Page 87 of By the Fae

Fuck the consequences. I could ruminate on those another time.

There was no tomorrow. No next week. No games expo.

There was no Seth, no Sophie, no August.

No nine-hundred years of heartbreak and mourning.

Only Holly. And me. And right now.

My fingers were in her hair, my tongue already seeking her perfect familiarity. I ground my pelvis into her hips. Unable to wrestle even an ounce of control from my urges.

“You wore this for him?” I tugged at the strap of her dress. Fuck, she looked hot. “I hate it.”

I missed her dungarees.

“Goldie?” she said, breathless.

“Baby girl?”

“Are you . . . Seth said he saw you with a succubus today. I mean, it’s none of my business, but . . .”

My hand shot into my hair. I had to be honest with her. I wanted to be honest with her. No point in hiding any of the truth any longer. “Yes, I was. I met up with her. We went back to her place. To fuck.”

A sad little mewl escaped Holly’s mouth. I grabbed her hand and placed it like a bandage over my heart to stop it from breaking.

After Sophie hung up the phone, she drove me to her apartment. On the back of her bad-girl motorbike, obviously. But the moment I walked through her front door, I knew I’d made a mistake.

“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” she’d said, her fingertips already working the tie on my sweatpants.

“I . . . I don’t think I can keep doing this.”

“Doing what?”

“Casual hook ups. One-night stands. Fucking strangers. No feelings.”

Sophie’s hands moved to my shoulders. After a while, she said, “She must be some girl. Would you like a cup of earl grey?” and patted my arm.

I hadn’t answered her. I just stared into her kitchen. At the postcards stuck to her fridge with souvenir magnets. The crayon drawings of balloon people with limbs coming out the sides of their heads. The leopard print dog bed, with a wholly unfazed, slightly dribbly, dogue de bordeaux, stretched across it.

Sophie made the tea regardless, and we sat at her breakfast bar while she told me about her nieces and nephews, her job as a travel agent, and her plans for the rest of the summer. She liked festivals, it turned out, and live music in general.

“Do you ever think you might give up casual hook-ups? Like for a relationship?” I said from nowhere. The words had slipped out.

Sophie shrugged. “Not at the moment, at least. I’m happy as I am. Enjoying the fruits of life, as they say. You know, we’re very similar. Me being a succubus, you being a nymph. We were designed primarily for one thing. But that doesn’t mean that someday I won’t want a relationship. One thing I do know is that it’ll take an incredibly special person, or persons, to make either of us settle down.”

Settle down.The words sat in my stomach like a bullion of gold. At once scarce and precious, and so fucking heavy it hurt.

“We went to her place, but we didn’t do anything,” I told Holly. “We chatted, and drank tea, and I met her dog, Vixen. She was disgusting and slobbery and you’d have loved her.”

Holly laughed, the relief obvious.

“I couldn’t bring myself to do anything with the succubus. Holly, she . . . she’s not you.”

The breath left her in a whoosh. “Hey, Goldie?”

“Holly?”

“I’m ready.”

---