The doll had a particularly creepy face.
“Miss Claudette is from the mid-eighteen hundreds,” the female auctioneer read, “once belonging to a privileged little girl of the era, she is a magnificent model of the expectations of a typical Victorian lady.”
You bit your lip in anticipation as hands reached into the frame, turning the doll on her pedestal to show off the detailing on the dress; the creepy, painted bisque face forgotten.
You had no idea who he was—he never spoke, never stepped into the frame, never did anything other than manipulate the items at the behest of the sultry voiced woman in charge, but you’d be lying if you pretended he wasn’t the reason you kept tuning in week after week to their oddity auction, his lovely hands and the banter afterwards.
Long and white and sculpted, veins and tendons standing out in relief, his hands were their own work of art, like a living sculpture. The endlessly long fingers were tipped in equally lengthy nails, painted matte black and ending in lethal-looking points, you supposed calling them claws would likely be more accurate.
You wondered, not for the first time, if he were a werewolf, or some similar creature.
He wouldn’t have the nails all the time, you reminded yourself, thinking of what Kenzie had said. The chipper werewolf had been in your gaming group for several months, a welcome addition, for geeky clubs tended to be overrun with guys, and you’d become friendly with her almost immediately, bonding over a shared love of anime and crafting. You’d casually wondered aloud if werecreatures retained elements of their bestial side, like sharp claws, perhaps, but the freckle-faced young woman had quashed your supposition.
“Nope,” she’d announced cheerfully, seating herself at the gaming table. “Unless it’s like, the day of the change, maybe.”
You had no idea who or what he was, but conversing with him after the auction each week had become a bright spot in your weekend calendar.
It had started when you discovered the wonderful, weird world of oddities auctions run weekly on Instagram. You’d always had a penchant for the macabre and had amassed a nice little collection over the years, but now small businesses were hurting and you could enjoy oddity shopping from the comfort of your phone. You’d heard of the Cat & Crow but had never made the drive to the neighboring city to visit the shop in person, and were excited to see what they had to offer.
“Welcome everyone to the Cat & Crow, thanks for joining us today.”
The woman before the camera wore the uniform of every other social media witch you followed—trendy, artfully tattered black clothes, her raven-colored hair done up in a crown of braids and dreadlocks; her eyeliner expertly winged, tattoos that appeared to be tree branches reaching across her clavicle, with half a dozen rings on each hand.
“Winners, Holt will be contacting you directly at the auction’s end, please be ready with your method of payment. We’ve got a lot of unique items to get through today, so let’s get started!”
It wasn’t until the third week you’d tuned in that you’d chatted with the mysterious Holt. You’d been outbid on several of the items you liked, but managed to snag two others, including a victorian poison ring, and he’d recognized your screen name.
Hello again! What were you the big winner of this week? Lot 23 and 47…the onyx and gold poison ring and the pocket-sized surgical tool set. Hmm! Big weekend plans?
You’d laughed aloud at your laptop, cheeks coloring despite the fact you were alone. Nothing nefarious as all that, I swear! Although my table game group had better stay on their toes tonight…
Oh fun! I used to belong to one of those before I moved. So what are you guys playing right now?
After that week, he asked after your game group at the end of every auction. You told him of the hours-long game of Catan, the entire month of Call of Cthulhu, the bickering session that had broken out over a game of Azule.
That sounds great actually. I need to start doing fun things again, since we’ve started the auctions I feel like I’m working 24/7.
You bit your lip now, thinking of his words from the previous week.
After the creepy doll had been some Templar altar piece, a hand of glory with only one candle remaining, and a terrifying victorian wind-up toy, and the only thing to which you’d paid attention was his hands and his sharp claws, shifting things around as the witchy-looking woman spoke.
You’d realized your shopping habit had become more expensive than you’d initially counted on, and that for the last several weeks you were truly only bidding on items as a way to talk to him after the auction’s close. Just ask him. You don’t need to buy anything today, you don’t even like the stuff! Just take a deep breath and do it. Deciding the voice in your head was right, you did as it advised, sucking in a breath and leaning over your keyboard before you changed your mind.
