vii.

"WE DON'T HAVE to do anything." He was drying his hands on a towel. They'd finished eating and then she'd wanted to help clean up, and so they'd loaded the dishwasher together. Their conversation had been lighter afterwards, and she'd driven it.

They'd talked about music, and she'd probed his interest in metal bands, trying to figure out whether that had anything to do with his being a skeleton. It's just so stereotypical, she giggled.

Yes, yes, he told her, that was part of the joke.

That only made her giggle harder, because she got the joke, and that was why he liked her.

"I want to do things, obviously," she said, grinning at him, her eyes twinkling. She was small and pretty and so enticing.

He thought about seeing her without clothes, about his skeletal hands on her breasts, her hips. More phantom erection.

Anyway, she probably wouldn't let him do that, and he wouldn't push. He didn't need that from her.

"Good," he said. "That's good."

Then they stood there, grinning at each other.

"Awkward," he said. "I'm bad at this."

She laughed. "Take me to your bedroom."

"Oh, that's what I should do?"

She nodded vigorously, still grinning like she'd gotten away with something naughty.

"Well, then," he said, "let me take you straight to bed."

She giggled. "I'm not taking off my clothes."

"Noted," he said, reaching out a hand to her.

She hesitated and then slipped her hand into his.

Fuck .

His thoughts all went dark and hazy for a minute. He was touching her. He could feel her. She was perfect .

She collided with his body, slightly out of breath, looking up at him with parted lips. "Hi," she whispered.

"Hi," he said, and wished he had lips. He'd kiss her.

She put a hand on his chest, holding his gaze.

He pushed in, and maybe it was too invasive, and maybe she wouldn't like it, but he put one of his own images in her head, her and him, his mouth opening wide—and it wasn't a romantic image, because it meant that it looked like he was about to bite her face off, except he had a tongue, a long and supple red thing that lapped at her mouth and teased its way inside, and she tasted like powdered sugar and strawberries, and her hand on his chest seized a handful of his hoodie as she tilted back her head and opened her mouth wider, panting.

In their shared minds' eye, in their connection, their tongues were dancing, and her body was waking up.

He didn't think. He just stripped her—the image of her—and put his imaginary tongue on her nipples—his tongue was big, it could cup her breasts, lick from the underside up over her very hard peaks, and he did that—again and again—and she fisted his hoodie and whimpered, eyes squeezed shut.

He tried to lick her imaginary pussy, but she objected to the image.

"No hair," she murmured, altering it, changing her body—making her less real, more like a cartoon, with nothing but a little drawn triangle between her legs, bare and hairless, all the same color, not the way he'd been picturing it, which was, well, more realistic—a tangle of thatched hair like briars over puckering skin that grew darker and deeper—a place like Faerie itself, a place of power and ancient knowing, a place that wasn't pretty or sweet or soft—that was something savage.

She pulled away from him, gasping, blinking.

He winced. "Sorry."

She shook her head. "No, it's… I'm being…" She smoothed at her hair. "I should… do you have a bathroom?"

"Sure," he said and took her up the stairs. He showed her to the door to his bedroom and the bathroom just down the hall. There was a connecting bathroom in his room, but he didn't know if she wanted a bit more privacy than that. He told her to come find him when she was ready.

Then he lay on his bed and looked at the ceiling and scolded himself for forgetting she wasn't like other women. Forgetting she was aroused by sexual images that didn't have anything to do with her. Forgetting she wanted ideas, not reality.

When she appeared in the doorway, she looked small and unsure of herself. "Is that what it's like?"

"What?" he said, sitting up on the bed to address her.

"Is it like that , real sex? What you were showing me?"

"I don't know exactly what you mean."

She came into the room, clasping her hands behind her back. "It doesn't seem like the same thing."

"What doesn't?"

"I think that's why I don't like it," she said. "Why I'm asexual. Because they're lying to us about it, aren't they?"

"Who's lying about what?" he said.

"Everyone," she said. "About sex. What you showed me, that's what it is. It's ruthless and bestial, and we put this veneer over it, try to make it into something else. But it's just that . And I don't want that."

"Then we won't. It won't be like that with us."

"Except I do want it," she said, sitting down next to him on the bed. "You can't want sex without wanting that, because that's what it is. And I keep trying to tell myself I can just have the veneer, just the pleasure part, but part of what makes it enticing is…" She swallowed, taking a deep breath. "Show me."

"Show you what?"

"Lick me like that," she said, holding out her hands, shutting her eyes. "Lick me, and don't pretend I taste like honeydew or that my pussy looks like flower petals. Lick me, and make it what it is. Sweat and hair and instinct."

"All right," he said. "I can try. I don't entirely… it's not why I want you."

"Try," she said, holding out her hands.

He took her hands, and the image that overtook him was not the image he'd sent her before. It was just as realistic, but it differed in a number of ways, the labia longer, the tint of the pubic hair, the way the clitoris was peering out, shy but eager. This is what her pussy actually looks like, he thought, and he was suddenly on fire .

He gave her the image, her on the bed, naked for him, thighs splayed, and him kneeling between her, his jaws wide, as if he was ready to bite down on her soft, giving flesh, but instead, his tongue tasting her body.

