He smoothed his hands along the inside of my thighs, gentle, caressing, but that gentle movement spread my legs with him kneeling between them.
“What’s happening, Mistral?”
“Are you afraid?” he asked, but he wasn’t looking at my face when he said it.
“Yes,” I said, and my voice was soft in the growing wind.
“Good,” he said.
Abeloec answered me, “I am the intoxicating cup like Medb for the kings of old. You have drunk deep.” I turned my head back to look at him where he knelt behind me.
I knew that medb had been a word for “mead,” a sovereign goddess whom nine kings of Ireland had had to mate with before she would let them rule. But most of that was only stories; no one would speak of her among the sidhe, as if she were a real goddess, a real person. I had asked, and been told only that she was the cup that intoxicates. Which had been another way of saying that she was mead. I’d been left to believe she’d never been real.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
Abeloec smoothed his hand along my face. “I give the power of sovereignty to the queen, as Medb gave power to the kings. I was forgotten, because the world turned to chauvinism and there were no more votes for queens. I was just Accasbel. Denied my purpose. Some human literature says I am an ancient deity of wine and beer. I founded the first pub in Ireland, and was a follower of Partholon. That is all I am now to history.” He leaned in close to my face, and I lay back against the ground with his hands on either side of my face. “Until today. I have new duties.”
Just then, Mistral’s fingers found my opening, and I would have turned to look at him, but Abeloec’s hands tightened on my face, kept me looking at him while Mistral began to explore me with his hand. Abeloec whispered, above my face, “There was a time when without me, or Medb, no one ruled in Ireland, or faerie, or anywhere in the isles. The sithen brought us here for a reason. It brought everyone here for a reason, including Mistral.”
Dried leaves rushed across my body like brittle fingers tapping my stomach and breasts. “Let us have our reason back, Meredith,” Abeloec said.
It wasn’t a finger touching me down there anymore, though Mistral hadn’t entered me. For someone who liked to cause pain, he was being patient, and gentle.
I whispered, “Reason, what reason?” to Abeloec’s face.
“Reason to be, Meredith. A man without a duty is only half a man.”
Mistral shoved himself inside me in one long hard movement. It spilled my upper body up off the ground, tore a scream from my mouth. Abeloec released me, and I could finally stare down my body at Mistral.
Mistral’s head was flung back, eyes closed. His body was married into mine as deep as he could make it. There were no lines of color on him anymore and I realized there were none on any of the three of us. But there was something in the shining of his skin. It took me a moment to realize that something was moving inside his skin. It looked like a reflection of something, but it was not a reflection of anything around us.
He stayed there, frozen above me, with his lower body as snug to me as he could get it, and his upper body raised back on his hands and arms. He opened his eyes and looked down at me, and I saw clouds glide inside his eyes like windows onto some distant sky. The clouds moved as if hurried by some great wind, and I realized that that was what I was seeing inside his skin. Clouds, storm clouds roiling inside his skin.
The wind was growing, spilling my hair across my face, sending dead leaves in small whirlwinds. A storm was coming, and I was watching it grow inside Mistral’s body. Mistral was the master of the winds, master of the sky, a storm god once upon a time. The first lightning flash showed in his eyes.
Once upon a time wasn’t as long ago as it used to be.
CHAPTER 6
MISTRAL DREW OUT OF ME WITH A SIGHING SHUDDER THAT RAN down the length of his body. Seeing him affected to that degree made my breath short and fast. At first I thought he had rain in his eyes to match the lightning; then he blinked, and I realized it was tears.
If we had been alone I would have questioned it, talked about it, but with this many other men around us, I could not. I could not point out that he was crying in front of them, nor could I ask him why and hope to get a truthful answer. But it meant a great deal to me that Mistral, master of storms, cried after he tasted my body.
Abeloec said, softly, “It’s been too long.”
Mistral looked at him, and he simply nodded with the shine of those few hard tears gliding down his cheeks. He looked down at me, and there was a gentleness on his face, a raw pain in his eyes. He kissed me, and this time it was gentle. “I have forgotten my manners, Princess, forgive me.”
