Ironside (Modern Faerie Tales 3)

"Neil," Luis said, his voice distant and unimportant. "Snap out of it.”

Corny leaned into their caresses, butting his head against a phooka's palm. His skin felt hot and oversensitized. He groaned.

Long fingers tugged at his gloves.

"Don't do that," Corny warned, but he wanted them to. He wanted them to caress every part of him, but he hated himself for wanting it. He thought of his sister, following a dripping kelpie boy off a pier, but even that didn't curb his longing.

"Come, come," said a tall faery with hair as blue as the feathers of a bird. Corny blinked.

"I'll hurt you," Corny said languorously, and the faeries around him laughed. The laughter wasn't particularly mocking or cruel, but it hurt all the same. It was the amusement of watching a cat threaten the tail of a wolf.

They slid off the gloves. Decayed rubber dust flaked from the tips of his fingers.

"I hurt everything I touch," Corny said dully.

He felt hands at his hips, in his mouth. The soil was cool against his back, soothing when the rest of him was prickling with heat. Without meaning to he reached out for one of the faeries, feeling hair flow across his hands like silk, feeling the shocking warmth of muscled flesh.

His eyes opened with the sudden knowledge of what he was doing. He saw, as from a great distance, the tiny pinholes in cloth where his fingers touched, the blackberry stains of bruises blooming on necks, the brown age spots spreading like smeared dirt across ancient skin. They didn't even seem to notice.

A slow smile spread over his lips. He could hurt them even if he couldn't resist them.

He let the pixies stroke him, arching up and biting at the exposed neck of the elfin boy, inhaling their strange mineral-and-earth scents, letting lust overtake him.

"Neil!" Luis shouted, pulling Corny up by the back of his shirt. Corny stumbled, reaching out to right his balance, and Luis pulled back before Corny's hand could catch him. Corny grabbed Luis's shirt instead, the fabric singeing. Corny stumbled and fell.

"Snap out of it," Luis ordered. He was breathing fast, maybe with fear. "Stand up.”

Corny pushed himself onto his knees. Desire made speaking difficult. Even the movement of his own lips was disturbingly like pleasure.

A faery rested long fingers on Corny's calf. The touch felt like a caress and he sagged toward it.

Warm lips were next to his. "Get up, Neil." Luis spoke softly against Corny's mouth, as if daring Corny to obey. "Time to get up.”

Luis kissed him. Luis, who could do everything that he couldn't, who was smart and sarcastic and the last boy in the world likely to want an awkward geek like Corny. It was dizzying to open his mouth against Luis's. Their tongues slid together for a devastating moment, then Luis pulled back.

"Give me your hands," he said, and Corny obediently held out his wrists. Luis bound them with a shoelace.

"What are you—" Corny tried to make some sense of what was happening, but he was still reeling.

"Thread your fingers together," Luis said in his competent, calm voice and pressed his mouth to Corny's again.

Of course. Luis was trying to save him. Like he saved the man with the mouth full of pennies or Lala with the snaking vines. He knew about cures and poultices and the medicinal value of kisses. He knew how to distract Corny long enough to bind his hands, how to use himself as bait to lure Corny away from danger. He saw right through to Corny's carefully hidden desire, and—worse than using it against him—Luis had used it to rescue him. Exhilaration turned to acid in Corny's stomach.

He stumbled back and staggered toward the curtain of branches. They scraped his face as he passed through.

Luis followed. "I'm sorry," he called after Corny. "I'm—I didn't—I thought—”

"I'm? I didn't? I thought?" Corny shouted at him. His face was suddenly too hot. Then his stomach clenched. He barely had time to turn before retching up chunks of old mushrooms.

Predictably, Luis had been right about the cakes.

An owl's yellow eyes caught the moonlight, making Kaye jump. She'd given up on calling Corny's name and was now just trying to find her way back to the revel. Each time she turned toward the music, it seemed to be coming from another direction.

"Lost?" said a voice, and she jumped. It was a man with greenish-gold hair and white moth wings that folded across his bare back.

"Kind of," Kaye said. "I don't suppose you could point me the way?”

He nodded and pointed one finger to the left and the other to the right.