It was only… he didn't quite know what pussy tasted like, to be truthful. He didn't have a tongue and he'd never tasted it. When he tasted food or beer, he pulled from memories of mortals who had touched the object itself, but that sort of imprinting didn't happen to people's skin.

Maybe if he'd ever attempted anything sexual with a mortal man—but he hadn't. He didn't know what that was. He should be beyond sexual orientation, and yet he was not .

He could smell her though, smell her arousal wafting through her clothing, and it was pleasant, and he thought of tasting that.

She crested and he felt it.

She took one of her hands away from his and tucked it down the front of her pants. He felt her fingers squirming around, exploring her body, and he used that sensation to inform their shared image of the pussy he was licking, and this made them both surge.

Now, they were riding some strange and high golden thread of pleasure.

In his image of her, she was panting and her blue skin was covered in a tiny sheen of sweat. Her tight nipples were rising and falling as she breathed heavily. He was tasting her between her legs, and she was tart and wet and glistening.

"It's better if it's unpleasant," she gasped.

"It's not unpleasant," he said in a very deep voice.

"But if it is, it's better," she said. "Because then, you're doing it for me, even if you don't really like it."

"Mmm," he groaned. "That makes it more pleasant."

"Yes," she hissed, finger on her clitoris in reality, his tongue teasing it in their fantasy. He knew her clitoris was necessary for her to feel the pleasure they wanted, but he made his tongue lap at her opening, tasting more of her wetness there. He shoved his tongue into her opening.

She moaned.

"Claiming you," he told her. " In you, that's what you like."

"Yes," she gasped. "But why?"

"Just what it is," he told her. In their shared fantasy, he was tongue-fucking her now, and they were watching the wide column of red tongue stretch her open, and the look of that, of penetration, of the in-and-out movement of something inside a wet hole, it was driving her over the edge.

She rubbed her clitoris, moaning. "I'm close. I'm already close. Why is it so easy with you?"

"Because you like being taken," he said. "You like being enjoyed ."

"Shit," she groaned, and it was rising behind both their foreheads, bright sparks that were getting bigger and brighter and closer and—

Boom .

He cried out.

She whined, gritting her teeth, the imaginary image of his licking her pussy taken over by an image of bursting fireworks in the night sky. They went off in time to her climax, flickering out as it ended.

She pulled her hand away from his and her hand out of her crotch. She took two steps and then collapsed onto his bed. She rolled over onto her back and gazed at the ceiling, letting out little sighs as her breathing returned to normal.

He wanted to touch her again. He carefully lay down next to her. "All right?" he said.

"Oh," she said, and rolled right into him.

He put his arms around her.

She rubbed her face into his hoodie. "Oh, tangles and briars," she said in a muffled voice.

He delved back into her, into the satisfied aftershocks. "Let me know when you're ready for another round."

She laughed, a happy noise, burrowing her nose into him. "Why does it feel like you have more under here than bones?"

"Illusion," he said.

"Magic?"

"Mmm." He traced his fingers over her shoulder. "You like it." He could tell that. "You like the way it feels."

"But if you want me to feel the way you really are, I want that," she said. "So much of this is pretend, but I want it to be real too."

"I want to hold you like this," he said. He wanted to feel strong to her, wanted to feel like he had some kind of bulk and form.

"All right," she said. "But sometime…?"

"Sure," he said, meaning it, but having no intention of being a bag of bones and emptiness near her anytime soon.

She rubbed her face into him. "I guess if you do that, I'll have to let you see me without my clothes."

He sucked in a breath, because he wanted that.

She lifted her head, having felt how much he wanted that. She was worried.

He shook his head at her. "You never have to do that."

"Can you…" She traced an idle pattern on his hoodie. "You could make me think you had a cock just like you made me think you had a tongue."

"Yes. I can even take you over. I can make it more intense and realistic, so you don't have the capacity to understand it's a fantasy in our minds," he said. "I just didn't think you'd appreciate that."

"But you don't have a real… you can't really…"

"No," he said.

"But your…" Her hand trailed down to find his fingers. "These are real. You could put these inside me."

"Wouldn't even feel that good to you," he said in a choked voice, remembering what she'd said in the sex shop about penetration with dildos. Why did he want it?

"Yeah, what would be the point of that?" She put her face back into his hoodie, groaning.

He twined their fingers. "Anything you want, Fifer. I want to experience all your wants and all your satisfactions."

She hummed.

He wished he could close his eyes. If he could, he'd want nothing but darkness and the feel of her in his arms.

"It would be a big fucking deal if I let you do that, you know," she said.

"I do," he said.

"But you'd like it," she said. "And I want to please you."

"You don't have to—"

"That's the difference," she said. "You don't want to do that for friends."

"What?"

"The difference between romance and friendship. You want to inconvenience yourself for romantic partners. You want to sacrifice for them. You want… to hurt for them."

"Really?" he murmured. "Really."

She shrugged. "Maybe just women."

He laughed, tilting back his skull into the pillows of his bed. "I don't want your sacrifices, Fifer."

"No?" she whispered, looking up at him. "Don't you?"

"No," he said firmly.