“You can kiss me with force, just don’t choke me.”
He gave a small smile, and an even smaller nod. Then he laid his body carefully along the length of mine so that his testicles pressed against my groin, and the hard length of him touched me from groin to my upper stomach. He let his weight settle on top of me with a sigh, then wrapped his arms around me. He put his face to one side of mine, and it was as if he let some great tension fall away from him. It was almost as if he grew lighter at the same time that his actual weight became heavier. I laid a soft kiss against the curve of his ear, because it was the spot I could reach.
He shuddered against me again, but because he was pressed so hard against the front of my body it made me shudder, too. The wind trailed his hair and mine across my face, mingling the red and grey strands together, almost in the way the neon glow of power had wound itself together. Stronger together than apart. The clouds in his eyes spun so fast across them that it was almost dizzying to watch.
He unwound his arms from me and raised up enough to see my face. “I don’t want to kiss down the front of your body. I want to bite my way down it.”
I had to swallow hard before I could answer, in a breathy voice, “No blood, no permanent marks, and nothing as hard as what you did to my breast. You haven’t done enough prep work for that.”
“Prep work?” He made it a question.
Abeloec said, “Foreplay.” He had been kneeling above my head, so still that I had forgotten he was there.
We both looked at him. “Give us a little more room,” Mistral asked. “I am the only one inside this circle with you, and I must remain.”
Circle, I thought, then I realized that he was right. The lines of blue, green, and red encircled the three of us. Everyone else was covered in them, but they formed a barrier around the three of us. It was a barrier that the wind could cross at will, but there would be other things that could not cross it. I wasn’t sure what those other things would be, but I knew enough of magical circles to know that they were meant to keep some things in, and some things out. It was their nature, and tonight was all about the nature of things.
I ran my hands up Mistral’s back, tracing the line of his spine, playing along the muscles that held him just above me. He closed his eyes and swallowed before he looked down at me. “You wanted something?”
“You,” I said.
That earned me a smile. A real smile, not about sex, or pain, or sorrow, just a smile. I valued that smile the way I valued Frost’s smile, and Doyle’s. They had all come to me without a real smile, as if they had forgotten how to do it. By the standards that the other two men had set, Mistral was a fast learner.
I moved one hand around so I could trace his lower lip with my finger. “Do what you wanted to do. Just remember the rules.”
His smile held an edge of something that wasn’t happy now, and I wasn’t sure if the parameters that I’d put on him were actually that taxing, or if I’d reminded him of something sad. “No blood, no permanent marks, nothing as hard as what I did on your breast, because I have not done enough foreplay for that, yet.”
It was almost word for word what I’d said to him. “Good memory.”
“Memory is all I have.” As he said it, that raw pain was back in his eyes. I thought I understood now. He w
as enjoying himself, and determined to enjoy himself, but when he was finished, there would be no more. The queen would put him back in the lonely cell of her rules, her jealousy, her sadism. Would it be worse to have had this moment and then be denied again? Would it cause him pain to watch me with my men, and not be a part of it? It wasn’t that I was so special to him, or to them. It was simply that I was the only woman with whom the guards could break their long celibacy.
I raised myself off the ground and kissed him. “I am yours.”
He kissed me, gently at first, then harder. His tongue thrust between my lips. I opened my mouth and let him explore my mouth. He thrust deep inside, then backed off a little, enough so that it was just a good deep kiss. The feel of his mouth drew my mouth closer to his, made my body rise up to press tighter against him, sent my arms across his back, pressed my breasts firm against his chest.
He made a small sound low in his throat, and the wind suddenly felt cool against my skin. He drew his mouth from mine, and the expression in his eyes was wild. Storm clouds rode in his eyes, but they had slowed, so that it was no longer dizzying. If I hadn’t known what I was looking at, I might simply have thought his eyes were the grey of rain clouds.
