The Care and Feeding of Griffins by R. Lee Smith Page B

“Please, no!  I’m waiting!”
    “ We are all waiting,” came the sorrowing reply.
    “ Waiting so long—”
    “ For you.”
    “ Lie with us, virgin, and be repaid.”
    The mouth at her sex withdrew and the brush of intangible flesh slipped up between her thighs.  Taryn tried to twist away, but there was nothing to twist against.   The female body pressing at her, kissing her, suddenly clutched at her with a wail.  Something was pulling at it, gently but insistently removing it from her.  The whispers turned to wordless wind as the phantoms fought each other in their quiet, pleading way.
    Sobbing then, soft as a spring rain, and the ghostly pressure of small breasts turned to a veil of vapor and blew away.  The chill of insubstantial flesh covered her at once, without weight, without texture, but owning her all the same.  Hands cupped her breasts.  Lips pressed at her own.  Her legs were being pried open —gently, so gently—and coldness in an icy bar slipped along her thigh.
    “ No,” Taryn said, shoving out into glacial air.
    “ Yes.  Oh yes.”  He, and it was a he now, that much was undeniably evident, kissed her face with a passion that bordered on the purely frantic and finished at her mouth, forcing his arctic breath inside her in spite of her struggles.  “You came, virgin, you came to us.  You honored us.  Now lie with us, as it was in ancient times, lie with us and let us remember before your will is exacted.  That is the price.  That is the agreement of these long ages.  The power you seek is mine to give, but you must let me have one moment to love.”
    Taryn didn ’t think.  She knew by some dream-instinct that waking up wasn’t within her power and she had only seconds to act.  She reached down between them, as slow and easy with her touch as the phantom trying to love her, and closed her hand around the coldness poised to enter her.  When she’d tried to push, there had been no substance, but in gentleness, she found him.
    He stopped at once, his breath withdrawing to hiss somewhere above her.  His hands and lips and every other part of him tensed once and faded to mist even as the part of him she held grew harder.  She ran her fingers lightly down the length of him —cold and slick as ice—until she touched the ghostly non-mass of his hips.  She squeezed lightly and stroked back up, feeling the exquisite detail of his shape.  He was long and thick, and the shape of him was utterly alien—ridged and knobbed and gnarled—a shape her mind quailed at even as her hand tried over and over to sculpt him into something more natural.  As she stroked him, he seemed to take on greater substance, until she could feel the subtle veining along his malformed shaft, the swelling at the base of him, the crowning of his glans.
    The other was weeping, her faint voice seeming to come from all around her, but she didn ’t intrude.  Taryn didn’t know the rules here, but she sensed there had been some sort of contest.  The unseen male atop her had won; the female could not touch her now.  And he, who could certainly take whatever he wanted in spite of her resistance, was content to have only this from her willing hand rather than take all from her struggling body.
    The cold was unending.  She could neither warm his flesh nor numb her own, but she kept moving, letting her instincts guide her.  She ’d never held a man in her hand like this.  She’d touched, but there had always been some layer between them.  She supposed she was dreaming and this still didn’t count, but it seemed so real.  Like the threat to her virginity, the sense of consequence was close all around her.  As she stroked him, she could hear his breath shivering and hoarse above her, and she knew a true kernel of excitement sparking deep inside herself.  She was sharply aware of her ignorance, and she wanted, now that fear had faded, to please him. 
    Sh e sat up slowly, and he drifted back.  She could