by Hazel Hunter
“Come here, Hailey…”
It wasn’t quite Piers’s command tone, but it was close enough that Hailey came to attention. Piers settled himself against the headboard of the bed, his legs sprawled so that Hailey could crawl between them. He took her hand and wrapped it around the base of his erection.
“I’m going to put my hand on the back of your head. I’m not going to push you, so just do whatever you like, all right, love?”
She purred at the touch of his hands in her hair, and she lapped at the tip of his cock. She relished the taste of him. When she was ready, she suckled on the tip, making him stiffen and moan.
Just when she was wondering what Kieran thought of all of this, Piers gestured to him.
“Are you waiting for a formal invitation, Major?”
The bed shifted as Kieran moved closer, kneeling between Hailey’s legs. She felt his hands on her hips lightly, almost tentatively. When he brushed the tip of his cock against her wet slit, she nearly moaned with it.
She needed him, she wanted this, why was he denying her? She pressed her hips back against him as if doing that would encourage him forward. It made him hiss with arousal. She felt him take his cock in hand and guide it into her.
She was so open and wet for him that he slid in easily, drawing a cry from both of them.
“I…don’t want to hurt you,” Kieran said through gritted teeth.
Hailey raised her head long enough to twist her head around to look at him.
“You won’t, love, I promise you won’t. I just need you now, please…”
Something in Kieran unleashed. He withdrew from her almost completely before sliding back in. He did it with such force that she was pushed onto Piers’s cock, taking him deeper than she had before.
As he had promised, Piers’s hands never forced her down or caused her to choke, but he did clench his fingers in her hair.
“You feel amazing, Hailey,” he whispered. “Gods above, you feel like heaven.”
Hailey was pinned between the two men that she loved most, giving them pleasure with her body. She twisted and moaned, wanting to tell them how good it felt, but Piers apparently thought it meant something different.
“Use your hand on her,” he said to Kieran. There was a command in his tone that Kieran snapped to obey. In less than a second, Hailey felt Kieran’s skilled fingers at her slit, pulling her open. At the first touch, her whole body twisted with pleasure, making both men groan.
How connected we are, she thought. We are feeling all of this together.
She had enjoyed bringing both of them pleasure, but now she could not concentrate on it at all. Instead, her body was a channel for her own pleasure. The feel of both of them inside her drove her mad. She loved the idea of being so filled, of having them both take their pleasure with her. Kieran’s fingers on her own body made her arch. She couldn’t control the way that she was moving and bucking. However, with her body pinned between the two of them, there was no where she could go.
Being helpless between two of the most powerful men that she knew was intoxicating. She could feel her own arousal soar higher and higher. Soon her whole body was shaking. Her climax pushed her over the edge in a blinding flash of sensation. The pleasure was so intense that she nearly lost consciousness for a moment.
Behind her, Kieran thrust into her one last time, his hands gripping her hips with a nearly bruising intensity. He was saying her name over and over again, telling her he loved her, that he wanted her.
She pulled away from Piers’s still hard cock to rest her forehead against his hip. His hands were in her hair, stroking and comforting her. Distantly, she was aware that Kieran had pulled out of her. She rolled over to her side, simply trying to catch her breath.
“Let me…let me take care of you,” she tried to say to Piers. Now that her body was cooling slightly, she felt guilty that she had not brought him to a climax as well.
Piers’s laugh was soft.
“I would like to spill inside you, love. May I?”
She nodded, almost sleepy in how satisfied she was. She felt Piers shift as he sheathed his own cock in a condom. He climbed over her, carrying most of his bulk on his arms when he rolled her to her back.
She felt exhausted but so satisfied as he pressed inside her.
“I wish I could come again,” she murmured. He leaned down to kiss her.
“Another night, we’ll keep you up and make sure that you feel every bit of pleasure that your body can tolerate. That’s what I want you to have.”
Hailey draped her arms around Piers’s neck, drawing him close.
“I want you to come now,” she said, her voice as soft as velvet. “I want you to spill. I want to think of there being nothing between us so I can feel how hot it would be.”
Piers tensed at her words, thrusting into her harder and faster. His movements became frenzied. At the last, he planted his mouth over hers when he thrust one more time. She could feel the deep groan he made and the way his body shook as if he were under a lash.
He pulled away from her to lie on his side, though his hand stayed knotted in her hair.
Hailey turned to look at Kieran, who sat on the edge of the bed, watching them.
“I don’t know what to do now,” he said.
Hailey smiled.
“It’s easy,” she said with a yawn. “Come to bed. Sleep with us. That is all you have to think about right now.”
Kieran looked like he was prepared to resist for a moment, but then he nodded. He crawled into the bed, resting next to her. After Piers had cleaned himself up, he came to lie down on her other side.
As she drifted off to sleep, she thought of how lucky she was, and how loved. She thought of the nervous way that Kieran had looked at her at the last, and she found herself wondering if he would respond to Piers’s pleasure at directing things the way she did.
