The Green's Hill Novellas Read online

  Whim closed his eyes and breathed in lightly, sticking his well-proportioned nose into the hollow of Charlie’s neck and scenting his skin. “It will be wonderful,” Whim whispered. “It already is.”

  Charlie shivered and sighed and tilted his head back. Whim kissed up his shoulder and along his neck and then up to the curve of his ear.

  “Wait,” Charlie said, before his vision went dark and his mind went completely blank. Very carefully, as though it were a glass butterfly, he took the precious little box, wrapped it in a fold of the picnic blanket, and then put the blanket in the cardboard box that held the Tupperware. He looked up self-consciously to find Whim watching him in bemusement.

  “It’s important,” Charlie said with conviction, and Whim nodded, understanding.

  “Good,” he said. “So is this.” And then he skipped the preliminaries and captured Charlie’s mouth in a kiss.

  Whim tasted like every good thing in the world. Like melon and peaches, chocolate and buttered toast, ham and sweet peppers, every taste individual and explosive on his tongue. And the kiss deepened, and Whim invaded his mouth, and Charlie stopped thinking about food and started tasting things like desire and want and… oh… oh God… hunger.

  Whim leaned back and pulled Charlie with him, rolling so they were side by side on the sleeping bag, just kissing and using their fingertips and the flats of their hands to explore. Charlie’s tank top was rucked up, and Whim’s palms glided over his back, cupping his shoulders and hauling him closer. Whim cocked a leg up, and Charlie tangled his legs in with Whim’s so he could grind his groin up against Whim’s stomach because, jeez, elves were tall, and Charlie wanted the contact.

  For his part, Charlie pressed his hands against Whim’s bare chest, rubbing his thumbs against Whim’s nipples and enjoying Whim’s catch of breath immensely. Whim bucked against him and then pulled back from the kiss with a pouty little frown.

  “Stop that,” he muttered.

  “You liked it!” Charlie protested, laughing with arousal and joy.

  “I could orgasm from that alone,” Whim told him crossly, “and I’m trying to make this good for you, so….”

  Charlie grinned at him unrepentantly and took each nipple deliberately between a thumb and forefinger and pinched gently, just the way he liked his own nipples pinched.

  Whim growled and kissed him savagely, his hard frustration taking kissing to a whole new level for Charlie. Charlie liked it! He returned the kiss with ferocity, still grinding, and then he stopped and shuddered a little when Whim spurted some precome.

  “See?” Whim sounded peevish, and Charlie smiled against his lips—but not for long. Whim pulled away from him and kissed down his chest, stopping at his nipples and suckling and licking until Charlie cried out and gibbered, knotting his fingers in Whim’s bloodred hair convulsively and begging for, God, anything, anything, but not this wonderful, frightening escalation to an orgasm the likes of which might crumble the earth beneath their bodies.

  Whim knew what to do. He pinched Charlie’s nipples one more damned time, and Charlie begged some more for form, and then Whim kissed his way down the soft skin of Charlie’s stomach, and Charlie thought his heart would stop when he sucked in air. Whim’s hands deftly unfastened his jeans and stripped them down his hips and off—he’d taken his shoes off when they’d sat down—and Charlie’s naked virgin body was gleaming in the light of a half moon.

  Whim pushed himself up on his arms and looked at him—just looked at him—a little half smile on his face. “Do you doubt it?” he whispered, and Charlie gazed up at him, his erection throbbing and his hips wiggling in arousal.

  “Doubt what?” he whimpered, and Whim popped a finger into Charlie’s mouth. Charlie sucked on it, hard, and Whim lay next to him, his head propped on his hand, right near Charlie’s middle, and used that slick, air-chilled finger to trace a line from the tight, furred swelling of his testicles and up his turgid, erect cock.

  “Doubt that you’re beautiful,” Whim breathed, and Charlie wanted to hold him, just wrap his arms around that clean, long body and hold him, but Whim grasped his cock firmly and squeezed, and Charlie’s vision went dark as his whole body threatened to explode.

