by Alex Lidell
Just as my breathing begins to settle, my hands uncurling from the edge of the bookshelf, I hear the crack of another slap. The fire follows it a split second later, making me yelp.
If I thought the first two swats hard, they were nothing compared to the force descending on me now, the slaps echoing through the space, dulled by thudding rain. My yelps turn to breathless moans as the blazing heat rushes right to my sex, making me push my bottom back higher, begging for more.
“Shade.” My words are strangled, my struggles useless against his steely hold. My bottom burns, my sex throbbing mercilessly, clenching around air.
Far on the other end of the library, a faint chuckle ruffles the air—and sends all the blood from my backside rushing to my face. ”Oh, they can hear you just fine,” Shade assures me, his velvety lips brushing over my ear just before he pushes my thighs farther apart, depriving me of what little control I still have.
Before I can rebalance myself, Shade plunges his cock deep into my channel. I scream, too far gone to care who hears me now. He starts thrusting immediately, without letting me adjust to his size, pumping hard but slow—agonizingly slow. The heavy wooden shelf creaks rhythmically under our weight. In and out, in and out, Shade stretches my channel, the occasional slap on my tender backside making me buck despite knowing how little good it will do—which in turn magnifies every touch.
My sex sizzles, shooting tendrils of sensation down my thighs and along the soles of my feet, which curl in desperation.
The tip of Shade’s finger traces the hood around my swollen bud, making me pant with need. My slickness drips down the bookshelf, and the scent of the male’s own sweat and arousal rakes through me. My breath catches as the abyss closes in on me, the tipping point of release just a stroke of Shade’s finger away.
“Please!” I can’t make myself care who hears us, not with my breaths coming fast, my body so tense in anticipation of the coming flood that my body trembles. The pressure building inside me grows more unbearable with every slip of a heartbeat, the wait an agony I cannot bear—and can’t do one thing about.
But this time, Shade listens, thrusting faster as if his body alone is now in control. His fingers dig almost painfully into my hips, pulling me back against him so our bodies meet with a crashing force to rival the thunder outside. I groan and pant uncontrollably, animal sounds escaping me that I don’t even recognize as my own.
Slap. Slap. Slap.
Shade’s palm keeps time on my backside, the perfect fiery pain igniting everything with a brilliance that makes the tiny flicker of his finger over my swollen nub feel like the sun itself is raking my sex.
I scream, my voice breaking as I fall over the edge, every fiber and muscle inside me clenching in ecstasy. Wave after wave of sensation washes over my body, Shade pulling me onto his lap to hold me as I arch helplessly. As my hands and back and thighs all tighten beneath the avalanche of pleasure assaulting them, until all my strength is gone, and I pant, a little rag doll in the male’s arms.
“You are beautiful, cub,” Shade says, stroking my face as I recover, his touch so soothing and warm that I melt into him like a kitten, bathing in his love and scent.
At least right up until the callused hand strays across my sore backside, the sting making me jump. “You are a bastard,” I mutter into his shoulder. “And I hate you.”
Shade chuckles, the noise deep and velvety. “I think I can fix that,” he whispers against my hair, his magic tingling like cool mint to cover my skin. Erasing the lingering ache as if it never existed.
“Stop.” I push myself up, breaking the web of minty magic seeping into my skin. “I don’t actually hate you.”
Shade frowns, his thumb tracing my cheekbone. “I didn’t think you did, cub—I want to soothe your skin. I want you to remember this moment with—”
“With something other than the full truth?” I shake my head. “I’ve had enough of altered memories to last a lifetime.”
Strong arms wrapping around me, Shade pulls me against him in a tight embrace. “In that case, let’s see if we can’t give those memories a bit more to chew on,” he murmurs, brushing the fallen books away to clear the carpeted floor beneath us.
Laying me back onto the soft fibers of burnt-orange rug, Shade eases off the remains of my dress and holds my gaze as he enters me gently, the glide of his still rock-hard cock along my channel pulling my mind to the here and now, very very effectively.