When she finally fell asleep, her arm was draped over Kieran’s chest, and Piers was spooned against her back. She had spent most of her life without a home; now she wondered if she had found it between these two men.
CHAPTER SEVEN
HAILEY WOKE WHEN Piers got out of bed. The light was still dim, and when she slid out from under the covers, she shivered at how cold it was. She dressed warmly, and when she came down to the kitchen, she found that Kieran had already eaten.
“There’s eggs and oatmeal in the oven. Eat up. That will probably be the best food we’ll get all day.”
His manner was brusque to the point of being rude, a far cry from the passionate lover he had been the night before. Hailey ate her food quietly, unsure of how to take this change. Piers seemed unperturbed, eating his meal quickly and giving her a brief kiss as he went to wash his plates.
When they went outside, Kieran turned to them both.
“I want to make our way into the mountains as quickly and as subtly as possible. Piers, I want you above, keeping an eye on things, and I’ll move forward on foot. Hailey, it would be safest if you stayed in animal forms if you can, wolf when you’re with me and eagle when you’re with Piers. With three pairs of eyes, hopefully we’ll be able to see something, whether it’s a sign of Templars or a sign of the man who went missing. If we haven’t seen anything by dusk, we’ll break off and camp. Do you have any questions?”
Both Piers and Hailey shook their heads. Kieran nodded.
“All right, Piers up in the air, Hailey, go ahead and start with your wolf form.”
Piers launched himself up into the sky. Hailey watched him for a moment before turning to Kieran.
“Kieran…”
“There is a mission that we need to accomplish, Hailey. That comes first.”
He could see that she was stung by his words. He sighed, started to reach for her, and then drew his hand back.
“There is…too much to deal with right now. I promise, though, when we return, I will give you the answers that you are looking for. I swear.”
Hailey nodded, knowing even in her disappo
intment that he was right. She took his hand, pulling from the dark sea that represented his power. She remembered what Liona had said, about how she wasn’t just taking energy from him. Instead she thought about sharing it. The ocean she could see was dark and choppy, but as she pulled power from Kieran, she tried to think about it as bringing light to him as well.
She wasn’t sure if what she had tried to do had worked at all, but when she pulled back, there was a slightly confused look on his face. He looked like he wanted to speak, but instead shook his head.
“Are you ready?”
She nodded, not trusting herself to speak. Instead, she closed her eyes and concentrated on her transformation. In a matter of seconds, her body had twisted and changed. She saw the world through eyes that were much sharper, but it was the scents that truly changed how she experienced things. It was all she could do not to run off into the forest to see what was going on.
Kieran seemed to sense her excitement. She won a grin out of him, something that made him into a man that she recognized again. She thought in that moment that she would do anything for him. Any amount of fighting and risk was worth it, if he would stay at her side.
“Come, Hailey. We have a long road ahead of us and a great deal of ground to cover. Stay close by my side, but remember to use that nose of yours. If something seems out of place, dangerous or odd, let me know at once.”
She would have saluted teasingly if she could. Instead she barked briskly and fell into place by his side. She loved her new body. It felt tireless, as if she could keep up her steady trot forever and a day. Hailey forced herself to remember that she wasn’t out in the woods for a stroll. There was a man’s life at stake. There might be Templars in the area.
The sky grew lighter and dawn finally appeared. Hailey was fascinated by the fact that she could sense a great deal of what had passed the night before. She could sense where a badger had crossed their path, and she was more interested than she felt comfortable with in a spot where a fox had made a meal of a rabbit.
She kept her mind on the task at hand, however, looking for the scent that would tell her that that something strange had occurred.
It was a few hours past dawn when Piers came down to rest in the tree above them.
“There’s smoke coming up from something that’s slightly to the west of us. Is it possible that there’s an old mountaineer or hermit in these parts?”
Kieran shook his head.
“No, this area of the mountains is typically a little too dangerous for people to simply want to live here. We should definitely have a peek. Here, while you’re down, feed your face.”
He tossed a protein bar at Piers, who caught it. Kieran turned to Hailey.
“Change up, and have some food as well. After that, you can join Dayton in the sky.”
It almost hurt to leave her wolf form, to feel her sharp senses being exchanged for senses that were not half so fine. She sighed. At least in her human form, she could touch Piers when he leaped down from the tree.
After she finished her protein bar, she took Piers’s arm, pulling his golden energy from him and trying to make it more than it was, as she had done with Kieran. He definitely looked startled, but then he shook his head, as if not quite certain what he had felt.
Hailey took a deep breath and concentrated. She wished for a moment that she could have changed into an owl, as she knew her own familiar’s body well. However, a man who lived at the first coven she had lived at had turned into an eagle. Once she had asked him what it was like. He fixed her with an eye that was far keener than a human’s.
“It’s like being sharpened,” he said at last. “It’s like all of your focus, all of your will and your power is focused in your eyes. You can see farther than any other animal in the world. You can see as clearly under water as you can in dry air. It’s like being a king.”
