Quickening, Volume 1

by Amy Lane

  A cleansing wash of sex and pleasure scalded the worries, the fears, the horrible weakness of the last weeks away. When they touched me, I was powerful, the apex of their desires, the focus of their want—and here, warm, safe in their bed, I felt vast enough to be filled with them, great enough of will and body to hold their sex safe in my womb.

  Green rocked back and forth, panting slightly in my ear. Every now and then he’d lick a tortuous line along the back of it, teasing the tiny gold hoops that lined it to the top. Until he’d started doing that, I hadn’t realized how erogenous that zone, and the mix of pleasure and slight twinges of pain, could be. When I opened my mouth to groan, Bracken clasped me around the waist and dragged me closer while one of Nicky’s hands got bolder, brushing my breast on purpose as he reached between our bodies.

  Bracken’s kiss, his unending appetite, the hardness of his body at the front, the fluidity of Green at my back, the pressure of Green inside me, and the flirting little touches of Nicky’s hands… ooh yes. Soon. Soon. It’ll come, it’ll come, it’ll come, it’ll come, oh please let it come… let it come now!

  The orgasm started slow, clenching the pit of my gut, squeezing around Green’s cock as it thrust so powerfully inside me. It rippled around the hard weight, grapefruit sized and growing, resting on my pelvic floor, along the muscles surrounding it, contracting everything from my thighs to my diaphragm as lights exploded behind my eyes and I screamed into Bracken’s mouth.

  Green bit my shoulder softly as he climaxed, and I reached down between us to take Bracken in my fist and give him the release I knew he needed.

  The men kept moving, Green in aftermath and Bracken chasing his own climax. He draped his arm behind him, and Nicky hissed, “Oh, Goddess, yes!” and I knew Bracken was offering his services. For a moment there was just harsh breathing and the rocking of the four of us on the bedsprings, and then I rubbed my thumb across the satin flesh of Bracken’s cockhead and he gasped.

  He must have squeezed behind him, because Nicky made a similar sound. In a moment I felt the heat of Bracken’s come as it scalded along my thumb and fist, and he convulsed in my arms as Nicky let out a breathless little keening sound. Bracken gave a grunt of satisfaction as he moved his arm from the awkward position at his back, and I felt Nicky’s come, sticky and cooling, coat my hip.

  I didn’t care. Green’s spend was running between my thighs, and Bracken’s coated my stomach. With Nicky’s there touching my hip, I felt whole, beloved, sheltered and cocooned by the men who were living up to that oath to keep me safe and warm and cared for.

  Green dropped his hand to span my middle, where I could still feel the pulses of orgasm against his skin.

  “That’s so weird,” I said gruffly. He laughed softly in my ear.

  “That’s your body making babies,” he told me, stroking the skin gently.

  “Right now, it just feels… bigger,” I told him thoughtfully. “Big and dense. When I come, it’s like… in the way. The muscles are longer, so the orgasm is stronger. It’s, like, the climax is harder—and I’m worried. What’s going to happen when I really get big?”

  Green made a hmm sound next to my ear. “It will take a great deal out of you to come,” he said simply. “You might not make it every time, just because coming takes so much energy.”

  “Awesome.” Because sex without orgasm? Bummer. “I should savor my orgasms now, that’s what you’re saying?”

  Nobody could be surly when Green chuckled against his ear. “You should savor them always,” he told me kindly. “Because they’re always a gift.”

  It was my turn to hmm. I had the come of three lovers splashed on my skin and inside me, and I really did have it good.

  GREEN WAS the one who helped me into the shower, soaked my body, and washed my hair. When we got out, he put me back in a T-shirt and soft cotton bra, panties, and sleep pants and ordered me unceremoniously back into the bed that Bracken and Nicky were sitting on.

  “But, I’m going to run—”

  “When it’s cooler,” he said without compromise. “Right now everybody has homework anyway,” he added crisply. “We’re going to let the hill run without us for a little bit, and I declare at least part of this day family day. Get out your homework and sit.”

