The Care and Feeding of Griffins (8 page)

Her fingers touched the silken down of her sex and she stroked slowly, letting the faint sensation become a focus for her restless mind.  As her body attuned, her senses heightened.  Soon, the faintest brush of her fingertips brought an excruciating shiver of anticipation.  She moved lower, parting her velvety folds and stroking into heat.  She shivered, biting her lip and concentrating on breathing slow and even, on not disturbing Aisling.

The sound of rain pattering on the grass went on and on in an never-ending undulation.  Beyond it, she could hear the faint lowing of distant cattle calling to one another in the dark.  Aisling’s breath puffed warm and steady against her throat.  All was peaceful.

Taryn closed her eyes, surrounding herself with sensation outside of substance.  With just the bliss of building pleasure and the easy movements of her hand, she became fascinated, as she always was, by the swift slickening of her sex.  How completely her oils covered her fingers, how wonderfully new it made her feel as she slipped one inside herself.  She tried to imagine, as she gently moved, how it would feel to have to man with her.  His hands on her body.  His weight covering her.  To have a man inside her in that unimaginable way
…the thought had a power over her that quickened her pulse and set her blood to burning.  Her breath coarsened, escaped just once as a whimper, and then was locked up tight again.  Aisling stirred, peeping; she laid a hand on him soothingly while her other continued to coax new pleasures from her core.

A man.  A lover.  Her fingers were no real substitute, she knew.  She
’d felt desire before, felt it hard as rock pressed against her thigh as she danced with boyfriends, felt it harder still beneath her hand as she’d huddled, kissing, on one couch or another.  No one who’d ever tried to ease her into bed would ever believe she could feel this excitement, this longing, as she lost herself to imaginings.  She bit her lip, pressing a second finger to the slippery core of her, squirming a little at the exquisite strain such touches provoked.  Her thumb rubbed twice at the sensitive nub crowning her sex and then she was lost in that swirling blush of pure pleasure.

Taryn lay still, letting all there was wash over her in an unhurried tide.  As it ebbed, she rubbed again, expertly keeping herself in the currents of sensual sensation.  There was a second bursting for her
—paler than the first, perhaps, but sweetly lingering—and then the righteous weariness that always followed.  She sighed, still stroking longingly at the damp proof of her climax.  Thoughts of John intruded for the first time since leaving—

(Earth)

—Oregon.  He’d called her frigid.  She’d heard that before, of course, but it still hurt a little.  She didn’t think she was frigid.  She loved the way she felt right now, so warm, so…melted.  She wanted to know how it felt for real.  She wanted that man’s weight, the feel of male substance entering and joining with her.  She wanted it even now, as she swam in a fog of fulfillment, she wanted to know how it felt to give even more.

But she was waiting.

For who, she didn’t know.  For someone she loved, that was the answer that felt honest.  And it would be a good long while before she could even look for that someone now that she was in Arcadia raising griffins.  What a horribly depressing thought.

Taryn rolled onto her side again, wrapping both arms around Aisling and feeling her eyes slide shut, cemented with the glowy sleep that she had known would follow her secret touches. 

There must be things worth waiting for.  And surely love was among the best of them.

12.  Virgin Offering

S
he heard the voices whispering from the shadows, but it was not until the first touches came that she was able to make out words.  She thought there were two of them, but it was hard to tell.  They were talking at the same time, finishing one another’s thoughts in the way of twins or long-married spouses.  They spoke quickly, urgently, but the only emotion that came through their leaf-dry whisper was one of desperate happiness.  Just two old-marrieds, overjoyed to see her, come to whisper at her in the night as they petted her limp arms and legs.

“
Long it has been, yes, and well you honor us—”

“
You honor us, yes, as in ancient times, when they would come—”

“
Come, yes, and cum for us.”

They touched her, their hands light as feathers
and cold as ice stroking up and down her limbs.  She couldn’t tell if they were men or women—the whispers were androgynous, the touches too light to take on gender—but she was certain she was naked where they were touching her and she wasn’t sure how that had happened.  She tried to open her eyes, but didn’t know if she’d succeeded or not.  Everything was perfectly black, but that was no guarantee of anything.  This was a dream, after all.  There was no sleeping bag, no baby griffin, nothing but whispers and phantom hands, and that made this a dream.  For such things, it really didn’t matter if she could see or not.

