up to the soft whisper of fabric as his hips edged along mine and to the feel of his breath along my cheek.
As the dance ended, he stepped away with a gentle smile. The quiet press of his hand to my shoulder was so formal that I again thought of kings and royalty. Then he reached and curled a hand to the back of my neck, the blue of his gaze hardening as his eyes settled on mine. His hold was so strong and sudden that I yanked my head forward, pulling it from his grip. Too late, I realized what I’d done.
He dropped his head, mouth edging to the curl of my ear as he laughed quietly along my skin. “What’s my name, sweet Elly?”
“Prick,” I sputtered, so in want and confused that I was sure the dance floor was swaying beneath me.
He winked at me before he pulled away and left me standing in the middle of the floor by myself, only his words remaining. “That’s two.”
Spun to Gold
I spent two weeks arguing with myself. Wearing my seat belt extra tight in the car to remind myself why I didn’t want it. Didn’t want him. But all I could see were his blue eyes reflected in the sky of my windshield.
I called him. Some faltering tone in my voice about dinner, or drinks. I looked at my wrists while I held the phone, their fine bones, the thin length of them. I bent my head forward and touched a few fingers to the nape of my neck.
“Tell me where you live,” he said, and I did.
I slipped into jeans. Then a sundress. Then a T-shirt and a soft yellow skirt that swirled around my thighs. I paced, touching things, asking myself what I wanted. Unable to say the answer aloud.
When he got there, I opened the door, unsure whether I’d find predator or king. Or perhaps just the man I’d known for so long, before that night at the bar.
He was neither. And all three. Leaning against my door frame in jeans and a shirt that fit his wide shoulders. Arms crossed, those long fingers hidden from view, he slid in through the door finally, gesturing to the couch without a word.
I sat, fiddling with my skirt. Wishing I was anywhere else.
“Hold still,” he said, reaching for my head.
The pain was small and short, the backward prick of a needle, and then he was holding one of my long hairs in his fingers. “Golden thread,” he said, “to bind you with.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. The sound eased the nervousness in my stomach and made me feel sick and stupid at the same time. “That? A hair?”
Without saying anything, he pushed the coffee table out of the way, then pressed both hands to my shoulders, easing me back. Scooting my hips forward as though I was a mannequin. With just his fingertips, he pushed my shirt up, then laid the hair across my stomach, the thinnest of gold threads. A breath would blow it away.
Down on his knees, he looked up at me, sending me swimming in blue. “Last chance, Elly,” he said, and his teeth were big when he smiled. “You decide.”
He didn’t wait, just curled his fingers beneath my skirt and hooked them into my panties, began to ease them down my thighs with tiny pulls. Bit by bit, until he caught them and pulled them over my knees. His tongue curled along the inside of my thighs, meaningless circles that echoed the turns of my stomach, the spinning ache that made me want to push my hips up from the couch.
With the very tips of his fingers, he pushed the fabric of the skirt up along my thighs, watching me with every inch of skin he exposed. Until I was naked and he was dipping his head between my thighs, glossing his tongue along the heated space between. And still I let him do all these things. I wanted him to do all these things. Only a thread, a hair, nearly invisible, holding me still.
“Wait…” I said. But he didn’t. He dragged his tongue like a cat along me until I was panting, the hair across my stomach rising and falling with each breath. So much as a movement would send it curling and spinning, off into nowhere.
His eyes stayed on the hair even as he slipped a finger inside me, then two, curling them upward, pulling me forward with that small gesture that made me cry out and reach forward to thread my fingers lightly into his hair. I breathed and breathed, careful not to aim my exhales at the hair that lay across my stomach. His thumb touched my clit, and I rose and jerked, the hair slipping just a bit. Settling into a slow, rhythmic circle, his thumb made me want to call his name, to beg him not to stop. I bit the sound back, my teeth hard over my lips.
He laughed, the sound vibrating along my skin. He lapped me between words, until each draw of his tongue sounded like language and each sound felt his tongue. “Don’t…move…”
I didn’t. I couldn’t. Trapped and yet not. My outside still enough that the inside was all I could feel, the pleasure that wove itself through me with its golden promise of release.
“Please…” I begged. I wasn’t ashamed. I wasn’t caught. I arched my body—not the outside, not my skin and bones, but the desire that rose in me, uncoiled itself into a long thread of pleasure. Asking for more, keeping my stomach perfectly still beneath the length of golden hair, while the rest of me spun and spun and spun.
“My name, Elly,” he said.
“Oh…” I clenched my teeth, trying to keep my movements still. “Please…”
He began to pull his thumb away from me, slowing his circles. Sliding his fingers from me. His retreat left me already empty. I wanted to shove myself over him, then sink his fingers inside me with a fast, hard pierce. But I couldn’t move. Couldn’t.
“Name,” he said softly, flicking his thumbnail along the hardened point of me until my breath caught in my throat.
“M-master,” I called out, my rasped voice rising in the air between us.
He grinned that dangerous grin of his, making me want to take it back, but it was too late. He was tightening his thumb back to my skin, cocking his fingers inside, his tongue curling over and over my skin until I was sure I was melting beneath the soft spin of his touch, turning liquid, turning gold.
The Three Billys
Sommer Marsden
“Philomena Fitzpatrick Troll,” she said. She said it louder than necessary because they stood there with their buckets, tarps and ladders looking like a ragtag bunch if there ever was one. And they had dirt on their boots. Dirt that crumbled into little brown piles on her perfect black-and-white tiles. What had Harry been thinking? They were a wreck. All three of them. And what kind of name was Three Billys Building anyway?
“Nice to meet you, but we just need to get access to the second floor and—”
“I understand,” Philomena interrupted. Rude but necessary. The big one did the talking. He had the beginnings of a goatee, which almost made her laugh because she was thinking of the fairy tale. Instead, she smoothed her brown dress and squared her shoulders. “In the future, please use the service entrance so as not to…” She let the sentence trail off as she raked a disapproving gaze over her now-marred floor.
“Sorry about that. First day and all. We weren’t sure, Philomena.”
“Ms. Troll.”
“How