She focused on his words, and she imagined what it would be like to soar into the air on wings that were broad and strong. She imagined what it would be like to have heavy talons that could bring down small deer. She barely noticed when she started shrinking and twisting.
When Hailey opened her eyes, she almost cried out. The forest that they had been walking through had been beautiful in its own right, but now it was lit from within, showing her a panoply of gem-like colors all in a vivid degree of sharpness that she had never imagined existed. Her sense of smell was not too different from what she had as a human, but it palled in comparison to what her eyes could see.
Piers grinned down at her.
“All right, darling, ready to fly?”
“Be careful.” Kieran’s voice was sharp. “If you get tired, come down at once.”
Hailey barely listened to either of them as she pumped her wings twice, hard. Then with a loud cry, she launched herself from the ground. It was clumsier than she thought it would be. Her first flaps were slow and lumbering, but as she put more distance between herself and the ground, she felt herself grow lighter and lighter. Soon she was hundreds of feet above where Kieran stood. Piers shot up next to her, nudging her slightly as he rose. She glanced up to see a sharp, proud grin on his face.
“Come on, Hailey, try and keep up,” he shouted, and with an inward grin, she shot after him.
Quickly, they fell into a search pattern that would maximize their range. They flew from side to side, crossing paths close to where Kieran still walked. Using him as a center, they could cover a great deal of ground.
She couldn’t get over how much she could see. If she cared to look, every rock and every rustle in the branches was obvious to her. She did quickly realize that the instincts of the eagle were more powerful than those of the wolf, however. More than once, she stopped herself from going into a dive. Seeing a fish in a stream or a rabbit in a bare patch of land made her talons itch.
More than an hour later, her sharp eyes caught sight of a strange shape in a clearing in her path. Letting out a loud scream, she spiraled over the spot, making sure that Piers saw her go down. When she landed, she returned to her human form, Piers lighting down beside her.
“Is that…what I think it is?” she asked, her voice soft and scared.
In the clearing were the remnants of a tent. It had been caved in from the top, and there were supplies scattered around the dead campfire. The light dusting of snow did nothing to cover the destroyed site. Instead, it only added to the air of desolation and fear.
Kieran appeared as if materializing out of the forest, his face grim.
“I saw you both drop down and came to look. Stand back, I want to get closer.”
Piers and Hailey hung back while Kieran carefully turned over the site. For a full twenty minutes, he went over the goods, occasionally nodding to himself. Finally, he stood and walked over to where they stood.
“It’s definitely a Magus Corps officer’s campsite. Those are the same supplies as the ones that I’ve used and we’re using right now. I don’t know what could take him out of it like this; he wouldn’t have left it this way on his own.”
“Something large,” mused Piers, looking over the destruction. “But it didn’t kill him, did it?”
“No, or at least, there’s no sign of blood or anything else. As far as I can tell, something came down and dragged him off.”
Hailey shivered to think about what could be powerful enough to remove a Magus Corps officer from his tent. All of them were trained in the armed and unarmed forms of combat. Some of them, like Kieran himself, had had centuries to hone themselves in the arts of war.
“I was looking for incendiary devices,” Kieran continued. “Templars and the Magus Corps have been at this war for some time, and they will leave bombs in places that they have attacked. There’s nothing like that here. It makes me think that they were in a hurry or simply did not have the mind to leave something behind.”
He turned to Hailey.
“We’re taking a break to refuel on water and food. After that, I want you down here in your wolf form. We’re goin
g to start moving slowly to prevent ourselves from missing anything.”
“And me?” asked Piers.
“I still want you in the air. If something happens to me, I want you ready to take Hailey out of here.”
Piers nodded. The three of them sat down to eat, by silent consensus staying away from the wrecked campsite. After they were done, Kieran went to clean it up, taking what supplies survived and piling the rest together so that the site would not be so obvious.
This time, when Hailey took Kieran’s hand, she could access his power with even more speed than she normally did. It was almost a heady feeling, having it right there. There was something powerful happening. She had never taken power from anyone as often as she had taken it from Kieran.
In her wolf form, she cast around the area carefully. Now she could tell that there had been a man at the site. His scent was the strongest, but the other scent that she found confused her badly. Her wolf brain tried to put it in a way that her human mind could understand, but it was at a loss.
Water. Blood. Bad. Old. Rot.
Hailey shook her head as if to get the scent out of her nose. For a moment, all she could think to do was to sit up and howl in a panic. Whatever had taken the man, it was not human. It was not right, and her body twisted, trying to pull away from it.
She shook her head and twisted into her human form.
“There is something very wrong with whatever took this man,” she told Kieran. Piers was already far above, watching them closely.
“What do you mean?”
“Templars are men. I know they are because I’ve seen them die. This…I don’t know what this is. The wolf is telling me that it is bad and, more than that, wrong.”
Kieran frowned.
“Do you mean something like a mountain lion or a bear?”
Hailey shook her head in frustration, wishing she could explain.
“No. I mean something wrong. A mountain lion or a bear is not a good thing, but it makes sense. They’re just other predators who want the same thing that the wolf does. This…thing…is something else.”