One of the whisperers, still soothing her in its urgent, eager way, moved its hands from her shoulders to her breasts, and dream or not, that was a little too familiar for Taryn.  She pushed out, but touched nothing but cold air.  She tried to roll away, and the hands cupping her breasts suddenly solidified, pushing her firmly flat even as she was whispered at to be calm, be still.

“Please,” Taryn began, and the voices instantly seized on the word.

“
Please!  Please, be still!”

Something swirled around her, and never mind that her back was pressed solidly to the ground, she felt her entire upper body constricted as if in a huge, unseen and frozen hand. 
“Be still,” that something whispered, directly in her ear.  “You have come and will be repaid for your offering, but you will be still.”

Taryn struggled, and that fist clenched even harder, too tightly for breath
.

“
Be still,” the voice whispered again.  “Or die.  Yes.  That much we remember also.”

And just like that, the pressure enclosing her was gone.  Taryn sucked in air in a seemingly endless gasp as suffocation-stars exploded behind her eyes.  She could feel the lips of the whisperer nibbling a leisurely trail down her throat, but was too weak to try and wave it away.  Her teeth chattered, whether from the cold or the shock, she couldn
’t tell, and it seemed to take a long time before she could bring herself to shape words. 

“
What…”  She coughed on frozen air and tried again.  “What are you?”

“
We are who was and who remain.”

“
Still we remain.  We wait—”

“
As you wait.”

“
For someone to love.”

“
Let us—”

“
Let us love—”  A sigh tickled at her breast and cool lips closed around her.  The voice whispered on, separate from the gentle ministrations of the phantom mouth at her nipple.  “Ah, so young.  So warm!”

Icy fingers slipped along her thighs.  Cold pressed intimately against her in a kiss and one word was spoken suddenly in countless greedy voices: 
“
Virgin
.”

Taryn pulled her legs together fast.  She met no resistance, only that freezing spot of air, but the mouth at her sex continued its easy exploration of her most secret self.  She kicked, and hands now extremely solid caught her thighs and pressed them down and open.  She tried to push at the thing that suckled her and her hands passed through another chill mist and touched only her own breast.  The nipple that had known the kiss of the phantom whisperer was stiff and cold as a chip of ice.

Whoever lay with her sighed, both of them at once, as her fingers rubbed at her naked breast, trying to warm it.  “Pleasure, yes!”

“
Pleasure yourself and let us—”

“
Remember—”

“
How it was—”

“
How it felt.”

She felt the slide of flesh move up through her thighs, hands slipping around to cup her bottom as her private self was gently parted with an icy tongue.  Taryn sucked in breath to cry out and lips pressed down on her in a kiss.  She could feel breasts now, rubbing lightly at her own as her mouth was invaded.  She couldn
’t push them away, couldn’t kick.  She bit helplessly, but the tongue that flicked so hesitantly at hers remained.

“
Yes,” one of them sighed.

“
No!” she cried.  She tried again to bring her legs together, but the phantom who lay between them simply faded to freezing mist and then opened her again, wider this time.  The kiss that renewed itself was stronger, more demanding.  The cold that slicked inside her with such tender licks shocked even the notion of mere dreaming from Taryn’s mind.  Panic began to sting at her.  “Please, no!  I’m waiting!”

“
We are all waiting,” came the sorrowing reply.

“
Waiting so long—”

“
For you.”

“
Lie with us, virgin, and be repaid.”

The mouth at her sex withdrew and the brush of intangible flesh slipped up between her thighs.  Taryn tried to twist away, but there was nothing to twist against.
  The female body pressing at her, kissing her, suddenly clutched at her with a wail.  Something was pulling at it, gently but insistently removing it from her.  The whispers turned to wordless wind as the phantoms fought each other in their quiet, pleading way.

Sobbing then, soft as a spring rain, and the ghostly pressure of small breasts turned to a veil of vapor and blew away.  The chill of insubstantial flesh covered her at once, without weight, without texture, but owning her all the same.  Hands cupped her breasts.  Lips pressed at her own.  Her legs were being pried open
—gently, so gently—and coldness in an icy bar slipped along her thigh.

