The evening is warm, the cushion between me and the floor is soft, and I feel at once both overly warm and as though I’m about to float away.

“I had thoughts as to how to begin this.” Lily’s voice is a contemplative murmur, and her feet take her around me. I don’t move, eyes forward, tracing the grain of the wall’s wood. “I had forgotten how you were to look, attired as you are, to say nothing of how it makes you feel.”

Her presence ripples under the panels of my clothes, traces the lines of my face. It’s not a physical touch, exactly; it’s more like the not-exactly-feeling of a potential touch, the mind activating neurons and feeding back when expectations and reality don’t quite align.

And there’s very little standing in the way of her not-touch.

When I’d last met Lily, I’d been wearing something very clearly coded for an assignation, but which had some degree of plausible deniability and practical merit. Tonight, I’ve been wearing—dancing in, for that matter—something far less subtle and yet far more stylish. Thin leggings hug me from my calves up to my thighs, tucked into boots at the bottom and barely reaching to something akin to a circle skirt with pleated panels at the top. Lily’s attention trails up from those to where the seventeen strips of cloth—nearly invisibly thin both in thickness and in width—anchor those leggings to the belt that clings to the skin of my waist, and the skirt flares around me as though I’d indulged in a spin, settling down into perfect symmetry.

“Your new friend’s work. Marvelous.” Her fingers gently stroke the woven, braided fibers of my shirt, pressing the soft fabric gently into my skin. “Tune for an abstract perfection all you want, magic never achieves this kind of artistry. Each strand exactly in its place, the whole thing a pattern.”

It’s a dragon. The shirt, the shirt’s pattern is, I mean. The wings wrap around my shoulders and chest—it’s fastened, inasmuch as it’s fastened, where the claws touch, with cunning little hooks—and the body seems to lift from my back as though it’s going to separate and start flying off. Its tail wraps around my waist as though it’s a second belt running over the panels of my skirt before dipping down to wrap around my left inner thigh, and it breathes a flame that wraps most of the way around my neck, shifting to blue where it becomes one with the near-invisible web of fabric that surrounds the wing. That same fabric forms clouds and gusts of wind down my arms, culminating in slender threads that wind their way around my fingers, binding just enough when I move them to be distracting without getting truly in the way of motion.

Anywhere someone’s eyes rest, they can see through the fibers, thin as they are and so cleverly woven as they are; but past the immediate area of visual focus, everywhere in their peripheral vision, there’s just the dragon about to take flight.

Lily takes her time running her hands along the pattern. I shiver, paralyzed under her touch, for no reason related to temperature; when her finger runs along the red flames and blue skies around my neck, I shudder, and again when she traces the tail of the dragon with a fingertip. She finds a way to let the tip of her fingernail trail through the weave of the fabric and follow it across my stomach and hip, down to where, with me sitting on my heels, it ducks between my thighs and disappears against my ankles.

“Up.” Her voice is soft, commanding. She has the edge of a finger just barely under my jaw, and it feels like she’s lifting me up with the gentlest of pressure even as my muscles burn to rise exactly at the speed she bids me. “Look at me, Adam. How might you describe me?”

Divine, I think immediately, but I swallow the instinct to say it. Even here, even as we are, it’s not in my nature; but she’s a precise, calculated vision of perfection in toned muscles and curves, of soft, supple skin and leather. “Glorious,” I say instead, because that’s no less true.

“Would you rather undress me, or watch?”

“The former.” The words slip out of me before I can even think about it, but in the beat she gives me to reflect on it, I know it’s true nonetheless.

Something still has her eyes narrow, has her tone grow noticeably more chilly. “I’d like, Adam, for you to add something to your sentences. I’ll give you a chance to figure it out yourself.”

It takes me a long moment. My body is… distracting, and my heart is beating wildly, and nothing in my brain seems to be working right; I’m all fizz and sparks and a calmness that isn’t conducive to thought. “The former,” I offer softly, “ma’am.”

Her smile banishes any trace of chilliness, and she steps forward until her chest is millimeters from mine. “Good. Very good.” Her voice is content, relaxed, and I can notice that, understand that she’s pleased, but I can’t think about it for the heat that surges through my body, the degree to which I want her to say that again. “You may proceed.”

It might as well be an order; I realize, belatedly, how much of me had craved something to do, some sort of directive to act on, and it’s with more joy than just for the beauty of her that I obey.

