Sweet Clematis Read online

  Table of Contents

  Blurb

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Epilogue

  More from R. Cooper

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  About the Author

  By R. Cooper

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  Copyright

  Sweet Clematis

  By R. Cooper

  A Being(s) in Love Story

  Can a curse be a blessing?

  Clematis works hard to embody every fairy stereotype. He can be a sulky prince or a submissive flirt, slutty and arrogant or silly and soft. He makes himself into whatever causes someone to want him. Combine that with beauty that’s incredible even for a fairy, and everyone wants him sooner or later… just not for long.

  Well, everyone except the fairy Clematis secretly adores. But then, he’s never expected happily ever after, not when he’s spent years burying his emotions and making himself unlovable to push people away and protect his heart.

  But his curse changes all that, and Clematis can no longer prevent his feelings from rising to the surface. He’s terrified that when his few friends see him for who he really is, they’ll abandon him, just like his parents did.

  It’s hard to imagine friends who see past his act to the sweet person within, but maybe happiness has been in front of him the entire time, waiting for the real Clematis to break free and blossom.

  A special thank you to Alix, Lucy, and everyone else who encouraged/nagged me to write about the beautiful trash fire that is Clematis.

  Chapter 1

  CLEMATIS HELD his breath as he pulled into the space at the edge of the DMV parking lot where his tester instructed him to park. The parking lot had cleared out considerably since he left at the start of his driving evaluation. Nonetheless, Clematis didn’t relax until he had the parking brake up and the engine off.

  The air conditioner was on, but the human testing him had rolled down the passenger-side window, so a light breeze stirred Clematis’s hair. He smelled flowers from somewhere, though the DMV lot only had a few trees. He took several great gasping breaths and then turned to the human on the passenger side. His wings fluttered but were trapped between his body and the driver’s seat.

  “How did I do?” Clematis asked, shivering slightly at breaking the silence.

  His tester hadn’t spoken during the ten-minute test except to issue instructions and one comment for Clematis to try to be still when the nervous flap of his wings had become too much. But Clematis hadn’t expected him to speak much. Driver licenses for fairies were conditional. Fairies weren’t meant to drive with distractions, and conversation was a distraction.

  “Good,” the human said shortly, his gaze still on his clipboard as he made notes.

  Clematis held tight to the steering wheel to keep from bouncing anxiously in place. He had made it this far, only a little further to go. He needed this license for work as part of the institute’s new policy, even though he would probably never use it. He had been quiet, and he had paid attention, and he had been good, even for a fairy.

  He glanced out the window while the tester scratched on his papers with his pencil. Midafternoon was apparently the quieter time at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Clematis wished he’d known that before he’d come here for his written test and had to stand in two different lines while bored, curious humans had taken turns either glaring at him or ogling him.

  Clematis avoided even a hint of his reflection in the rearview mirror and turned toward the human in the car with him. The human was what other humans would call middle-aged, or approaching middle-aged; Clematis wasn’t quite sure how that worked. The aura around the man was yellow and white, bright and warm, but not shining. He had golden brown skin, neatly trimmed black-and-gray hair, and small wire-rimmed glasses. He was sweating a little at his upper lip and his armpits, but that was likely from the late-summer heat. He smelled like soap and tea, which Clematis had found encouraging when he’d first gotten into the car.

  Some humans, usually the ones who identified as male and straight, seemed to regard cleanliness and grooming as forbidden. Clematis had never understood why.

  His tester was mostly slender, except for a soft paunch. Clematis smiled at him, waiting, and tried to enjoy the sunshine angling in the windows through the branches of the tree above them. His wings fluttered against the seat again, and he tried his best to make them still, to be as calm and quiet as David when he was reading.

  The tester glanced up. His gaze went to Clematis’s chest, bared to the waist, and then darted back to his clipboard. He cleared his throat, and the yellow colors around him sparked. “So… Mr. Atis….”

  “Clematis,” he reminded the tester, who once again glanced at him.

  “Clematis,” the tester repeated, his gaze fixed on either the smattering of freckles on Clematis’s shoulder or the iridescent white of his wings. It took him a second to go on. “You did well.”

  “Really?” Clematis lifted his head, his eyes wide with excitement.

  “You did very good for a fairy,” the tester assured him. His gaze dropped to Clematis’s jeans. Clematis had wanted to be comfortable for this and would have liked to be naked, the preferred state of fairies, but figured having no shirt on was already pushing it. Anyway, he’d have to wear a shirt when he went back into work.

  Clematis stretched to glance at himself in the rearview mirror, the shining, soft waves of light brown and emerald green hair, eyes of shifting ivy green, full pink lips, faint silver and white sparkles. He turned his head, glimpsing the pointed tips of his ears and the faint curve near the top of his long dragonfly wings before he focused back on the tester.

  “Very good for a fairy,” Clematis echoed, quiet.

