had collected all he could give. She transferred the precious liquid into a glass vial and capped it as he panted, exhausted with pain. Then she washed him again and bound his wounds before she unbound him and carried him to the daybed she had brought in beside his tree.
It would be a long night for Vanessa still. The sap would need to be concentrated just below boiling and the equipment cleaned and several other mixtures tended to. But her boy would come first, and while she would not avoid causing him pain, and even enjoyed the look of him when she did, she could care for him afterward. She pulled him so that he was sitting propped up on a pile of pillows and fed him spoonfuls of the poppy tea.
“Please, not again,” he whispered, unable to open his mouth without aggravating the cuts along his neck.
“Not for a long time,” she said. “I know it was a very precious gift that you gave me. This is just for the pain. Time to rest now.”
Vanessa brushed a few flyaway wisps of hair out of her eyes as she checked on the small still she had rigged up in the kitchen. The whole house smelled strongly of rose petals even though every window was open to let the breeze carry away the heat and scent. The summer sun was as intense as the winter winds had been, and her chapped skin stung with sweat, but she was content in a way that only came from a life led solving problems with her mind and body both.
Her lovely companion certainly helped, too. She could see him from the kitchen window, stooped to gather sheaves of lavender from the row of plants that bordered the upper terrace of the grounds. His skin had colored to a lovely celadon with all the outdoor labor and he wore the caplet she'd made to give him a little extra hardiness against the less than ideal climate. His basket full and the morning light grown strong, he returned to the house, not to go out again until early evening, when he would no longer be in danger of crisping under the full brunt of the high desert sun.
Vanessa slipped on the gloves she now always kept tucked into the waist of her apron. They were an extremely fine silk, breathable and light enough that she could almost forget she was wearing them as she took Clement's basket and undid the tie of the capelet at his throat before running her thumb with a posessive fondness. He froze and then hesitantly leaned into her gloved touch, humming a little like a bronze bell.
"You can bind and hang those in the workroom to dry with the rest," Vanessa said. "I'll make you your tea once the kitchen is free. Any problems today? Feeling any changes? You were out there quite awhile"
"No, Miss. It started being a bit too much right before I came in, but I felt fine. Better than when it was colder. I probably need the mister again, though. It's hot in here."
She jotted down notes in a little book that she carried with her, snapping it shut again when she finished. "Alright, hop to it. I need your opinion on the rose oil in a bit."
Once Vanessa had decided to make the old place her home, she had thrown herself into the work of taking over Sylve's business with the kind of intensity that she had directed toward her work in manufacturing before. Clement's health and improved hardiness had become her special project and he had been shocked when she announced her focus would be in making him her helper outside, rather than remaining an ornamental source of blood.
Eventually the resin collected would run out, of course, but she was as sparing with it as she could be. She liked to touch him plenty, good touches that he had not realized he longed for until he had them. And they pleased her to give, which meant the endless days and nights of doing nothing but dozing and waiting alone for the next time his mistress would need resupplied were over. His tree was flush with blossoms and new growth, and he was stronger than he had been since he was a little sleeping seed resting on the moss of fairyland.
He drank Vanessa's special tea while sitting in her lap, letting her pet him while he rested. As she chattered about what she had learned about rose varietals and geranium propagation and ran her hands along his body. The gloves dared lower until she had pushed apart his legs, running her finger along the ruddy scars. Her silken hand brushed against his cock and he shuddered with the sensation. He could feel the smile in the breath across his neck. She kept talking, but he could feel her tone shift to something teasing as the featherlight stroking shifted from his thighs to fondling it delicately until he was whimpering and dripping.
The scent was intense, floral and musky and earthy, even stronger than the stuff she had bled out of him.
“Oh, please, please don’t stop,” he whispered as she pinned him across her chest, keeping the exposed skin of her neck and cheek as best as she could. She thumbed his weeping cockhead and slicked him with his own fluids as she twisted and pumped him in her hand. He clutched at her shirt as he came, bucking up involuntarily as he spilled, vision spotted white. She held up a hand coated in his spill and he heard the smile in her voice.
“Well, that was a much more pleasant process of extraction, don’t you think? And potent, too.”