Page 51 of The Troll’s Summer Flame

“Are boyfriends allowed to be clingy? Want your touch all the time?” Gordon asks, lifting my hand and showing me how the shiny red skin is now almost back to normal thanks to the balm he applied.

“In my case, yes. I want that. If I want space, I’ll tell you.”

Gordon nods, speechless, but this time I think he’s a little bit awed that love and talking just... exist here. That touch, and music, and cuddling are something easily shared.

And it also makes me acutely aware that my boyfriend is not experienced in physical intimacy, and that worries me, just a little. What if I mess up in “teaching” him? What if I gross him out with the things I want to do?

Time to change the subject. “This food is amazing. And you say the chef is an Orc?”

Gordon nods with a contented smile. “But his wife is a human. She owns Cakes by Claire, and they have a little baby now. Well. Not very little, because Georgie Fenclan is about my size.”

I listen, still rubbing my hand against Gordon’s knee. Fears slide away as we eat and talk, and the cat purrs between our feet.

Andrea’s feet are so much better. She insists on walking around the apartment in soft teal slippers, and she plays the piano for an hour before dinner. I work on my report and my investigation, studying images of claw marks, sketching them, and sending them to the people who might recognize them.

An upbeat piece plays—ragtime, Andrea calls it, and I study some images Mr. Minegold has sent over, pictures from an old text of “magical” creatures.

Four claw marks. Close together. I keep sketching as I smell the wonderful ginger-garlic smell of whatever Andrea is making for supper. She comes over between numbers, resting her hand on my arm, kissing the top of my head, her breasts pressed into my back.

I want to feel that soft body in my arms again. Naked, this time, without water washing over us, or towels in between us. I know how humans and trolls mate, how most sentient bipedal races mate. I just don’t know if Andrea will be disgusted by how badly I want her once she knows how perverse my infatuation with her has become in just the space of a day.

Since she told me she loved me.

I want to prove my love, to give her every pleasure, and I don’t think I know how to do that. All I know is that I want to be pressed against her—inside of her. To taste every inch of her skin. To see every inch of her body.

I have to stop thinking like this, because I’m very much afraid it sounds like I’m consumed with lust, that my sexual desires, long buried, are now coursing through me as if I were possessed by a—

“Succubus!” I shout.

Piano chords crash. Chopin opens one annoyed eye from where he’s sitting on my nap, upside down and dozing, his little paws flexing in the air.

“Four claw marks close together, as close as a human hand’s fingers. Sparks. Sulfuric smell. Succubus!”

“Succubus. Like... Sexy dream demon things?”

“They can invade dreams, yes, but they have a physical form. I know that these corporeal forms can live in our world and seek redemption, just like... Just like my kind. There are some peaceful trolls in other parts of the world, or so I hear,” I end with a wistful note in my voice. Suddenly, I’m not thinking of a reformed stranger.

I’m wondering if my brothers ever realized there was more to living near humans than simply avoiding the stone curse and not getting caught or hunted down. I wonder if Matthew is some lonely hermit in a wood someplace, hunting and fishing.

I wonder if maybe Hugo, my little brother, the youngest one, the weakest one, the “runt,” ever managed to leave. Move out west. He used to dream of raising sheep in Montana.

“How would a succubus exist if she’s reformed? I mean, obviously I never met a real one, or at least I don’t think I have, given I didn’t even know that ‘monsters’ were real and living right around us.” Andrea stands beside me now, shaking her head and squinting at the screen of the laptop I brought with me from work. “But don’t they like... have sex with someone while they’re sleeping and live off of their souls?”

“That’s a good description, and not too far off. Reformed ones have sex with willing partners in a physical state and feed off the sexual energy they get.” I have heard that in some cases it’s the literal “life force,” too, meaning the essence of their partners that creates life, and I don’t know if that means they need to swallow it or the partners have to ejaculate inside of them. I don’t think I want to discuss all of the precise nature of succubus survival with Andrea.

Andrea, who is massaging my shoulders and looking at the image of a feral, feminine form with clawed hands, flaming skin, and bat-like wings. Naked. Riding some man in an old woodcut image.

I quickly click the tab back to my report, throat tight and cheeks hot with embarrassment. “I was not aroused by the image. I was comparing the marks I saw with the beings who could make them.”

“It’s okay. I... I don’t know what exactly arouses you. If you tell me, that would make me feel better.”

“It would?” I almost fall off my chair.

“Then I won’t have to guess.”

“Oh. Right.” That makes sense. “You.”

“What?”