Page 5 of A Queen and Her Knight

“No.” Azar was beyond blushing, beyond hot. She was about to explode, nearly out of control. Like a disappointment. Like a child. “No, it’s nothing. Never mind.”

Bernard only stared, a frown forming as he considered Azar’s display.

If it would have made a difference, Azar would have apologized, but there was no way to do that without telling him everything. How very silly he would find it. He would be embarrassed for her, the rude child. The dragon who could not even…. Her parents were right.

“I have to study,” she muttered, not allowing the word she wanted most to say to pass her rose-red lips. Then she turned and was out the front door and running for the safety of the trees.

The End

Frangipani and the Very Shiny Boy

First posted in 2013

Set beforeA Dandelion for TuliporSweet Clematis

Summary: Frangipani is a beautiful, hot fairy who nonetheless can’t seem to get the attention of one particular, fascinating human. m/m

“Hey there,” Frangipani began, only to immediately fall silent, because wow, way to sound like an idiot. Thankfully, there wasn’t so much as a twitch from the boy he’d been trying to talk to, the impossibly cute human boy deeply engrossed in his book, so if Frangi wanted, he could slip away right now in a flutter of wings and humiliation.

He would have, if that hadn’t been what he’d done last time, and the time before that, and the time beforethat. Just thinking of it made Frangi let out a small whimper and slink back to thewrought-iron table in the café’s patio area, where his vanilla-caramel mocha with a dash of praline syrup was waiting for him. It was his sixth of the morning, and at this rate, he was going to burn through his college money in coffee alone.

Maybe if the shiniest human he had ever laid eyes on didn’t come to this coffee shop every day for what must be his downtime between classes, and maybe if that human didn’t sit outside so the breeze could stir his light hair and make it fall in front of his eyes so he would absently brush it away as he kept reading, and maybe if he didn’t always get the cheapest drip coffee to save money but then drop a quarter in the tip jar, then Frangi could give up and fly away and get his sugar somewhere else.

But he wasn’t so lucky. In fact, Frangi would swear he’d been cursed with this. This… thiscondition, as he was starting to call it. The stuttering tongue, the cold uncertainty in his stomach, the heat in his cheeks. He knew what humans called this, but he wasn’t human, and he knew that couldn’t be the case. The human was simply very shiny, so shiny that Frangi was kind of amazed that every other being on campus wasn’t as drawn to him as he was. It was strange enough to him that the other humans didn’t seem to see anything special about this boy.

Frangi thought him beautiful. Handsome, yeah, but Frangi had always had a weakness for a human male with a strong jaw. He fluttered a little closer at the thought, trying to display his body as best he could despite shivering every few moments. The fall days were colder than he liked. Most fairies did not take well to cold, and Frangi’s kind, used to tropical climates, suffered more than most. Winter was on its way, but he didn’t want to think of that now, and stretched in the open air to feel the sun soak into his skin.

The sun perked him up more than his morning’s intake of sugar and he raised his face toward it, stilling his wings and then extending them to absorb the heat. His wings were sheer white, tipped with a yellow-gold, the same yellow-gold that swirled through his brown eyes and tinted his black hair. He had tucked a white flower behind his ear that morning, full of hope and determination that today would be the day he got this human’s attention.

Sure, okay, he’d swiped the flower from a professor’s garden, but if the humans didn’t want fairies taking their flowers, they should allow gardens in the on-campus housing. And the flower made him look good.

Better. It made him lookbetter. Fairies already looked good, especially to humans, and Frangipani was no exception. If past experience was anything to go by, Frangipani was even more of a draw to these mainland humans with his warm brown skin and sunny smile. Humans, all humans, liked him.

Except this one. The shiniest one. The one who did not smile, but wore ragged, thin jeans, ratty sneakers, and thick glasses with a scratch in the lens. The one who had a pink mouth and kind eyes, and skin that burned in the sun, and whoshined—so brightly that silver lights streaked around him when he moved.He was different, that shine said,he was special, and Frangipani wanted him.

He wanted him so much he had accepted this daily shame of coming here to stare at him, which was something fairies did not do, because they did not have to do it. They were beautiful, and the beautiful did not pine.

His sister, the Lit major at the University of Hawai’i might disagree and quote a fairy poem of longing at him, but he could never tell her about this. She would never let him hear the end of it.

Frangi let out a sigh and dropped his head. The boy, his boy, looked up, giving him one startled, blue-eyed glance that clearly said he thought he’d been alone out on the chilly patio, then swept a look over Frangi’s bare chest before quickly ducking back down over his book.

Frangipani sighed again and flopped down in the nearest chair. He put his chin in his hands and stared morosely at the rosy color painting the human’s cheeks, which was a positively lovely sight. Frangi must have embarrassed him. Yes, itwasa little cold to be walking around bare-chested, but anyone who had been around fairies before should be used to that, and Frangi had a very pleasing chest.

A sweatshirt would have been nice, though. The one his boy was wearing seemed especially comfortable. Frangi wanted to sit on his lap and slide his hands underneath it to feel bare skin. He could apologize for his cold fingers with a kiss, something soft, justthere, under the human’s ear, and laugh if it tickled and he finally got the boy to smile. The boy rarely smiled. Obviously, he was working hard at school, but if he had friends, Frangi never saw them. He’d pulled out a phone a few times and texted back and forth, but Frangi had never heard it ring, or overheard him make plans on a Friday night. He’d never even heard him laugh out loud.

“I bet your laugh is amazing,” Frangipani told him softly, unsurprised when that got no response. The boy continued to frown down at a gigantic Chem text. Frangi was half a second away from doing the Bend and Snap out of desperation, and wouldn’t his roommates think that was hilarious? Rooming with other beings had its downside, even if they did understand his lack of a sleep schedule and inability to stay dressed for the periods of time that humans seemed to need to stay dressed.

Clothing wasn’t natural; there was no way around it. But Frangi looked at the boy’s university sweatshirt again and imagined it draped over him in the library while he waited for the boy to finish his studying so they could go out.

Which was a thought that made him pause, because Frangi wanted to roll around naked with this human. He didn’t want todatehim. Frangi didn’t even know him, and anyway, he was too young to be settling down. Frangi haddecadesbefore he had to start considering settling down, especially with a human. But then he wondered if the boy liked flowers, or boys, or fairies.

“Can’t you just look up, and see me, and drag me away for sex?” Frangipani asked, though there was no one around to object if they were to have sex right there. If the boy was shy, as humans tended to be when it came to things like public fucking, then they could go somewhere else, but Frangi would have been fine out here on the patio, slipping down to suck him off under the table, or straddling his lap to kiss him, or bending him over a table to trust between his pale thighs until they were rosy too. Maybe the boy liked to top, maybe he was fierce and strong, and he’d kiss back hard and tug Frangi close by his hair. Maybe….

What was the use of dreaming of it? Frangi morosely cut himself off before he could get too excited. He stood up, loudly scraping his chair against the cement and stalking back over to his coffee, which he drained in a gulp while wishing he could get drunk and forget everything the way humans did.

He gathered up his things and slung his bag over one shoulder, then decided that no matter how tempted he was, tomorrow he’d get his coffee somewhere else. The pastries weren’t even that good here. He had to pour sugar on top of his donuts to make them edible.

Of course, feeling so resolved didn’t keep him from turning around to get one last look at the shiny boy—or from jumping insurprise to find the shiny boy standing a foot away and looking right at him.

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