8
Lera
“Does this mean you two have made up?” Tye’s voice penetrates my haze of bone-melting satisfaction, my naked body utterly content where it sprawls atop Shade’s equally bare form. Shade’s chest lifts me slightly into the air with each inhale, his warm sweat-soaked skin slippery and perfect against mine as I stare at the intricate woodwork along the nearest baseboard, the designs slipping and dancing.
“Mmm?” I blink away from the designs to focus on Tye. Shade’s arm pulls me tighter against his chest as I examine Tye’s lovely freckles and large emerald eyes, the lashes long and dark enough to make any girl jealous. Including me. Of course, if those eyes were a bit closer… “You want to join?” I ask.
Tye snorts. “I always want to join. We can’t have you thinking this fleabag’s feeble skills are all there is to be had in our quint. Alas, I prefer my couplings to be with sentient beings.” Squatting beside my head, Tye rests muscled forearms against his knees and studies me with amusement, his beautiful wide mouth quirked at one corner.
Shade growls softly but doesn’t move.
I blink at Tye again, the effort it takes to enunciate my words seeming much greater than usual. “I’m sen…sensual. Sentient. I’m whatever you said you like.” My sex twinges despite my fatigue, and I run the pad of my finger along the inside of Tye’s wrist.
The male tenses, looking up at the ceiling to draw several deep breaths before daring to return his attention to my face. “Right. You are bond drunk, lass. Both of ye. And we really don’t have very much time for that just now, what with the Night Guard holding the kings hostage and River trying to plan an assault on the keep while Coal and I try to find a way to tell him the other news. And the humans, meanwhile—” Tye’s words meld together, his songlike accent turning whatever he says into a lullaby.
I close my eyes, listening to the roll of Tye’s Rs, the way the ends of his phrases shift beautifully to make “your” into “yer,” with the occasional “aye” sprinkled in for spice. It’s not until the sounds rudely stop altogether that I open my eyes again, my attention snagging at once on the sizable bulge between Tye’s legs—which his crouching position gives me a perfect view of.
My mouth waters, the thought of what Tye would taste like in my mouth just now, with Shade’s scent still clinging to my tongue, making my mound press hungrily against Shade’s body. The shifter growls in response, slipping a hand over my bottom to help me along. My hand floats from me, reaching toward Tye’s cock, my fingers already planning the quick tug that will unravel his flies. How nicely the great length of him will spring out for my pleasure.
Tye catches my wrist, his breaths quick and strained.
“What are you doing?” I demand.
“Ruining what would have been a very well-spent hour, apparently,” Tye mutters, placing my hand back on Shade’s shoulder before straightening to his full height and retreating from view. A part of me insists that I should care where he is going, but the rest of me can only sulk at being denied.
Turning my head the other way, I circle one of Shade’s nipples with my finger, the muscles under his velvety tan skin puckering in response. “What’s bond drunk?”
“It’s something that sometimes happens to bonded mates when a female is with pups,” River says dryly from behind me. “Given that that, at least, is one thing we do not have to worry about at the moment, you two can get your naked backsides up and rejoin reality any time now. Let me help.” The last words are punctuated with a downpour of ice water.
I
yelp, the shock making every nerve in my body scream with indignation, especially with a stray icy stream snaking down the crack in my bottom. I scramble off Shade—who steadies me with his strong arms before pushing himself up as well—and glare at River, who righteously sets the now-empty water pitcher on a nearby table. He’s dressed now in a white shirt and blue wool jacket, his brown hair combed annoyingly neatly.
“Errr, River?” Tye drawls. “I wouldn’t jump to too many assumptions there, lad.” Taking off the soot-stained remains of his Prowess uniform jacket, Tye wraps the material around my bare shoulders and pulls me against him.
River turns away from Shade, who now has his hands on his thighs, shaking the water off him in a perfect imitation of a wet wolf. “What assumptions am I jumping to, Tye?”
