A Helping Hand

Hi, hello, yes. This is my first time publishing on the site and I'm hoping y'all enjoy! Any constructive criticism will be more than appreciated, seeing how I'm here to really develop my erotic writing craft.

Please enjoy

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"I can't believe it didn't work."

Even if she wasn't proud of it, Maeve allowed her frowning lips to pull into a full pout- born of the absolute disappointment she was now staring at.

The disembodied hand stood on the tips of its fingers at the very center of the summoning circle; the bright red light that had previously blinded the room continued to fade back into the sigil she had drawn on the floorboards. There were thick, opaque tendrils of smoke emitting from the end of the hand that was supposed to be attached to a whole person; the very person that she had wanted to teleport into her home to be able to surprise them for the first time since they had gotten to know each other.

It was a strong hand, with gray skin that had a dark brown undertone, thick fingers, a broad build, and veins that bulged ever so faintly. Below the wrist, essentially decorating the edge where the appendage ended, was a broad, blackened tattoo that had a few symbols floating above it. She knew this hand; had come to know its owner incredibly well in the past few months. Even though she knew the hand and its owner, she still had little to no idea what the dark tattoos and artful symbols that adorned Ulv's body meant. No matter how long she spent tracing the ink that was charged with freezing magic far beyond her skills, Ulv still remained tight lipped over what mysteries it carried.

As the final embers of her magic dissipated into the ground, Maeve could tell that her eyes did not deceive her; there was no wool pulled over her eyes; there was nothing being hidden from her. Even though she had tried her best to ensure the success of the ritual, she had, once again, failed at accomplishing a ritual without the aid of her coven.

Even though she was now a powerful and competent witch that was capable of teleporting whole groups when she worked with her fellow siblings... her magic still suffered as it had throughout all of her life, no matter how much she trained.

Tempest believed it was a lack of self-confidence, Phoenix insisted it probably had to do with her not yet suffering through a true spiritual awakening, and Elder Adonia still tried to convince her that her time to practice on her own would come along, there was no need to rush. If the rest of the members of her coven believed there was something she lacked or had to live through to be able to be like the rest, then they chose to remain quiet. On good days, Maeve was happy to believe that they didn't actually have anything to say, which is why they remained silent; on the bad days, she was happy to know that they knew her well enough to know staying quiet was a much better thing for them to do rather than add on to what the others said.

Normally, setbacks like these were just challenges for her. Maeve had always been the kind of person that saw failure as an opportunity to learn and get better; had been like this even when she had been a young babe, forcing her parents to teach her what the unintelligible scribbles on the fascinating tomes they knew to decipher truly meant, trying to learn how to read well before she was supposed to. And she knew that compared to her complete uselessness in solitary practice from days gone by, she had certainly improved to have been able to summon a piece of Ulv to her... But on a day like this...

Maeve could feel the way her eyebrows began to stitch together at the same time a small burn began to sting at her eyes. She knew that she was close to crying. And even though she knew that it was perfectly valid to feel overwhelming sadness because of yet another catastrophic failure in solitary work... she still felt great shame over allowing herself to become so emotional over failing something she had known would likely not be successful.

There was no more glow coming from the sigil on the ground; not even a dull one. The rose petals had finished the process of decay they had begun to undergo as soon as the ritual had been finalized, which meant that they were now little more than ash on the ground she needed to clean up. And no sooner had she noticed this that the stem of the rose she still held in her hand disintegrated; what she had held in her palm was now crushed by her fingers while the rest of the remains began to fall, as silent as the dead, to the floor.

As dead as her magic when it came to doing anything by herself.

The burning in her eyes worsened, becoming a harsh sting, and Maeve closed her eyes tightly shut in an attempt to stop any tears from escaping; if they did, she knew it would only serve to make her feel worse. It was one thing to fail for the umpteenth time when she was more than aware of how terribly her magic failed her when she was alone; but it would be another, much more demoralizing and haunting thing to allow herself to cry like a child when she knew very well just how likely she would have failed at trying this.

