The Castle of Fire and Fable

by Steffanie Holmes

  Everyone took turns to hug me goodnight. Jane was first, brief but genuine. Corbin’s was warm, sending hot echoes of our evening together. Rowan held me tight, his arm trembling, the other hanging awkwardly at his side like he didn’t quite know what to do with it. Flynn held on for too long and pinched my ass. Blake went in for one of his kisses that stole my breath until Arthur’s grunt tore me away.

  Stomach fluttering with nerves, I followed Arthur out of the room. I hoped like hell the tension in his shoulders was just from the strain of the task ahead of us, but I had a sinking feeling that wasn’t it at all. At the foot of the stairs, he turned.

  “You want me to carry you?” he asked gruffly.

  The fact that he was asking instead of just swooping me up meant something had changed between us. But still, at least he was asking. He regarded our time alone together with as much reverence as I did. “Take me to the tower, my prince.” I grinned. Arthur’s grumpy expression cooled slightly. He scooped me up and started up the stairs.

  I snuggled into his t-shirt, relishing the hot, spicy smell of him. The magic Corbin had awakened glowed hot under my skin. Maybe tonight was the night Arthur and I could finally shag (such a great word). My skin pulsed in anticipation of his bulk around me, his tight muscles holding me with such ease as he plowed into me—

  My hope was shattered when Arthur crossed the threshold of my room, dropped me on the bed, and went to stand by the window, his back to me and his impressive bulk silhouetted by the moonlight.

  “Is everything okay?” My hand poised on the zipper of my dress, wondering if nakedness was the way to go here. My body hummed, begging for his touch.

  Arthur grunted. He didn’t look around.

  “That sounded convincing.” I slid off the bed and stood behind him, sliding my hands around his waist. He was like a tree trunk, strong and tall and proud. And impossible to bloody read.

  I reached up to stroke his cheek but Arthur turned his head away, so all I did was graze my fingers against his scraggly beard.

  “They told me today about you and Corbin and Rowan and… and Flynn,” he muttered. “The things you’ve been doing with them.”

  “I’ve not made any secret out of it, Arthur,” I shrugged. “Honestly, I thought you knew about all that, but I forget guys don’t talk about that sort of things like girls do.”

  “I thought…” Arthur sighed, his huge body sagging. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Don’t give me that macho bullshit. If you’re going to be all mopey about this, then you’d better tell me what’s going on. There are enough bloody secrets and fables in this house as it is.”

  Arthur stared out into the vastness of space. The constellation of Scorpio danced behind his cheek.

  “Fine, so I have to guess.” I tapped my chin. The sizzling under my skin dissipated a little. “Guess One: This is a bullshit double standard about girls having to be all pure and not sleeping around.”

  “No.” Arthur muttered something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like, “You haven’t even slept with me.”

  “Wow, that’s not bitter at all.” Anger flared inside me. This was veering dangerously close to a conversation I did not want to have with any of the guys. “I don’t owe you anything, Arthur, sexual or otherwise.”

  Arthur sighed again. “You’re right, Maeve.” His hands balled into fists. “You’re right and that was shite of me to say. You need to step back in case I let rip with a fireball.”

  Like hell. Instead, I got right up in his face so he couldn’t avoid looking at me. I wrapped my hands around his wrists. “Don’t hide behind your power. Tell me right now what’s going on or Guess Two is going to be really mean.”

  Arthur finally looked at me, and the storm in his eyes nearly made me leap back again. But I held fast. “I thought you and I had something,” he hissed. “I thought I was special to you, but you’re running around with all the guys… with Blake, even. I can’t handle it.”

  “Whoa, there. First of all, you don’t have to handle it, because it doesn’t concern you. Second, you are special. I’ve never met a person who is even remotely like you, Arthur. I think all of you guys are special. Even Blake.”

  “Those guys are my best mates. They’re my family. It’s weird…”

  “I know. And I’ve only been here a few days and things are a bit messed up in this house because of my spirit magic, but I think you’re all becoming my family, too.”