Shade clears his throat, his gaze shifting to me, then back to River. “How is your chest?” he asks the commander, turning to fish a pair of britches from the hastily discarded pile of clothes. “I don’t want you walking around if you don’t have to be.”
“Noted,” River says dryly, one dark brow quirked. “Is something going on of which I’m not aware?”
“What’s bond drunk?” I ask again, snuggling my face deeper into Tye’s warm chest, his pine-and-citrus scent tingling over me deliciously.
“Pregnancy has a tendency to magnify certain emotions and senses,” Tye says quietly into my ear. “Mix high emotion and mating, and the effect is well, this.” He shifts to put his hard cock—which I suddenly realize I’d been reaching for—out of my grasp. “Unless you want to be doing nothing but coupling for the next few days, I suggest not going into my britches just now.” He snorts. “What idiocy am I saying. If you want to—”
“Why are we still talking about—” River freezes in midsentence, blood draining from his face.
I bite my lip.
His eyes widen, the apple of his throat twitching before he steps back so quickly that Shade steadies him with a hand on his shoulder. Gripping a table’s edge, River stares at my still perfectly flat midriff, his mouth moving without making a sound. Beyond the library wall, another crack of thunder cleaves the air, rain pelting the windows.
“She is…” River starts to say, then stops. His beautiful gray eyes swirl with rapid-fire thoughts, each one crowding out the next. I’ve never seen our powerful commander like this. It almost makes me nervous.
“The cub is carrying pups, yes.” Shade tries and fails to sound clinical, his hand twitching toward me before he contains himself and sticks it into his pocket instead. “Twins.”
“How?” River demands, turning on Shade with all the reasonableness of a disheveled hyena.
“Well, River,” Tye says, “I’m no healer, of course, but I do believe it has to do with a cock making entry into—”
“Shut up, Tye,” River snaps over his shoulder before advancing on Shade. “You said it was impossible. That being so newly fae, her body was not yet developed for…for…”
“Yes, I know what I said. As both Coal and you have now pointed out.” Shade throws up his hands. “The research on the fertility cycles of a human turned fae are somewhat lacking. And before you ask, no, there is no way of knowing which of our seeds took hold. Only that it did. I suppose we might get some clue once they’re born, but for all I know, Lera’s weaver magic managed to blend the essences from all our seeds together.”
River rubs wide palms over his face, color slowly beginning to seep back into it. The rest of us are quiet as he works through the news. “All right,” he says finally, the practical command in his voice giving me hope that he’ll gather his wits about him faster than Coal and Shade did. Then he speaks again. “We need clouts,” he says, all business. “Where do we get clouts at the Academy? Does the infirmary stock them?”
9
Lera
A quarter hour later, thanks to Tye’s ability to procure clothes at a moment’s notice—having found inconvenient nakedness a common hazard of his former lifestyle—I stand beside River at the window in a pair of soft black fighting leathers and a warm shirt. My thick hair has been corralled into a long braid down my back, and I’m finally feeling like a version of my old self again.
In no more than ten minutes, Owalin’s first deadline will pass. Not a single human has darkened our doorstep since River’s offer of an alliance.
We are still two hours from sunset, but with the storm, it feels like dusk has come early. Through the gray sheets of rain, I watch the royal families huddle under a large white tent that Academy staff erected—probably repurposed from some planned Prowess festivities. They’ve put it as far from the Great Hall as possible to try to avoid Owalin’s prying ears, which puts them close to us. Many of the women and children and even professors have taken shelter in the academic buildings ringing the courtyard, though there are still at least a hundred people gathered on the sodden cobblestones.
With nothing to do but wait, Tye and Shade have gone to the back of the library to clean up the mess, their restless energy obvious even from here in muffled curses.