Hi! Not a winner this week, nothing really caught my eye. You swallowed hard, pushing on. I wanted to invite you to join our group sometime! We meet every Saturday at the Melted Meeple, so tonight, lol! You grimaced at yourself, but persevered. We’re just playing CAH right now, but there’s talk of a D&D campaign starting up. The more the merrier!
You waited a minute, then two, before pushing yourself up from the desk. If he didn’t respond, it wasn’t a big deal, you told yourself. He was working, after all, and you really did need to get ready to go meet your friends that evening. Hair fluffed, clothes changed, the handful of dishes you’d left in the sink washed and put away…you went back to your laptop just before you needed to get going, holding your breath as you looked at the screen.
That sounds great! I have to finish things up here, but hopefully I won’t be too late. This will be fun, I feel like we’re old friends at this point!
You told yourself the bounce in your step as you left was simply because it was a nice evening, that you were happy to spend time with your friends and nothing more. That’s it. Just another normal night.
.
.
“So what are you going to do?” you asked him for the dozenth time that evening, before biting into a crust of melty cheese, your eyes rolling back in bliss. The Melted Meeple specialized in gaming and grilled cheese, and they excelled at both.
Holt shrugged, spearing a sweet potato fry. He was a finicky eater, carefully cutting things with a knife and fork, scrutinizing the menu every week as though it were the first time he’d seen it, before ordering the exact same thing. He took his time with things and could not be rushed—spearing his fries one at a time, swirling the straw in his drink until the ice had all but melted into the alcohol—and as a result, the two of you spent more time tucked away at your own little table than you did playing the group’s game, but you wouldn’t have it any other way.
You were smitten.
You’d been a nervous wreck that first night, raising your head anxiously every time the Meeple’s great doors were pulled open, but you did your best to hide it from your friends. You were used to being the steady one, after all, the one who gave advice and provided a ready shoulder for the whole group…you didn’t begrudge your friends their drama and woes, but it made it hard when you had your own anxieties and nowhere to turn.
Kenzie had dropped into the seat next to you, had been going on about the latest disaster with her boyfriend when her head had snapped up, nose wrinkled.
“Ugh, cat. It’s too close to the moon to deal with smelling that.”
You hadn’t noticed the door pulling open, and weren’t entirely sure how he’d managed to do it silently, but a man who’d not been standing before the entrance a moment earlier had stood there then, his citron-green cat eyes scanning the room hesitantly. You’d known it was him instantly.
Thick raven-colored hair and bone-white skin, slim black jeans and a black leather jacket atop a blood red shirt, he was a fitting counterpart to the witch who ran the oddity auction. One of his thick, arched black brows had cocked hopefully when they landed on you staring at him, and you raised a hesitant hand in greeting, smiling when his lips split, revealing a row of blinding white teeth. You took note of the long, hooked incisors in his smile.
“Is he a werecat?” you’d hissed to Kenzie as he made his way across the huge room.
She’d sniffed the air, wrinkling her nose again. “No. Just…just a cat. I don’t get it. I’m going to grab a drink before the next game starts, you want anything?”
He was a familiar, you’d learned. A witch’s familiar, a sleek black cat when he wasn’t the handsome, slightly goth-looking man sitting across from you. His witch, the auctioneer, Arabeth the mistress of Crows—“Bethany,” he’d corrected flatly, rolling his eyes—was his business partner and co-owner of the Cat & Crow, a naturally gifted witch with no direction or commitment to the craft, according to him.
“Let me tell you, working in retail was not a career ambition for me,” he’d laughed that first night, as the two of you sat at your own small table away from the group, sharing a basket of fries before joining the game. “But the shop is successful and it keeps me busy, since she’s all but abandoned her path.”
By the end of the night, your stomach had been a riot of butterflies. He was stable and confident, a sharp departure from the majority of your friend group, you’d realized. Stable and confident, and ridiculously good looking. You’d thought he was of a middling height when you’d been seated, but he towered over you, engulfing you in a hug at the evening’s end.
“This was a lot of fun, thanks for inviting me!”
