v.

SHE HAD NEVER taken off her clothes in front of another person, and she wasn't sure she wanted to now. She didn't know what he wanted from her, however, not exactly, but she had an idea that it was simply, well, her desire and pleasure.

He didn't have flesh, not at all.

She didn't like flesh, not exactly. She liked ideas, but she appreciated the way that her flesh could be manipulated to pleasure through ideas. And, well, her fingers. Her fingers were part of it.

She stood in the middle of her bedroom, which wasn't an extremely big room, and he seemed enormous in there. He had to duck so that his antlers wouldn't get tangled in the ceiling fan, and she took pity on him and said they should sit on the bed.

They sat down.

Then they just looked at each other.

"If you're waiting for me to take charge in some way, just understand I don't know where the boundaries are," he said. "Can I touch you?"

"I don't know," she said, and her voice was very small. "Is that what you usually do?"

"There's not a lot of usual, to be honest," he said.

"Has it been since… like hundreds of years?"

He stroked the side of his skull, thoughtful. "No, occasionally, there's a, um, interlude. Sometimes, just on a dance floor in a club or in a crowd at a concert. I probably shouldn't do that sort of thing, I suppose, but it's not… no one gets hurt, at least that's what I tell myself. There are no consequences, so why not?"

"What are these interludes?" she whispered, intrigued, still aroused, frightened, and… jealous? Shit, I'm jealous of his past? Already? This was not good. "I guess it's good. It doesn't sound like I have to take off my clothes."

"No, definitely not." He raised both of his hands. "Nothing you're not comfortable with." He considered. "It does require touching, actually, so if you don't want that, that's fine."

"You said you just wanted to know me."

"The interlude requires touching."

"Which is… what?"

"It's easier to show you? If it's all right? Remember, just push me out if you don't like it."

"Push you out?"

"I'll feel it if you reject it," he said. He reached for her, his bony fingers hovering next to her face. She looked at the way the bones actually didn't meet—no tendons or sinews, just sliding against each other there—held together by magic.

She shivered. "All right," she breathed.

And then there was contact, and it felt like a rush of power into her body, something nearly electric, and yet it wasn't quite warm or fiery. Tranquil and yet alive. Her eyes slammed shut involuntarily. She sucked in a noisy breath.

He breathed too, a hiss of an intake that whistled a little.

What did it feel like to him? she wondered. She was still all over shivery, her pelvis still tight, her nipples still tingling, her body alight. As she paid attention to these elements of her physical arousal, the rush of him seemed to pay attention to them, too.

Everything intensified, but it also… well, she felt the connection between them. He was… feeding on her? Like a vampire?

He let out another breath. "Fuck."

She giggled, her mind latching onto this, pulling up an image in her head of a cartoon vampire and a cartoon fae girl. Whimsically, she gave her green hair and huge breasts and thighs.

The vampire was skinny and pale and had long dark hair and sharp, sharp fangs, which he was dragging over the swells of the girl's breasts.

Hollis moaned. "Shit," he breathed.

"You like this?" she said. "You see this?"

"You don't mind, right?" he murmured. His fingers toyed with her jaw, gently brushing against her face, and she felt it in her clit, her nipples.

They both moaned in unison.

"Does he bite her breasts?" said Hollis.

"He can," she said.

"Will that hurt her?"

"They're cartoons," she said. "I can make it so there's no pain for anyone, just, you know, hotness."

He groaned.

"But," she said softly, "it's better if there's some pain left, some consequence, or else it's just not as hot for some reason."

"Or else it doesn't mean anything," he breathed. "So, let's say that it hurts but she likes it. And he won't take too much."

The cartoon girl arched her back, presenting her breasts to the vampire, who teased one of her nipples with the tip of his fang. A tiny drop of blood appeared.

This was different than the way she usually fantasized. It wasn't usually this clear or this bright. He'd done something magical to the fantasy in her head. He'd intensified it. She also felt an electric bit of pressure against her clit and both of her nipples, but she wasn't sure if that was him or just because she was really turned on.

"Can he bite her?" said Hollis. "Sink his teeth right into her round, firm breast?"

"He can," she whispered.

And the vampire did it, and it made something in her pulse and swell. She sighed and so did Hollis.

The vampire sucked, then pulled out his fangs and they retracted so he could lap at the little wounds he'd made, licking at her blood as the girl whimpered and writhed against him.

"The other one too?" she said, shy.

"Yes," said Hollis. "Definitely the other one." His voice was thick and affected. "Will you…"

"What?"

"I don't want to say it and maybe ruin this," he breathed. "I'm afraid of spooking you. I won't. Sorry."

" That's ruining it," she said, because the image in her head was sputtering out, and she was thinking about what he said. "Just ask."