  The tester looked up, at his face, then coughed and pulled out his clipboard and held it between them. He took a deep breath. “You didn’t get distracted at any red lights,” he observed, as if plenty of human drivers hadn’t used their time at the intersections to check their phones and reapply lipstick or mess with the radio. “You used your signals, and you put on your seat belt upon entering the vehicle. And you ignored the, um, attention, from some of the other drivers.”

  The leering hadn’t been out of the ordinary, at least not for Clematis. “And my driving?” he wondered aloud. “I haven’t gotten much time to practice. I only know one human with a car who also has the patience to teach me, and she—”

  The tester interrupted him. “Your driving skills were surprisingly adequate.” He nodded several times as if to confirm this, then cleared his throat again. “You avoided obvious distractions, Mr.—Clematis.”

  His yellow and white colors sparked again at the name. He had a rising, dusky blush on his cheeks and down his neck.

  “Surprisingly adequate,” Clematis echoed him again, letting his voice fall to something almost breathless. The flush on the human’s face darkened. Clematis had been focused on the test. He hadn’t seen the sparks in those bright colors for what they were. Desire took many shapes, especially in humans who denied it so much. “Were there distractions?” Clematis asked innocently, and bit his bottom lip both for the hint of pain and to make it fill with color. Then he licked it and
shifted in his seat.

  The tester did the same, then raised the clipboard higher as if he wanted to hide behind it.

  “For a fairy, your driving is better than I expected,” his tester continued firmly, and bobbed his head again. He smiled in an automatic way. “Congratulations, you passed!”

  “I passed?” Clematis straightened. “I really passed?” He hadn’t slept in days, and Lis had wished him good luck with so much magic in it, but he’d still somehow expected some obstacle, some human objection. The tickle of his faint glitter was barely noticeable on his bare skin. “Even though I’m fairy?”

  The clipboard was slowly lowered, and the tester, who had eyes of rich brown behind his glasses, gave him another polite smile that quickly faded. His mouth grew soft as his gaze wandered from Clematis’s lips to his chest and stomach.

  Clematis slid against his seat, heedless of his wings. He tipped his head back to regard the human with heavy, half-closed eyes. The human suddenly did not know where to look.

  Clematis smiled. “I didn’t distract you too much, did I?” He pulled at the band of the seat belt across his chest, drawing his fingertips over his stomach. He had a few freckles there too.

  The human seemed to just notice that. He took an audible breath. “Distract? I… uh… it’s pretty rare for a fairy to apply for a license,” the man answered, meeting Clematis’s eyes with obvious effort. “I’ve never ridden one—with one before.”

  “Ah,” Clematis said with husky-voiced understanding. He let the silence sit, watched the human stare at him and then not stare at him and not leave the car. “I see,” he added finally, because he did, every sparking shimmer of yellow and white. “So I did good?” he asked softly. “I was good, for a fairy?”

  “Yes,” the human told him, smiling again. “You were good.”

  Clematis thumbed his nipple and wondered what he looked like to make the man breathe so hard. But then, of course, he knew what he looked like to humans—a sparkly fairy, who was lucky he could concentrate long enough to pass a test. Like so much promised sex that humans could not even focus.

  The tester widened his eyes, then shot a frantic look around them, as though the parking lot was crowded, but it wasn’t. He swallowed. “You passed,” he said again, stressing it. “You just have to hand this in. It’s written up and everything.”

  Clematis nodded without making a move to take the clipboard or the piece of paper on it. “Do I get a reward for that?” he inquired, his attitude cool but his tone hot.

  The tester could not look away from him now. His words had a rasp in them. “You, uh… you will have the ability to drive legally with an approved fairy license. There are some restrictions. No radio while you drive, things, uh, things like that. But you get to be a fairy who drives.”

  “Which is rare.” Clematis gave his nipple a tug, considering, and the human groaned for a moment before he controlled himself. “So I’m very, very good?”

  The tester’s eyes were locked on to his. “Yes,” he agreed hoarsely, hopefully.

  “Yes, what?” Clematis asked, flicking his thumb over his nipple once more before dropping his hand to his lap.

  “Yes, you’re very, very good,” the human repeated, gaze on Clematis’s hand now. His colors were full of needy little sparks.

  Clematis considered the way the human spread his legs, and then he bit his bottom lip. “For a fairy?” he pressed, more breathless than he should have been.

  The human nodded without looking up.

  Clematis ran his fingers down his fly, lightly tracing his cock. “You said you’d never had a fairy in here before.”

  After several moments, the human finally raised his head. “What?”

  “So I’m your first?” Clematis carried on, staring into dazed eyes while he touched himself through his jeans. The human made a choked noise. “You won’t forget me.” Clematis didn’t ask, but he was breathing harder, and that might be mistaken for coy.

  “You don’t even know my name,” the man said, though it was hardly a protest. He didn’t move from his seat except to try to spread his legs even wider. His cheeks were truly dark now, as if he was embarrassed. He probably was. It wouldn’t stop him. It never did until after.

