The House of Flame Lilies Ch. 01

She let him gaze at her for a while, folding her shoulders back and tracing the line of her jaw with her fingertip, giving him just enough openness, just enough motion, to keep him mesmerised.

She stood smoothly. She stepped to stand over him. She wasn't much taller than him sitting on the table, but he shrank under her, feeling her tower over him, feeling it was only right. Her breasts were just under his chin. He could tuck himself onto them and sleep, if he dared. She stroked his temple and pushed his tousled hair behind his ear. She cupped his cheek, holding him like an egg fallen from a nest.

"There," she murmured, "Do you feel warmer now?"

Sparrow broke into a smile that cracked his face apart. She grinned like a fox and kissed the tip of his nose. A merry bubble popped in his belly. He swam in amazement and delicious exhaustion.

"We're out of balance again," she whispered conspiratorially.

Sparrow felt a flicker of eagerness that moved his hands before he could hesitate. He folded forward into the shadow of her body and cupped her waist. He suppressed a shudder of pleasure. Her flesh was firmer than he expected, with her ample figure. It invited pressure. He held her and sneaked closer to her, her perfume making his mouth water. He looked up into her eyes and forced himself to hold her penetrating gaze, as he ducked and placed a kiss on her breast. "I'm sure we can right that."

She laughed with villainous glee, it elated him. She didn't move him, but somehow he was puppetted. He found their positions reversed, he on the edge of the dining chair, his heart buoying, she on the table, her gown gushing over the edge like squid ink in water. Her gluttonous gaze glittered down at him. She swept her hair from her eyes and rocked back, candlelight dancing over her curves and the cut of her cheekbones. She gathered her skirts in her hands and found a long, concealed slit up the side. She drew it back, like a curtain, and cast the fabric out to flow over the white tablecloth.

She was left unveiled. Her vulva, crowned with black hair, swelled from the shadow, the gleaming ruby of her clit raw and ruthlessly tempting, even in the darkness. In fact, the darkness accentuated it. It shone to Sparrow, the single point of focus, drawing him to it like an artist to colour. Her scent crept to him, lilies and spices. His body was already loose, relaxed, ragged. It liquified at the closeness of her cunt. Her thick thighs spread, the luminescent flesh rising from the sea of her black gown like rolling, chalk cliffs at the edge of an untraversed country.

He took a steadying breath. She loomed over him, all confidence and desire. He wanted to please her. The need for it gnawed on him, like a wolf.

He dipped tentatively between her legs. Her fingers combed through his hair, the sensation trickling through his nerves. He sighed and pushed into her touch, like a kitten. She stroked down to the base of his skull and drew him into her. He moved without resistance, gratefully letting her guide him into the cavern of heady scent and the gem at its heart. He ran his lips along the insides of her thighs, a little tacky from heat. He rubbed his cheeks on her, growing more animal by the moment, but not bestial, tame, entirely tame. She pet his hair, scratched behind his ears, tickled the back of his neck. He mewled and shivered, the ripples of pleasant sensation trancing him.

He kissed higher on her thigh. He felt her shift her weight. Her flesh brushed over the tip of his tongue and her vulva inched closer. He licked his lips, trembling. He wanted her taste more than he wanted food when he was starving on the mountainside. He wanted her heat more than he wanted warmth in the snow.

He so wanted to please her.

He was terrified that he wouldn't.

He looked up. The candlelight glowed around her, making her angelic, draping her body in amber, like she was stepping through to this realm from another. She ran her fingertip along his forehead, brushing the tendrils of his hair aside. She bounced an eyebrow encouragingly. She licked her teeth. Sparrow beamed. The drive to do as she wished surged in his body, louder than any shyness or self-doubt. He pressed a final kiss to her thigh, ardent and promising.

He plunged into the depths.

Her flesh met his mouth, the awe broke over him in waves. Her taste was overpowering, it flooded his senses, it filled his mouth and clung to his tongue, wine and petals. The chair scraped, as he slid forward, enveloping himself in her. His face misted in the humidity between her thighs. Her knees drew up. He hooked his arms under them and clutched her thighs like a liferaft, the weight of her legs on his shoulders aching satisfyingly. He gave himself to her pleasure. Her drugging juices spilled over his taste buds, as his tongue delved into her folds. He worked around her slowly, indulging in every tiny exploration, enjoying how she clenched and writhed on his lips, softly revisiting the paths that made her buck or twist.

She moaned deeply, her gruff, sultry voice reverberating in his body. "Mmm, Sparrow, you're a tricky one."