His skeletal fingers curved around her jaw. His voice was gentle. "I'd love it if you touched yourself. That would feel amazing. But if you don't want to—"

"Okay," she said, gasping. "But my clothes stay on."

"Sure, sure," he said.

"Are you looking at me? Can you close your eyes?"

"Well, no, I can't close my eyes. I mean, I see you, but I see what you're seeing, what you're imagining. If we, um, we get better at it, if you trust me, I can take control of it to various degrees."

"Oh," she whispered, her entire body surging at that, even as she wormed her finger into the front of her pants, down, down over her skin, down to the sensitive— shit, I'm wet.

Hollis grunted.

Weird. Usually, she felt a little ambivalent about her wetness. It was a good sign. It was natural. It made it easier to manipulate her skin, made her fingers glide better. But she wasn't keen on the smell or even entirely sure she liked the texture and sensation of it. Sometimes, though, if she was turned on enough, she didn't really think about it.

But she, um, she was kind of liking it right now. Like, being wet was making her even more aroused. She thought of gushing, surging, lots of liquid, and she liked that .

Suddenly, the vampire was lapping at the girl between her legs, and she was crazy wet and the vampire was saying, Only thing that vaguely compares to the taste of blood is the taste of your sweet arousal .

She cringed. That was… wasn't that gross?

"Not gross," said Hollis, and something came from him, something that flooded her with a sort of override, and it made her gasp because she just liked it, liked the fluid, liked how she was getting even wetter.

I've never been this wet, she thought.

"Good," said Hollis. "That's just what you'll do for me, then, won't you? Get nice and wet for me?"

"Oh, fuck," she said, gasping for breath. Her pussy stuttered against her fingers. She'd barely even touched herself, but now, she could feel that she was climbing towards an orgasm, and it was half because of what he'd just said.

"Answer me," whispered Hollis. "Will you get wet for me, like a good girl?"

"Yes," she whimpered, and she clenched, a warmup clench, and it sizzled out into her, a promise of the intensities to come, and she wanted to come, oh tangles and briars, she wanted to come.

But it was too much her , right now, and she wanted… she needed—

"Here," said Hollis, somehow putting the vampire and the girl back on full display. "Is he me? I know she's not you, but is he me? Do you like watching me feed on a woman? Do you like getting wet watching me use her?"

She whimpered. Yes, she fucking did, but she was confused about it. One of the reasons she liked to keep herself out of sex was that there didn't need to be boundaries if it was pretend people. She could find a thing arousing in the abstract, but it wasn't real, and it wasn't about her, and it absolved her from having to actually grapple with the thing. It was just an image, just an idea, just—

But if the vampire was Hollis—

"Doesn't have to be me," he panted. "Sorry, I thought it would make you more excited, but if it doesn't—"

"Are you feeding off of me now?" she breathed.

"I don't eat," he said. "I don't need any kind of sustenance to exist. I'm… tasting you, Fifer, that's all. Experiencing you. Feeling you. Basking in you." His voice cracked.

"How do I taste?"

"Like liquid sunlight," he breathed, his voice deeply affected.

And that was when she came. It happened like a burst of heat and light, swelling inside her body to burst and spatter like molten metal. She got visuals like that a lot when she came, actually, strange metaphorical pictures that flowed through her as her body clenched and she was flooded with pleasantness.

He made a mangled noise, and his forehead came down against hers, cool bone there against her skin. His fingers dug into her neck. He clung to her through the waves of her orgasm, as they washed through her again and again and then finally ebbed out.

They were both out of breath.

She opened her eyes. His skull was too close, looming there—terrifying. She jerked back.

He let go of her.

It was like a current cutting off.

"Shit." She reached out and seized his hand, turning the current back on. "Sorry."

" I'm sorry," he said. "This was probably way faster than you wanted to go."

"I…" She blinked at him. She squeezed his fingers. "No, I don't regret anything about that."

He chuckled, pleased. He squeezed her fingers back. "I should have taken you out for dinner first."

She threw back her head and laughed. Then—driven by something in her that she didn't understand—she leaned forward and kissed him, right between the holes of his nostrils, not on his mouth, but in a tender place, a sweet place. She kissed him, peppering his smooth bony face with tiny, fluttering kisses.

He gasped, his hand sliding into her hair, holding her head against him. "Fifer," he whispered. "You…"

She sighed. She stopped, pulling away a little, looking into his eyes.

His other hand came up to trace her lips, her cheek, her jaw. "Thank you for this."

"Well, you owe me dinner, I guess," she said, grinning at him.

HE WAS HUMMING to himself.

How long had he been doing that? He toppled down on the couch there in his house, bemused, happy, distracted, and he just lounged there. He'd completely forgotten what he had even been doing.

Daydreaming about the selkie, I think. His inner voice was knowing and amused.