  “I want you to be my girlfriend,” Arthur growled.

  Girlfriend. His words pounded inside my head. No guy had ever said the G word to me before, not even Andrew in the astronomy club.

  I smiled sadly. “I want that to. I wish I could say yes, you have no idea how much I wish that. But I’m all messed up right now, Arthur. You know that – you were messed up like this, once. I’m full of pain and grief and magic I don’t even understand. And as special as you are to me, I have feelings for all you guys that I can’t even articulate yet. I can’t be the girlfriend you deserve.”

  Arthur’s eyes screwed up. “I know,” he said.

  “This isn’t about you, it’s about me. I can’t be anyone else’s girlfriend – not that anyone else has asked, by the way. I’m not surprised you’re the first. I love that about you.” I touched his cheek again. This time, he rested his head against my hand. “Your passion.”

  “That’s not how people describe me,” he snapped.

  “Oh yeah?” I grinned. “How do they describe you? I told my sister you were the hot sword-fighting Viking who was the first guy to ever kiss me and make me feel something.”

  Arthur grunted, the guttural sound reaching right through my body, tugging at the ache between my legs. I pressed myself against his body, running my fingers over his lips.

  “You know that anything I do with the others doesn’t impact how I feel about you, right? We’re all being safe. We’re all consenting adults trying to deal with ancient sex magic and our own individual pain. No one has to get hurt if we don’t let that happen.”

  I had to stand on tiptoes to reach him. I brushed my lips against his. The ache between my legs surged into an agonizing rhythm. Arthur’s lips pressed back. He opened his mouth, devouring me. His hands reached up, rough fingers touching my cheeks, cupping the back of my neck, pulling me against him.

  Yes, yes, yes… give me more, Aragorn. Give me—

  He wrenched himself away, staggering backward, his eyes narrowed.

  “Arthur…”

  “I can’t do it,” he growled. Backing up toward the door, he shot me a look that burned with desire… and something else. “Don’t touch me like that again.”

  Before I could protest, Arthur spun on his heel and stomped down the stairs, slamming the door shut behind him so hard it clattered on its frame.

  23

  ARTHUR

  I slammed the door to my bedroom and leaned against it, breathing hard. Heat surged in my palms – the fire within desperate to be unleashed.

  Leaving Maeve upstairs, her heavy-lidded eyes begging me to bend her over the bed and take her in a manly fashion… that took every ounce of self control I still possessed. I’d been stiff all day watching that tiny dress clinging to all her curves. And there she was, her lips against mine, telling me I was special, that she had feelings for me—

  But what she was asking… for me to share her with my best friends like she was some cut-price whore. I couldn’t do it. No fucking way.

  With shaking hands I hung my sword on the hook above my bed, always within arm’s reach in case I needed it, and to remind me always not to give in to temptation. Beneath it were two medieval prints Corbin had given me for my birthday last year. There were written in Latin, which I couldn’t read, but Corbin told me they represented the chivalric code of the Late Middle Ages. “When I think of you, I always think about their medieval knights – fierce warriors who upheld the honor and nobility of their kingdoms, and always opened doors for ladies,” he’d said with a gri
n.

  That was me, Arthur the knight – who desperately wanted to do something very unchivalrous upstairs in the tower right now.

  But I wasn’t going to sleep with Maeve until she was my girlfriend. Maybe the others could handle all this modern female empowerment stuff, but I only wanted Maeve to empower herself with me. Maybe that made me old fashioned, or a controlling dick, but that was how I wanted things to be. Eventually, maybe, Maeve would see it that way, too.

  I sat down on the mattress, my body wrecked with tiredness, but my eyes wide open, my cock rubbing against my jeans.

  Like hell I was going to sleep tonight without a cold shower… or… or something else.

  I stared at the sword on the wall, my veins buzzing. No, a cold shower it is.

  There were two bathrooms on the bedroom floor, and I shared one with Corbin. I knew him well enough not to expect him to come up from the library until the early hours of the morning, so I had it to myself. I peeked out of the door and – seeing it was empty – swaggered down the hall, slipped inside, and shut the door behind me.