“Every Saturday,” you replied breathlessly, trying to restrain yourself from burying your face against his solid chest. You didn’t know what Kenzie was talking about, he didn’t smell like a cat at all—he smelled like black musk and pine, making you think of a dark forest on an autumn night, masculine and sexual…“I hope you’ll join us again!”
“If you’ll be here, I definitely will,” he’d said, giving you another one of those sharp-edged smiles, his eyes glowing on the dark street.
That had been over a month ago, and you were head-over heels in your crush.
He’d joined you every Saturday, and it had become your custom to eat together, away from the group before joining in whatever game was starting. When both Kenzie and another friend had flaked on going furniture shopping with you, he’d taken their place, doing the heavy lifting, putting together a bookcase, and paying for dinner afterwards, despite your insistence to the contrary. It was a revelation, having someone there to hear your problems, and you were happy to do the same, whenever he came in grumbling about his deteriorating relationship with his witch.
When your gaming group began planning its Dungeons and Dragons campaign at last, you discovered Holt had never played and wasn’t familiar with any of the rules.
“First we have to decide your character,” you explained, pushing a character sheet across the table. “Race, attributions, what you’d like your strengths to be…”
“Tell me again why I can’t be a bard who’s also a sorcerer.”
“You can cast spells as a bard! We’ve been through this!”
“I want to be sneaky and magical and have everyone love me.”
You’d come to the Cat & Crow once, popping in unannounced, and had seen him in his cat form. Sleek and sinuous, jet black with bright green eyes, the black cat had rubbed up against your ankles as you’d stood there, after being greeted by the friendly-seeming witch, mewling determinedly before darting off into the back room. Holt had come breezing out a moment later, announcing to Bethany that you were going out for sushi and would be back in an hour.
“So basically you just want to play yourself,” you laughed, receiving a not-at-all angelic smile in return.
It was the first grownup relationship you’d ever had, you’d realized with a start that evening. You loved your friends and wouldn’t change a thing about them, but it was nice not playing therapist, having a solid give-and-take of support. Your first real adult relationship, and it’s completely one sided. Brava.
Still, you thought, when he slinked through the Melted Meeple’s doors that night, dropping into a chair gracefully and announcing he was officially a free agent familiar, you were glad for the opportunity to listen, knowing he’d be just as present and solid for you.
He shrugged at your repeated question. “Go to the agency on Monday, file for a new witch, I guess.”
“Does…does that mean you’ll have to move? What if they pair you with a witch on the other side of the world? What about the shop?”
His laugh was a dark curl, full of mirth. “Nothing archaic like that. This is where I live, the shop is my day job. We’re still business partners, but she’s quitting the craft entirely and I don’t have that luxury. The magic world is ninety percent bureaucracy and paperwork, it’ll probably be at least a year before they even get to my file.”
“Oh, that’s-that’s good,” you sighed in relief, not wanting to contemplate what would happen if he had to move away. “Good! You’ll have more free time now!”
Holt’s smile was wide, the light overhead winking off his fangs as leaned across the table. “And I know just who I’m going to spend it with,” he purred, before catching your lips with his own.
.
.
You hadn’t really known what to expect from the home of a familiar—a part of you was expecting some gothic lair with dripping candles and some ancient book of dark spellwork on a pedestal—but a completely average garden-level apartment on a tight lane of historic brownstones had not been it. The neighborhood was trendy: full of crowded little bistros with packed, street-side patios and bars boasting craft cocktails on swirling chalk signs outside their doors. You didn’t mind an occasional foray into adventure, but you couldn’t imagine living somewhere so noisy and bustling.
“Here we are,” Holt announced, tugging your hand and carefully leading you down the short stairwell in front of the dark-bricked building. “The neighborhood is great, but I love my little dungeon.”
You understood his meaning the moment the door closed behind you. The apartment was small but tidy, with plush-looking furniture and towering bookshelves, each crammed with curios, macabre trinkets and gimcrack. The street-level windows did little to illuminate the space, giving it a dim, cloistered feeling, amplified by the red-shaded lamps on either side of the sofa.