"At least you didn't tell anyone about this ritual this time around." Voicing her thoughts, even though she was more than aware that no one else was around to hear her, had proved to be a relatively quick and simple way for her to calm herself down when these failures slammed into her life. "Come the next coven meeting, you can just tell them you spent the whole month so busy with your nose in the tomes that you just didn't have the time to practice on your own."

She was able to feel the faintest breath of something like acceptance come over her when she noticed the hand twitch from the corner of her eye. And as soon as she saw it, a sharp pressure appeared in her chest at the same time her mind started to race.

Ulv's fingers began to move forward, its movements slow and measured. Maeve had never seen the appendage go about anything with such a lack of speed, seeing how Ulv had never allowed her to see him capable of even the most minimal amount of patience. It was... captivating, really, seeing how carefully the hand made its way across her floorboard, stopping at the edge of the teleportation sigil.

She had to contact Ulv, let him know where his missing appendage had disappeared to and, regretfully, apologize for having failed at giving him a proper surprise. He would undoubtedly be more than just annoyed with her for having failed and unwittingly harmed him, even though they both knew full well that he couldn't feel pain and could function deceptively well when he was down one or two limbs... He'd probably ask her to just mail his hand back to him so it wouldn't risk getting detached any further if she were to attempt to teleport it back...

The stinging in her eyes worsened, all the while the hand began to rub two of its fingers against the sigil on the floor. Chalk rubbed off the floor and onto the pads of the fingers; once satisfied, the hand stopped, balanced itself on three fingers with a lot more stability than Maeve expected, and then rubbed the tips of its thumb and forefinger together- through just touch, Ulv was attempting to figure out what had happened to his hand, where it had gone to.

She bit softly on the inside of her bottom lip as she took a moment to wonder if she should try and pick up the hand and take it with her before she contacted Ulv... but then her mind dug up the memories of that very disembodied hand utilizing the mysterious magic that gave Ulv life to fully suffocate an unwitting enemy and immediately thought better of such a course of action.

In defeat, fighting back tears in her eyes and the cowardly voice in the back of her head that yowled for her to just run away and never talk to Ulv again, Maeve moved towards the edge of the ritual room to utilize the crystal ball to call on a being she really should have known better than to mess around with, Friends with Benefits or not.

~/~/~/~/~

Unimpressed red eyes, framed by stark white hair she had only ever seen in such a loose, frenzied state in the safety of absolute privacy, glowered down at her even from the angle below her. Even though the crystal ball was on the desk whose ownership she shared with her brother, and she stood at her almost full height before it, she could feel Ulv's towering height looming over her. He wasn't in the room, she knew... but she couldn't stop her shoulders from sagging and her head from dipping ever so slightly as she looked away from his intense gaze.

"I thought you left the petty practical jokes to Eoin."

The swirls of purple and blue haze that encircled the bright image of Ulv's face did nothing to minimize the manner in which his face was pulled into a glower of undeniable irritation. His eyebrows were pulled in low with the intense glare that had taken over his whole face; his eyes were ablaze with so much anger that Maeve was once again reminded of the killer capabilities of the being she had only wished to have surprised with a pleasant, impromptu teleportation into her home.

At the simplest, all she had wanted to do was teleport Ulv into her house and surprise him with what was supposed to have been mind blowing sex. That's why she was dressed in an outfit she would never have been caught wearing outside unless something was terribly wrong; that's why the fire in her home's hearth was uncharacteristically hot and high. She had wanted to take advantage of the fact that Eion had gone off on an unplanned adventure with the bubbly mage that was trying to recruit him into that pesky adventurer's guild that was supposed to be staying far and away from her coven's forest territory.

But all she had managed to do was mess up and piss Ulv off.

The silence that hung between them after Ulv's words was deafening. "It's not a prank." She managed to squeak out, valiantly keeping herself rooted in her spot instead of running away when Ulv's glare turned from annoyed into flat out murderous. "I wanted to surprise you by teleporting you in here, but I failed and I'm super sorry, Ulv, please don't hate me."

