She shimmers in the moonlight, a reflection in reverse, rippling in the darkness as she stands with her feet submerged in the misted pool. The trees are black, branches scratched and sketched into the pale night, clawing towards her out of the spilled ink of the forest. She watches the woman approaching her, walking barefoot, wading through the undergrowth, ferns and foxgloves plucking at the hem of her nightdress, brushing her fingertips. The woman reaches the edge of the pool, ribbons of cold yellow-blue light writhing on her body.
"I knew you'd come."
"What are you?"
"Nix."
The woman does not remember how she got here. She does not know why she came. She wants to stay. She wants to be in the water. The surface is like frosted glass, wisped with mist and eerie turquoise like some strange, exotic drink, ringed with narcissi like lace. They bow and kiss her feet as she dips her toe into the pool.
"Take a step."
"I'll sink."
"You're perfectly safe."
The nix looks like she has been spun from the fabric where moonbeams meet water. Her hair flows into the pool and dissipates like fingers of frost. Her eyes are dark and hard. Her mouth is soft. She extends a hand with long, clever fingers. The woman takes it.
The water laps at the soles of her feet.
She does not sink.
The nix's arms are cool, they soothe, she is embalmed in her embrace. She sinks against her lips, giving into her shape like down. Their kiss is as slow as the ripples from dropping petals. The nix is coaxing and the woman is curious. Their tongues hook each other, beckon and press and stir. Their fingers move carefully, feeling their way in the dark. They investigate each other. The nix traces the details of her body, fingertips alighting on moles and dimples and the stitching of old scars. She interlaces their hands and strokes the sides of her fingers, noting their slight crookedness, melding their palms together to draw the warmth into herself. Their lips seal together. The nix kisses deeply and the woman loses her breath, feels the blood rush to her face and the nix's mouth grow hungrier in response. Her heart thumps against her ribs and carries her forward. A shock pulses through her as their bodies connect and her nightdress dissolves and trickles into the mist. Their nipples touch and kindle each other, pointing with cold and keenness. Their bellies and their thighs and their mounds lay along each other. It is like stepping into a waterfall. The closeness of the nix's skin pours through her, she feels like a deck of cards shuffling. She breaks the kiss to gasp for breath and the withdrawal needles her instantly, she plunges back into it and her face flushes as she feels the nix's mouth twist with a flicker of cocky satisfaction. It twangs her nerves, she scoops her hands into gushing hair to extinguish it. She doesn't want to be nervous.
The nix gasps with the sound of carp tails whisking the surface of a pond. She curls her fingers and draws fine, sharp nails down the woman's spine. The woman shivers and moans into her mouth, her vertebrae vibrating. The nix catches the tremor in her palms and shepherds it around her waist and hips and down into her thighs. She clutches the roundness just under her ass, firm and supple. She nips the woman's lip, sweet as hibiscus, and chuckles at the woman's whimper of want as she draws away from the kiss. The woman's eyes stay closed, her brow creases, her lips pucker, cloying and catching the light. Her skin turns to dark glass in the swirling shadows of the pool, the flute of her neck glancing silver. She ducks her lips to it. A low growl rumbles in her throat.
The woman hears it. Her heart starts to canter. The nix's hands close on her, her grip sinking through her muscles. Her teeth graze her and her breath prickles, her lips are silk and her tongue is mercury. They run their hands on each other, they pick up speed, blood rising to the surface and simmering at every touch. The clearing echoes with the sound of snatched breath and scuffing skin and the snick of wet flesh. The nix's fingers sneak between them. They glide under the woman's belly button and, even in the coolness of the pool, heat flares across her lower body. Those nimble fingers splay and stretch, moulding to the shape of her pelvis. They brush the crown of dark curls and a shudder jerks through her legs.
"Touch me."
The nix slips her lips around her earlobe and sucks, stealthy laughter stroking round the hollow of her jaw. The nix's fingers creep down, down, down...
"Yes." Her sigh lances the air. Her knee drops cocked to open her legs and sends a pulse through the water. The nix's hand darts into the dark and cups and clutches. It cages the heat rolling in her vulva and intensifies it, stokes it to a roaring, wild burn. Her fingers bow and press into the tenderness. The pleasure and the relief rushes up the woman's body, tingling in the roots of her hair, unravelling the tendons in her shoulders. She clutches the nix at the small of her back, her skin smooth and misted with water. The nix stirs her, her fingertips delving into the split plum of her flesh, juices welling at the pressure. Her stirring creates a coil of longing at her core, spinning her like a top, winding her tighter and tighter until every fibre of her body is quivering for release. Her moans are coming in spectres of steam from her lips and drifting into the night.
The nix starts to tumble down her body, her steadiness flees and the woman is shocked with avalanching kisses, streaming sensation from her neck to her shoulder and across her breasts and belly. The nix glances up at her with delicious wickedness as she catches her nipple in her mouth and sucks and laps and sneaks her teeth around the delicate rosebud points and teases them red. She rocks the length of her fingers along her clit, faster, faster, it swells into the crook of her index. She avalanches again, splashing kisses over the woman's body so she feels like she is plummeting into a lake. She gasps for air, her eyes flutter open and the stars reel through the embroidery of branches. The surface of the pool kicks up around her feet. The nix's giggles slosh with it and she sinks to her waist in the water, her hair swirling around her in the mist. Her knuckles turn white as she grasps the tops of the woman's thighs and jolts her forward. The woman's insides lurch, her ache ramming the underside of her skin. She drops her eyes to the nix. Her dark eyes are thrilling, their butane flame glimmer and mother-of-pearl shine, their incredible, unsettling depth, their devouring greed, greedy the way water is greedy, the way it pulls everything into it and swallows it whole.
The nix nods her head closer to the cherry gleam of her clit. She smiles, roguish and satin.
The woman nods, vigorously, feverishly, biting her lip to hold in a mewing plea she feels rising in her chest.
The nix's tongue emerges from between her teeth, black and shining. A thread of saliva drips from its flicking tip. She lowers her eyes. She presses her mouth to the woman's spiced sweetness.
The tightness at the woman's core snaps. Her ache bursts into tumultuous pleasure, surging through her body, pebbles of sensation skimming across her skin and casting ripples through her pores. The nix slinks and serpentines her tongue. She drives it deep in slow, hard circles. She slips it between her labia, tickles her seam, coats her in her ravenousness, spills flame over her. Pleasure sweeps in waves through her flesh. She rocks her hips and the nix catches her rhythm, clutching her close. They ebb and flow against each other in a river-current rhythm that threatens to carry the woman away. Her wetness gushes, she can feel herself flowing into the nix's mouth, the sounds of sucking and lapping and soft groans of satiation petering into the eddy of water.
The woman combs her hands into the roots of the nix's hair, twisting her fingers into the silken threads and pulling her closer, deeper, scooping her hips to summon her tongue as the want overtakes her senses, stifles the scents of watercress and willow, suppresses the thrum in her nerves. She thrusts and sighs and the nix grinds her lips on her, slipping in her arousal. Her tongue moves faster, dancing and dining. She sucks the blood to the surface then javelins the piqued sensitivity. Need fizzes in the woman's abdomen. Her knees are buckling, her nipples are singing, the back of her neck is searingly hot and her vulva is submerged in agonising joy.
