Dim Sum Asylum(68)
“Hazard of being part fae.” I returned Trent’s touch, gliding my fingernails along the inside of his thigh. His cock was ready, stretching upward, its head slick with a bit of moisture beading at the slit. I ran my thumb through the damp, then brought it up to my mouth to discover he tasted like a brush of peppermint oil and salt. “You taste good. Like a shot of winter on my tongue. Wonder if it’s a faerie thing like my wings.”
“I don’t know much about the faerie.” He made a face, one tinted with regret and something sourer I couldn’t name. “It wasn’t something any of us talked about. Hell, I didn’t even know what I’d been spliced with until about a year ago. Up until then, it was just something that made cold.”
“Your parents didn’t talk to you about… I mean, they spliced you.” I rolled over, propping myself up onto my elbow. “Did they tell you why? Costs a lot of money to splice fae into a human embryo, and they didn’t tell you why?”
He stiffened, his body going taut, and his face grew hard, stony in the faint golden light. “Never met my parents. Someone dumped me in a baby drop-off box down in Los Angeles.” I heard him pull in a hiss of air. Then he rumbled, “I was raised in a crèche down in Santa Monica. Raised, educated, and sent out into the world. Joined the military and ended up on Special Forces with a bunch of other splices. There were about thirty of us when the program was closed down.”
“Who the Hell pays for a genetic splice, then abandons the kid?” The cost of a splice boggled my mind when I’d first learned most people who were like me happened on purpose rather than by chance.
Blending fae and human genetics was a difficult process, with magic and science needed to push the foreign strands together. Unless it involved a Scottish Odonata, a three-month-long affair with a yakuza crime boss’s son, and a lot of whiskey-sake bombs, the fail rate was spectacularly high, with the spliced infant not manifesting any of its fae abilities. Going through all of that, then tossing the kid into a safe baby box at an ER was crazy.
“Don’t know. The unit became my family. We were… we were all kind of in the same boat. Spliced fae hybrids who didn’t fit in their parents’ human worlds. If anything, I had it better than a lot of the guys. At least I didn’t have anyone at home wishing I’d turned out different.” His fingers were moving again, coursing over my wings, up my spine, over my shoulder blade. “Lots of people think their kids are going to get wings or… Hell, I don’t know what they think, but most of us end up looking for a place to belong. And we found it in that unit.
“We were trained to be an investigative and tactical force. We went out, did the job, then came back to the base for some downtime. Gathered evidence before and after missions for federal prosecution teams, which is how I ended up leapfrogging through to inspector. I lived, ate, and shit with the same guys for years. There wasn’t any family or kids or anything. It was good until… well, things went to shit, and that’s how I ended up here.” His smile held a warmth that didn’t reach his eyes… it didn’t even reach the ends of his mouth, but it flirted with me, a wry twist of dark humor in the solidness that was Trent. “Now if only my partner would stop trying to get himself killed, I might be able to get on with my life.”
“That’s….” I didn’t have any words for the emotions rushing through me. “I’m sorry you lost that. I am.”
“Don’t look at me like that. I’m fine. Or I will be.” Trent frowned, but his hand moved up over onto my hip, his palm resting on the rise of my ass. “I like being a cop, and after years of having someone dictate where I was going to go next, it’s nice to go home. To have a home instead of sharing dorms with ten other guys. Chinatown’s an interesting district, and I lucked out getting into Arcane Crimes. Not to mention pairing up with you.”
“Yeah, that’s a bonus. Least the brass could have done was teach you the basics. Who the Hell shows up for work without tea leaves or salt?”
“I look forward to learning everything you can teach me.” He stretched over me, pushing me back onto the mattress. His cocky smile was back in place, his breath hot on my face. “Maybe I can teach you a few things too. Just lean back. I’ll show you.”
“I don’t know about teaching me anything. I know quite a lot.” Moving under him was like trying to slide out from under a ton of bricks, but he shifted his legs, giving me some space. “I could probably teach you a few things. I mean, I’m not Papilio, but I can do some amazing things with my tongue if—”
“Really, do you ever stop talking?” Trent muttered. “Let me give that busy brain something else to think about.”
Trent’s fingers were in me, deep and slick with oil. I panted, arching my back as he pushed in farther, spreading me apart. I could barely grasp the head of his dick with my hand, stroking at him in time with his curling movements, and I growled when he pulled himself free of my grip. I was going to need a lot of work to get him into me, but I was willing to give it a go. I rolled, pulled forward when he wrapped his arm around my side, and I gasped when his mouth found my ribs, peppering damp kisses down the length of my dominant wing. He found a sensitive spot, biting at it, and I squeezed down, stroking his length with a hard tug.
“Keep doing that and I’m going to come all over your bed,” he growled into my ribs. My skin there was wet, laved and bitten where he’d explored me. “Then I’ll have to kill you so no one knows I shot off too early.”