LISE
The monster was nothing she had expected it to be. Nothing she was ready for. She cursed herself under her breath as she watched the creature undress.
He had said that he was human. He could speak, and he had a name, and there something very familiar about him. But that was what the monsters were supposed to be like, right? Cunning and vile, pretending to be human and have language and names, and then they would claw through your throat while you weren't looking.
But he was also everything a monster was not supposed to be: weak and funny, and slightly drunk. His skin was like the skin of a potento tuber, kept in the basement for winter, his skin was brown but looked pale — as if something had washed him in his mother milk from inside.
She watched him undress, peel off his armor that had been fitting as close as a second skin. Under it, his body was all wrong: well built, like a lord's, as if he had never starved as a child, and smooth as baby's, as if he'd never been beaten or burned. There was not a single scar on his body, save for the small nick her knife had left on his neck. It was now caked over with dark red blood, human blood.
Lise put her knife to her mouth and licked the blade carefully. His blood tasted like human blood.
And then she saw the monster staring at her. He looked scared, the whites around his eyes showing, and his dark, long hair looked as if they were standing on end. All the hairs on his arms and chest were bushy like some small sickly animal's.
"Come closer," Lise said.
He hesitated, breathing deeply. Lise didn't want to scare him any more. She didn't like him scared, he looked like a child.
She liked him drunk and laughing, she liked him asking questions.
Nobody had ever asked her questions. Nobody had ever been scared of her — and nobody had ever been in need of her mercy. Suddenly Lise realized that maybe this was why she hadn't killed the monster: because he had asked her not to. Because he begged.
Because he had said "love".
"Come," she said. "If you are human, come to me."
He moved, slowly, clumsily, swaying the net, rocking it gently, and she held on, like a child on a swing.
"And you?" he asked. "What are you?"
"Me?" Lise looked at him. He advanced. Now he looked better, less scared. Perhaps it was because of her smile. He was not scared when she smiled.
"Are you — are you human, just like me?"
"Yes. Yes, I am." She reached out to touch his skin. It was soft, as if a tanner had laid it out and worked on it for days. And then put it back on him, but not before drenching it in milk. Maybe that was how you made monsters. Maybe that was why you were supposed to kill them right away, even though preserving their life fluids would be easier if they were alive.
He reached out too, and he touched her cheek, the one that Nika had scratched a long time ago. His fingertips were soft too, like moss, like the underbelly of a small bird.
"Where did you get this?" he asked. "The scar?"
"Well." Lise thought about it. She knew that Nika was listening. "Somebody scratched me, they didn't know me then."
"That seems like a weird way of introducing oneself."
"I introduced myself by promising to cut your throat, remember? It worked."
He laughed. "You didn't know me then."
"I still don't know you."
But she wanted to know him, and not by talking. Talking was what the lords did, when they were tired of riding and hunting and drinking and singing. That wasn't Lise's life now, and she wasn't going to pretend it was.
"And I don't know you," the monster — Jade — said, tracing the scar on her cheek. "But I would like to, Lise."
She leaned down and took her shirt off. Jade smiled, and then his expression changed to that of horror. Jade gasped
"What?"
"It seems that there have been a lot of people who... didn't know you."
Lise looked at her body as if for the first time. Compared to Jade's, it was a collection of scars and bruises in a variety of shapes.
"I don't want to talk about this now," she said. The list was too long, and what good it was going to do for him?
"All right," he said, tracing the shape of a burn mark from the day she ruined her best dress by playing outside. "You don't have to tell me. And I don't need to know. It is enough for me to feel this. To understand."
His fingers tiptoed to her shoulder, where she was stupid enough to wear her backpack wrong and, when the bruise sweltered, not telling anyone in the Sunstreak's gang. It was a small scar, and well-deserved, and she didn't like the look on the monster's face. It was something she had always hoped to see on her mother's face — and on him, it looked just wrong. As if a monster could feel sympathy that your mother couldn't.
Besides. She was already half-naked and chill, and he was shivering — and aroused, despite of that — so Lise saw no reason whatsoever to linger any more.
She took a breath, calculating her jump, a tricky thing considering the swaying net and the knife in her hand. And then she moved, forward and all around the monster, laughing at the surprise in his face.
*
JADE
Lise launched herself at Jade like a swimmer in a nordic sea runs into the water, all at once and breathless, squealing in horror and joy. Jade held her and followed her movement, rolling around until he was on top on her. She squiggled under him, positioning herself right under his dick, and, while Jade still gaped at her, surprised at the quick development of events, she took him with her free hand — the one that wasn't holding the knife — and pulled him between her legs. It turned out that her pants weren't actually pants, just leggings with a short skirt over them. Her skin was warm and unshaven, and surprisingly soft — unlike most of her body, it was not puckered with old scars. Jade winced at the thought and drew in a sharp breath, pity and desire and fear blending in a torturous cocktail of emotions, something you would drink after too long night clubbing, as a dare, and lose all memory after that.
Jade was leaning on his elbows, watching Lise's scarred face scrounged up in determination, intent and decisive, as if she was doing some unpleasant but necessary task, like skinning an animal or stitching a wound; she looked fierce and withdrawn even though she was obviously ready for sex.
