Down to the Bone: Quantum Gravity Book Five Read Free Page A

their right, as if an entire theatre-curtain’s worth had gone
     sashaying to the ground.
    ‘What the hell . . .?’ Lila was saying, finding herself suddenly naked and touched not by one but by many hands of Zal.
    But Zal was the darkness, his aether given form and mass inTatterdemalion’s wake as some of her faery nature lingered in his aura; a strange gift or theft he understood intuitively
     with a shock as great as the result of his bad-tempered attack. Now Lila’s hands gripped and held onto his body beneath her
     as he was able to repay her kindness with his own new touch. His many hands, many more fingers, long and articulate, delicate
     as feathers, powerful, tentacular, slippery as oil, flowed across her. He was able to caress her everywhere at once as the
     dress’s metamorphic patterns cascaded through his
andalune
body. It was a fantasy he thought could never happen because she was human – they couldn’t even make the common interface
     of one aether body to another like elves would together. But now he could play with her breasts and feel their soft reactivity
     to the teasing of his fingers and the lick of his tongue, at the same time as he played sweeping scales along her back and
     over her buttocks. His senses were filled with the roundness, the soft weight of her, the sound of her gasping moan in his
     ears. Meanwhile his hand on the wall held them from disaster and the one at her waist gripped hard enough on her to anchor
     him and stop him falling into delirium and giving in, coming like a kid before he was ready or the gift was wasted. Before
     that happened he wanted to pour everything he felt for Lila into the way he touched her. Centuries of practice with musical
     instruments of every kind and with his own breath for voice rose through him, guiding his actions and his reactions. A sensitivity
     greater than any he’d had as an ordinary elf flooded back into him and he was able to attune himself to her as keenly as she
     was able to play him.
    He felt her hands slipping down from his shoulders as she grounded and balanced herself on her knees. She leaned forward and
     he felt his breath, then her lips against his neck. The tough cotton of his trousers that had been hard-stretched against
     his hips in that position, suddenly loosened and separated as she precision-dissected them, leaving them in tatters around
     the top of his thighs. He shifted precariously into a better position, crates juddering. He was as hungry to join her fully
     as she was for him. In the complete darkness of his shroud body the touch sensation was so heightened he had to bite his lips
     as she mounted him.
    The metal elementals bound into her form acted as conduits for his shadow energy. There was traffic both ways; a subtle vibration
     ran through his aether body as she found a way to touch him back through the same circuit. Her charge, metabolised by the
     elementals,was very strong. The absolute dark of his covering,
andalune
about them, began to glow very faintly red like a smouldering ember. He noticed it and felt the change but he was too far
     gone to care what it was or what it meant. It wasn’t until she screamed and then sighed with delight on him and he did the
     same that he opened his eyes to a hot yellow-white flare so bright he was nearly blinded. Without his concentration his
andalune
reverted to its ambient energy form and she grabbed and held him as the crates gave way at that moment and they fell to the
     concrete floor amid the smoking, splintering wreckage. He landed on his ass with a painful jolt that ran up his spine and
     he got a lungful of nasty smoke. Lila was laughing. He heard her quick footsteps and then the hiss of a foam fire extinguisher
     being used. Something wet splattered around his feet and ankles as he stood up.
    Now that he had lost contact with her the brilliant glare died away rapidly, through all the colours to red and then crimson
     before his ordinary shadow body was all