Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers

It was the usual room, dark with wood and red velvet, candlelit, cushioned. He began to take his gloves off, but stopped when he noticed the room’s other occupant.

“Is there a mistake?” he asked in a low voice. “You’re not… precisely what I require.”

The slender man lying decoratively on the floor cushions wore the simplest of white robes. His close-cropped hair stood up like a brush. Although his eyebrows were dark, his hair was bleached almost to white. “I am not Carlin, of course, sir. He cannot come tonight. If you wish to wait, another man, darker than I, and more to your taste, should be free in a matter of an hour or so. But the Master of the House thought I might serve.”

“Oh, he did, did he? What does he know of me and what I want?”

“He would not be Master if he did not know us all.” The blond stretched his body back against the cushions luxuriously. His robe opened on a supple set of muscles, but his chest had been stripped hairless: no way of knowing whether he were a blond by courtesy only. “I know it does not please you for me to join you on the bed, sir. With your permission, I’ll stay here where you may see me clearly.”

The young client perched on the edge of the canopy bed. He removed his gloves, but that was all. He had the smooth white hands of a scribe, a scholar, or a dandy. His face hid in the shadows of his hat, his figure in the heavy folds of his cape. But his voice was a young voice, pitched low, without inflection, to cover its youth. “What is your name?”

“That will be your choice,” said the blond. “Will you not name me, sir? For a friend, maybe, or for a lover?”

“You would let me do that?” The client scowled. “Very well,” he said maliciously; “I will name you for my dog. You shall be—Fluff.”

“As you please, sir. Fluff is my name.”

“No, no!” he objected, not laughing. The notion did not amuse him. “I don’t care what you call yourself.”

“Bliss is my name,” the blond said; “if you would have it so.”

“I would have it so, indeed.” He gestured with one leather glove. “Very well, Bliss, stay. But take off the robe.”

The blond stood with a dancer’s economy of motion, his eyes modestly cast down. “Quickly, sir, or slowly?”

There was a moment’s startled silence, swiftly recovered from: “Slowly,” the client purred.

And slowly Bliss slipped the robe from one shoulder, and then the other, letting the soft cloth caress his skin, letting the client see the effect that the performance, and the sensation, were having on him.

The client saw. “Goodness!” he squeaked, by which Bliss knew that Carlin sometimes required more encouragement. He already knew of their relative endowments, and watched to see if the young man appreciated them.

He did. He was looking very hard at the one in question. Bliss took two steps toward the bed, and saw the young man on it freeze as if he’d seen a dangerous animal moving. Bliss converted the movement to a langorous dance with the robe, trailing it over his body until the fine white cloth hung like a scarf from the end of his fingers, stretching out toward the bed—as if he were the trainer, now, and the young man the frightened animal he was trying to coax toward him. And so he remained that way for one moment, for two, the white cloth waving faintly in the stillness of the room…

“What?” the client demanded. “What am I supposed to do?”

“It is an offer,” said Bliss. “An offer without words.”

“You need offer me nothing,” the young man said gruffly. “I can have whatever I want.”

Bliss’s hand held steady, and he met his client’s eyes. “And yet I offer it: The robe from my body, still warm, and faintly scented, for you to do with as you please: to smell, to stroke, to tear to shreds—”

“Give it to me!”

“Quickly, or slowly?”

The young man’s hands were clenched. “Quickly!”

Bliss flung him the robe; it unfolded in midair, landed against the young man like a spider’s web, a gossamer net. The young man tore it from his face, crumpled it into a ball and breathed in deeply.

“And will you give me nothing in return?” asked Bliss.

“You don’t need it. You’re already randy as a buck in spring.”

“That’s not why I’d want it.”

“Why, then?”

“So that you might see your hand on me.”

Mutely, the client held out one red leather glove. Bliss knelt to take it, and pressed it to his lips.

The sharp intake of breath from the bed confirmed his guess. He ran the leather along his chest, across his thighs. Only then did he raise his eyes, shyly, to the client. The young man’s hand had vanished inside his cloak, to where a man might keep his dagger. And further down, to where a man kept other things and kept them well. The hand stirred the cloth steadily, and his breathing was audible. Bliss suppressed a smile. He teased the glove across his nipples, and gasped loudly at the sensation, in tandem with the excited young man.

“Ah, yes!” the client breathed. “That’s good. Go on.”