Page 13 of Nix and Tell

“But?”

“But I want you to be in charge.” I don’t want that control, don’t want to be the person making the decisions like that. What I want, is to make her feel good, make her feel like she’s the sentence of the universe.

“You’re a service top!” Violet sounds delighted, and when I sit back to look at her, she grins. “Oh that’s fuckingperfectChlo. I’m far too bossy to relinquish all control, but I love bottoming.”

I don’t quite know how we’ve gotten here, and I suppose in some ways I’ve got the goddess to thank for this, but I feel light. Relieved.

She cups my face in her hands then, and pauses right before her lips kiss mine. “May I?”

I nod, and then my whole world gets blown apart.

There’s magic in her kiss, both metaphorical and literal. Soft lips that entice murmurs of pleasure from mine, as Vi strokes my cheek with her hand. And something drawing us together, something magical that isn’t the goddess, and isn’t the river, but is purely us. It’s sparkles and vines and it wraps us in a virtual cocoon as we sit and kiss, and everything else falls away.

I shift so that I’m above her, pulling her closer to me, my tongue coaxing pleasure from her mouth. I could lose myself in her. I want to lose myself in her. And when we pull apart, we’re both breathing heavily.

“I guess we’re doing this then,” she says, but her eyes belie the lightness of her words. It’s hit her as hard as it has me.

“Have dinner with me,” I say. This intensity, I want to prolong it, to bask in it some more before it breaks and the feeling dissipates. “I don’t just want to… you know. I want to date you. And that means dinner.”

She laughs then, and the sound fills my world with everything that’s been missing from it. “Dinner would be lovely.”

10

Violet

We can’t spend the whole day making out on my sofa, as much as we’d like to, so Chlo gives me one last lingering kiss, and heads back to her shop, leaving me open-mouthed and starry-eyed.

I’m a romantic, always have been, and have u-hauled my way into more than one relationship, but I like that Chlo wants to date me. It feels like courting, in some ways, and it’s utterly charming. As charming as the sound she made when I bit her earlobe.

A shiver runs through me at the remembrance and I can’t wait to see where this goes.

I hear the shop’s bell go, and I hurry downstairs, turning the lights on and flipping the sign as I go.

It’s Hazel, and she makes no attempt to step over the threshold. “I don’t suppose you could…”

I mutter some words under my breath, a little ditty that lessens the impact for those who wish me no harm, and she smiles.

“May I come in?”

“You may.”

We’re oddly formal, and when she enters, she winces.

“What’s that about?” I ask, more blunt than usual.

“Huh?”

“The wince.”

Her hair is falling in pink curtains about her face, and I get the impression that she’s trying to use it to hide from me. “You’ve got a protection spell.”

“Yeah, againstherentering, not you. Though I suppose if you kind of work for her…”

“It’s anti-river magic, and us nixes, we’re part of the river.”

“Nixes?”

Her eyes widen and she seems to realise something, the moment I do. “I mean?—”

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