by Lila Dubois
She was thrusting against his hand, moaning and whimpering, kneading and pinching the nipple that wasn’t in his mouth.
William took his fingers from her to grab her hips. She sat up, her nipple popping from his mouth. She brushed her hair back over her shoulder, her breasts and belly pearl-like in the starlight.
Together they positioned her hips, his cock. William knew it was a dream, if only for the fact that his cock was hard and ready, totally unimpaired by the rampaging amounts of gin.
She braced her palms on his belly as the tip of his cock found the center of her. Holding her hair up off the back of her neck with one hand, she rode him, her face tipped up, her breasts bouncing. William sat up, bracing himself with one hand. He put his hand on her back, kissed the soft skin between her breasts.
“I love you. I love you,” he whispered.
Her hands were in his hair, gripping him as his movements grew jerky. “Protect me, don’t hurt me,” she gasped out.
“Never, never again,” he promised.
Mirela pressed her face into his hair, body coiled and tight as the orgasm rocked her. William wrapped his arms around her, holding her through it all.
When she was done she climbed off him. He hadn’t come but he didn’t care. He wanted to please her more than he wanted anything else.
She went to the window and looked over her shoulder. Then his dream Mirela smiled, climbed onto the sill and jumped.
Chapter Twelve
Christoffer found that self-hatred was the emotion that kept on giving. After a night of tossing and turning on the cot, he woke to find that he didn’t feel any better about himself.
He’d locked himself in one of the cages, as his Alpha asked, but he hadn’t locked the building door, and the gale-force winds of last night had popped it open. He was glad. He wouldn’t want to be stuck in here without any way of knowing how much time had passed.
Until William put words to his actions, Christoffer had been in happy denial. He loved William, and clearly love didn’t bring out the best in him. Despite what he knew about Mirela’s feelings, he’d said nothing to William. A lie of omission.
He hated that his Alpha was angry with him, but he hated himself more.
Mirela didn’t deserve what either of them had done to her, but she especially didn’t deserve the betrayal he’d dealt her. It was not her fault William loved her, and not her fault William’s love was so dysfunctional. Christoffer was painfully aware that Mirela had trusted him far more than she’d trusted William, but while William’s actions caused her pain, Christoffer had let it happen. If he’d have said something there was no doubt William would have stopped.
Hadn’t she made it clear she would have denied William sex if Christoffer wanted her to? Hadn’t she been his friend, his lover?
There was an ache in his chest separate from the knot of guilt in his belly. Every time he thought about returning to the house and finding her chamber empty he wanted to throw up.
She was annoying, socially clueless, unskilled in bed. She was a good listener, loyal and beautiful.
“I’m such a moron,” Christoffer said.
“Not as much of a moron as I.”
Christoffer jumped to his feet at the sound of William’s voice. The Lord of Eahrington stood in the open door, his shadow stretched before him.
“I closed that door last night,” Christoffer said. “The wind blew it open.”
“I believe you.” William picked the cell key up from where Christoffer had thrown it. “And I knew you’d be here. I’m sorry for what I said last night. I do trust you.”
William unlocked the cell and pushed the door open.
“My lord?”
“You must be hungry. Come have breakfast.” William shook his head. “Let me try that again. Would you like to have breakfast with me?”
“Yeah, I’d like that.”
Christoffer followed William out into the early morning light, chuckling at William’s hiss of pain. “Hungover?”
“Not as bad as expected,” William said, squinting at the ground.
The housekeeper was in the kitchen. She’d laid breakfast on the table and was now cooking dinner, which she’d put in the fridge for William to heat up later.
“Kim, this is Christoffer. His father is an important business associate of mine. Christoffer is going to be living here.”
“Very well, my lord,” she said, looking up briefly from the cottage pie she was making to smile at Christoffer.
A ball of pleasure filled Christoffer at William’s words. It almost pushed away the guilt. Almost.
They tucked into a full English breakfast of bacon, sausages, toast, beans and tomatoes.
“This needs to cook for forty-five minutes, gas-mark five,” Kim said. “Shall I wait for it? There’s some laundry.”
“No, thank you, Kim,” William said. “We’ll take it out.”
“Very good. I’ll be seeing you tomorrow, my lord.”
“Good day, Kim.”
The housekeeper left. Christoffer waited until he heard tires on gravel to say, “How are we going to get Mirela back?”
William sat back, wiping his mouth delicately. “We’re not.”
