Page 52

Rai nodded, and then shivered when her hands rested like a butterfly upon his arm, then stretched the arm out for her to peer at.

It wasn’t a caress—her fingers were tentative but firm, tracing veins and tendons as if she were drawing a map.

She studied his fingernails, the creases of his palm, the curve of his muscles, the scattered dark speckles that ran up his arms. He took a deep breath of anticipation when her eyes went to his wings, but she didn’t touch them, just went up on her knees a bit and observed how they spread out in the studio.

It was barely wide enough for them. The rain had returned, he realized. It fell steadily outside the windows.

“Your wings don’t seem big enough to lift you,” she said after a bit. “Especially not when you’re carrying me, too.”

He turned his head to regard them. “But they do. I can carry even greater weight. I have borne three children upon my back at a time.”

“Guess if you can have wings of lightning and absorb water like a sponge, the laws of physics are basically meaningless.”

“I follow no laws,” he said. “And I am very strong.”

Her eyes widened. “Wait. So when you offered to carry my car to the shop… ”

He nodded modestly. “I have lifted a car before.” She did not need to know that he had lifted it in order to fling it the rest of the way off a Peruvian cliff after it had been washed to the head of a tall waterfall.

“Holy shit.” She plopped back onto the cushions. “Okay. I think it’s time to start at the beginning. The day you trapped me in the rain. I know what it was like for me. I want to know…what it was to you.”

Rai took her hand in his, as he had so many times before.

“And you will tell me your part?” He let his gaze travel to her face.

Her cheeks had gone the shade of pink that delighted him so, and he curved his free hand around one, admiring the way his colors looked with hers, like an exotic orchid.

“I must confess, I did not know your mind, your thoughts.”

She swallowed, eyes wide. “Yeah. I mean, that’s fair. We…both had secrets.” The pink spread. “Though I guess it’s not a secret that I thought you were sexy.”

Rai dared to kiss her forehead. “Sexy like France?”

“Sexier than France.” She exhaled harshly. “Okay. If we don’t start talking we’re just going to end up in bed and…and I am trying to make myself be smart and not do that yet.”

Rai let his hand fall from her cheek. “Very well. From the beginning.”

It was a long story. He had, of course, told it before—had regaled Ofelia with his overflowing emotions—but it was fuller with Poppy beside him, interjecting her own experience and asking questions about how his magic worked, his glamours and his hoard.

As they spoke, she settled more comfortably into the cushions and he found himself propped on his elbow above her, his wings relaxing behind him into a gentle rhythm, as if he were swimming in a peaceful lake.

Now that their minds were flowing together, he felt tranquil, content.

Until he reached their first visit to the coffee shop with the ants, his first sight of Poppy’s artwork, and his memory of the blue-haired woman—Heather, he recalled—brought her voice bubbling up in his head.

Poppy’s pretty stubborn and independent… You’re probably aware she wouldn’t take this well.

He didn’t realize he had fallen silent until Poppy nudged him. “Hey. You were saying about the cinnamon? ”

Rai gazed at her, her perfect pink face, her mossy brown eyes, her earnest expression. “It was delicious,” he said, thoughts bubbling faster than he could keep up with. “I… I much admired your drawing.”

“The one that sold?” She snuggled up to him with a satisfied smile. “That was a good day.”

“It was.” The words he should say, the secret he should tell, stuck in his throat. It was I who purchased your drawing. I needed it like rain. I could bear for no other to own it. And the others. I wish to own them all.

She turned her gaze back to him. “You don’t know what it’s like being an artist nowadays.

There’s so many people trying to make it, and nobody has money to spare, and then there’s generative AI, making it harder to get noticed and…

Well, it felt so good to have someone, a stranger who didn’t even know me, pick my art off the wall out of all the others. ”

“A stranger.” Rai felt himself nodding, though his heart was a stone.

“Dad always told me how proud he was of me, and Mom, too. And…” She cast him a shy look.

“You, um, like me a lot. So… I mean, I’m happy you commissioned me.

Really happy. I’m not… It’s just different.

Validating. ” She cuddled up to him again.

“I’m sorry. I know you liked it. If it hadn’t sold, I probably would have given it to you. Heather wouldn’t have minded.”

He held her closer. “You are…very kind.”

She traced an aimless pattern on his arm—no, not aimless. She was tracing from freckle to freckle, as if making a map. “I need to bring her more art. I was too busy this whole week, first with transcripts and then with…you…to do anything else.”

“You must indeed,” he agreed hastily. “I do not mind if the painting must wait.”

“Are you sure?” She raised her head.

“Yes, it will…” He put on an encouraging smile. “I have said that I must rest in water at times. Especially when the sky is clear. Have I not?”

Poppy regarded him warily. “Yes? But I have a tub.”

He shoved himself up, furiously aware that his wings were quivering behind him, reflecting his inner turmoil.

He consciously quieted them, willing them to the languid stillness of the moments before, when his love had innocently buoyed him.

Before his secrets had weighed him down.

