A Beauteous Flower Ch. 16

As he read the spells, he heard a tap at the window. The man had not looked out the window in years. He had forgotten the world outside of the library, so he was surprised to hear that tap. So, he went curiously to the window to see what made that tap.

To his amazement there stood a tiny fairy, who shook cold. Her wings drooped and her eyes were sad as she gazed longingly through the glass at the man. She tapped a delicate finger on the window again and she spoke to him in a voice like a windchime.

"Please, sir," she begged. "Please let me in so I can get warm. It is cold in the world, and I am just a small fairy who has nowhere to go and no one to turn to. Please, sir, please!"

The man was amazed and fascinated by the golden fairy. In all his magical adventures he had never even heard of a fairy, and she was here at the window of the library instead of far away in the magical adventures he had with the spells in the books and scrolls. His hands trembled as he opened the sash, and he felt the cold of the outside world rush through the window. The fairy was weak and tired, and the man had to lift her through the window.

"I'm so cold!" uttered the fairy in misery as he shut the window to hold the cold of the outside world at bay. "Please, sir, please! Let me sit with you and be warm!"

The man was only too pleased to have the fairy with him. He helped her to a chair by the warmth of the crystal puzzle. The man knew from the magical scrolls and books in the library that fairies needed to be warm, but they could not warm themselves because their hearts were so wonderful and frail. They needed warmth from somewhere or they would fade and disappear. Yet the fairy still shivered and drooped and was sad.

"Please, sir, please," begged the fairy. "Share your warmth with me, because even though your puzzle is warm, I am still so cold and chilled that I fear I will fade and disappear."

So, the man hugged the fairy to him, and the fairy snuggled close to him and they shared the man's warmth. Gradually the man warmed the fairy with his body and the kaleidoscope glow of the crystal puzzle. After a long time, the fairy no longer shivered or looked sad. Instead, her wings spread wide, and her face brightened, and her skin began to glow in the rainbow of colors from the crystal puzzle.

"Thank you, sir, thank you!" the fairy chimed in her bell-toned singsong. "You shared your warmth with me and rescued me! You have made me so happy, so happy, sir! Your warmth has made me so happy! And I am so happy I must dance!"

And with a little flutter of her wings the fairy rose into the air and began to swoop and dive and dance with glee. Her gossamer wings caught the light of the crystal puzzle and splashed its light on the floor and walls of the library in spectacular swirls and shapes that filled the man with joy at the sight of it. He had never seen anything as pretty the fairy in all his adventures.

"You have to stay with me!" he cried to the fairy. "Stay with me and I will keep you warm here by the crystal puzzle, and we will go on many wonderous adventures with the magical books and scrolls!"

The fairy laughed and danced and swooped and dove with delighted abandon. She was so happy to be so warm could not contain herself. On and on she danced and whirled and the colors from the crystal puzzle, swirled and mixed by her wings, dazzled the man. They dazzled him so much that he did not see how near to the crystal puzzle the fairy was, and as the man's amazement and joy at the fairy's dance swelled in his heart, disaster struck.

As she happily danced and dove, the fairy swooped too close to the crystal puzzle and the tip of her wing brushed it ever so gently towards the side of the table. The puzzle skittered to the edge of the table and it hung on the edge, poised above the floor for an agonized moment, before it plunged to the floor and shattered into spectacularly colored dust.

"Oh no!" the man cried as the light of the crystal puzzle faded and the library disappeared from view.

The fairy ceased her wild dance and held her hands over her mouth. As the cold crept through the window into the darkness of the room, the man knelt in the colored dust of shattered crystal and wept.

"I'm sorry!" the fairy as trilled she laid a gentle hand on the man's shoulder. "I didn't mean to! I'm so sorry!"

And then she turned and went to the window and opened it.

"Wait!" the man cried to her. "Wait! You can't leave me now! Not alone in the dark and cold!"

The fairy shook her head.

"I must be warmed, or I will fade and disappear and the warmth is gone from here."

"But I can warm you with my body!" the man urged. "I will keep you warm so you will not fade!"

But again, the fairy sadly shook her head.

"With the puzzle gone, you will grow cold, and you will not be able to warm me. I must leave here and find warmth elsewhere or I will fade and disappear!"

And then she fluttered out of the window where she paused to wave goodbye and smile at him with her pearly fairy fangs, and then she was gone in a flash of lace wings.