  I rolled my eyes, but the truth was, that sounded heavenly. No talking in councils, no going out into the hill to the swiftly growing number of people who depended up on us all for safety and protection. Tonight, at dark, I needed to send the vampires out to scout a likely location using Connor’s description. Before now they’d only been looking for the right fringe group migrating—this was different. For one thing, according to Green, Connor’s ritual would need running water, and it would need to be accessible to the full moon. It would also need to be dry enough to place sleeping bags and bed mats on fairly dry ground so people would be in the mood to make love or have sex. People had to think it was a great idea to go party at the beach on the equinox—and wasn’t it just special that the mountains got a little chilly but not ice-fucking-cold this time of year in California? So perhaps a place where a few RVs could park, but someplace not too far away from civilization, because Connor had made claims to free beer and an Internet hotspot for his phone.

  But that was tonight. Tonight I’d probably be the eyes and ears on the ground as the vampires flew—which would mean I’d be better served by a small number of people around me so I could give orders if need be.

  The equinox was in just a few nights. If we didn’t stop the new werewolf ritual then, we’d be screwed.

  But Green was right—if I didn’t get some downtime, some normal time, I wasn’t going to make it.

  Green brought his laptop into our room and sat at one of my overstuffed chairs, using the end table as a desk. He’d been so absent over the past weeks, I almost cried just to be able to look up and see him there while Bracken’s hand rested absently on my thigh. For a little while we worked in harmony. I felt my inner battery charge with something different than sex, something that was almost better in its way—but only because I’d just had sex!—and that I thought might sustain me a little more for the long term.

  Contentment—it was as elusive as a sprite doing 200-proof cocaine, and I got to capture it for a few hours. I might be young, and marked primarily by my fuckups, but I was smart enough to pin that truth down and welcome it.

  A FEW days later, after lunch and about two hours before sundown, Teague and I strategized while we were out on another run. While I seemed to be doing okay with the strategy, I sucked more at the running than I usually did. I had to stop about halfway through, leaning against a tree and gasping, because holy wow did my wind suck ass.

  “You miss” (pant pant) “a week or so” (gasp gasp) “and look” (wheeze) “what happens!” Inhale!

  Teague, damn him, wasn’t even winded. “It’s not the week, and you know it,” he said amiably. “You can’t keep pretending it’s not happening.”

  “What’s it been, a couple of months that I’ve known? Give me a little more time!” I wasn’t counting the weeks. Really. Neither was Bracken, seeing as that afternoon after lunch he’d actually put a poster up in our room showing stages of embryo and fetus development. Well, nobody said my beloved was subtle.

  “Sure. I’ll give you about six more months,” Teague said, laughing at his own joke. “But don’t get mad at me when you come out after month five and biff yourself because you can’t see your feet.”

  I glared at him sourly. “Seven,” I said. The unfairness had been bothering the fuck out of me, and I’d been avoiding how much.

  Teague grimaced. “Ouch. Maybe by then you’ll get over your denial.”

  I glared at him and started a dogged trot down the trail again, forgetting the strategizing and concentrating on the running. We’d gone maybe half a mile before Teague spoke again.

  “You know this scary shit with the werewolves and the funky crazy elf witch isn’t going to be around forever. You know that, right?�
�

  Oh Goddess. No one else had guessed. “Something will,” I managed. Good thing Teague had practice speaking in code, since he was the one who could speak.

  “Yeah, but it’s that way with all parents, you know? You worry about miscarrying, you worry about the birth process, you worry about feeding the kid. You worry about day care and you worry about school. The shitty parents, they check out of that shit. They just screw the kid and forget to feed it and let it get beat up and raped with broken bottles and—”

  “Holy Goddess!” Because it was clear from his bitterness that he was talking about himself. Green and I had known—of course Green had known, he knew all a person’s secrets before they joined the hill permanently—but to hear him talk about it in terms of a child, a baby—

  “Yeah, Cory, it sucks. And this summer you did a really fucking horrible thing to help a bunch of kids who didn’t have it that bad at first and then suddenly had it worse, and that’s going to eat at you. But you know what?”