Yes, he had it bad. Maybe he'd never had it this bad, but he knew that the mind was capable of playing those sorts of tricks when it started in on these sorts of things. It always seemed special and different and sweet and wondrous. It always seemed like something that had never happened before, like a revelation, like an ocean of perfection.

Just a fascination, though.

He'd had them before, with mortals. It had been a long time, and he'd thought he'd cured himself of it, but then… her .

No, certainly she was different. Certainly, she was something entirely unique and remarkable.

He went to women's beds sometimes. Didn't mention that to her when you were talking about interludes, did you? He didn't do it often. He likely hadn't in a few decades. He wasn't sure exactly when the last time had been. He hadn't been living here. Some city somewhere, he thought, and considering the music, maybe the early 2000s?

Didn't matter.

He could fake things if a woman was drunk enough, take enough control of her mind to delve inside and give her what she wanted. If that was a big, thick veiny cock, he could make her see it, feel it. He could make her believe she'd had a one-night stand with a skeletal skull-faced man.

But he didn't usually.

He found… women seemed to have a strange disconnect between what they thought they wanted and what would actually produce the strongest sensations of pleasure in their bodies. Some strange quirk of the way mortals were put together, he supposed. But he understood. It spoke to him.

Wanting to get fucked—wanting to be a vessel of pleasure for a man—whether or not such a thing was even going to produce an orgasm for her. It seemed to him that women not only tolerated one night stands that were only ever about male pleasure—that were about being used by a stranger to get himself off—but that part of them seemed to even enjoy it in some way.

It was more than just being too drunk to teach a man how to pleasure her, it was the entire fantasy. Not for all women, maybe. He didn't know. But too often, this was the case.

Anyway, those sorts of interludes were never worth it—not for him. He didn't get off if she didn't get off—that is, the only person capable of getting off was the person with actual physical equipment, and all he could do was make her think he was getting off. So, this tended to require that the woman in the scenario would take some kind of control of her own desires and go after what she wanted.

He could have, during these interludes, taken control of the situation himself and started physically stimulating the women in question, forced them to have orgasms, but he never did.

For one thing, it ruined it in some way. He was there to feed on desire, and if a woman couldn't or didn't desire her own pleasure enough to go after it, then the whole situation was already less than satisfying for him. If he gave her the pleasure without her going after it, then he didn't enjoy the orgasm in the same way. It tasted wrong.

He was there primarily for the desire, for tasting the woman's want, and the orgasm was just icing.

But maybe he didn't do it because he was the same as these women in some way. Whatever they were getting out of these interactions with men, it was a kind of vicarious ride of pleasure—they didn't get off, but they enjoyed that the men who were fucking them did.

It was like what he did.

And the thing about his desire… he didn't like it.

It disturbed him in some way. He had found that if he ignored it, it kind of went away. Or, maybe he just wanted it to go away. Deep down, he wanted to be satisfied, he supposed. And there was no satisfaction, so, the next best thing was the absence of desire.

Contentment.

It had to be the same for women, though. He knew that there was a stereotype that women didn't have as large an appetite for sex as men, but he didn't think this was entirely true. He thought, perhaps, instead, women got sort of frustrated with the whole mess of it easily.

Even if women went into the situation wanting an orgasm, prioritizing their pleasure, there was simply the fact of the matter that the entire business was designed to give men more pleasure than women. It was easier for men to come, the sex act stimulated their most sensitive parts, and only male orgasm was necessary for reproduction, so nature made sure it happened.

For women, it must be like wanting ice cream and then being served the kind sweetened with aspartame over and over again. Eventually, they must just get sick of it. Why bother? I want a thing, and I try to get it, but it's always disappointing . They went out and sought out sex—big cocks, penetration, being taken, being enjoyed… because that was what aroused them. But what they also wanted was an orgasm, and lots of women didn't seem to ask for one.

But everything was different with this selkie. Everything .

This selkie, she…

She was just pure desire.

As close as he'd ever come to tasting it, anyway. He'd never had anything like her sweet, bright taste. She was something like perfection, that was what she was. Better than perfection, though. Perfection would disappoint in some way. The parts of her that were mortal, that were vulnerable, they made her just right.

He was obsessed with her.

Which was, of course, why he hadn't gotten in touch with her in…

How many days?

He looked at his phone.

Four.

She'd been angry the last time he'd waited a week. He also really had to take her on an actual date. He needed to text her.

Didn't make sense, really. If he was obsessed with her, he should want to be around her. He should not be frightened of her. He shouldn't be avoiding her.

He thought about her constantly, that was the truth. And it was often in this reverent, lovesick way, with the humming and the gazing off into space with the silly grin on his face.

But he was frightened, that was the truth of it.

"And what could a being like me be afraid of?" he whispered to himself.

It didn't make any sense.

Text her.

He put his phone back in his pocket and got off the couch. He ambled off, telling himself not to hum.