And the man was alone again, in the cold dark, with nothing to warm him."

Carefully, Madison put the pages down and wiped away a little tear.

"It's," Madison sniffed. "I'm sorry, but don't like it... I mean... I don't like how it makes me feel."

"How does it make you feel?"

"Lonely. Sad."

Daniel nodded silently, as if he expected Madison to say something else. Daniel's quiet scrutiny made Madison feel studied, so she hugged her knees to her chest to be smaller. Then, seemingly to break the quiet spell, Daniel produced a non-sequitur out of thin air.

"Those socks are positively wretched," Daniel teased. "They look as though you pilfered them from the Men's Big and Tall section at a thrift shop,"

"They do not!" protested Madison, with a dab at her eyes, glad for the distraction from the sad pall of Daniel's story.

"They're monstrous!" countered Daniel with a smirk. "Appalling! Hideous!"

"They're cute!"

"They make your legs look stumpy and your feet look like flippers!"

Madison looked at her feet and started to object, but Daniel suddenly lunged, seized her by the ankles and bodily dragged her legs across his lap. Her sweatshirt rode up and exposed her stomach, and Madison yipped and babbled in surprise. Daniel stripped the sock off of her left foot and held it up towards her. His other hand raised goose bumps on Madison's legs with a gentle, but firm grip. She squirmed as her skin pulled taut and sensitive and her body spun up to alert status, as his touch reminded her that she was as horny as she could ever remember.

"Unsightly!" he proclaimed over Madison's sexy girl giggle.

"No, they're not!"

Daniel stripped the other sock from her right foot and contemptuously tossed it away and Madison giggled and was thankful that she had maintained her pedicure. Daniel pinned her feet under his arm and looked down at them.

"How can you put such ugly socks on such cute feet?" he demanded.

Then he gave a mischievous smirk and slowly moved his hand towards Madison's trapped feet. Ordinarily her little feet were terribly ticklish, but when paired with six weeks of cold-turkey horny, Madison was doubly vulnerable.

"No! No! No please!"

The tip of Daniel's thumb stroked the bottom of Madison's feet from heel to toe. Madison squeal-giggled in protest and put up a mock struggle to encourage him. Daniel clamped down on her ankles and held her feet as she flopped dramatically from side to side. Daniel's tickles became more vigorous, and Madison plopped flat on the sofa in an airless gale of giggles.

"Daniel, no! Please no! Nononononooooooooooooooooooo!"

His tickles intensified and Madison thrashed about, which further displaced her sweatshirt. Her hair swished and covered her face in an unruly mess that partially blinded her, and Madison gasped for air to scream.

"Daniel! Daniel! Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!"

For a few minutes Daniel tickled and teased Madison's feet intermittently. It left her breathless in a pile twisted clothes and tousled hair with wild little chills up and down her legs. Daniel's touch, so distant and longed for, now consumed her as she peeked up at him through her unruly mass of hair.

"Oh... oh... Daniel... Daniel..."

Daniel continued to admire her feet.

"Such cute feet! I could just...!"

He placed a soft kiss on the instep of her left foot and tickle tingles raced sexual electricity up Madison's left leg. While his long, languid kiss felt exquisitely sensual, the tease of tickles charged something more urgent in Madison's body.

"Danielllllllllllllrrrrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!"

Daniel followed up his gentle butterfly kiss with a little swirl of the tip of his tongue along her instep and up on top of her foot by her toes. Madison's body bucked in tortured pleasure. Her stomach fluttered and her heart raced.

"Stopstopsssssssssstoooooooooooooooooooop!"

As she bucked and screamed and struggled and swished, Madison felt her boobs pop free of her sweatshirt and her vagina began to sing with sensation. Semi naked and strung out from a sexless six weeks, the sensation of Daniel's hands and lips and tongue on her skin set Madison's body aflame with a desire that demanded release. When Daniel softly kissed the inside of her left ankle, tickles turned to chills and Madison's mind warped with lust.

"Danieldanieldaniel... Oh gawwwwwwwd, Daniiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeel!"

Madison's body ached with pent up tension and strained towards Daniel. In response he gently licked the inside of her right calf and she moaned and squirmed and spread her legs immodestly wide in invitation.

"Daniel!" she gasped. "Daaaaaaaaaaaniel!"

