Page 50 of The Shape of Monsters
Lyric’s hand does not shake as he plucks one from her palm, though his stomach revolts at the idea of swallowing it. He opens his mouth to breathe through it, sucks in cold, clear air, exhales a tight line, tries again. After the third attempt to calm down, he looks back at Iriset.
“Don’t panic,” she says, eyes squished in concern. “Lyric, do you not—do you not want to… take it?” she ends in a whisper, face falling into something lost and confused.
Maybe that’s why he says, “No, I don’t,” but then stuffs the little pill into his mouth and swallows hard. He covers his lips with his hand, pressing in, swallows again.
Iriset’s jaw falls open and she stares in shock. So Lyric pushes her hand up to her mouth until she eats her pill, too.
They stare at each other. Nothing happens. Lyric holds his gaze onIriset but pays attention inside himself, waiting to feel it, feel something. Unraveling, maybe the fraying edges of his love, or resonance. A gong to ring in his chest, to vibrate through his bone marrow. To be severed and alone again, the way he was never supposed to be after making those promises. Through, with, around, toward.
“It might take…” Iriset begins, but she looks away, out at the garden with its changing statues and milling people. “What next, then?” she murmurs.
Lyric puts his hands under her jaw and kisses her.
He kisses her slow and deep. She tastes like she always tastes when they’ve spent a day apart: not quite right, not quite like his own tongue, but she’s warm and soft, and Lyric closes his eyes more tightly because it’s the same—she’sthe same, her teeth and tongue, her palate and the way she tilts her head and grabs his wrists for leverage to climb directly into his lap.
It is such a relief to kiss her and let himself be kissed. His fingers drag back into her hair, knotted and thick. He digs into her scalp and Iriset groans into his mouth. She clutches his ears and then his hair. Lyric’s scalp tingles, and the heat of desire slides down his spine and around the curve of his ass, flow and rising force twined together to cup his balls and grip his thighs, and the heat of Iriset in his lap makes him shake as he kisses. She presses into him, wiggling to situate her hips where they fit best against him, grinding after his cock, which she always liked so well. Lyric puts his hands to her knees and starts bunching up the skirts of her robes, shifting to pull the material out of the way. She helps with his long dress but it’s trapped under her, so she tugs at the top where it wraps his shoulders and torso. With little gasps Iriset kisses down his neck and pulls the robe off one shoulder, binding his arm.
“Iriset,” he whispers, and she makes a face like she’s in pain. Once his arm is free he loosens his dress and gets it off down to his waist.Iriset spreads her hands on his chest, skimming her palms over his nipples as she finds the tight muscles of his stomach and digs under the belt with cold fingers.
Lyric finds ties to her robes and pulls them open over her bare chest and soft belly. He is burning up, his entire body vibrating in perfect clarity for the first time sincethat nightwhen everything was ruined, and he needs her to be inside of him where he can keep her forever.
She pushes him down and Lyric allows it, though the shelf is cold on his back. The defense necklace falls against his throat, and while he’s removing it Iriset gets between his legs. Suddenly her mouth is on his cock, tongue gliding heavy and wet up the underside. He arches in surprise, the warmth so good, and his body pops with ecstatic eagerness. But Iriset curls one hand around his cock and with the other lightly scratches his inner thigh, making him gasp, only to soften her touch on the delicate skin under his balls. She kisses the naked head with all the intention of someone about to take their time doing whatever they wish.
“No,” Lyric says with more might than he intended, and Iriset plants another, wetter kiss to his cock. He reaches down and grabs her hair, dragging her up. By the time her whimper of surprise is finished, he’s kissing her again, holding her face against his until she gets the idea and kisses back with all that same focus of intention. He sucks on her tongue, trying to hold it inside as she climbs up to straddle him again, reaching back behind herself, and Lyric helps with the hand that isn’t tangled in her hair. He finds her hole unerringly, dips his middle finger in, and she moans into his mouth, then wiggles away. As Lyric squeezes her ass, she gets his cock where she wants it and her body swallows the tip easily. She leans up to seat herself on him with a long sigh, and her head falls back.
It’s dark up here, but enough firelight and fireworks and sparklingbanners coat the night in chaotic flashes that he can see her open mouth, her eyes, the knots of her hair falling all around, and her breasts, her heaving belly.
Lyric touches her jaw, nudges up his hips where he’s so encased, and it’s weird to think about the way his cock just disappears inside her, her inner walls squeezing hot and his hand on her ass. He slides fingers farther, feels the slick edge of her hole, and that’s when she moves: He feels his cock like it’s swelling in strange shapes to fit the spaces inside her, but against the side of his finger it’s the same as it always is when it’s hard and wet with her. Iriset laughs breathily.
Her hands prop her up on his chest, and Lyric lets go of everything to touch them, choosing one to tug up to his mouth until he can suck three of her fingers in. “Oh,” she murmurs passionately, riding him slow and steady, her fingers pressed to his tongue. That’s better, he thinks, body alight but in a falling way, like everything in the world is gathering in one place, pooling slowly around him, around this circuit of flowing, falling, rising, ecstasy.
His orgasm builds and builds without stopping, and Lyric reaches down, finding her thigh with its strength and tension, then the wet come she’s spreading low on his belly. He touches her, offering fingers for her to press against, but Iriset shakes her head. “Hold on,” she says, and smiles at him, the brightest smile he’s ever seen on Iriset’s face.
Then he feels it, ecstatic force ripping from his extremities and sparkling in the air itself, swarming down his arms, legs, chest, to their center, to her clitoris, Lyric is sure. And rising, his dominant force, tugs at him from his spine, squeezing his balls and zipping up his cock, and his mouth is open in shock around her fingers as the forces move inside them. Iriset curls her fingers against his tongue, and he remembers himself, sucks and licks, giving over to the feeling of her control. It’s dangerous and sharp and it feels so, so good, like every particle of his body is focused on coming.
Lyric almost doesn’t realize it’s happening until he’s bending up like a great hand is folding him in half, and he nearly chokes on Iriset’s fingers as he comes. She throws her arms around him, squeezes with her thighs and hole, and shudders in his lap.
The day they arrived here, when he carried her into the Moon-Eater’s garden and the numen and the Moon-Eater embraced, he thought he saw their cheeks smeared into each other, merging and parting, merging and parting, and now he knows maybe it was true, because the numena aren’t human. He doesn’t even know if Iriset is.
This was apostasy, what Iriset did between them now. Pulling on their inner forces with nothing but her will. Changing them, making them come together.
He’s uncertain whether it matters that he knows or cares. In blissful apathy Lyric drifts, holding Iriset against him on the shelf balcony, stars and fireworks popping overhead, and the bonfires eager to feast.
The answer to every question
When Iriset shivers, Lyric holds her closer, rubs her arms. She’s fully on top of him, like he’s a warm bed, and he’s thinking again that it’s dark up here, and probably nobody can see them. What would there be to see, anyway? A silent god and her wife fucking on—
Lyric’s entire being falls still.
“Lyric?” Iriset murmurs against his clavicle.
“It’s gone,” he says just as softly. To his ears, there’s a hollow devastation behind his voice.
Her frown tickles his skin, and Iriset kisses little pecks down toward his nipple.
“The knot.”
She stops. Stares at his sternum, eyes unfocused. “I didn’t even feel it happen,” she whispers.
