FROM THE DESK OF ELISE SASINI, AN EXCERPT OF THE MANUSCRIPT THE SHROUDED CITY:
…on the subject of elementals as a whole, there is not much I can write. There is not much anyone can say for certain, as a matter of fact. Research in the subject is painfully lacking, but I cannot say I blame elementals for their circumspection. Perhaps, like the elves, they prefer to keep their secrets, their weaknesses and their wants, just that: secret.
Cal tells me that they are generally solitary, but he has only met a handful and cannot be entirely certain. He does not know if they mate for life or if they typically eschew permanent familial bonds. He doesn’t know if they can have children, or if they all eat food, or if they sleep.
What he can tell me is his personal experience, and, I am ashamed to say, it is only his experience I am concerned with.
Fascinatingly, he confessed that, although he gained his physical form that disastrous morning in 1906, he’d actually achieved a level of sentience long before then. Wandering over the Earth as an amorphous cloud of magic, he remembers his first thought as, “Well, what are they all doing down there?”
I wonder, do the m-weather scientists know that the clusters of magic they study might actually be studying them back?
As an aside, I asked Cal whether this made him 139 years old, or many thousands. He thoughtfully replied, “Depends on whichever you like more.”
Gods, I love him.
Cal knew what sex was.He’d never done it, obviously, but one didn’t hover in back alleys and linger around windows in a city like San Francisco for a hundred years without learning a thing or two about sex.
On the whole, he’d always considered it gross.
What were people thinking, plunging their tongues and fingers and genitals in places they didn’t rightly belong? He understood the concept of copulation as well as its purpose, but as someone conceived by nothing other than magic and fate, Cal felt no compulsion to explore what Kaz playfully called the carnal delights.
Now, though, Cal wished he hadn’t tuned out his friend when he tried to explain the joys of sex and intimacy all those years ago. Perhaps if he’d listened, he wouldn’t be standing there, staring agog at his mate as she slowly lowered herself to her knees before him.
Doubtful, he thought wryly. In all likelihood, he would still look at her like she’d hung the moon. Even if he’d slept with every willing being in the city, this moment would still feel special. Important.
Elise slid her free hand under his shirt. Her palm pressed against the clenching muscles of his abdomen as she gave his cock a long, slow stroke. “Is this okay?” she asked, petting his stomach in time with her strokes. His heart swelled with the strangest mix of tenderness and borderline painful arousal he could imagine.
He wanted more.
“Yes.” Cal felt her breath ghost over the sensitive head of his cock and groaned, low and long. He was so damn hard, he could feel his heartbeat throbbing against the softness of her palm. “I’ve never done— this. I want to.”
Gods, he wanted to do everything with her. Cal just never knew where to start. He loved kissing her more than he loved anything, but he knew there were more steps to the dance she had only begun to teach him. Was he supposed to do something to show he wanted to do more or was that something she needed to do? Was he missing some signal? Did he need to wait for her to tell him explicitly that they could go ahead with whatever it was that came next?
He had been on the verge of breaking down and seeking out Kaz for advice, but now that seemed unnecessary. Cal wasn’t entirely certain what his witch had been waiting for, but that was a conversation for later. After.
It wasn’t like he had any plans to let her go, anyway. Screw the terms of their deal. He’d find a way to keep her. They would have plenty of time to discuss this new facet of their relationship.
Even when he slid his fingers into her hair and felt the sweep of her tongue down his shaft in every single nerve ending, Cal felt the low hum of fury, of possessiveness in his blood. It wasn’t easy keeping his shape together, and he had no control over the fog that billowed out to fill the tiny annex, obscuring the sight of them from anyone looking through the windows.
Do you want to end things, then?
Gods, he felt his heart stop when she said that. He wasn’t ready for this to end. He wasn’t ready to go back to how he was before. He wasn’t ready to not see her every day, to not hear her voice, to not kiss her whenever the mood struck him. He wouldn’t ever be ready.
Cal wasn’t sure if elementals had mates. Not every race did. Humans, certainly, didn’t seem to have some ingrained compulsion to stick with one partner for all time. Elementals were solitary. They didn’t do packs or families. They came into the world alone and they died alone.
But he wanted more than that. She taught him that he deserved more than that.
He wanted Elise Sasini, the woman on her knees before him, her lips running down the length of his cock in a reverent caress, and he intended to have her. Forever. He was prepared to fight her tooth and nail to make it happen.
He watched her with unvarnished hunger. Elise was beautiful and smart and kind and she was his. Her lips were flushed a bright cherry red. They looked even more lush, more human, when they were pressed against his pearly white skin.
Cal shifted his stance, moving his booted feet so she could have more room. Wanting to see her face, he gathered her hair in one fist and held it back. It was a soft, heavy weight in his hand, and he relished the feeling of it.
“Tell me if you want to stop or if you’re uncomfortable,” she murmured, sliding her hand slowly back up his length to press the pad of her thumb against the underside of the flushed head. Elise kept her eyes on his as her tongue darted out to lick up a gleaming drop of pre-come.
Cal’s fist tightened around her curls. Gods save me.
“Deal?”