With his customary studious patience, Daniel shifted between Madison's legs and worked his way upwards with his lips and tongue. It took a maddening eternity for him to reach her knees, and even longer to reach her thighs. When he finally kissed her inner thighs just below her Lycra shorts, Madison arched her back against the sofa like a Halloween cat and her face twisted in lustful anguish. His touch no longer gave her chills. Instead, it burned on her skin like icy fire. Yet despite her moans of pleasure to urge him on, Daniel remained as careful and patient and left no spot on her inner thighs untouched. He drove her nearly mad with anticipation, but Daniel inexorably worked his way up her thighs closer to the target.

"Oh God... Oh Gooooooooooooooooooooooood....!"

Daniel's next gentle caress of a kiss landed right on the button between Madison's thighs and Madison's mind took flight.

"Daniel!" Madison begged desperately. "Plllllllllleeeeeeeease!"

Stretched tight by her strained posture, Madison's Lycra shorts provided absolutely no barrier and Daniel peeled them off with a quick jerk from his right hand. Madison's legs spread wide as a plea for mercy and Madison's mind could not keep up with what Daniel did next.

Without preamble, Daniel's tongue plunged into her and searched her with tender firmness. An over-excited Madison didn't stand a chance. With a few deft nibbles and insistent swirls, Madison's body careened over the edge of a body shattering orgasm. Six weeks of unquenched lust cracked like a whip up her spine. Her O-face wasn't cute, and it wasn't pretty. It was a one hundred percent unvarnished and nitro-glycerin orgasm, and, in a sweetly agonized flash, Madison's orgasm came so hard she saw stars through her eyelids.

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrg!"

Her whole body shook with release until finally the pent-up sexual energy ebbed. Addled by the force that rocked her, Madison panted for breath and searched for the scattered parts of her brain. As she spun down from her orgasm, Daniel blew puffs of his warm breath on her vagina and thighs that made her legs quiver with little jolts of aftershock pleasure.

"Oh, Jesus!"

Daniel released Madison's legs and stood up from the sofa. Free from his grasp, Madison brushed her hair off her face and looked up at Daniel.

"Good?" Daniel asked in monotone.

Madison nodded emphatically.

"So good! Thank you!"

Daniel nodded.

"Thought you might be in need of one."

Madison pushed herself up on her elbows and nodded gratefully as she tried to collect enough poise to look sexy. Daniel's body fairly trembled and bulged with desire not three feet from her. Immediately Madison's passions boiled up again and she yearned to reciprocate his touch, but then Daniel suddenly leaned closer and Madison got a deep look into his eyes. His face remained as blank as a new sheet of paper, but the depths of his dusky green eyes showed shiny streaks of emotion; deep, passionate, and raw emotions, long hidden and denied and intimate in a way she didn't think possible. In Daniel's eyes Madison saw a roiled storm of love and pain and fear and hope and the sight stunned her. In fact if she had not been paralyzed by the shock she received from the visceral panic and primal aggression in his gaze, Madison might have recoiled from him. Instead she only opened her mouth in an airless gasp as Daniel's aspect took on a steel-edged set and his voice rumbled like distant thunder.

"You don't get that from anyone else. Understand?"

Madison gulped back surprise.

"Daniel?"

"I do that to you." Daniel deadpanned with an emphatic downward stab of a finger. "No one else. Understand?"

"Daniel, what...?"

"Do you understand?" Daniel interrupted in a stern low tone of command.

"Yes," Madison answered smally as she tugged at her sweatshirt to cover her nakedness.

"Good night, Madison."

Without another word or look, Daniel turned and stalked out of the living room like tiger. Madison's flinched as the back door slammed shut and a few seconds later the cabin door banged like a gunshot. Her mind raced to process what had just happened. He hadn't allowed her time to touch him back, but Daniel had very definitely meant to do that to her tonight. If it wasn't an accident or momentary slip, what was it? Daniel, it seemed, had just made some kind of statement, but what did that mean? Was Daniel ready to have sex again, or was that what Daniel thought of as preventative maintenance? Was it a power play or a reward for her current efforts? Or had he intended to simply mark his territory?