  I turned the water on and got undressed. I pushed my pants down, my cock springing free, so hard that even pulling my pants off made it jump. I stepped under the water, letting the stream pummel my body. My first instinct was to keep it cold until my hard on went down, but I couldn’t get the sensation of Maeve’s tongue off my lips.

  I closed my eyes. Maeve appeared in my mind. Her naked body – which I’d seen only in my dreams – reclining on a velvet sofa. I approached her, awed by her beauty and the way she carried herself with such dignity, even with her legs spread wide.

  I grabbed my cock, squeezing my fingers around it as I pictured myself sliding my body over Maeve. She reached up and pulled me against her, wrapping her legs around me and guiding me inside her. I yanked on my dick as I imagined sliding into her warmth, her walls tightening around me.

  Hot water streamed over my body. My shoulders tensed. I pumped faster.

  Maeve’s lips on mine. Maeve’s ankles crossed behind me as she pulled me deeper into her warmth. Her neck arching, her breath coming out in frenzied gasps.

  Oh fuck, oh fuck…

  In my mind, I bent my head to pull her nipple into my mouth, but my chin jabbed into someone else’s skull.

  Blake turned around and grinned up at me. Corbin licked and sucked on her other tit. Behind her head, someone moved in the shadows, and Maeve stretched her mouth open to accept a waiting cock.

  Blake’s grin widened. “Share and share alike, Arnold.”

  No, get out of my fantasy, you bastards.

  But it was too late. Maeve’s wide eyes burned into mine, and her lips curled back against that cock – a black cock, Rowan’s cock – as her own orgasm slammed into her. I slammed my fist against the wall, cracking one of the tiles. Jizz pumped out the end of my cock and splattered on the bottom of the shower.

  Fuck. That was amazing.

  No, disturbing.

  Yes, definitely disturbing.

  Hands sticky, eyes red with shame, I cleaned the evidence off the bottom of the shower with my foot. Turing the water off, I rested my dripping back against the cool tiles.

  Is this how it’s going to be, jerking off in the shower while I imagined debasing the girl I care about with my flatmates?

  I remembered the sword hanging above my bed, and my blood turned cold. My elbow throbbed with phantom pain. It’s better than the alternative.

  24

  MAEVE

  I wondered if any of the guys might try to visit me that night, but no one did. I kept my light on for another hour, staring at the page of one of my physics books, listening for the sound of footsteps on the stairs.

  It occurred to me that I could go and visit one of them in their rooms, but the agony of choice froze me in place.

  I was usually so decisive, so sure of myself. But these guys had got me completely turned around inside. I already saw them as family – as precious to me as Kelly was, as my parents had been. They were essential to my understanding of myself and to uncovering this power I never knew I had.

  More than that, but they had started to heal me. I’d come to Briarwood a shadow of myself, broken apart by grief and loss. When I looked into their eyes, I saw my own pain reflected back at me. But rather than shattering me into a million pieces, digging into their pasts and discovering their secrets helped me to put myself back together again. We were all broken people trying to find our pieces in the rubble. I had pieces of all of them now, just like they had pieces of me.

  And then, there was this other layer – this deep ache inside my chest and quickening of my pulse whenever I was around them. I wanted all of them – how fucked up was that?

  And yet, it didn’t feel fucked up. It felt so, so right.

  I flicked the light off and rolled over, pulling the blankets up around my chin. No one was coming for me. And it was just as well. Maeve Crawford doesn’t wait for no man – if I wanted to, I could visit with them.

  It occurred to me as I drifted over into the realm of dreams, that I still hadn’t called Kelly back. It’s far too late now. I’ll do it tomorrow.

  My eyes flickered open, and I immediately recognized that I was in a dream. I lay across the sofa in the Great Hall, only the walls were covered with bright bold fabrics – prancing lions and fleur-de-lys outlined in gold thread.

