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“You’re not supposed to eat the fairy fruit. It drives us mortals wild with desire.
I craved romance and sex, yes, but more than that, I craved happenings. Novelty. I wanted everyone to be looking for love or falling in love or having their heart broken…I wanted everyone to be poised on the edge of some new cliff, ready to tumble into the next pool of excitement or pain.
I’ve learned the hard way that insatiable girls don’t get happily ever afters. They eat their way through lovers and friends too heartily—and that they also want to be eaten alive, their blood drunk and their bones cracked open, is irrelevant.
Insatiable girls stay alone. Insatiable girls settle for living by proxy, for craving and wanting and shoving those wants down where they won’t scare anyone away.
Because I’d like her to. Because even though I was kidnapped by someone named Maynard and carried to a mushroom castle, even though I’m so very certain this is a dream, it would be a very good mushroom castle dream if she put her fingers in my mouth.
I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing, but I do think I could sink into the inky well of her gaze and never resurface.
“Are you asking why someone might want to have a toy, Janneth Carter? You who so like to be one?”
“Because mortal toys are more fun,” he says. “And more beloved. And when beloved things bleed, the land sings.”
I never imagined I would see them in real life next to a flipping fairy orgy, but there you are.
Unless she needs a horny archaeologist at her disposal, I’m useless.
Some people have princess fantasies—I have fantasies about getting railed in a princess dress. To each their own, I guess.
The queen’s stare trails up from where Maynard’s head moves between my legs up to my face, and then our eyes meet and lock. Her eyes are as wet and black as the sea at night as she watches me,
Without a word, she presses her fingers—slick with me—to my lips, and when I open for her, she pushes her fingers into my mouth. I suck, obediently, instinctively, and though it’s a tiny, tiny thing, I see her swallow.
“You have my agreement. You shall be my pet, my everything, until the final night of Samhain, and you will not be harmed until you leave Faerie.”
“You’ve done well,” she says softly. “And I greatly look forward to seeing you on the morrow for the hunt.”
“Okay, fine,” I concede. “I do know where I want to go. I want to go to her.”
“But you did notice me, and you still stayed,” the queen observes mildly. “Well, if you’re here, I may as well put you to use.”
“You may look up, Janneth,” the queen says, sounding amused. “I’m not a Gorgon.”
“I find it hard to believe no one wanted you,” the queen says.
“Janneth,” says the queen. Her voice is quiet. “Take care of me as a pet should.”
“It pleases me to have you as my pet,” she says finally and then closes her eyes. “And so whatever you do, I shall find pleasing, because you are mine.”
I am pleasing. I am hers.
I want her to know I love being her pet, for however short a time I’ll be one. And that if there’d been no bargain at the banquet, no transaction of safety, I’d probably be here anyway, offering myself up for her to use however she’d like.
I slide my hand free and, without thinking, lift it to my mouth. A habit as old as sex, and I think nothing of it, although when she turns her head and watches me do it, her expression turns ardent. Like I’ve just done something that thrills her to her core.
Why have I been pressing myself into the shape of someone easy, someone composed and guarded and temperate, when I’m none of those things? When I don’t even really want to be? When what I really want is to be as hungry as I can be, as messy as I can be, as much?
Whatever you do, I shall find pleasing, because you are mine.
Her stare is shining with something I don’t understand, but I don’t have to wonder for long. She takes the heart from my hands and sets it carefully on a pillow of ferns. And then her bloody hands are twisted in my dress, dragging me close to her for a hard, crushing kiss.
And she seems pleased now, or at least aroused, because her eyes flash as she leans in to kiss me again, and her hands are demanding, eager, pulling me close and then finding my hips, my ass, my breasts.
“Yes,” says the queen finally, shoving up my dress to curl her fingers over my clothed pussy. “Now. Always.”
I can’t help squirming as she slides the point against the soft fabric of her breeches and then cuts them open with an impatient flick. She tosses the knife aside and tears the fabric even farther apart so that her sex is bared to the open air.
She moves over me, swinging her knee easily over my head so she can straddle my face. She reaches down to drag her fingers to my chin, parting my lips, and then she lowers herself to fuck my open mouth.
“I want to taste you again. Please let me. Please let me.” “Oh, Janneth,” she sighs, fully fucking me now. My legs can’t go any wider; I’m resting my full weight on her hand. “That’s the fruit talking.”
“That’s it. You are so beautiful, Janneth, so beautiful always, but especially when you’re coming for me.”
“Not your whole name or true name or whatever it’s called,” I say quietly. “Just something to call you. I love it when you say my name; I want to say yours so you can have that feeling too.”
I frequently catch Morgana looking at me like she’s wondering when she can have me flat on my back again.
Morgana slips her hand into mine. “When I stand, follow me quickly,” she says. “Let’s not be seen.”
“I’ve never snuck away from my own court before,” she confesses, standing in the middle of her tent and looking around like a kid who’s just played hooky for the first time. “I feel a little giddy.”
You think you love something, you think it will love you back, but then the closer you get, the further it draws away from you. The more you realize that, rather than the thing itself, you loved the way it made you feel when you knew nothing about it instead.”
“I mean it, Janneth. Some lovers might enjoy gifts of jewels and gold, others might want ballads or praise, but I have no need of those things. Instead, I want to see inside you. I want every ugly secret and thwarted hope; I want whatever makes you flush and squirm and hate yourself at night. I suppose it might be because, in the most literal sense, people have always been able to see inside me, but it could just as easily be that I’m more than a little sadistic. Whatever the reason, you need not treat your humiliations as things that will diminish what I feel for you. Your trust in showing
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Whatever you do, I shall find pleasing, because you are mine.
“I don’t say that as a platitude or a vacant reassurance, nor”—a smile tips the corner of her mouth—“would I say it to just anyone. Sholto, for example, would endear himself to me more if he were quite less himself. But for you, Janneth Carter, what does the world gain by you folding your hungers into the smallest possible square? When your hungers are so very lovely and have led you to dig into the earth for answers to questions most mortals have forgotten to ask?”
Her gaze is steady. “Do you want the truth?” “Of course!” “I’ve been watching you for a long time. Since you called for me.” “Called for you?” I echo. I literally have no idea what she’s talking about.
Yours was the only bargain that intrigued me. So I watched you. I watched you through mirrors and puddles and the shine on the face of your watch and the glass of your phone. I watched you and I…”
“I grew fascinated by you. I have wanted you for a very long time, Janneth.”
For whatever opaque reason she has, it must be you. No one else.
I’m not sure what to do with this information, because I should feel angry or scared or violated. I should not love that she watched me, chose me, took me for her own. I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” the queen murmurs. “Tell me something true.” “I’m thinking that I shouldn’t love this so much,” I breathe. “I’m thinking I should stop you, that I should try to get away.” I shudder as she fits her fingers into the opening of my cunt, sinks inside. “I’m thinking I’m so fucking grateful that I was on your land that night and not the Thistle Court’s.”
The two years since I’ve claimed the crown have been like walking along the cutting edge of a knife. Sharp and joyless. Until you.” Until you.
“Not as good as fairy fruit, I imagine,” I joke weakly, and she shakes her head. “It’s better,” she says, and she can only tell the truth, so who am I to argue?