  Whim chuckled with an evil little accent, bent and extended a pointed tongue to taste the head. Charlie whimpered and buried his hands in Whim’s hair, and Whim licked again and then again and then, when Charlie was squirming beneath him, popped his lean mouth over the bell of Charlie’s cock and slid his lips down to the base, swallowing as it bottomed out in the back of his throat. Charlie groaned, because it was going to happen… happen too soon… but oh God….

  Whim did it again and one more time and….

  “Auuuuuughhhhhhhhh… God… Whim!” And Charlie was coming and coming and coming and coming and Whim’s head kept bobbing until Charlie’s fingers relaxed and he fell back, panting and sweating and flaccid, recovering from a climax that seemed to have cleared the clouds from the moon.

  Whim pushed himself up next to Charlie and lay on his side, patiently waiting for Charlie to find something to say. Charlie turned his head sideways, reached out a shaking hand, and pushed Whim’s tangled hair away from his face.

  “Damn,” he said after a moment, and Whim’s smile was brighter than stars.

  “My people don’t believe in damnation,” Whim said practically, “but it’s a very good word and I’m happy for it.”

  Charlie’s shoulders shook, and he cupped Whim’s cheek. “That was amazing,” he said more coherently. “You… uhm….” His eyes darted down to Whim’s crotch. His cock was thick and trapped against the leg of his jeans. “You want I should, uhm… you know?”

  Whim nodded enthusiastically. “Reciprocation,” he agreed, rolling to his back and shucking his jeans. He didn’t have on any underwear, Charlie noted with raised eyebrows. “Reciprocation is an excellent word.”

  Charlie did the same thing Whim had: he explored. He discovered that Whim’s nipples were even more sensitive than his own, and he spent a while tasting them, playing with them, and nibbling delicately on them, until Whim put both hands on the back of Charlie’s head and pushed, and Charlie obeyed.

  He lay on his stomach, propping himself up with one arm, and decided that Whim’s cock was truly a thing of beauty. It was large, long and thick, although not, he had to admit, quite proportional to his feet, which was probably a good thing. Under the gray sky, it gleamed like marble, even when he grasped it at the base and slid his hand smoothly up, a tiny, shining bead of precome leaking out. Charlie tasted it, sticking his tongue out like a cat’s, and then licked up the broad, flared, uncircumcised head, pulling the foreskin back so he could ply his tongue on the ridge. Whim shook, quaked, trembled like a rabbit’s soft bunny nose with every new discovery, and the sound he made when Charlie stretched his lips over his teeth and popped that thing in his mouth….

  Ooooohh….

  That sound alone made Charlie hard all over again.

  But this time was for Whim, for all Whim had given Charlie—although it appeared that Whim had a lot more stamina than Charlie did, because Charlie’s mouth was getting tired and his fist was cramping, and Whim was still highly aroused but showed no sign of going over the edge to climax.

  Then Whim started giving him explicit directions, and Charlie’s prick got even harder.

  Whim widened his legs and folded his knees up, and Charlie, using a copious amount of spit, began to stroke the area behind Whim’s balls. A little bit of precome spurted, and Charlie swallowed, gratified, and Whim kept begging, piteously, and Charlie gave him what he wanted.

  Sliding his finger on that sensitive area—Whim called it his taint, and Charlie liked the word—he then let that curious, probing finger slide down, down, into the cleft of Whim’s bottom, and then into the shadowed recesses of his ass.

  He found the entrance, and Whim whined even as Charlie gulped at that magnificent prick in the back of his throat. Charlie let more spit dribble down, down over
Whim’s testicles, into his cleft, and took that moisture and rubbed it on the tight pucker that strained for his touch.

  Then he breached it gently, and Whim shouted and fisted one hand in Charlie’s hair while Charlie stroked with that one finger and, in a sweet, breathless moment, Whim was coming, pouring come down Charlie’s throat. He couldn’t swallow it all, but he kept trying, until finally Whim lay still, panting and shaking under Charlie’s cheek, and Charlie was using the heel of his hand to wipe away the slickness that coated his chin and lower jaw.

  Whim hauled him up by the armpits until he was sprawled and sticky on Whim’s narrow chest, and then Whim reached up and licked the spend off his chin with little laps, like a delicate kitten.

  Charlie whooshed out a breath and fought to find Whim’s mouth. His lover allowed himself to be captured, and they kissed, long and long and gloriously, until both their bodies were aroused again. But neither of them was in a hurry to move.