There’s an obvious starting point with the hooks above her right shoulder, so I undo them. Her top is tight leather, anchored to her even tighter pants at the bottom with straps that cross over above her navel. It’s buckled at the top on the side that doesn’t have hooks, and it bares a tall triangle of her belly and her entire sides and clings to her chest like it’s painted on. It comes apart once I thread the strap with the eyelets back out of the cinch and undo the buckle, and I drink in the sight of her bared breasts and the contrast of their proud softness against the hardness of her muscles.

Lily surprises me by stepping in towards me. Her lips meet mine almost teasingly, brushing against them gently in a light kiss before she turns my head with the soft pressure of her fingers on my jaw. “We will,” she murmurs, and for some reason it sends tingling shocks down my entire side, “begin with you putting your mouth to proper use.”

She pauses, and for a seeming eternity I have no idea what I’m supposed to do. “Yes, ma’am,” I finally say, and that gets me another kiss, a deeper, longer one, with one of her hands digging into the small of my back and the other trailing along my neck.

Puzzle solved, I think to myself, and then Lily is drawing my mouth to her collarbone.

I explore her slowly, hands around her waist. I taste her very slight sheen of sweat, feel the warmth of her, the softness of her skin on my lips. Her breathing flutters as I kiss the hollow of her throat, and again when I kiss my way between her breasts, brushing against them and her nipples as I do. I work my way down to her navel before rising again, and when at last I’ve worked a spiral around the curve of her breasts and taken a nipple gently into my mouth, I feel her pulse pound just as hard as mine.

Her hands grip the back of my head as I go to move on, pulling me into her. I suck, running my tongue against her stiffness, and she gives out a low groan and pulls me off of her chest. Something in me rebels, something that wants to do to her other breast what I did to her first, but the pressure of her hands pushes me down as though my hesitation never existed, and her touch reminds me of who is so completely in charge, and my breath catches in my throat as my tongue traces the curve of her waist.

Her pants are laced. It’s straightforward going, though delicate, and I fumble the laces more than once as Lily runs her fingernails through my scalp, sometimes tugging at my hair, sometimes stroking it. She murmurs encouragement when something slips through my grasp more than once, and kisses me when my fingernail bends back in a brief moment of pain that hardly registers. I drink in the taste and smell of her as I go with each millimeter of cord that I undo, and each millimeter in turn increases the torque on the rest and makes it harder even as I find my thoughts focusing so much on the patience, reassurance, and affirmation in her voice that I can’t hear her words.

When I’m done, I go to rise from where I’d knelt to tug the now-slender thread through the eyes at the base. She stops me with a single finger, pushing me onto both knees, and with a simple motion of her hips the pants and the top-straps anchored to them simply slide off.

She’s glorious. Eyes hungry, she looks at me, standing nude and semi-erect, and it’s all I can do not to reach out towards her.

“Very good.” She’s got a mild drawl in her voice, and whether from her words and tone or from the way she bends over to stroke the hair out of my face, I flush and shiver at the same time. “Put your hands behind your back for me.” I can feel the slenderness of the thread she winds twice around each wrist and twice around both together, smooth and sliding with the slightest shift of my arms. “These will break so easily, but I’m sure you’ll be good for me and stay very still. Won’t you, Adam?”

“Yes, ma’am.” The words slip out of me in a breath, without conscious thought.

“Good. Now, that position won’t do at all.” She runs a hand through my hair and tugs gently, bringing me up from where I was sitting on my heels to a vertical kneel with my back straight. “Legs spread a little wider. A little more; that’s right, lower yourself down like that. That’s it.”

And then she’s swaying forward, one hand brushing a stray hair out of my face while the other slips behind the back of my head, and I wrap my lips around the tip of her cock.

She’s gentle, which somehow I hadn’t expected; I have no idea what I’m doing, which I fully had. It’s not that I hadn’t had liaisons with men, but I’d never been the one giving, only receiving, and even then it had been relatively rare; the Spirit had been very deliberate about the cadence of my relationships, and I’d let them.

Somehow, I doubted that the dicks that’d gone unsucked had tasted this good.

The thought sparks a giggle inside me, and it burbles outward into my face, silent but stretching my mouth into a smile. I can feel it in my eyes and in the lay of my ears, and Lily takes that as an opportunity to sway her hips forwards.

She begins with tremendous gentleness, for all that her hand behind my head is utterly implacable. Slipping almost imperceptibly deeper, there’s a hitch in her breath as my tongue runs the width of her tip, and then she tightens on me and takes a step.

It’s the smallest of steps, and her hips swing back as she takes it, but between that and the way she stiffens and hardens has her thrusting past the tip of my tongue to press gently against most of its length. There’s a moment where I’m lost, adrift from any prior experience, but it’s only a moment, and then I’m drawing from my own memories of receiving and doing my best to give, tongue running along her shaft and lips gripping her as she works my head in slow motions.