  My stomach hurt—a little because I was hungry, but mostly because… because….

  “You’re gonna tell me.” I hoped he would.

  “Damned straight.” Our feet made little puffs of dust in the drought-ridden earth, and his words had opened up an entire wasteland of worry before me. Three years ago I’d hated the world—but I’d assumed there was something worthwhile about it to hate. And now? “You’re worried if you can do it. And more importantly, you’re worried that it’s just going to be one big scary thing after another. Sort of like our lives since that big scary bear crashed your shields in the spring.”

  “You think that’s the only time life’s looked a little bleak?” I panted. Teague shook his head.

  “I know it’s not. Man, I’ve lived it’s not. You’ve seen me. For more than a year I worked next to Jack and prayed I’d die before he did.”

  Ugh. Yeah, talking to Teague did give you some fucking perspective. “That’s awful,” I said, even though I’d sort of known that anyway. Teague hadn’t come to us all sunshine and fucking roses.

  “Yup. You know the hardest thing I ever did?”

  I didn’t want to say “Sac up and kiss him,” because I didn’t know if that was how it had played out. I knew that Teague had been in love with Jack when he’d shown up here—Jacky as a newly born werewolf dying at his side—and that Katy had been here months before, but she’d known Teague from an earlier time in their lives. Other than that, I let his privacy be his privacy. But I could hazard a guess.

  “Believe you’d live?”

  He grunted again, because that’s just how he rolled. “You wish. No. I hoped I’d live. Still don’t believe it, but I don’t need to. Belief? Nothin’. Hope? That gets me out of bed and lets me leave their sides.”

  “So I hope I’m gonna have a baby?” I asked. “Because I think that ship has fucking sailed.”

  He whapped me upside the head.

  I stopped, shocked, and sputtered at him.

  “Oh, please—you take worse in your sleep.” He rolled his eyes, disgust evident while I just sucked air like a landed tuna. “Don’t be….” He floundered for the word. “Obscure, or opaque, or augh fucking obtuse, little Goddess. You hope the world will be worth having the baby in.”

  I glared at him and then took off running again. He rejoined me after a moment, catching up easily.

  “You can ignore me all you want,” he said. Then he just left it.

  “I never ignore you.” Because it was true.

  “Yeah, but you can if you want. If it will make it easier for you to stay in your little patch of denial.”

  “I’ll think about it,” I said—because, hey, not like I had much choice to do anything else.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.” ’Cause hell, if Teague could face his fears and hope, why couldn’t I? “Let’s see if we can get through tonight without anyone getting killed. And then, if we’re not overrun with the funky furry werewolf apocalypse, I might even call my mother.”

  Teague shuddered. “I’d rather fight werewolves,” he said, dead serious. “Even with the scary blood and suicidal tendencies. Good luck with that.”

  “Yeah, well, we gotta survive first. Let’s try real hard to do that.” We’d sent out a few vampire recon parties since Green had figured out the equinox would be a big deal, and had narrowed down some of the places the enemy could be. This time out we figured Teague would be on the ground, directed by me and Green and trying to make sense of the patterns the vampires had seen from the air. He wouldn’t be our only guy running around in the woods—but boy, that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to worry about every goddamned one of them.

  “You gonna be okay running things from the top of the hill?” he asked, and it was my turn to grunt. “I’ll take that as a no.”

  “You would be right,” I said. God, it had taken Green some talking to get me out of this op. Nearly a week of it, in fact. He did have a point—I was going to have enough to do on the ground, contacting all the vampires and getting reports from Green, Arturo, and Bracken, who were going to be doing the same thing. In addition to Teague, we’d have around twenty men in the field—including Lambent, Max, Renny, Mario, LaMark, and Nicky—and I didn’t even want to think about the potential for disaster.

  “Your people know their shit,” he said seriously. I had enough breath to send him a dirty look and not much else. Still, when we cleared the hill we were working on and started back down the other side, I realized I was getting my wind back.