Long-fingered hands encircled your waist, claws dragging lightly over your stomach, sending a shiver up your spine and reminding you remembered why you were here. You were terribly aware of your own heartbeat when warm lips pressed to the back of your neck, hot breath and the glance of fangs moving over your delicate skin, and your head tilted on its own accord, giving him better access.
“It looks like a bordello in this place,” you mused, laughing when you felt his outraged gasp against your shoulder.
“Slander!” he exclaimed, the press of his hot tongue making your back arch, “calumny and lies. I demand restitution.”
It had been two weeks since he’d kissed you over your grilled cheese sandwich, two weeks of making out like teenagers and groping each other on the street corner every Saturday, two weeks of thinking about him every night, waking heated and flushed in your bed with an ache between your thighs and slick coating your fingers, and tonight you’d decided enough was enough.
He was steady and confident and reliable, but you’d noticed that he deferred to you in almost every matter. If you asked his opinion, he gave it; if you told him he was in charge of the evening’s plans, he already had one, but he let you control the direction of things rather than steamrolling you, and you wondered if it was something he was compelled to do as a familiar. You’ve got to be the one who makes the first move, you realized. Then he’ll take over and you can stop panicking.
“I think,” you murmured into his ear that night, as you sat on the edge of the gaming table, waiting to join in on the next round, “you should show me your apartment tonight, and we can work on your rolls.” The D&D campaign had started, and two sessions in the entire campaign had been entirely waylaid by a troublesome tiefling character who refused to follow the group’s initiative, and Holt had been smug that he’d not been the new player to cause problems.
“Hmmm,” he hummed, green eyes flashing, “we can do other things while we’re there.”
The apartment was dark, but somehow you were led to the bedroom without tripping over anything, the bedding beneath you cool and thick as Holt pressed you to your back. His eyes were glowing green orbs, rapidly growing closer until your lips were captured by his own, the kiss breaking off abruptly when he leaned over your body to turn on the bedside lamp.
“What do I need to roll for seduction?”
The bed rocked as he reached back from where he straddled your body, pulling off your sandals and sending them sailing across the room. “I’m serious!” he insisted when you laughed again. “This is a serious game, remember? I don’t want to be the one who gets the whole party kicked out of a tavern.”
“Well, if you’re serious,” you began, breath hitching as your top was pushed up your body, claws dragging over the newly-exposed skin, “then you should know you can’t actually roll seduction, it’s not a skill.”
“Oh, I beg to differ.”
You couldn’t find fault in his words as your bra was deftly unhooked and pulled away, the heat of his mouth closing over the tip of your breast before you had a chance to be chilled. The tips of his clawed hand continued to move in soft patterns over your side as his tongue worked, teasing your nipple before sucking, biting ever-so-gently before releasing it with a wet pop.
“Are you sure I can’t roll seduction? I am a magical bard, after all.”
“Nope,” you corrected on a gasp. His mouth had moved to your other breast, giving it the same treatment until both nipples were pebbled and aching. “Seduction isn’t a skill. You can roll for deception, if you have ulterior motives.”
“Absolutely not. There you go again with the slander. What about…persuasion? Can I roll persuasion as a means of seduction?”
You unbuttoned the dark shirt he wore as he spoke, pushing apart the fabric to reveal the long, lithe shape of him above you. Broad shouldered but slender, Holt possessed none of the bulk the werewolf you’d gone out with a few times last year had. Tightly muscled and well-defined, your own clawless fingers moved down his chest, following the trail of dark hair down the hard plane of his stomach until you reached the thick bulge at the front of his jeans. The noise that emitted from his throat as you stroked the hard shape of him was very nearly a purr, and you smiled hugely, deciding to let him do his best.
“Sure, why not,” you smiled, pulling open his belt. “But I might want a perception check. Gotta check out your staff of persuasion first, make sure its on the up and up.”
You let out an undignified squeak when your skirt and knickers were pulled down as he rose, shucking his jeans before climbing over your body slowly, and you were clearly able to picture him as the giant, stalking cat you knew he occasionally was.
The soft drag of his claws over your thighs made you gasp, legs falling open, and the knuckle that pressed into your folds found you slick and eager.