  His dick was so hard in his khaki pants. He must ache. He must be thinking of every fantasy about fairies he’d ever had, every story about one he’d ever heard.

  Clematis briefly wondered if this human called himself straight, then decided he didn’t care.

  He licked his lips. “Can I unbuckle?”

  That got him another series of startled blinks. “What?”

  Clematis studied him with heavy-lidded eyes, his lips parted, flushed, and wet. “Tell me I can.”

  The man drew in a shocked breath, but said nothing, no question or objection. He would have done anything Clematis wanted. “Yes. You can.”

  “Because I’m good?” Clematis watched the yellow-and-white shine intently, each spark of want and every dark thread of illicit pleasure. But no lies.

  “Yes,” the human agreed. “You’re beautiful.”

  “I know.” Clematis pressed the release button on his seat belt. “But am I good?” he asked, then wriggled to a better position in order to half crawl over the armrest between their seats.

  The hand tightening in Clematis’s hair made him flush and bend his head to mouth at the cock he couldn’t taste yet.

  “Good?” He spoke softly, spit pooling under his tongue, and the human began to beg.

  “Yes, oh God, yes!” he cried, before Clematis had even touched him.

  CLEMATIS VERY carefully returned to the institute in the company car, no less nervous now that he had the paper version of his provisional fairy license. The institute was near the university campus, and human college students were far more prone to distraction than any fairy. Most of them looked exhausted all the time and ignored crosswalks and traffic lights as though they thought they had a fairy’s healing.

  It was summer, but plenty of young humans still milled around the campus gates, protesting or manning booths for different groups and causes. Someone had put up the same Welcome Freshmen banner that they did every year, although Clematis wasn’t sure when, exactly, classes would start. He hadn’t looked over the course catalog this year, though he often unofficially audited classes.

  He skirted the campus, made a cautious left, and arrived at the institute. Parking was easy since school was not in session yet, and few students were around for special lessons. His legs were still trembling with residual nerves that his orgasm had only partially soothed. He got out of the car, then had to reach back in for his phone and his shirt, which the parking lot security guard watched him struggle into from his kiosk several yards away. He could have offered to help, but he never did. Said he didn’t like to touch fairies.

  Clematis was forced to wriggle his wings through the holes in the back of his shirt on his own, and immediately felt confined by the old, soft, and well-worn T-shirt. The Holt Institute was a school for gifted children who were also aurally and/or visually impaired, and as such, demanded all its employees, even ones who were not teachers, be fully clothed.

  The institute was a conservative place by anyone’s standards, with most of its students coming from money and the others there on scholarship. But changes from new board members seemed to be making things even more regressive.

  The most recent new policy change was a directive that all sighted employees had to have a driver’s license in good standing in case of any emergency event in which the students would have to be driven elsewhere. Even Clematis was required to comply, though he couldn’t imagine who would trust a fairy in an emergency that dire.

  Some fairies might have had suspicions about the change. Might have said angrily and repeatedly that the point was to push out any unwanted fairies on staff.

  Clematis was the only fairy on staff. The only being there at all, except for the occasional visiting werewolf there to give talks on senses other tha
n sight.

  He sailed past the security guard and into the building. He nodded to Collette at the front desk—although she never acknowledged anyone but board members and especially wealthy humans—and then floated down the hall to the rooms filled with the network of desks known as the warren and slapped his paperwork down in front of Shiny Desk Human.

  Shiny Desk Human, whose name was Sasha but who Clematis had called Shiny Desk Human in his head for weeks before getting a chance to really talk to him, hit a button to pause whatever recording he was transcribing and pulled the little earbud from one ear.

  “You passed?” Sasha guessed, with his adorable, always slightly crooked smile. He was an undergrad at the college, which meant he was younger than David and Stephanie, either just under twenty years or just over it. He had a certain seriousness that most of the undergrads did not. Clematis did not think Sasha spent his nights getting high or drinking very disgusting cheap beer. He wasn’t sure what Sasha did for fun, but not that.

  “I’m pouting at you,” Clematis informed him, pushing out his lips and regarding Sasha with sulky disappointment. “You didn’t let me tell you. How did you know?”

  Sasha laughed gently while sweeping some of his dark hair from his face. The orange-and-lavender aura around him was like the evening sky. “Your wings make noise, especially when you’re excited.”

  “Pfft.” Clematis had figured out how Sasha always knew when he was around weeks ago. “I meant, how did you know I passed?”

  “The triumphant smack of those papers against my desk,” Sasha remarked with a tilt of his head. His gaze was aimed roughly in Clematis’s direction. “And I didn’t really think you would fail.”

  Clematis sucked in a breath and spread his hand out over his provisional license so the breeze from his madly beating wings wouldn’t send it flying.

  “Are you smiling now?” Sasha asked warmly. He was warm and soft by nature, one of the shiniest humans Clematis had known since David.

  Clematis leaned his hip against the desk, artfully arranging himself out of habit, even if Sasha wouldn’t appreciate the sight. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”