He sucked on her softness, forgetting the meal, forgetting the numbing cold on his lips. He had been so lost last night, cast away from everything he knew, no more than debris. He felt moored again, reconstructed. In this moment, his land was her body, his home was her pleasure.

Her fingers curled in his hair and bunched it on the back of his head. She closed her fist and pulled him deeper. The sting of the pull on his scalp brought his cleansed body back to life. Her flesh filled his mouth and smothered him, stars popping behind his eyes, as the oxygen fled him. He chased his shock deeper into her, his tongue flicking and swirling and burrowing needily. He reeled with dizziness before breaking for breath.

"Yes, Boy!" Her cry thrilled him.

She was hot-spring wet and swelling in his mouth. She grasped his hair and crushed his skull in her strong thighs and ground on his tongue, riding his lower lip, scooping her delight out of him until his jaw ached and his mind was spinning. He lapped and lashed with his tongue, ensuring that every motion she made was met with zeal. She was unlocking something in him, something greedy and foolish, all instinct and worship. He ate her like he'd never eaten food. The slurp and squelch of her flesh was deafening. The heat of her was suffocating.

"Oh! Oh, Sparrow... Mmm, you really were hungry, weren't you?" Her hissing murmurs were stifled by her flesh over his ears, but they spurred him on.

His breath rasped in his throat. She pulled from him to let him catch it, holding him back by his hair, as he tried to dive back into her, not caring if he died there. He blinked blearily up at her. His puckered, throbbing lips fell open. She looked divine, gigantic, her curves flowing above him, like gathering storm clouds. Her hair had tumbled from its bonds and the thick, black curls, tipped and streaked with scarlet and copper, made her more fearsome than the fire. Her large mouth was in a tempting O, her cheeks still glimmering and her eyes bright. She was framed by fat fruit and velvet wine, candlelight slipping oily over the waxy roundness of plums, twinkling on raspberries, glowing on peaches. The vines and white flowers dressing the table foamed about her bountiful hips. She was nestled in decadence, rising from it, like Venus from the waves, bathing in a sea of crystal and sugar and ripe harvest and alcohol. It was as if it had all been offered to her, some Pagan goddess in an imperial temple, sacrificed to under the moon. And forever in the centre of his vision, her cunt gleamed like the gates to Hell, and beckoned him.

She whispered a command. "Make me come, Boy, cover me in pleasure."

He whimpered and plummeted. He surrendered to her rhythm, moving his tongue with her clit. She gripped him harder, thrust into his mouth with overwhelming force. She snarled and sighed, caught him in a net of her hunger and insistence. His body was drained, his mind was addled. Her taste maddened him, her heat clasped him. She fucked his mouth powerfully, like it was a saddle on a horse being broken in. His moans were stoppered. His senses whirled.

His tongue found the nut of nerves at her peak. He attacked it, half like a ribbon in a gale, half like a woodpecker.

It didn't take him long.

A lascivious groan roared out of her. Her thighs clamped his skull, hardened, and trembled like felling oak under his grasp. Her juices washed his taste buds. She flung forward and both her hands clenched in his hair and lanced him with joyous pain. Her climax was primordial, he felt like earth being broken and remade. She shook cacophonously around him, inside him.

In a bewildering moment, he understood how the mountains had come to be.

She stilled.

Her thighs relaxed and parted, his hands moulded to them. His cheek fell onto the misty cushion of her lap, as he was hit by a rush of cool. Her weight sank onto his shoulders. He gasped for breath, clutching her to stay afloat. His lips were slick, they slipped over each other as he rubbed them together. Her fragrance was smeared across his mouth, taunting his nose. He turned his mouth into her inner thigh and floated kisses around her flesh.

His eyes drooped. Dreamy exhaustion crept over him. All his fear and awe leaked away in the magical, liminal space of afterglow.

Then he was thrown from it.

Her foot planted to his chest and kicked him away into the chair, pinning him against the back. He blinked at her in breathless surprise. She was an irresistible picture of regal ruin.

She looked down at him along the smooth line of her leg. The toe of her black slipper pressed over his thudding heart. "Off to bed."

Sparrow blushed crimson. For a moment, he sat stunned. Then the natural need to obey her nudged him awake. He scrambled to tug the ties of his britches back together. She lowered her foot and he stood from the chair, his bare feet sinking into the weave of the rug, his joints all jelly and barely holding him up. The idea of leaving her hurt wickedly. Being drained and discarded humiliated him, but a strangely pleasurable heat rose with it. He knew he ought to be indignant, but she was so impressive, so fascinating, so much higher than him, it almost felt right that he should be sent away once he'd fulfilled her need. It felt respectful, fair. Yet he couldn't make himself move away.