“I’m glad you invited me to join the group,” he purred against your lips, sharp teeth catching them gently in a kiss. “Even if I don’t know any of the rules.”
The hard press of his erection was a molten heat against your hip and you shuddered out a breath, wanting to take him in hand but enjoying the press of his body against yours too much to force him to move. “I-I am too.”
Between your legs, his hand was buried against your sex. His sharp claws were tucked back, a finger on either side of your clit, knuckles kneading into the sensitive flesh until your hips were bucking upward to meet his hand, kneading and rolling, over and over until you were seeing stars. Pressure built behind your navel with every roll over the exposed bud of flesh, and you keened.
“I’m still having fun,” Holt went on, mouth stretching into a wide Cheshire cat-like smile, “and isn’t that the point of a game?”
The band of pressure snapped and you arched against him as throb after throb of pleasure pulsed through you. Your thighs tightened around his wrist, trapping his hand in place, and he hummed in amusement, fingers still moving as you gasped and shook, his lips pressing to yours lightly when you trembled with the aftershocks of your orgasm.
“I’d like to seduce you, please,” he purred, waggling his dark eyebrows. “I’m being as persuasive as possible.”
His cock was still hot when you wrapped a hand around it, giving his shaft a firm pump, dragging upwards until your fingers reached his swollen head. “You really are a big cat,” you observed when the repeated motion drew a vibrating rumble from his chest, before edging closer to the foot of the bed. His smart-assed reply was lost to another rumble when you licked a broad stripe over his exposed head, laving your tongue over the bead of moisture there.
There were several rings of nodules at the base of his head, you realized, mimicking the sharp barbs he might possess in his cat form, and you wondered how they would feel inside of you. The sharp points of his nails dragged through your hair as you sucked him into your mouth, swirling your tongue before lowering your head down his shaft, bobbing your head several times before his clawed hands were tugging you upwards.
You were reminded of his speed on the day the black cat in the shop had gone darting off to the back room in a blink of an eye when he flipped you, you cheek pressed to the mattress as he kissed up your spine, raising your hips. You felt the leaking tip of his cockhead press to your slick folds, sliding up and down before finally pushing into you, hilting himself in one thrust.
You hadn’t intended on finding a relationship, only some fun new additions to your curio shelf, you thought as has pumped into you, those textured nodules dragging deliciously over your inner walls. Claws dragged over your skin as you clenched around him, unable to stop the moan which broke from your mouth. You hadn’t been looking for a relationship, but one had found you anyway.
When his hand found its way back between your thighs, you were lost. Already gasping with every thrust of his textured cock, as soon as the rough pads of his fingers began circling your clit, you felt your tentative control slip, your core clenching and spasming around him before you were filled with heat, his rumbling purr vibrating against you as he came.
The comforter was thick and soft when he pulled it over you, once he’d withdrawn and quickly cleaned you up. Thick and soft and incredibly warm, snuggled against his chest.
“I have a confession to make.” You craned your neck up to find Holt peering down, one of his thick, dark brows cocked curiously. “You can’t actually play persuasion or deception against another player’s character. Everyone has their own freewill and agency, it doesn’t matter how silver-tongued the party’s bard is.”
“Do you mean to tell me I wasted a perfectly good persuasion play?”
“It was unnecessary but not without merit!” you yelped as he flipped you to your back, giving you his best glower as he straddled your hips. “You’ve convinced me!”
“Oh, just you wait. I am going to cast so many spells on you once once we finally get out of the bloody tavern.”
The bed, you realized, had begun to levitate, and now hung suspended in the air as you squealed. He really was a magical, sneaky bard.
“You can’t do that either,” you laughed after the bed dropped, shaking the walls. “No spells on teammates.”
“There are too many rules to this game,” he griped, pressing his cheek to your breast. You wrapped your arms around him, pushing your fingers through his thick hair. Give and take. Solid for each other.
“You have plenty of time to learn.”
His purr vibrated against you before he wriggled free from your arms to fix the blanket, pulling you against him as he resettled. “It’s a good thing I have an excellent teacher.”