“Come on. She needs to be here, with us.”
William crossed his arms. “That’s an odd thing for you to say.”
“I should have told you what was going on, and I shouldn’t have let my jealousy stop me from helping her, but I was caring for her. I made sure she was okay because I like her too. She should be here with us.”
William shook his head. “It’s not safe. I don’t trust myself not to treat her the way I did before. Even knowing how much I hurt her, the memory of her wearing the jesses and the hood arouses me.”
“So you’ve got a fetish. Who doesn’t? The thing is, now we all know what’s going on, we know who loves who and so we’ll watch out for each other.”
“She doesn’t love me.” William stared at the tabletop. When Christoffer didn’t respond, he looked up. “She loves you? Well, that’s brilliant.”
“No,” Christoffer rushed out, scared to destroy the understanding they seemed to be reaching. “She doesn’t love me, but she…likes me, as a friend. And, er, I might as well tell you now that we would fool around after her baths.”
“You had sex with her?” There were storm clouds gathering in William’s eyes.
“No, just oral. Sixty-nine. Kid stuff really.”
William sighed. “I’m not angry.”
“Er, really?”
“No. I’m as surprised as you but I’m not angry. The idea of you two together seems…right.”
“The idea of the three of us together seems more right,” Christoffer said.
“That was…very erotic.”
“I don’t mean just for sex. The three of us…in a relationship.”
“Relationships are between two people.”
“That rule only applies with humans,” Christoffer said, making it up as he went along.
“Oh really?” William cocked a brow.
“We’re going to live with you for the rest of our lives, right? Why shouldn’t we all have sex and love each other and all that?”
“This is the manor house of the Lord of Eahrington, not some hippie commune,” William scoffed.
“Try to not be such a snobby Brit for one second and think about it. I was scared that if you had her you wouldn’t want anything to do with me anymore. No more sex, no more watching cricket, no more time in the library doing nothing. That’s what I was scared to lose. But it doesn’t have to be that way, does it?” Christoffer dropped to one knee beside William’s chair.
“I don’t want to lose you either.” He tucked Christoffer’s hair behind his ear. It was the most tender and loving gesture William had ever performed toward Christoffer, and if the wolf hadn’t already been in love that would have done it.
“I don’t want to lose you,” William repeated. “And what you describe feels…right, though comp
letely inappropriate and beyond the pale.”
“But you can see it, can’t you? All of us, together?”
“I can. But you forget one very important thing.”
“What?”
“Mirela’s gone. She hates me.” William looked away from Christoffer out the kitchen window, his eyes scanning the cloud-studded sky. “She’s gone.”
“No, I’m not.”
As entrances went, it was perfect. When Christoffer later learned she’d been standing there listening to them, he’d been floored that she’d finally managed to say the right thing at the right time.
Christoffer and William both rose to their feet. Christoffer smiled in relief. She met his grin with a smile of her own. William looked as though he saw a ghost.
Mirela tipped her head to the side. “Why do you look so shocked?”
“You came back.”
“Where else would I go? This is my home.”
“I dreamed of you.” William sounded like a love-struck teenager. Christoffer rolled his eyes. Mirela saw it and the corner of her lip twitched.
“You dreamed of me before or after we had sex?”
“That was real?”
She blinked. “Of course.”
“You don’t remember having sex with her last night?” Christoffer tried and failed not to smile. “You were drunk.”
“I thought it was a dream.” William frowned.
“It was good sex,” Mirela said to Christoffer. “Though William did not come and his cock was squishy toward the end.”
William was blushing now. “I was drunk,” he said defensively.
Christoffer hung on the side of the table as he laughed. “Squishy? Hahaha.”
“Hateful creatures, both of you,” William said, but he was smiling.
Mirela made her way over to the table, picking at the last of the bacon. William took her hand and kissed the center of her palm. Mirela looked away from her bacon, face gone soft and dreamy.
Jealousy, a terrible green dragon, reared its head in Christoffer, but William took his hand, lacing their fingers together so that Christoffer was a part of the moment.
Mirela broke the silent moment by saying, “I saw two foxes at the edge of the forest.
Christoffer snorted. “Small game. Are you saying you just looked at them instead of catching them?”
She narrowed her eyes. “I could have if I wanted.”
“Liar.”
“Dog-face.”
“Dog-face?” Christoffer yelped. Now it was William who braced himself on the table and laughed.