There was a softness to the head of her, but as she slips further inside me, there’s only hardness under the barest layer of pliable skin. I run the tip of my tongue against her, experimentally, and then flatten my tongue out to press against her. My attempts at a massaging motion are rewarded with a low gasp, an approving murmur whose words I can’t quite make out, and a hot, salty taste with a hint of a viscous texture at the back of my throat. She doesn’t taste like anything I’ve tasted before, but it lights a fire through what feels like every nerve in my body. I want more, I want to taste her and to hear her make that sound again, and then her hips sway forwards.

I gag, my body almost jackknifing; I almost snap the threads, the urge to try to push her away close to irresistible. It’s all I can manage to hold myself together without biting or vomiting, even with Lily whispering words of encouragement in my ears. You’re doing so well, I hear, so soft and so gentle that it barely registers as language. Relax. Relax for me. Stay here, in this moment, in this place, and know that you are beautiful, and your tears are beautiful.

That’s it, her voice murmurs straight into my spine. That’s it, and her fingers brush away the tears.

The feeling of iron in my jaw, the tightness as I force my teeth to stay open, fades as I notice that she’s pulled almost entirely out of my mouth or pulled my head back. Her voice remains, murmuring gently as I start working my tongue across her tip again, and soon she’s gently pushing my head forwards again as her hips work in ever-so-gentle motions. Somehow, in the midst of it, I find enough presence of mind to realize that the heat I’m feeling isn’t coming from the room or from her; it’s nothing thermal, it’s hunger and it’s desire, and it’s inside me, and she’s been working her way back in ever so gently, ever so slowly, stoking it higher.

She warns me, even if I can’t process her words, as she goes that critical millimeter deeper, and I barely gag, feeling as though the sound of her voice is soaking into my every muscle and controlling me. She pulls out again regardless, resetting as she praises me and strokes my hair; on the third time around, she brushes my throat as she bottoms out, my tongue tracing a line to where her cock ends and her perineum begins. That gets a shudder out of her, full-bodied and unconscious, and her hips thrust, grinding against my face as she presses into the back of my mouth. Her whispered instructions have me holding my breath for long seconds as she thrusts—I could breathe, I’m fairly confident, if she weren’t bidding me otherwise; she’s past the base of my tongue, but not blocking my throat—and then she pulls back just a little and I gasp greedily for oxygen. She shudders at that for some reason before filling my mouth again, letting a rawness of mixed desire and need color her voice as she thrusts.

It’s a timeless moment, lost in my body and putting every ounce of will into the stillness of my wrists and my control over my mouth and throat, into dwelling within that space of doing nothing but what she bids. It’s forever and it’s no time at all, denominated in breaths held and in gasps and in the feeling of slipping into her rhythm and in filling my mind with the sound of her voice.

I can feel the orgasm building inside her as I work to stoke it, written in every shiver and shudder of her body, in every gasp and moan and hitch in her breath. Every reaction I manage to provoke from her is a scorching heat, a fire that fills my mind and body, and it pushes almost everything else away. The gorge is almost gone, even as her control slips ever so slightly and her hand twists painfully in my hair; I am nothing but a feeling of soaring, and I am nothing but the sheer want that fills me, and I am nothing but the thin strands holding my wrists.

I am nothing but my awareness of Lily’s cock growing firmer and swelling against my lips, and the veins that run along the bottom growing rigid as my tongue traces them, and I am nothing but her voice in my ears, guiding my body and urging me further into the moment and into a more complete relaxation and submission.

It still takes me by surprise when she comes. I swallow convulsively, over and over again, fighting to not fall behind, my own body shuddering in a sympathetic and incomplete pleasure. She’s as salty and bitter and hot as she had been, and every swallow is ambrosia, and every swallow is a fight against gagging or worse.

It’s long, long moments before she lets go, and I suck breath into burning lungs and feel the warmth in my stomach shooting burning tendrils through every nerve of my body. Her fingers reach behind me and snap the threads binding my wrists, and my arms rise to wrap around her waist, hungry to touch her, hungry for her touch. It’s bliss to feel her stroking my hair and running her fingers down my throat, and it’s bliss to hear her murmurs, her whispers, telling me how marvelous I am, how good I felt, how beautiful everything I am is. How good she’s going to make me feel.

She lapses into silence for a long moment, running her hands down my back and back up my sides. “Up,” she finally says, and I look upwards to see a renewed glint of heat in her gaze.

“Up you go, Magelord. We’re not done yet.”