  “I should be down on the ground,” I said, knowing I sounded childish. Well, I was growing children, it was bound to happen.

  “Even if you weren’t knocked up, you couldn’t be on the ground,” Teague chided. “My entire point for living here is so I can go out and do the shit that you and Bracken are too busy or too important for. Jesus, Cory, you gotta thing against letting a guy earn an honest living?”

  I glared at him. “I am used to being hands-on,” I ground out.

  “Yeah, and then you got knocked up. And guess what?”

  “I’m gonna be squirting kids out my cooter like watermelon seeds before I even admit I’m pregnant?”

  “No, but that’ll be entertaining. I hope I’m there to see it. But that wasn’t what you were supposed to guess.”

  “Thrill me.”

  “The thrill is gone, your queenship, that’s how you got knocked up.”

  If I hadn’t just got my rhythm back, I would have stopped running just to trip him. “I will hurt you. For fucking real.”

  He smirked back, the expression almost boyish on a face that didn’t do boyish. Yeah, when he was asleep you could see the remnant of freckles and the slightly crooked front teeth that made him look like he should be playing little league, but awake? Teague was five feet nine inches of green-eyed bantam-rooster badass.

  “You hurt me, you won’t find out that thing you don’t know yet.”

  “It had better be good, because I really want to hurt you.”

  “Don’t worry, it’s good.”

  We jogged a few moments in silence.

  “Teague, so help me—”

  He laughed. “You would have had to stop anyway.”

  “What?” I almost did stop running, but after a bobble in my step and a nearly rolled ankle, I decided a rhythm was nothing to fuck with. “What in the—”

  “This shit we do—the stuff on the ground? Yeah, some of it needs you. Some of it needs the whole hill. But you got better shit to do with your time—”

  “Like what?”

  “Like that thing we drove Green to do. You and Bracken can go out and do phase two of that. Me and Lambent? We need a boss there to back us up. You are a queen, Lady Cory. You need to get your hands out of the dirt so you can shake with the big boys, you understand me?”

  “I hate you,” I said plainly, because I did understand him, and I hated the idea. It was easy to think of myself as Queen of the Fey and Undead, just as long as I was regular Cory who
just happened to have a shitload of power at my disposal. But if nothing else, the events of this summer had made perfectly clear the fact that all that power meant more than just the ability to fry people where they sat.

  It had to be wielded, and wielded well, or it was no goddamned use to anybody. It was my job—my fucking responsibility to my people—not just to keep them safe, but to trust that they could do the same for me while I wielded some of that awesome power.

  So, yeah. I knew what he was saying.

  Wasn’t excited about it, but I sure did get what he was talking about.

  “Yeah, I hate you too,” Teague said as we rounded the last corner before we approached the garden.

  We got to the top of the hill and began to walk, the temperateness of the Goddess grove easing the sweat from the late-September heat. I stood for a moment, my hand resting on one of the lime trees, and caught my breath while the sun slanted hard toward the horizon.

  Teague looked toward the pending sunset and then back to me, his brow arched.

  “Pretty. Any reason we’re contemplating the remains of the fucking day?”

  I swallowed. “Yeah—I’ve got the feeling it’s going to be a bitch of a night.” I could feel it—after nearly a week of searching, we were going to pin those fuckers down and put a dent in their future. Or we hoped so, because this was the last night we had to search.

  Teague’s scowl was, for lack of a better word, wolfish. “Yeah. I’m telling you, it’s gonna be so much better than dressing up in a monkey suit and making nice.”

  I grinned at him, remembering how much I loved the adrenaline rush and that power of going out and doing something proactive to make my corner of the world a better place. “Nice is overrated,” I told him. “Now I’m going to go shower before my pit stink distracts me.”

  Teague scented the air, his nostrils flaring and his upper lip curling so he could taste the air on his palate. “Yeah,” he said contemplatively. “You need to do that. The sweat makes the grove smell pregnant. It’s fuckin’ weird.”