He laid his face in the curve of my neck. He didn’t so much kiss me as lay his lips against my skin. His breath went out in a heavy sigh that spread warmth across my skin. It made me shiver, and that was it. He set his teeth in the side of my neck, and bit me. It made me cry out and tense my fingers along his back, to trail an edge of nail across his skin.
He bit my shoulder, quick and hard. I cried out for him, and he moved again. I don’t think he trusted himself to hold my flesh in his mouth for very long. I knew he wanted to bite down harder, and I could feel the effort required to fight that urge in his lips, his hands, his entire body. He was enjoying himself, but he was struggling to keep his impulses in check.
He put his mouth into the side of the breast he had not marked and barely laid teeth. I grabbed the side of his face, not hard, but it stopped him. He lifted his gaze to mine, his mouth half opened, and I watched his expression fall. I think he expected me to tell him to stop. Even if that had been what I meant to do, I wouldn’t have had the heart to say it. But regardless, it hadn’t.
“Harder,” I said instead.
He gave me a wolfish grin, and again I got that glimpse of something in him that would have made me hesitate to be alone with him. But I was no longer certain if that was truly Mistral’s nature, or whether centuries of denial had made him wild with need.
He set his teeth into my side and bit down hard, hard enough that I writhed under him. He moved just a little farther down my side, to my waist, and this time when I felt him begin to let go, I said, “Harder.”
He bit me deeper this time, bit me until I felt his teeth almost meet in my skin. I cried out and said, “Enough, enough.”
He lifted his face as if to stop completely. I smiled at him. “I didn’t say stop, I just meant that was hard enough.”
He moved to the other side of my body and bit me again without urging, hard enough that I had to tell him, almost immediately, not to go farther. He looked up at me, and whatever he saw on my face satisfied him, because he bit next to my belly button, setting his teeth so hard and fast that I had to tell him to stop.
He’d left a press of red teeth marks on my stomach. There were red marks here and there on my body, but nothing as perfect as that. A perfect set of his teeth marks in the white flesh of my body. Looking at it made me shiver.
“You like it,” he whispered.
“Yes,” I said.
The wind held an edge of dampness as it trailed across my skin. He licked low on my stomach, and the wind seemed to blow across that wet line, almost as if the wind had a mouth, too, and could blow where it wished.
Mistral pressed his mouth where he had licked, and bit me. Hard and sharp, enough to make me startle, and raise my upper body off the ground. “Enough,” I said, and my voice was almost a yell.
The wind began to pick up, blowing more dead leaves across my body. Streaming my hair across my face, so that for a moment I couldn’t see what Mistral was doing. The wind was damp, as if it rode an edge of rain. But it never rained in the dead gardens.
I felt his mouth laid on the mound between my legs, resting on the tight, curling hair. I couldn’t see, but I knew what he was doing. He bit me, and I yelled, “Enough.”
I used one hand to push my hair out of the way, so I could look down my body and see him. He gave one quick flick of his tongue between my legs. That one small touch sped my pulse and opened my mouth in a silent O.
“You know what I want to do,” he said. He spoke with his hands around my thighs, fingers digging in just a little, his face just above my groin, so close that his breath touched me there.
I nodded, because I didn’t trust my voice. On the one hand, I didn’t want him to hurt me; on the other, I did want him to come just to that edge of truly hurting me. I liked that edge. I liked it a lot.
I finally found my voice, and it almost didn’t sound like me, so breathy, so eager. “Go slow, and when I say enough, you stop.”
He gave that smile again that filled his cloud-dazed eyes with a fierce light, and I realized it wasn’t my imagination. Lightning played through the heavy grey clouds of his eyes. It had gone away, but now it was back, and it filled them with a flashing white, white light, so that his eyes looked blind for a second. The wind slowed, and the air felt heavy, thick, and I felt an edge of electricity in the air.