Before she knew it, Maeve had closed her eyes to not have to face Ulv's piercing gaze. She spoke quickly, unable to stop herself from trying and salvaging the remains of this situation before Ulv told her to lose his information and never bother thinking about him ever again; she didn't even stop to breathe as she spoke; she barely managed to get herself to breathe once she had finished rushing everything out.

Maeve kept her eyes shut so tightly that she began to feel the faintest jabs of pain start to emanate from her eyelids.

The silence stretched between them once again, so loud that it was deafening; the only noise Maeve could properly make out was that of her racing heart crashing violently into her ribcage.

She knew what was coming now; what words Ulv was formulating within his mind to tell her to buzz off. He would be harsh, cold, but, ultimately, quick. Ulv had never wasted his breath on anything that wasn't worth the energy, so there was no reason to doubt how he'd go about telling her to never look at him again. It'd hurt, naturally, but at least it wouldn't take a whole afternoon for him to get his point across.

Her breath was now coming in quick, short bursts because even though she was reassured that Ulv would deliver a speedy tongue lashing, it would still be a lashing unlike any other. She had seen the way in which he was capable of tearing the wicked down with just a few, scathing, choice words. What awaited her was the fate of a quick obliteration, but not a painless one.

"You only wear that to fuck."

An arrow stabbed straight through Maeve's heart, but not the one she had been expecting.

Ulv's voice... it was no longer overcome with anger, irritation, not even an undertone of exhaustion over what she had done to him... instead... Maeve swallowed deeply, fighting back the heat that attempted to rush up to her face. His rough voice was now filled with an amusement he hadn't even bothered with trying to cover up.

She knew that tone of voice.

It immediately made her heart begin to swell at the thought that Ulv wasn't nearly as angry about the situation as she had feared.

With a deep inhale, Maeve forced herself to open her eyes and face the being that she had been so sure would want to get rid of her only a few seconds ago... and found that, within the crystal ball, even if he was somewhat obscured by the dark background of his own home and the tendrils of haze that surrounded the orb... the bright red eyes that had glared at her with nothing short of anger before were now narrowed in a much different attitude.

Ulv's scarred face was pulled somewhat as the softest smirk tugged at his thin lips.

"Teleportation magic just to fuck?" and his tone was now teasing, all the while his eyes looked down as far as he was capable, undoubtedly to get as good a look as he could of the outfit they both enjoyed to see on her. "Novel."

And this was the main reason why Ulv and her had been capable of building something kind of like a friendship, with sex, to boot, when they were such fundamentally different individuals. Ulv could read her much better than a book- it was almost worrying how easy it was for him to understand what was going on in her brain without her having to speak in eloquent sentences.

Maeve liked to think that she was good at reading Ulv, too. But she wasn't sure what was the precise reasoning behind getting Ulv: if it was that she was a master at reading the subtle, micro expressions that Ulv's face was supposedly capable of making, or if it was that Ulv's face was as expressive as any other person's, but most people in the world didn't bother with actually looking at him, sticking to only noticing the superficial characteristics that made Ulv appear far more dangerous than he actually he was.

Well, no, that wasn't completely correct- Ulv was a dangerous being, capable of mass casualties if he really put his mind to it. But he wasn't nearly as cold, cruel, or rude as her coven had warned him of being when they had first met the magical being to contract him due to his mercenary expertise.

"You're... not mad?" even if Maeve was able to see it with her own eyes, she was still wary of possibly being deceived. To her, Ulv seemed to have lost all of the fire of anger that had previously fueled him; but her eyes might try to trick her into thinking that the situation had simmered down even when it had not.

"I was." Ulv cleared his throat, using his chin to motion towards something to her left. "My mind's somewhere else."

All Maeve could see and hear from him was amusement. There was a hint of intrigue that underlined his words; to her ears, it sounded like his tone had become just a bit scratchier- like it would get when-

"Oh."