“I cannot be a burden upon you, my lo— Poppy. I have paid for my no-tell rooms for many weeks. There is water there that I may rest in. I wish to be…gallant. Not goofus. ”

She dimpled at him. “Do you even know what goofus means?”

“No,” he said fiercely. “But I know that you weep over money, over bills. If I use your water, I increase your bill. And I would not have you weep.”

Her eyes grew limpid. “Then stop being so…you.” She sat up abruptly and kissed him on the cheek. “Why are you so perfect? In an almost-purple way.”

I am not, he thought dizzily. I am a liar who cannot help but have secrets that would hurt you, break you. I am a storm of destruction. Yet I cannot bear to destroy you. “I will go to my no-tell rooms and allow you to draw things that are not me.”

Her voice lowered, velvety and dark. “But what if I want you to stay?”

He wanted to stay. He wanted to stay forever. He wanted the climate of the desert to magically change, become a rainforest, so that he could stay forever. “When I need to hydrate, I will go,” he said.

“Do you need to hydrate now?” She stroked her hands up his arms, across his shoulders, her fingers arching deliciously back to where his wings sprouted. He shuddered and turned his head away, overwhelmed.

The rain still pattered against the windows, and a bolt of lightning cracked nearby. He felt full and alive and desperate for her embrace. His skin itched for her touch. “Not now.” He bent his gaze back upon Poppy, the lightning sizzling in his bones. “Not yet.”

She smiled and relaxed, her body oozing beneath him. “Stay, then.” She bit her lip and ran her hands across his chest; he shuddered at the sensation. “We can talk more tomorrow.”

He should not make love to her. He should bow at her feet, beg her forgiveness for the secrets he still kept—four of them, framed drawings arranged around the tub of his motel room like a shrine. He should become something other than a liar.

But she sank her hands into his hair, dragged him to her mouth for an intoxicating kiss, and he could not do what he should.

It will be all right, he told himself as he surrendered, arched against her soft, welcoming body. She will never know. Heather will not tell. And if she does learn the truth…she will understand.

He knew he was lying to himself. He knew that if she knew, she would weep, far more than she would over a bill. More even than she would when the rains ended and he left, for she knew their time was short and had chosen to be his lover despite it.

But he did not care. Not when she was opening to him like an orchid. Exotic and sensual and begging for rain .

And then her hands slipped around to stroke at the sensitive roots of his wings and he lost all thoughts of lies and tears and time, all of him focused on her wicked touch.

He gasped, unable to hide his pleasure, and her eyes narrowed in wicked glee.

“Does that feel good?” she asked, her voice as inescapable as the tides.

He nodded, chest heaving. “I have said. It is intimate.”

She ran her fingers in a devastating line along the membranes of his wings. “Intimate?”

Ah, there was the word. “Erotic,” he hissed out.

She pulsed her hips against his erection. “Oh, my,” she whispered, drawing out the vowels.

“Do not stop,” he begged.

“Never,” she whispered back, but then she sat up. “Let me?”

He knew what she was asking, desired it as if caught in a flood. “Yes,” he said in a voice that felt like distant thunder, deep and dark and inevitable. “I am yours.”

She eased out from beneath him, and for a moment he was bereft, lost, at sea, but then she ducked under his wings, pressed him gently into the cushions, and then her hands were on his wings and he could think no more.

He could not hold back his cry when she set her palms to the center of his back and stroked outward, out past the stolid mechanisms of muscle and bone to the shivering mazes and membranes.

He could feel his lightning curling helplessly around her fingers and had the barest moment to be grateful that the bolts were not so fierce as to hurt her against his will.

As in a dream, he felt her straddling the backs of his thighs, and then gods, her lips were on his back, kisses trailing down his spine and out, nibbles that made him writhe with ecstasy beneath her.

Never, never had he felt such bliss, never had he bared his soul and his body to anyone with such abandon, never had he felt such inescapable adoration as this moment, her lips and her hands building his passion like a storm, like a hurricane, like a tempest that would ravage the globe.

She trailed kisses and caresses over every inch of his shivering wings.

He could feel nothing but the heat of her moving against his thighs, her wicked, wicked lips, her devious fingertips as they traversed them.

He was mindless with desire, overcome by everything that was Poppy, and when she finally had mercy on him, ducked under his wings to face him, he could do naught but dedicate himself to her pleasure, only one thought in his mind.

I love you .

He sang it into her honeyed cunt, shoving her thighs over his shoulders, feeling her heels spasm against his wings as he feasted on her ecstasy, on her acceptance, on her unspoken forgiveness.

He whispered it into her throat as he finally, finally drove his cock into her wetness, clutching at her desperately as they strove together.

He shouted it without words when he reached completion, emptying his loins and his heart and his soul into her.

He let his lips form the words in her hair, silently, as they shivered in the aftermath of their lovemaking, damp and replete and quaking like the volcanoes of the Andes.

And he whimpered it in his mind, like an apology, when his senses returned to him and he once again had to face his own mendacity.

She would never forgive him his lies, his theft of her confidence, the worst of his secrets. Never.

And so she must never know.