  “Whim,” Charlie groaned into his shoulder. “One night is not going to be enough…. Can’t you stay more? Longer? A summer?”

  Whim framed his face with both hands. “The thing I am afraid of,” he said after a long, cricket-chirping pause, “is stealing away your life from you, Charlie. I could take you to my hill, change you into a werecreature or a vampire, and you would be mine forever. Or for a much-lengthened lifespan. You know, if you wanted to be a werekitty or a werewolf or a puma or something.”

  “They have werekitties?” Charlie asked in bemusement, and for once Whim was the one keeping the conversation on track.

  “But you have so much to do in your world,” Whim continued, his face tense and taut with this thought. “You have… Goddess, Charlie, there is so much you can accomplish. So much I would rob you of, should I take you with me now. You need to have another lover. You need to feel what the world is like without me. You….” Whim looked away for a moment—to their surroundings, to the railroad track that still cut a swath through this vacant field, to the graffiti wall that separated them from everything real in Charlie’s human world. He looked back, and his face was pinched and unhappy, and his eyes were shiny, and not with joy.

  “Charlie, I want you to go out into the world and live, and come back to me and tell me of your life. Can you do that? For a few years, can you do that? I would not miss the man you are becoming for all the Litha nights under the sky.”

  Charlie bit back bitter, bloody disappointment, and he nodded. He’d told himself, hadn’t he? He’d known. Whim was his for a night. This night. He would be Charlie’s on Litha, and wasn’t that more than a mortal could ask?

  Still, he didn’t object when Whim raised a hand to his cheek and wiped his eye with a gentle thumb. Whim took the tear to his lips and tasted, and he made a sound like a man would make if a scalpel made of starlight incised the flesh nearest his heart.

  “I know that taste,” he whispered. “It’s the taste of my own tears, Charlie. But I beg you to meet me here anyway, so we can have laughter too.”

  Charlie sniffed. “What sort of moron would turn down another night like this?” he asked, trying to keep his chin under control. He failed miserably, and Whim took his mouth and kissed him hard, and their bodies, naked now, resumed their delicate dance of flesh as they kissed and kissed, their wet cheeks rubbing together and the taste of their combined tears sweet and bitter on their tongues.

  They made love again—and again—although the condoms in Charlie’s picnic box never came into play. (Whim told him as the night wound down that Charlie wouldn’t need them anyway, not with Whim. Apparently elves didn’t get those kinds of diseases, and they certainly didn’t spread them, and Charlie was relieved to hear that.) When Charlie sounded disappointed, sometime near the break of dawn, because they wouldn’t get to actually do that, Whim had laughed gently.

  “We’ll get around to that,” he promised. “Is it horribly vital that I’m the first person to invade your flesh?”

  Charlie looked at him soberly. “Yes,” he said with emphasis, and Whim nodded, accepting that this was important.

  “If it’s that vital, it can wait until next year,” Whim said quietly, running his fingers through Charlie’s floppy bangs. “Tonight my flesh is sated, but I cannot get enough of touching you and watching you and talking to you. I would rather spend our last hour that way, if we may.”

  Charlie nodded—his body was about wrung out anyway—and they talked quietly until the first light of dawn cracked over the edge of the hill. Whim stood with regret, and both he and Charlie slid their jeans on (after making free use of the wet wipes), and Charlie tucked himself into Whim’s arms to be enfolded into his careful embrace.

  “Goddess, boy,” Whim muttered, “I shall miss you. There is no lying about how much I will miss you.”

  “Someday, Whim?” Charlie asked plaintively. “Someday?”

  “Someday,” Whim told him. “I promise. We don’t take that lightly. Someday, when your living is done here in this world, I’ll take you to my hill and you can be a big tomcat—my big tomcat—and chase sunbeams and play music and do whatever you wish, and we will have every night in a soft bed to touch each other’s skin.”

  Charlie nodded against his chest, forcing himself to be content with that, and then he raised his face for one last kiss.

  “Close your eyes,” Whim whispered, and he did. He felt Whim’s lips against his own, and then on his forehead, and then a faint breeze.