  A body lay behind me, arms wrapped around my torso, thick fingers scraping over my skin. “Hey, beautiful,” It was Arthur. His hands snaked over my body, wrapping me in sizzling warmth.

  “I didn’t think you wanted this,” I said, my words purring as his fingers coaxed pleasure from my shimmering skin.

  “I don’t.” His beard tickled my neck. “And yet I’m here. And I’m not leaving.”

  A second hand joined Arthur’s on my naked stomach, tracing patterns over my skin. Corbin planted a soft kiss on my forehead. Gone was the darkness that had marred his eyes when he spoke of his dead brother, of his parents abandoning Briarwood and their magic. Now, his eyelashes tangled together, his gaze heavy-lidded with lust.

  “She needs time with each of us,” Arthur said. “She has to choose.”

  “I thought so, too,” Corbin replied. “Maybe there are more choices than we thought.”

  Shadows moved across the room, but I was only dimly aware of them. Corbin’s lips touched mine, teasing out my tongue. Arthur’s hands trailed across my stomach, stroking my breasts, circling my nipples until they hardened into pebbles.

  More hands joined Arthur’s, touching me, probing me, pushing my legs open, trailing rivers of fire along my thighs, dancing around the spot that tugged at me, riving the ache inside me to its peak.

  Corbin’s lips fell away, and something soft pressed against the corner of my mouth. I tipped my head back, meeting Blake’s dancing eyes. He was naked, his cock waggling in front of my face. I wrapped my tongue around the head, tasting the warmth of him.

  “That’s it, Princess,” Blake grinned, pushing his cock in deeper, so the tip scraped the back of my throat. “Take it all in. All the glorious choices.”

  I lengthened my throat, curling my lips around my teeth so I could take as much of Blake as possible. He tasted hot and salty, like a corn dog at the county fair. I wanted to taste every glorious inch of him.

  Fingers opened my hands and placed thick cocks against my palms. I closed my fingers around them, reveling in the insanity of what I was doing.

  I couldn’t see in the darkness, but I could feel the slight curve of the shaft in my left hand, the bulging thickness of the right. Rowan and Corbin. But where were…

  Hands gripped my thighs, dragging my hips back. Blake’s cock slipped from my mouth, but with a hand on my chin he guided it back in. “That’s it,” he stroked my hair, his breath hissing through his teeth. “Keep those beautiful eyes open. I want to see the pleasure swimming in them when you take in both of them.”

  Both of… what?

  With a single thrust, a
thick shaft slammed into me. I arced my back as a wave of pleasure drove through me, tightening my grip on the cocks in my hands.

  One… two… three… four…

  The cock inside me thrust deeper. I was so turned on, so hungry for more, more, more of them.

  Something rubbed against my ass, darting just inside my entrance, spreading some warm liquid around and inside.

  And then something larger pressed against that hole, thrusting in as the other cock pulled out, working its way a little deeper each time. I sucked in my breath, petrified with pleasure.

  The two guys inside me – Arthur and Flynn, although I didn’t know who was who – moved in unison, their steady rhythm rendering me breathless. They rubbed against each other inside me, sending my body to the heights of pleasure.

  I don’t know how… it doesn’t make sense… this position is physically impossible…

  But the fullness, the gloriousness of being suspended between them all, my body worshipped by their cocks, as I worshipped their bodies in turn, rendered me formless, floating like an amoeba.

  Blake in my mouth, thrusting as hard and deep as he could, scraping my throat with his cock. In my hands, two glorious cocks, hard and dripping with pre-cum. And inside of me… they touched every part of me, and it was amazing.

  I tried to focus past Blake, to see which of my guys had penetrated me in such a way. But I couldn’t see past the two naked bodies that were leaning over my torso, their faces meeting, their arms wrapped around each other.

  Corbin and Rowan.

  And they were kissing.

  25

  ROWAN

  What?

  I bolted upright, my chest heaving. My lips still stung from where they’d been pressed against Corbin’s, the taste of Maeve mingling with with own unique scent.

  My body was drenched in sweat. My heart wouldn’t stop pounding.