Nageire

Kayo is on the edge of sleep when she realizes that something has changed in the half-darkness. She was lulled by the heady, cloying scent of the smoke from the medicine seller’s pipe and the scent of her (pungent herb and warm musk), was drifting just on the edge of dreams, when she hears the medicine seller give a soft laugh, low and gentle in her throat. Kayo opens her eyes and sees the medicine seller’s hands in the air, moving as though there was something there, her hair swept off her neck, her yukata sliding off her shoulders. There was a movement in the darkness like a flickering flame, shadows and play of light, and Kayo squints and focuses and sees the glint of fang, the glitter of gold, and her voice dies in her throat, suddenly aware that she is seeing something that she shouldn’t.


As he shudders into half-being, the medicine woman’s dark other is a glimmering beast of fire, all black-gold and ashes. She pushes at his clothes, sliding her fingers into their folds and pulling them away to bare his dark skin, his metal-bright markings. She hooks her legs around his bare waist and arches as he draws his hands over her shoulder blades and to the small of her back, and he presses his lips to the rise of her breast, making a thrumming sound the back of his throat like a purr. He is smoldering-dark, the night lapping at his edges, but his gold glows like an ember, his eyes burning-hot. She traces the gold wrapped over his corded arm, presses a finger gently to his cheek as though she is wiping away tears, and he trembles and compounds and his edges solidify and blaze.


They fuck in the candlelight, her yukata rucked up around her hips and her fingers knotted in his hair, their heat like a flame. Her hands are like two wings, her skin pale and paper-thin in the light of the candle’s small flame. Kayo watches wide-eyed, so close she could reach out and touch them, hardly daring to breathe. Her eyes follow the medicine seller’s painted nails as they traces the line of her other’s ribs, the strong, dark line of his side and the wing of his shoulder blade, as she rolls her hips forward again, dipping her head to press her smiling lips to the curve of his pointed ear, her teeth flashing as she bites.


Kayo shudders a little, heat curling in the pit of her belly as the medicine woman’s other surges against her, his hands sliding over the curve of her ass, pulling her closer to him and his thrust. He makes that low, purring sound again and kisses her, his eyeteeth glittering black in the candlelight, and the medicine seller presses against him, her hands yanking at his hair, pulling his head back, opening him to her, making him submit even as his hands swallow the pale skin of her back into his dark heat.


Her pulse thundering, Kayo’s hands twitch and creep lower over her hot skin, sliding her fingers across the soft inside of her thigh. She curls her fingers into herself, her eyes on the full curve of the medicine seller’s breast, the line of her other’s throat. She bites the inside of her cheek, tucking her face against her pillow to muffle her breath, and watches their flickering movement, the fall of their hair together, white and black and gold, painted lips and fingernails, silken ash and slick heat and absolute darkness and molten, winnowing flame.