  When he opened his eyes, Whim was gone.

  Whim—Sacrifices

  THE NEXT Litha, Whim was there when Charlie arrived, and he watched his human walk purposefully through their little field with an eye that was both critical and pleased.

  He was growing up. His body was no longer ribs and clavicles, elbows and ears. His face had grown into his nose a little, and his chin was growing strong and square. He still wore ripped jeans and was in a tank top and the ratty trench coat, but Whim was starting to wonder if those were Charlie’s real clothes or if he was dressing that way so Whim would know who he was.

  Whim would always know who he was.

  The illusion of complete adulthood vanished anyway, because as soon as Charlie saw Whim he stopped his purposeful walk and started tear-assing across the field, vaulting into Whim’s arms with enough force to propel Whim backward a few feet as Charlie wrapped his legs around Whim’s waist and met Whim’s mouth with a ferocious kiss.

  Charlie’s taste hadn’t changed either, nor his passion, nor the way he closed his eyes when Whim kissed his ears or his neck. He tasted his way down Whim’s body with enough enthusiasm for Whim to know he’d had other lovers since they’d last met, but when he took Whim’s erection in his mouth—after they’d both scrabbled furiously to get out of their clothes—he made a deep, primal sound in his chest. When he pulled back, a shudder ripped through his body.

  “Thank God. I was starting to wonder if it was my imagination, but it’s not. No one tastes as sweet as you. No one feels like you do under my hands….” His voice choked a little, but he silenced the sadness with the taste of Whim’s erection and his fingers began the walk that Whim had coached him through the year before, and Whim saw black stars in his vision and bucked and all but screamed into the clear night. There was a three-quarter moon on this solstice—it made their clearing look knife-edged in light.

  Whim had his turn then, rediscovering Charlie again and adding some things he was pretty sure they hadn’t done the year before. Charlie whimpered in surprise when he found himself manhandled and turned on his stomach, and then he grunted when Whim wrapped an arm around his waist and hauled his bottom up in the air. Whim pulled a little bit of plump cheek into his mouth, laving with his tongue and suckling on it hard, and Charlie made a series of sounds into the sleeping bag that were a hysterical cross between laughter and arousal.

  Whim let go of Charlie’s flesh with a wet smack of his lips. “You’ve bathed,” he said with satisfaction, reaching around to grasp Charlie’s cock with a sure h
and.

  “I… oh gosh… I prepared….” Charlie was gasping and not very coherent, but Whim got the gist—his body was clean inside and out—and Whim took that as a big hint. Charlie wanted everything, and Whim wanted to give it to him. Still, he teased, separating Charlie’s bottom and touching his tongue to the pucker between the cheeks. Charlie made a squeaking sound that Whim took as invitation, and he was more generous with his kiss. In fact, he spent a bit of time there, licking, stretching, using his fingers to make sure the ring of muscle was relaxed and ready, and Charlie’s shameless begging, his innocent passion, had Whim aroused and (with a little help from the bottle in Charlie’s trench coat pocket) poised at Charlie’s entrance in far shorter a time than Whim would have imagined.

  He reached down first and hauled Charlie upright, so for a moment his chest brushed Charlie’s shoulders and he could whisper in Charlie’s ear. “Mine,” he promised. “Mine, for Litha, forever. Mine.”

  And then he thrust inside, and Charlie moaned, “Yours. God, Whim… I’m yours… always have been… now now now now now….”

  And Whim obliged.

  It was different than other sex, where Whim felt his own flesh alone, no matter how considerate he tried to be of the nerve endings of his partners. For one thing, Whim felt no urge to sing. For another, he was focused—as he always had been—completely and utterly on Charlie. Charlie’s every grunt and groan, every frenzied cry, every gibbering word begging for completion, all of it was Whim’s agenda, his feedback, his evaluation. When Charlie groaned loudly and went down on his elbows, yanking furiously on his own cock in order to climax, Whim was there reaching around, because he didn’t want Charlie to have to do anything this time but scream with pleasure and come.

  Which he did, and then—only then—was Whim prepared to finish, and the sweetness of spending inside Charlie’s body…. Whim would stop often in the following years, out of nowhere, and shudder and smile wistfully because he had possessed such joy.