“
No,” Taryn said, shoving out into glacial air.

“
Yes.  Oh yes.”  He, and it was a he now, that much was undeniably evident, kissed her face with a passion that bordered on the purely frantic and finished at her mouth, forcing his arctic breath inside her in spite of her struggles.  “You came, virgin, you came to us.  You honored us.  Now lie with us, as it was in ancient times, lie with us and let us remember before your will is exacted.  That is the price.  That is the agreement of these long ages.  The power you seek is mine to give, but you must let me have one moment to love.”

Taryn didn
’t think.  She knew by some dream-instinct that waking up wasn’t within her power and she had only seconds to act.  She reached down between them, as slow and easy with her touch as the phantom trying to love her, and closed her hand around the coldness poised to enter her.  When she’d tried to push, there had been no substance, but in gentleness, she found him.

He stopped at once, his breath withdrawing to hiss somewhere above her.  His hands and lips and every other part of him tensed once and faded to mist even as the part of him she held grew harder.  She ran her fingers lightly down the length of him
—cold and slick as ice—until she touched the ghostly non-mass of his hips.  She squeezed lightly and stroked back up, feeling the exquisite detail of his shape.  He was long and thick, and the shape of him was utterly alien—ridged and knobbed and gnarled—a shape her mind quailed at even as her hand tried over and over to sculpt him into something more natural.  As she stroked him, he seemed to take on greater substance, until she could feel the subtle veining along his malformed shaft, the swelling at the base of him, the crowning of his glans.

The other was weeping, her faint voice seeming to come from all around her, but she didn
’t intrude.  Taryn didn’t know the rules here, but she sensed there had been some sort of contest.  The unseen male atop her had won; the female could not touch her now.  And he, who could certainly take whatever he wanted in spite of her resistance, was content to have only this from her willing hand rather than take all from her struggling body.

The cold was unending.  She could neither warm his flesh nor numb her own, but she kept moving, letting her instincts guide her.  She
’d never held a man in her hand like this.  She’d touched, but there had always been some layer between them.  She supposed she was dreaming and this still didn’t count, but it seemed so real.  Like the threat to her virginity, the sense of consequence was close all around her.  As she stroked him, she could hear his breath shivering and hoarse above her, and she knew a true kernel of excitement sparking deep inside herself.  She was sharply aware of her ignorance, and she wanted, now that fear had faded, to please him. 

Sh
e sat up slowly, and he drifted back.  She could still see nothing, feel only the hardness of his shaft in her hand and the faintest impression of ground beneath her knees, but it was enough.  She reached out with her open hand and felt his flesh trying to form beneath her questing touch.  Trying.  Quickly fading.  His whole reality lay in her grip.  She could feel desperation crowding at her as he struggled to more fully manifest, and in her dreaming way, she knew a kind of pity for him.

“
Yesss!”  He began to thrust lightly into her grip and she matched the pace he set so that he groaned, a plaintive and wistful cry.  “Ah, I remember!  Oh, long it has been!  So long, but I did once love!”

She felt a tightening, a slight swelling, and then a gentle fall like snow on her belly and thighs.  The shaft in her hand dissipated at once, freeing her to brush at her skin, but whatever he had released was gone, melted or faded, but gone.

A sigh, soft and sorrowing, and then lips brushed at hers once more.  She tasted rain.  His whisper came to her again, soft and indistinct now as a memory of itself:  “What would you have of me?  I remember—”

“
We remember,” the other added sadly.

“
How this is done.  What would you have, virgin, what return?”

Would this dream never end? 
“Nothing,” she said, straining toward wakefulness.

Confusion drifted over her in a chill breeze. 
“Ask,” he insisted.  “The power is mine to give, but you must ask.”

“
I don’t want anything.”  She struggled again to wake up, but he held her pinned in the shadows, his anxiety crowding heavily around her.  She abandoned her efforts and helplessly said, “It was a gift.”

“
Gift?”  That confusion swelled up again and then popped like a bubble.  “Then I will gift,” he whispered, and released her at last.  “Let you waken and be well.  And I will remember.  I will always remember.”