He spread me wide, using his fingers, so strong, so thick. He licked the length of me, back and forth until I writhed under his mouth and hands. Only then did he press his mouth over me. Only then did he let me feel the edge of his teeth around the most intimate parts of my body.
He bit down slowly, so slowly, so carefully.
I breathed out, “Harder.”
He obeyed.
He took as much of my flesh down there into his mouth as he could fit, and bit me. Bit me so hard that it raised my upper body completely off the ground, and I screamed for him. But I didn’t scream stop, or enough. I just screamed, full-throated, spine bowing, staring down at him with wide eyes and opened mouth. I orgasmed for him, from the feel of his teeth in my most intimate flesh. I orgasmed for him, and even through the pleasure of it I changed my scream to “Stop, stop, oh, God, stop!” Even through that most overwhelming of pleasures, I could feel his teeth going just a little too far. When something hurts in the middle of orgasm, you need to stop—things usually only hurt when the afterglow begins to fade.
Again I screamed, “Stop,” and he stopped.
I fell back onto the ground, eyes unable to focus, fighting to breathe, unable to move. But even while my body lay helpless with the afterglow, I began to ache. I ached where his teeth had touched me there, and I knew that it was just going to hurt more later. I’d let my desire—and Mistral’s—send us too far over that fine edge.
His voice came. “I did not bleed you, and I did not bite you as hard there as I did on your breast.”
I nodded, because I couldn’t speak yet. The air was so dense with the coming storm that it made it harder to breathe, almost in the way the queen could make the air too thick to breathe.
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
I found my voice. “A little.” The ache was becoming sharper. I had only a limited time before it was simply going to hurt. I wanted him to finish before the pleasure truly did become pain.
He crawled over my body on all fours, so that he wasn’t actually touching me, but he could see my face. “Are you all right, Princess?”
I nodded. “Help me turn over.”
“Why?”
“Because if we finish this with you on top, it’s going to hurt too much.”
“I was too rough,” he said, and he sounded so sad. Lightning flashed first in one eye then the other, as if it traveled from one side of his mind to the other. The light blue lightning bolt on his
cheek paled in the brightness of it.
He started to crawl off me as if he were going to stop. I grabbed his arm. “Don’t stop, bright Goddess, don’t stop. Just help me roll over. If you take me from behind, you won’t be brushing up against the part of me you bruised.”
“If I have hurt you so badly, we must stop.”
My fingers tightened on his arm. “If I wanted to stop, I would say so. Everyone else has been too afraid of hurting me, and even if you went too far, I do like it. Mistral, I like it a great deal.”
He gave an almost shy smile. “I did notice.”
I smiled back at him. “Then let us finish what we started.”
“If you are sure.” In the moment he said it, and meant it, I knew that I would be safe alone with him. If he was willing to pass up some of the first intercourse he’d been offered in centuries for fear of my being hurt, then he had the discipline to control himself in private. Consort preserve us, but he had more discipline than I would have had. How many men would have turned down the finish, after a start like that? Not many, not many at all.
“I am sure,” I said.
He smiled again, and something moved above us. Something grey was in motion near the high domed ceiling. Clouds—there was a tiny knot of clouds up near the ceiling. I looked into Mistral’s face and said, “Fuck me, Mistral.”
“Is that an order, my princess?” He smiled when he said it, but there was an edge of something that wasn’t happy in his voice.
“Only if you want it to be.”
He looked down at me, then said, “I would rather do the ordering.”
“Then do it,” I said.
“Turn over,” he said. His voice did not have quite the firmness it had had earlier, as if he wasn’t sure I would obey.
I had recovered enough to roll over, though I was slow. He moved back until he knelt by my feet. “I want you on your hands and knees.”
I did what he asked, or ordered. It put me looking at Abeloec, who still knelt, motionless, at the top of our makeshift blanket. I expected to see lust, or something to let me know he was enjoying the show, but that wasn’t what was in his face. His smile was gentle, peaceful. It didn’t match what we were doing, at least not to me.
[Merry Gentry 05] - Mistral's Kiss Page 6