I jump when the library door bangs open, the little bells cutting through the heavy tension with ridiculous cheerfulness. Coal stamps his feet and brushes water off his clothes, his pulled-back hair almost dark against his scalp. “They’re giving in to Owalin’s first demand. The king of Fothom is readying to enter the Great Hall.”
River only nods. He’s been silent ever since hearing the news of our cubs, the tension around him making the air sing.
“They’re relinquishing the mortal world to a madman, River,” Coal presses, glancing at me with nothing short of alarm on his face when the commander doesn’t respond.
“I know,” River says finally. His experienced eyes survey the situation with the calm steadiness that I have grown to take for granted, but the words lack all interest. As if the outcome of the standoff little matters to him now.
I shrug at Coal, and he lifts his hands in an “I give up” gesture, going over to the crackling fire Gavriel laid in one of the library’s three massive hearths to start drying off his clothes.
“River,” I say quietly. “Are you…” I search for the right word to say, my chest tightening at the one I settle on. “Upset? About the cubs.” My breath halts, my eyes not daring to look at River’s face. After the initial shock wore off, the male retreated behind the wall of his own thoughts with a speed that’s left me reeling.
I wrap my arms around myself when the male says nothing, my jaw tightening.
“I’m upset that we are in the mortal world with no way home except through battle with the Night Guard,” River says finally. With a start, I realize he’s trembling. The silence on the subject, which I broke, seemed to be all that was keeping him together.
“We are choosing to face the Night Guard, River,” I say. “We have a way home. The Mystwood key you took off me back in the beginning of the year—”
“I destroyed it.” He strikes his palm against the windowsill, the glass rattling. “Katita had seen you with what was plainly a fae artifact, and I was afraid of her turning on you. With fae hunters in major towns… If she’d started something, it would be bad enough to pit her word against yours, I didn’t want there to be evidence to boot. So when I took it off you, I shattered it and threw it into the fire.” River swallows, turning slowly to face me. His strong, smooth face looks like marble, every hard plane sculpted to perfection. But his swirling gray eyes are a different story, the vulnerability in them striking me to my very core. “I’m sorry, Leralynn. I’ve been a father for less than an hour, and I’ve already failed.”
“River.” My chest tightens as I press my palm against his cheek. “River, the stupidest reasoning I’ve—” I cut off, the truth dawning on me just a moment too late.
“It isn’t the key you’re upset about,” I whisper. “You aren’t afraid of battling the Night Guard. You aren’t afraid of battling anyone. You’re… Stars. Listen to me, River. You are going to be a good father. I promise.”
&nb
sp; The male’s flinch betrays just how deep a wound my words struck, his beautiful strong jaw clenching so hard that I see the muscle coil beneath his skin.
“You are going to be a good father, River,” I say again. “Just as you are a good mate. And a good commander.”
“You don’t know that,” he whispers, the fear saturating his voice now spilling into the air between us, giving a sharp tang to the dusty smell usually settling in the library. “How can you trust me when you know what kind of monster sired me?”
“Because I love you,” I say simply. “Because we fell in love with each other when there was nothing to tie us together and everything to keep us apart. And because I won’t let you be anything else.”
River chuckles, the sounds starting off strained but easing as he gazes into my eyes. Shaking his head, he cups the back of my head with his hand, leaning down to take a slow tentative kiss. “I don’t deserve you, Lera,” he whispers against my mouth as my hand rests gently on his hard triceps. “But I’m grateful for you with every breath.”
Before I can reply, the kiss deepens, River pouring so much of himself, his love, his strength into the connection that the magic coiled inside me rouses and purrs until I wonder if one of the twins isn’t a shifter.
“What was that for?” I ask, when he finally pulls away, the callused tips of his fingers lingering on my cheek.
“To thank you,” the male replies, a smile finally, finally touching his eyes. “And to make up for the bastard I’m sure I’m going to be shortly.” He brushes his thumb over my lips. “If you think pregnancy is intrusive, wait until you discover what four overprotective mates are like to be around.”