Gaffriel 29

I wanted to ault her so badly, and mark her as mine, to know that satisfaction. I wanted her to mark me too. I was glad I asked. To my delight, she bargained! A solid ‘no’ would have crushed me, but she was anything if not amicable, all things considered.

I kept telling myself it wasn’t about marking her. Maybe I had fooled myself a little, but just the thought of stroking the down of her with my wrist, the act of it, became its own reward and own intimacy. I thought of it like a hickey, more fun to make than it was to wear. She would be mine for that moment with proof that lingered. That way, I’d know it hadn’t been a dream. I wanted to smell me all over her. I wanted her smell on me, too. I wanted that cold winter steel and citrus marking me.

I had every opportunity to just slip my wristband off and use my own ault on her, but I didn’t. Every fiber of my being screamed for me to, but I was good. I resisted… Why was it so fucking difficult? I powered through. Touching her like this had to be enough.

“Gaff, don’t laugh,” She said as she drew her wings up on her back. She felt nervous, reaching her hand behind the feathers to fidget at her lower back. She shuddered, squirming on the stool as her tail snaked its way down. It slid easily from a stitched-in slit at her waistband. At its thickest point, it looked barely as big around as my wrist, tapering down to a spaded tip, lined with feathers in a bunch. She fanned them with a twitch.

I caught the tail in my hands and gasped softly. Niala looked over her shoulder at me, and I studied the thing, letting my fingertips trace the strange shape of it, mesmerized as she twitched it open and closed in a soft fan. The skin of the tail felt soft, not like her body’s skin, smoother but tougher feeling. I traced my fingers up its length, and I noticed her tensing up, shoulders raising and gooseflesh spreading out over her arms.

I stroked again, watching that response, then again, laughing as tiny noise escaped her lips. Her tail felt so sensitive. She squirmed in her seat, and I loved watching it—loved hearing her noises. Something adult loomed in those sounds. But, then, every part of me that cried to ault her silenced at once to memorize this moment.

“Gaff, is it weird?” She asked.

“Marginally so,” I answered. Niala slipped it free of my hands and gave me a little slap about the face with her feathers. Her wings did the snapping thing she did when something irritated her.

“Why do you do that?” I asked her. I’d asked her before.

“It’s like… angry punctuation, with your wings. When you write, you end a sentence in a period or something. When you end something in person, you…,” She tried doing it again, but it sounded a little different. “Sorry, it doesn’t sound right unless I’m really annoyed.” She moved her wings a lot when she talked. Gesticulation with them came naturally to her, and I had tried to mimic how she did it a lot when she and I had been kids. Suddenly, Niala moved her tail, wrapping it around my arm, and tugged me up. I felt along the prehensile and dextrous length as I moved to stand, a silly grin on my face as I stood up over her.

She reached over her shoulders, took my hands, and drew them over to her chest. I bent low to rest my chin on her head and held my hands to hers, no fire, nothing untoward, just a lingering hug. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and then tensed up before shaking me off.

“Your turn!” She said with finality, scrambling off the stool. Her cheeks went pink. I wondered if I’d brushed up against her chest or something inappropriate.

Damn.

Her tail swished back and forth, not consciously as it thudded against a cabinet and a stool leg. I let my wings free and sat on the stool, stretching them as best I could.

She oiled her hands, got the brush, and worked down my already-preened wings. She saw the gaps in places where the feathers came from. I’d cleaned the blood away, so she didn’t have to see that. She moved a little rough with the comb and thankfully didn’t have to use the hemostats to pull a barb or anything. She just enjoyed the moment of touching.

“Just like when we were kids,” I said, grinning over at her.

Our eyes met, and Niala’s had gone soft. Her cheeks went strikingly crimson.

It felt nothing like when we were kids…