Her eyes went wide; she felt something land softly on her left shoulder. It was cold, but it wasn't frozen. Through her sheer sleeves, she felt it begin to move. Two fingers began to graze along her collarbone, all the while a cool thumb made itself comfortable near her shoulder blade.

Ulv cocked his head to the side as Maeve tried her best to relax her stance; even though he was far away, she could still feel the immense power of his gaze. And that gaze made her remember the precise reason why she had been so excited to try to accomplish this plan all on her own.

"Move the crystal ball to your room. We have to be quick."

"What?" even though the hand tightened around her shoulder in a clear sign to stop her from questioning Ulv, Maeve pressed on. "You said you were free the whole afternoon."

The amusement was tempered by a momentary look of annoyance coming over Ulv's face. His lips twisted into an almost snarl, before he was closing his eyes and sighing softly, "Job came up." Was the only thing he bothered to explain. "If you're going to be difficult-"

"I'm moving!" she moved to grab the crystal ball, making sure to grab it with a firm grip because one wrong move and this would all have been for absolutely nothing.

This most definitely had not gone down the way Maeve had planned it, and there was more than enough reason to mourn her still existing inability to practice even the simplest of teleportation magic without the aid of another. But. If Ulv was telling her to move locations, it meant something. And Maeve so hoped that meant that he was going to use his hand to take her to the level of bliss that so eluded her when she tried on her own.

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When Ulv had said he needed to be quick because of some supposed job, Maeve had thought that he had been exaggerating; that Ulv had come up with the quick lie to make her move into her bedroom faster than she would have if they had had all the time in the world.

As soon as he had demanded her to pull down her skirt when she had barely managed to close the door into her room, Maeve had come to find out that he had been dead serious about how limited his time was.

Because she was more than aware that this was still part of a mess she had created, she attempted to tell Ulv that she could wait for him to finish his job, by the gods, she was prepared to head into the village and find Elder Adonia to make sure his hand was teleported back to him so he could complete it without any hiccups. But before she had managed to get even a single word out, he had demanded for her to sit down in the center of her bed.

"We can really leave this for later."

She had placed the crystal ball at the foot of her bed before she had crawled towards the center of the bed, which meant that Ulv got a clear view of how her hands went to her waist, only to begin twitching around the sash that kept her skirt up.

Even though he was half a world away and only visible in a regular sized crystal ball, Maeve could see with compete accuracy the unimpressed stare he sent her way when she hesitated.

"You're wet." He stated so bluntly that it stabbed her heart; her legs, though, twitched against her will. "Now, Maeve."

If Maeve had been a strong witch, the likes of which the rest of her coven believed her to be, she would have told Ulv that they could leave this for another day. But she wasn't that strong. And she had been needing proper release for far too long now.

If Ulv was being this demanding, then that meant that he really wanted to do this for her. And if he didn't reach his own release today, then she would make sure to offer herself up to him as soon as they were both available to make this up to him.

Maeve shifted on the bed until she was on her knees, able to undo the sash around her waist. Her movements were somewhat clumsy and it took her far too long to undo the annoying piece of fabric, but soon the short garment that had been covering her up was falling away from her.

"There's a good little witch." Ulv's voice was low once more; when Maeve looked at him, it was to find that there was a self-indulgent smirk firmly on his lips. "Spread them."

He hadn't even finished speaking before she had done so, her pale, sturdy legs moving to reveal herself fully to one of the most powerful beings she had ever met in her life.

"You're awfully obedient today, Maeve." As he spoke, Maeve was able to see how his eyes drank in her whole frame, moving slowly from her knees all the way up to her own eyes. "I enjoy your fire. But I'm quite enjoying this submission."

"I'm not- ah!"

Ulv's hand had still been on her shoulder when she had closed her room's door. She had forgotten about it, admittedly, as she had begun to undress. And so she had been completely caught off guard when the appendage made its presence known by pressing softly into her clitoris, yet with enough pressure to make her gasp.

"See? Much better."

Any other day, she would have grabbed the hand and thrown it clear across the room because how dare Ulv talk like that to Elder Adonia's personal protégé?