“The Way You Look Tonight”
by Sonni de Soto

Your sightless eyes, covered in the blindfold you always tie tightly over them, are cast downward. “Are you sure about this?”

I touch your shoulder, letting my hand slide down your arm, feeling the tension in your bronze and copper scale-covered skin. “I’m sure.” Hating the sight of my striking medusa so unsure, I lift your chin. You are too beautiful, too powerful, too majestic to ever lower your gaze to anyone.

This world has taught you to fear your own power. To tamp it down, to hide it away, for humanity’s protection. At the expense of your own. They tried to tame you. They convinced you that you should want to be normal when you are, as you are, magnificent.

Few know this better than me. As a titan, a natural force, I’m a living embodiment of the earth. I can shake and shape the world around me with a thought. I can melt into mud or make myself a mountain.

My people were once worshipped as gods, commanding the earth, winds, and waters. Now we scrape for survival in a polluted world that can’t seem to care less about us.

So, yeah, I understand better than most what the world has done to you.

I reach out my hand and let the snakes slithering atop your head weave their way along my fingers and wrist. I smile and let them pull me closer to you. I cup your scalp, as they tangle about me, nuzzling my elbow. My fingers nudge the blindfold’s knot, making you jerk.

I wish you could see yourself the way I do. The way I want to. I lean in to press my lips against yours. “We don’t have to, if you’re not ready.”

But I want to. We’ve been together for months now. Have touched and been touched in ways I’ve never with anyone else. But, in all that time, I’ve yet to look you in the eye. I don’t even know what color they are.

“What if it doesn’t work?”

I touch your lip, where your sharp fang worries the soft yet resilient skin. “We’ve tested it.”

“On your foot.” You sit up, inadvertently forcing me to move with you. You tug at your hair, forcing the snakes to let me go. I pull back my hand, missing the tight embrace. “And, even then, it took you an hour to change back.”

My foot flexes reflexively, still remembering how it’d tingled into and out of stinging numbness. It’d been such a strange sensation. I bring my hand close to touch your cloth-covered temple gently. “But I came back.”

The transformation isn’t exactly the same. It’s different magicks mixing in ways they aren’t meant to. But your apotropaic magic, made to ward away dangers, can’t keep me out. Because you have nothing to fear with me. Because, I like to think, I’m perfect for this. For you. That I was made for you. Living earth.

You look away. “I’m afraid.”

I touch your cheek. “Of what?”

Sightlessly, you turn to me. “That, when I finally look at you, all I’ll see is fear.”

I smile and touch your lips. “I’m not afraid of you.”

You lean back out of my reach. “Not yet.”

I reach for you again, this time my touch sure and possessive. “Not ever.”

You purse your lips together before nodding. “Okay.”

But you still seem unsure. So I shift our bodies so our lips meet. You’d once told me that I taste how earth should, rich, dark, and full of possibilities. Your kiss is wild, like a secret, all risk and thrill, that few will ever have the courage to know.

You break the kiss to press the bridge of your nose against my lips, my breath hot and damp against the cloth there. Your hands reach up to untie the knot. I watch, knowing few others have seen this. Fewer still have survived. My breath catches as the fabric’s ends flutter down, still held in place between your eyes and my lips.

“Be sure.” The words are a whisper, a plea.

I nod. I am.

But, when you lean back, letting the blindfold fall to the bed beneath us, your eyes are still shut. I touch your temple, for the first time feeling the smooth, delicate skin there.

Pressing both hands at my shoulders, you push me down, so I’m lying beneath you. You twist, sitting up, to straddle my thighs. Facing away from me, you stroke my legs.

Then I feel it.

The slight tingle as the feeling in my toes fade. It creeps up the bridge of my feet. By the time it reaches my ankles, I can feel sharp pain, like countless needles, begin to stab. Instinctively, I try to wiggle my toes awake, but I can’t.

Even when I transform myself, I can move. Whatever I make myself into—sand, soil, stone—I am still myself. A titan. A god. The Earth made man. I’ve been granite before; it’s a useful thing to turn my body into, the epitome of strength.

But I don’t feel strong now.

Instead, I feel the weight of your gaze grip my flesh. It changes it. Makes it yours. If I’m honest, it terrifies me. And exhilarates me. In ways I don’t think I fully understand, but want to.

I sit up a bit, resting on my elbows, so I can watch you. Your hands stroke my calves, my knees, my thighs. It’s strange; I can see your hands move over my body but I don’t feel them until they are about halfway up my thighs.

It shouldn’t shock me. I’m used to seeing my body in granite’s dappled brown. I’m used to the heavy, hard feel of it. I like the way it slows my movements, making every shift and step I take feel weighty. Important.

But it’s different—difficult—to watch white marble consume my body. Slight grey veins streak over my legs, making me look fragile. Cracked. As if one wrong move or shove could shatter me. And there is nothing I can do.

You turn to face me, your eyes closed again. I don’t know if I’m disappointed or relieved. I need a minute, a moment where I’m still me, so I can figure it out.

Then your hand and your tongue stroke my cock and all thought escapes me. No worries, no fears, just your touch and the heat it evokes. My flesh hardens but it has nothing to do with rocks or magics or anything but you. Your mouth on me makes me moan and writhe, or at least the parts of me that can.

The need to bend my knees and flex my feet radiates through my whole body. I try to lift my hips, but my legs’ leverage is gone. I want to push myself deeper into you, but I can’t. I can’t do much but lie here and let you lead.

I reach down to stroke your hair, the snakes wriggling up to meet my hand. But the second I press my fingers to your scalp in a silent plea for more, you grab my wrist and sit up.

I groan at your giggle, the mirthful sound almost mean in my mind. You kiss my hand before turning around to face me, straddling my body again.

Your gaze narrows as you lower your body onto mine. My pained groan melts into a more sensual sound as I feel your warm, wet sex slide over mine. Right before that numbness grips my dick.

I grunt. The sight of you riding my now marble body is maddening. It’s hot to watch, but it’s as if it’s happening to someone else. It shouldn’t but a twisted sense of betrayal swirls with my desire. I am a starving man with his face pressed against the window of the feast.

I look up at you. Your head is thrown back and your breasts are thrust out. Your hand grabs at my stone body as your hips undulate over—onto—me. Your snakes riot around your head, swaying with each other in an almost violent dance.

“You are stunning.”

The words escape my mouth. I hear their sound before I realize I’ve said them. I couldn’t help it. You are.

But I should have.

Surprised, your eyes open and meet mine.

Brown. Your eyes are wide, thickly lashed, and brown, deep and dark as the richest earth, and the sight of your desire as it grows there fills me. Overwhelms me.

I gasp as I feel marble seize my gut and my brain. About to pass out, I can feel oblivion blur my thoughts. My chest aches as stone pushes my breath from my lungs.

I see, rather than feel, you pause. My last sight is your eyes—beautiful and brown—widening with worry. I want to comfort you, but I can’t as darkness takes me.

When finally my eyes blink open again, my body feels raw, new, as you hold me, stroking feeling—life—back into my limbs. You smile at me with relief, your blindfold back on. “You came back.”

I stare at you as if seeing you clearly for the first time. “Always.”

–

Sonni de Soto is a kinkster of color who believes that one of the best parts of a good relationship is discovering how the parts of you that always made you feel different or strange can fall and fit into place with the right person. Please find more of her work at patreon.com/sonnidesoto and follow her at facebook.com/sonnidesotostories