Parties (Girls Weekend, #2)

by C.M. Nascosta

"Bluebell, don’t pretend you don’t love butterin’ this big ol’ biscuit. You think I’d be able to keep your side of the bed warm with a flat ass? This space heater does all the heavy lifting."

There was nothing wrong with her, only the mixed messages she had received growing up — that her body was too much, that she took up too much space in her own life, which somehow made her less. Too much, and made smaller as a consequence.

They fucked for the betterment of Elvish kind, and for that we thank them.

"Nanaya was an ancient goddess," he explained with an arched eyebrow, "of sexuality and pleasure and war. She was worshiped under many names . . . Inanna, Ishtar, Tašmetu . . . I thought it was a fitting sobriquet. That’s what I’ve been calling you in my head all this time."

"Sorry about that. Sometimes it's not easy being the filling in a friend sandwich, especially when one of the pieces of bread is determined to pick fights with the other. In this case, the piece of bread doing the picking is a piece of bread. And the piece of bread she's picking on is actually a switchblade. I am just an innocent pickle, trying not to get knifed."

She didn't have to be anyone but herself for him, and he didn't ask her for anything more than she was willing to give, and she wouldn't have it any other way.

We all have choices to make in life, and I'm happy with the ones I've made. They led me to you."

"What the fuck?!" he shouted, his voice reverberating in the muscle car’s interior as she wheezed in laughter. "How did this happen? We’re both too hot for this!"

"He always manages to turn up when you don't think you need him, but you're glad to see him just the same. You’ll not be able to keep him out, you know. If that’s what you intended. He’s a dab hand at getting under the skin. One minute you think you’re having a drink with a mate, and next he’s chewed his way into your heart, and there’s no scraping him out after that. Believe me, I've tried."

"The most I am planning to do at five is have a nice horny dream, because that is still practically the middle of the night." "Then I think it's time for you to get the fuck out so that I can go to bed."

"What does that even mean anyway? ‘A girlfriend. A boyfriend.’ Who gives a fuck? You can call me your watermelon king, for all I care. Those are just titles for everyone else, right?"

"You seem to forget, Nanaya. I'm a white collar professional. I have excellent dental insurance. If I break a tusk licking your pussy, honestly there's no better way for it to go."

She'd not planned on winding up coupled, hadn't planned on meeting someone like him at all. She wondered if maybe that was why it happened, because she hadn't actually been looking, not for him.

She may have still struggled with the voices in her head and the body she saw staring back at her in the mirror, Lurielle thought, the protective lava bubbling in her chest, but after a lifetime of being told what to do and how to look and what to think, her field of fucks to give was barren.

They were happy, they were moving in the right direction, and she wanted to give him everything he wanted, which was what she wanted as well, as long as he was at her side. Life in the real world.

She wondered if she cut open his chest and climbed inside to be nearer to his heart, if it would ever feel close enough.

"You're my heartbeat, Silva. You're the pulse in my chest and the blood in my veins. You want to rip me open, dove? Take a bite out of my heart? It already belongs to you, so you can do as you wish, and it doesn't matter what you call me. You’re the only reason for breathin', and if you come to your senses and kiss me goodbye in the morning and then put me out of your mind, it won't change a thing. It won't change what you are. You'll always be mine, Silva. That doesn't mean you should want me as yours."

What about what I want? What's the point of having everything if I'm never going to be allowed to be happy?

"I don't know, but isn't it kind of crazy the way we de-evolved like that? Elves were chosen consorts of the high fae! We committed genocides! We were apex predators! Now we're one step up from humans, and all it took was fucking them for a few hundred years. My ancestors were able to disembowel ogres with their bare hands, now I get period cramps and have to take three days off work to lay on a heat pack and cry. What a fucking letdown."

She wanted every piece of him – his secrets and his fears, his blood and his viscera, every thought in his head and the essence of his very soul, and she wanted to give herself in return.

"Lurielle, you think we can dill this pickle first? If seeing your mother is going to have you madder than a mule chewing bees, I understand. But this squirrel can't bury this nut alone."

She was going to live a lifetime with him, and that would be the balm on her broken heart when he was gone, to sustain her for a lifetime without him.