Whatever it was, between the story and her orgasm, Madison was more lost than ever and a wave of exhausted confusion washed through her. A fog of physical relief and satisfaction settled in her mind and she couldn't organize her thoughts in any kind of a cogent way. As she tried to review it all, the situation seemed so fantastic and incongruent and it had moved in what seemed like a fast forward pace that it defied immediate understanding. It was all too enormous for an emotionally shaken and physically drawn out Madison to figure out in the moment and, unable to focus, she collapsed into a stunned and deep sleep on the sofa. In fact, such was the physical relief that for the first time in weeks she slept without nightmares.

*****

Nervous and conflicted, the next day Madison waited at the breakfast table. On the one hand, the sensual memory of the night before ignited a little hope for a thaw. Maybe last night meant that the polite glacier between them had thawed a bit.

On the other hand, Madison felt more guilty than ever. Once again, it seemed that Daniel had dutifully seen to her wants and needs like an attentive husband. Once again, she had received from Daniel and given him nothing in return, and it served as yet another stark reminder of her failures as Daniel's wife. While he satisfied her needs and she screamed out in epic orgasm, Daniel was still miles away, isolated and unable to shake what she had put him through. Again, Daniel had given her warmth and joy and satisfaction while he churned with unexpressed pain.

For that reason, Madison wasn't sure if she was happy or sad when Daniel arrived at breakfast and their lives settled back into the distant, polite, and ritual routine. Daniel made no mention of the night before, so Madison didn't bring it up either, but inside she considered if she should say or do something. Daniel had reached out to her last night and maybe she should reciprocate? Then again he had left her last night without allowing her to reciprocate, so she struggled with her next move. Meanwhile, they made polite conversation, ate oatmeal, shared a platonic side hug and then Daniel left a conflicted and chastened Madison alone at the breakfast table.

Madison fretted away most of a lonely afternoon before she finally reached for her phone and called up her girlfriends for some insight. With a few clicks Madison had Deva, Kelly, Ivy and Adalina in a group video chat. Advisedly she added Cassidy, but Cassidy didn't answer immediately, so the impromptu discussion started without her.

"I came so hard my teeth hurt," Madison finished her description of the events. "And now I feel like such a creep. Worse than I did before, and I didn't think that was possible."

Everyone was silent for a moment.

"He really loves you, though." Kelly guessed obviously.

"I know that. He tells me that. But what was this?"

"Dominance?" Ivy guessed. "Some kind of male claiming ritual? Maybe he was just worried that if he left you all horny, you'd go someplace else to get yourself straightened out?"

"I'd never do that!" Madison asserted.

"Well, you don't say?" riposted Ivy.

That gave Madison a bit of pause and allowed Adalina to tut to Madison in disappointment.

"I thought we taught you better than this, Madison," Adalina jabbed. "All this trouble over a kiss? What kind of rube is he? It was a kiss! Tell him to get over it or you'll follow through with the divorce. Take control, girl!"

"Yeah," interjected Kelly but without much enthusiasm. Without Cassidy around to guide her thoughts, Kelly wasn't exactly sure what to think of the whole situation.

"You've got to get this man of yours under control, Madison," agreed Ivy. "He's way out of pocket. Hire the lawyer and tell her to crucify him. And Steve is available, by the way. Just a phone call away."

Madison didn't tell Ivy that just the thought of Steve the Oaf made her queasy. It was obvious what they all expected of Madison, but rather than try and argue her girlfriends into agreement, Madison sat quietly and let her original question work its way around the video chat.

"Maybe instead of guessing, you should just ask him?" Deva interjected.

Madison shook her head at that.

"I couldn't."

"So let me get this straight," Deva continued with a little exasperation. "You can't touch him. You can't talk to him, and you can't even ask him a question. Am I right?"

Madison bobbled her head to one side in concession.

"So, what the hell are we talking about?" Adalina interjected. "What's left for you to do? He's being a little bitch about a kiss. Dump him. Hire the lawyer and call Steve to come rail you until you faint. Do it now. A boss bitch doesn't put up with this kind of nonsense and you know it."

Madison sighed inwardly and just as she thought this call might have been a huge mistake, Cassidy's pixie voice interjected unexpectedly.

"You need to do one of two things, fuck him or fight him. And the sooner the better."

Everyone went silent in surprise. After what went down between Madison and Cassidy at the party, none of them had not really expected Cassidy to join in the conversation, but Madison invited her anyway because Cassidy seemed to have some kind of intuitive understanding of Daniel. Even though it made Madison jealous, Madison needed every insight she could get right now.

"Hi, Cassidy," Madison ventured into the silence.