Ellen Datlow - Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers

“What?” the client demanded. “What am I supposed to do?”

“It is an offer,” said Bliss. “An offer without words.”

“You need offer me nothing,” the young man said gruffly. “I can have whatever I want.”

Bliss’s hand held steady, and he met his client’s eyes. “And yet I offer it: The robe from my body, still warm, and faintly scented, for you to do with as you please: to smell, to stroke, to tear to shreds—”

“Give it to me!”

“Quickly, or slowly?”

The young man’s hands were clenched. “Quickly!”

Bliss flung him the robe; it unfolded in midair, landed against the young man like a spider’s web, a gossamer net. The young man tore it from his face, crumpled it into a ball and breathed in deeply.

“And will you give me nothing in return?” asked Bliss.

“You don’t need it. You’re already randy as a buck in spring.”

“That’s not why I’d want it.”

“Why, then?”

“So that you might see your hand on me.”

Mutely, the client held out one red leather glove. Bliss knelt to take it, and pressed it to his lips.

The sharp intake of breath from the bed confirmed his guess. He ran the leather along his chest, across his thighs. Only then did he raise his eyes, shyly, to the client. The young man’s hand had vanished inside his cloak, to where a man might keep his dagger. And further down, to where a man kept other things and kept them well. The hand stirred the cloth steadily, and his breathing was audible. Bliss suppressed a smile. He teased the glove across his nipples, and gasped loudly at the sensation, in tandem with the excited young man.

“Ah, yes!” the client breathed. “That’s good. Go on.”

Bliss stood very still. His naked body was flushed and hard, gleaming in the candlelight. Only his breathing flashed light and dark. “Go on?” he asked, though he knew perfectly well what was meant.

The client’s eyes were bright and feverish. “Yes, yes, go on!” His hand stopped moving. “You must take your pleasure,” he added gruffly.

“Alone?”

“You know better than to ask that. Let us each…” His hand stirred the cloth.

But Bliss did not move.

And neither did the client. “What is the matter?” he asked. “You must be—doesn’t it hurt, your, ah…”

Bliss said, “It pleases you to see it thus. I would be a poor servant to release it so quickly. You shall look your fill. And when you have had it to bursting, only then shall we concern ourselves with me.”

His client’s free hand wrapped itself around the white robe. “You will watch me? You like doing that?”

“Very much. Like candle and mirror, we increase each other’s brightness. I like to watch you look at me. I like what looking at me does to you.

“Hmph,” said the young man; “Carlin is not so bold.”

“He is a different man. You must not think, because we have many skills, that we do not have feelings, here in the House of Delight.”

“I’m not sure I believe you, but what difference does it make?”

“None, sir; you are wise. When you enter this House, you leave the World behind. Outside, it is dangerous not to distinguish truth from lies. Here, and only here, the lies are always for your benefit—and certain truths cannot be hid.”

“My truths are hid,” the young man said.

“Only some of them. Or will you lie and say I do not please you?”

“You please me very much. You’re beautiful. Different, but beautiful.”

“They all say that when they’re excited. See if you think so afterward.”

“ You’re excited. Am I beautiful?”

“I’ve no idea. Your hand is beautiful. Your voice is beautiful.”

“Close your eyes.”

Bliss closed them. He felt the stir of air, heard the hiss of cloth, and the sputter of wax when the candlewicks flickered.

“You may look.”

Both the young man’s hands were folded on his lap, encased again in gloves. He was breathing hard, and his voice was mischievous, pitched high with excitement. “I think you will go first after all.”

“As you wish.”

“Show me.”

The blond man put his finger in his mouth, twirled it there and removed it, shining with spit. He ran it down his chest to his navel and through the thicket of hair that was, indeed, dark. It traveled a straight line to the tip of his shaft, and circled the hole where a drop of moisture already shone.

The client moaned deep in his throat.

Then Bliss’s hand traveled gently over his own body, touching the places an eager lover touches, sometimes gentle and sometimes rough, using the backs of his nails and the tips of his fingers. His thighs, corded with muscle, began to tremble.

“ Now! ” hissed the client.

“Not yet,” Bliss answered faintly. He raised his arms over his head, curving like the arc of the moon, his whole body and its desire exposed.

The young man growled, “If I say now, then it is now!”

But Bliss stood poised upon his toes. “The robe,” he whispered.

“I have it.”

Bliss held out his arms, like a woman just stepped out of the bath. And the young man stumbled off the bed, unfurling the gossamer robe.

He let it fall on the trembling man’s shoulders, and took a step closer. Bliss’s heat seemed to scorch the only part of him not covered, his face.

“Ease me,” said Bliss, not moving.

“I cannot.”

“Keep all your clothes, even your gloves, sir, if you will, but I beg you—”

“How?”

“Ah. I will show you.”

The young man stayed behind him. “Lie down, first. On the cushions.”

Bliss did as he was bid, hands at his side. His tense body seemed to lie only on the surface of the pillowed floor, straining upward. The young man stood above him, fold upon fold of cloth falling across his body like a sculpture. But his gloved hands were twisting above the naked figure.

“Feast on me,” Bliss said; and the young man knelt clumsily. The brim of his hat brushed Bliss’s chest. When the tip of his tongue touched the tip of the other man’s member, Bliss breathed deeply and did not thrust.

“How soft your skin is!” the soft lips murmured against him. By which the naked man knew that he had indeed been right all along. He felt the delicate nibblings and trembled as he fought the urge to pull the mouth down over his throbbing cock. The strokes grew more deliberate, longer and more avid, now here, now there, sweet and incomplete. His fingers clenched despite himself. Finally, “I wonder,” he said, “if you would find it distasteful to close your mouth around me—no teeth, you understand—and feast in earnest?”

There was no answer but the thing that he desired, wrapping him in a sensation even he could not be separate from. It was as though the layers of clothing above him had turned into a ravening succubus, pulling the pleasure out of him like hunger itself finally fed. And yet he retained enough sense to lift his hands to his lover’s head, pressing and stroking the back of his neck, burying his fingers in his lover’s hair and one by one pulling the long pins that held it in place—so that as his body arced helplessly up in chaotic ecstasy, the long bright hair came cascading down around them both.

“Oh!” his client cried. “Oh, no!”

Hair clung to his damp face, and tangled in the buttons of his coat.

“Never mind,” said Bliss. “It’s nothing.”

The client wiped his mouth with the back of his glove. But he did not pull back when Bliss kissed the glove, and licked some of the moisture off of it. “Am I still beautiful?” Bliss asked.

“Oh, yes. Very.”

“Come, then.” The naked blond rose lazily to his feet, drawing the other with him, floating across to the red velvet bed.