She reached out and brushed his hair from his brow once more. The tenderness of the gesture stung. Her voice turned lilting, but firm. "Goodnight, Sparrow."

His hand drifted up to stroke hers. She pulled hers away just a fraction too soon.

His mouth still tingled with the taste of her. He watched her ardently all the time he was stumbling from the room. As he vanished through the door, he saw her kick one foot over the other, pluck a grape, and pop it into her maw.

Sparrow staggered back to his room in a daze. The marble gargoyle silently guided him, but he was too confused and elated by the happenings at supper to notice it as anything more than a convenient beacon in the dark corridors.

His room was still lit by the dimming hearth, as he entered. There was a fresh, pressed night shirt on the bed. He changed unthinkingly, the linen stroking over his tingling skin, the air on his legs a relief. He collapsed into the cool sheets, the scent of dried lavender buffeting him, clean and calming. His mind was both sluggish and racing, alive with images of Vestalia, but totally unable to find an anchor or a clear train of thought. Every track he tried was blocked by her scent, or crumbled under the weight of her stare.

The best thing you can do when you're lost is put one foot in front of the other, until you're not anymore.

Where had his feet led him now? To whom?

Didn't you learn your lesson about wandering?

Tossing between bewilderment and bliss, Sparrow made one last surrender to his senses - he dropped into sleep.

He dreamed of sharp teeth in a wide, red mouth.

*

Vestalia perched on the end of the oval dining table, the remains of supper scattered behind her. She gazed out into the ocean of night, the stars spanning a breath-taking canopy of deep blue and raining down on the snow-covered mountains, turning them to diamond. She raised her eyes to the moon, its serene, spectral face holding her gaze, like an abbess waiting for a thorny theological conundrum from her favourite novice.

Her sharp ears pricked at the scuff of boots on the rug. A step. Half of another.

"If you're going to try sneaking up on me, you should wear silk slippers," she said, not turning around.

The boots scuffed a little heavier. A large, looming shadow stretched across the pane of moonlight on the floor.

"You hunt in a gown, I'll dine in leather boots." A rough, rumbling voice replied.

Vestalia turned. She looked up into a broad, imposing brow and deep set, black eyes. The man at her side was tall and hulking, his mighty build emphasised by a long, wide, worn, leather coat. He had a thick, close-cropped, black beard and a shaggy mane of black curls. His skin was wan. He smelled faintly of grave soil.

"Though, speaking of hunting," he continued in a voice like turning earth, "Our prey seems to have been allowed to scamper off."

"Our prey?" Vestalia arched an eyebrow. "I don't see you stalking through the undergrowth and pouncing, my handsome scavenger."

The man's mouth twitched under his plume of a moustache. He leaned behind her and filled her glass on the table. He handed it to her in an easy, well-mannered movement. She tipped it to him and drank. She kept it held up near her nose against his scent.

"Alright," he conceded. "But whilst I was waiting patiently for your scraps, what exactly were you doing?"

Vestalia drank again. She shot him a gleeful look over the sparkling rim of the glass. "I have other appetites too."

The man huffed and laughed in a rasp. He folded his arms and raised his chin, smiling wryly. The moonlight fell on his face, but it didn't illuminate him, like it did Vestalia; it sprinkled on him, like dead, grey ash. "Much as I depend on them, your appetites will be the end of me. I shall starve while you glut yourself on pretty virgins and doe-eyed wanderers."

"He's not a doe," Vestalia corrected, prodding the man playfully in his great chest. "He's a Sparrow. So it seems I'm keeping an aviary, I have a sparrow and a vulture." She tittered and flicked the finger on his chest up to ruffle his beard.

He jerked his chin away, but grinned at her. He shook his head and another chuckle escaped him, like the crunching of fallen leaves.

"Besides..." Vestalia's eyes drifted back to the moon, her voice drifting with it. "It isn't my appetites you have to be wary of with this one. It's my curiosity."

"Ah." The man rubbed his chin, his fingernails were bruise-black. "That old gremlin."

"Afraid so." She glanced at him with a ruby twinkle in her eye, then gazed up at the night, tracing the constellations the way she had traced the life line on the boy's palm. "Mmm, I'm very curious about him."

"About anything in particular?"

Vestalia swilled her wine in her glass, it tossed lazily up the sides. "Not yet." She sucked her lower lip in and her canines peeked over the pillow of burgundy. "But I think, my shadow, that we might have something extraordinary tucked under our roof." She looked into the fire, her pupils round and abyssal. "And we might just be able to make use of him."

The man smiled, and poured her more wine.