Free Malakai by Michele Hauf

Unless it
embarrasses you?”
    “What? Showing my wings?” She tugged at the
hem of the shirt. “I don’t want to drop my glamour completely.
There are things…”
    “I'm aware of the differences in faeries to
other breeds. Longer fingers, longer torso, delicate, pointed
ears.”
    "Just my wings, yes?"
    "Please," he breathed.
    With a nod, she pulled the shirt over her
head and handed it to him.
    Kai could feel the change in the air as Rissa
straightened and closed her eyes. It grew sharper, more defined.
Crisp, like a brisk January morning, yet without the chill or snow.
A shimmy of her shoulders then unfurled wings that brushed his face
with a grass green scent. Emerald and fuchsia and azure designed
the gossamer appendages that resembled a dragonfly's wings yet with
elaborate laced edges.
    “They’re lovely. So deeply colored. Can
I…touch them?”
    A brow quirked above her bright violet
eye.
    “I’ve never touched a faery’s wings before.
They look so soft.”
    Rissa smiled, almost compliantly, he thought.
“Yes, I'd like that.”
    He sensed she wasn’t comfortable, perhaps
nervous. But not embarrassed. He looked over the wings slashed
through with iridescent glimmers of pale violet. Long filaments
stretched from the tips of each quarter section. Each moved like an
appendage, and one curled loosely about his ankle.
    Eager to touch, but not wanting to frighten
her, he lowered his fingers over the suede-soft thin membrane.
Carefully, he traced along the hard cartilage-like section that
ribbed the upper wing. It was warm and flesh-like. And yet he
sensed it might be scaled as if on a butterfly wing, and so he did
not retrace over his path for fear of damaging a portion.
    Rissa's approving murmur softened his
apprehensions and he spread his hand wide, pressing a palm against
the thinnest part. Ichor must flow in veins he could not see
because he could feel the vigor of life beneath.
    Did he give her that life when they made
love?
    She curled back a wing, and the filament
coiled loosely about his wrist as if a curious sea snake then
slipped away. Cool. And not at all disturbing. In fact, it turned
him on, and—yes, he got a hard-on.
    Drawing his fingers toward her spine, he
stepped closer, positioning himself directly behind her, and leaned
to kiss her at the nape of her neck. The wings beneath his touch
shivered. The gorgeous smell of summer meadow filled his nostrils
and dizzied his brain.
    “You do know what it means to touch a faery’s
wings?” she asked.
    “No, what does it mean?”
    “Your parents didn’t teach you that?"
    "I was only warned to stay away from faeries.
The last thing my father would have ever done was to condone
touching one."
    "It’s a sexual thing, Kai. It
feels…exquisite.”
    Sexual? He’d had no idea. Kai retracted his
fingers from the highest wing bone, but then, he clasped the
thickness of it firmly. He couldn't deny his own desires had
surfaced. “You want me to stop?”
    “What do you think?”
    Her hair sifted across the tops of her wings
and tickled his face. He leaned in to kiss the glossy hem of it all
and swished it aside to reveal her spine where the wings joined her
body. A kiss at the base where the strongest, thickest parts of her
wings rooted lifted a shiver through Rissa. Goosebumps spotted her
skin. Kai smoothed a hand across her neck to warm them away.
    The tickle of her touch along his back clued
him she’d wrapped both wings about him. It was a sexy kind of loose
hug, enveloped in gossamer and summertime meadows.
    He stretched out both arms, gliding his
fingers across the fabric of her wings. Rissa's sigh prompted him
to press his erection against her derriere. Slipping one hand
around to clasp across her waist, he drew her up tightly. Her feet
left the ground. A kiss to her wing felt the ichor rushing against
his lips.
    “Oh, Kai. Every touch to my wings brings the
ichor rushing to my breasts and core. It’s incredible.”
    Incredible was putting it