Oh gods, Jade thought, she probably doesn't even know what sex is. Or what it is supposed to be, at least. He couldn't take her like this — he shouldn't take her at all, at least not until he teaches her about gentleness and teasing, or at least a goddamn foreplay. A course that would normally take months, even years, and would be done by a licensed expert, not by a black-hearted amateur like him.
But it was just like with the liquor she'd given him: you don't refuse and spit out things that are given to you when the generous giver holds a knife at your throat, eager to cut the game as soon as it becomes too confusing.
Besides, he was a convicted criminal already, and there was no punishment harsher than being exiled to hell — nobody could come after him with charges of insensitivity or practicing sexual education without a proper licence.
"What's wrong with you?" Lise hissed, wriggling closer to him, as if she had only so much patience to bother with sex. And maybe she did.
Jade closed his eyes — he couldn't look at this face right now, her crooked, chipped teeth, and marks on her skin, left by sickness and abuse — and he kissed her, slowly, gently, on her dry lips.
Lise jerked back, almost jumping away from under him. "What was that?" she demanded.
"I kissed you," Jade whispered, then coughed to clear his throat — he hadn't noticed when he'd gone hoarse. "Why? What is wrong with that?"
"Who does that?" Lise protested. "It's like — like —" she waved her hand, the one with the knife in it, looking for the right word.
"I do that," Jade said and kissed her again, mostly to save his head from accidental scalping.
He touched her lips with his tongue, first the lower lip and then the upper — here, this is how you do it, you poor girl, haven't you ever been kissed?
It really felt like she hadn't — she held her lips tight, her teeth closed, and Jade slid his tongue over her teeth, feeling the uneven, chipped surfaces, and then — very lightly — ventured to the inside of her lip. He hadn't ever done this, and it felt sweetly forbidden and wrong.
Lise made a small sound that wasn't quite an irritated grunt and wasn't quite a moan.
I am so underqualified for this, Jade thought. He gently caressed her cheek, feeling the strained jaw, until Lise parted her teeth. He suppressed the urge to invade her mouth. Not yet. She needed to trust him — trust with her whole body.
Jade let go of her hips and rose a bit to look in her face. Lise opened her eyes — the impatience and determination were gone, leaving just confusion and worry.
"What's wrong?" she asked. He saw her lips tremble — not from the chill air, but from the new experience of being kissed.
"I wish I had more time," he said. "More time to get to know you. More time to — reach you."
"You are reaching me right now," Lise remarked and moved closer to him, placing the tip of his dick in the warm, soft opening of her vagina. Jade groaned, he hadn't felt like this — well, technically for centuries, but even before this, having sex was never this intricate. So fragile and clumsy, so breathtaking and scary.
Lise moved again, guiding him with her hips, pulling him inside. She smiled, a crooked smile that made him want to kiss her again. To cup her breasts, to tease a sigh from these lips, a moan.
He kissed her eyelids instead, tracing their shape with his tongue, tasting the salt in the corner of her eye, the remainder of a dream. She arched her spine, letting her nipples travel against his chest, enclosing him in her warmth, as if her vagina was a small hand picking a bird out of its nest — and, at the same time, she was the ocean and he was the moon; she responded to his swelling by rising up against him, and he stood on the precipice, faltering, trying to keep his balance.
She moved her head, rose it up and put her nose behind his ear, and she bit his neck, very lightly, just a small bite that unlocked all his madness, all his willingness to surrender, to make his mark in the world — to reach inside her, deeper and deeper, probing her, touching her in a place where she was soft and gentle and yielding, his skin hot against the coolness of her hands as she pulled him in, grabbing his buttocks, locking his legs with hers so that he couldn't retreat, just move, desperately, hungrily, move inside her, becoming just a pulsating piece of flesh.
And she laughed. He had expected her to cry, but she laughed, a soft, girly sound that came from a happier days long gone, as if he had made love to her through time — and he wanted to reach out there, to that happier place, but all he got was this sinewy, scarred body in his hands.
He stopped, trembling, and took a deep breath. "Are you all right?" he asked.
"I don't know," she said, and something changed in her eyes — from gentle and laughing, they became outright mischievous.
And then she moved again, pulling him in, and the last of his conscience was gone. He grunted, almost angry, and pushed against her, merciless and strong, one, two — and three, a final thrust, and then he came, pulling slowly out of her to make room for his semen. Lots and lots and lots of room. He shuddered as everything that had been wrong with this day flowed out of him and became just right.
He whimpered and collapsed on top of Lise, so hot that the air he breathed had no flavor at all. Lise drew her hand over his sweaty spine, and he trembled again, the last of the cum dripping off and away. He pulled away from her — this was almost painful, almost impossible to do — and lay there, alone, with the crisp air cooling his overheated skin.
A minute — or maybe an hour — later, he opened his eyes just to see Lise's curious face above him.
"So," she said. "Are you all right?"
He groaned again, all language forgotten, and drew her close, so close that she couldn't watch him, couldn't say a single thing.
He almost noticed the moment when he fell into sleep.