I shake my head, taking Meghna’s soft hand in both of mine. “I don’t, actually. Please explain.”
Seraphine perches on the island a second time, wings fluttering in silent annoyance.
Meghna waves her off with a gesture, taking my hands in hers. “I know that most humans prefer monogamy, but immortal and elemental lives aren’t necessarily fit for such an arrangement. We often drift in and out of each other’s lives with great affection and no ill-will.” She cups the side of my face, and I think of a soft breeze on a warm day. “I imagine you thought Seraphine and I an item. And we are sometimes lovers but never proprietarily.”
Turning to Seraphine on the counter, Meghna arches her wispy brows. “Would you like to add to that?”
Wings twitching, the gargoyle closes the distance between the three of us, cupping one hand to my face and Meghna’s.
“I would rather show her.” Her voice is low with a hungry edge that has me clenching all over again. My head is swimming—with want, confusion, joy, apprehension.
Meghna leans into Seraphine’s touch, eyes fluttering. “Yes, yes, all appetite and no forethought as always,chérie.” She nudges Seraphine in the ribs, stepping barely out of her touch. “Look at the poor thing. Come now.”
The gargoyle gives an annoyed growl, but turns to me, expression softening. “I know about your contract.”
My eyes fly wide, my slamming pulse the only other sound between us. “Oh.” Again, it’s all I can manage.
“And?” Meghna prompts.
“And.” Seraphine gives her a look before turning back to me. She steps between the older woman and me, cupping my face gently in both her hands. “You must know that true love is never one-sided.”
My heart flutters like a caged thing. I can barely breathe, terrified that the next ticking second will make this all disappear.
“You?” I ask, eyes darting to Seraphine’s lips and back to her eyes, just like the first time all over again—as if I wasn’t just spread open to her will moments before.
“And you.” She nods, kissing me gently.
Behind her Meghna gives a dreamy sigh. “Just like a fairytale,” she says.
“I’m ready for something a little more bacchanal . . .” Seraphine gives me a meaningful, heated look. “Can you trust me,ma belle?Can you trust us both?”
My gaze darts between the women. “About what?”
“About pleasure unlike that found in the human realms. For an experience you will never forget in your too-short life.” Seraphine’s gaze doesn’t stray from my face, and when I meet it again, there is tenderness there, a want that I can see now she needsmeto affirm for her. My hesitation stretches between us for a moment, and then Seraphine takes my breath away without touching anything more than my hands.
She kneels before me, pressing her forehead to my hands, wings tucked respectfully against her back. “Please,” she says.
It’s a powerful feeling to see this expert predator, this steel woman made of stone and sinew, bow before me. The woman who moments ago was all stern praise and worshippingdemands is now supplicant and priest all in one—the prayer, the goddess, the conduit.
I nod.
“Out loud, dear.” Meghna encourages.
“Yes,” I say, voice clear, trembling, slowing, heart pounding. “Yes, I trust you both.”
Seraphine stands, kissing me deeper this time, and I taste myself on her tongue, the flames between us stoking higher from their brief embers.
Behind us, I hear Meghna clap with glee, her reedy voice suddenly filling the room on all sides. “Here we go!”
A supernatural fog fills the room around us, dampening my hair, skin, clothes. Heart hammering, skin tingling, I let Seraphine guide me out of my dress, kicking my heels off somewhere distant. I undo the buttons of her cotton dress, marveling briefly at the clever openings that accommodate her wings without making the outfit impossible to discard.
Naked, Seraphine is more statuesque than I imagined. Her muscular chest heaves beneath her sloped breasts, the smooth planes of her stomach leading down to her clean-shaven cunt. Her padded feet thud softly on the wood flooring, and I notice how she curls her claws up to avoid scratches even as she gathers me tighter to her, kissing across my cheeks, down my neck. She pauses behind my ear, scraping her fangs lightly across the sensitive lobe and on the soft skin behind it, melting me at the knees. I let myself lean against her arms, braced against my back, and I wonder briefly if we look like a Renaissance painting—the monster and the maiden.
How little the masters must’ve known.
Seraphine’s clawed fingers skate down my hips as I cling to her shoulders, kissing her like she is my oxygen, my breath. I gasp against her lips, the sting of her claws on my ass sending a wave of pleasure straight to my core. And just as soon as I’mpunished, a familiar soft touch, like a loving cloud, passes over the marks—pain and comfort in the same blissful moment but from two different sources.
It's then I realize Meghna has vanished, and Seraphine has lifted me several feet off the ground, our legs tangled effortlessly mid-air.