Mirela smirked and bit a sausage in half.
“I think,” William said as his laughter died, “that it’s time to test my Hunting Pair.”
*
The Lord of Eahrington rode out, falcon on his wrist, wolf at his side.
The barbarian inside him was savagely satisfied. He was finally the lord he’d been born to be, master of beasts too dangerous for other men to tame, guardian of an old and sacred secret.
On his wrist, the falcon—for he found it hard to think of the powerful bird as Mirela—rode with her head held high.
The wolf padded along beside them, far enough to keep the horse from spooking.
He took them away from the deer park and stables, following the edge of the forest. Soon the manicured grass of the manor house grounds gave way to field. William stopped here.
He wanted to be able to see the falcon and wolf in action, and the meadow with its thigh-high grass and open sky would provide him the opportunity.
“Bring me a fox,” he told them. The wolf’s head jerked, the falcon lifted her wings.
“Go!” he shouted, and the wolf was off. William could see the dark fur of his back amid the green of the grasses, but then the wolf melted into the scenery and was gone. William twisted in his saddle, lowering his wrist, then flung his arm into the air, pushing the falcon into the sky. Her wings beat, lifting her quickly and seemingly effortlessly into the sky.
William watched his falcon circle. He settled himself into the saddle, prepared to watch and enjoy, but he’d underestimated their skill. There was a flurry of motion in the grass ahead and to the right and then a high-pitched scream. He saw the wolf’s shoulders rise above the grass.
The falcon dipped into a corkscrew dive, disappearing into the grass only to lift again, a fox clenched in her claws.
The fox, no larger than a cat, screamed and squealed. The falcon’s beak parted and she let out a short cry. A howl responded.
The falcon dropped the fox, which fell into the waiting jaws of the wolf.
Less than two minutes had passed.
They were utterly savage. William had expected them to balk at being asked to catch a fox. People were horrifically sentimental about foxes, though they were overpopulated dreadful pests.
They had not balked. They had, with beautiful savagery and human intelligence, caught the foxes and, when the falcon needed assistance the wolf was there. That was the power of the Hunting Pair—animal savagery and human intelligence.
William swung off his gelding, not bothering to tie up the reins. He wouldn’t have cared if the beast had run away. He was watching the falcon, flying low over the grass. She circled around him, then came to rest heavily on his wrist. The wolf, two very dead foxes dangling from his mouth, emerged from the grass.
He laid the foxes at William feet.
“You are beautiful,” he told his Hunting Pair. “I have never seen anything so amazing.”
Though he said nothing, the wolf began to change from animal to human and the falcon jumped from his wrist to do the same.
Christoffer and Mirela, naked, sweaty and panting, rose to stand. There was wildness in their eyes, so much so that for a moment William was afraid.
They reached for him, Mirela grabbing his face to savage him with a kiss, Christoffer ripping his shirt open.
At last.
Mirela nipped William’s lower lip and dug her fingertips into his hair. The high of flying thrummed in her veins. The ground felt odd beneath her feet, as if a part of her hadn’t come out of the sky yet.
It had been glorious to fly from William’s arm. Flying for him was so much more satisfying than simply cruising the sky on her own.
Mirela finally felt as though she was living the life she’d been meant to, fulfilling her duty.
The wolf was pressed against her, his hands on William’s chest. He smelled like the earth, an alluring and foreign scent.
Mirela nipped William one last time, then trailed her lips down William’s throat to his chest, which Christoffer had bared. There were hands, three of them, on her waist. Someone took her nipple between his fingers, rolling and pinching it. Mirela pressed her forehead into William’s chest and moaned in pleasure.
She was bent at the waist, her hands digging into William’s hips. Christoffer was kissing William. The men stopped kissing. Christoffer looked down and said, “Well, this calls for a spanking.”
There was a sharp crack and Mirela jumped as Christoffer’s hand landed on her ass. He rubbed his palm over the smarting cheek. “Liked that, didn’t you?” he asked.
She didn’t respond.
William cupped her head, drawing her to stand straight. “Did you like that?”
“Yes,” she said, swallowing a knot of fear. She couldn’t lie to him but she wanted to.
“Why are you scared?” Christoffer asked, his warm, hard body pressing against her back, sandwiching her between them.
Mirela twisted her head to address him. “If I say I like that will I be locked up again? Or tied to the bed?” She started to shake. “I don’t want that.”
“If you don’t want that we won’t do it,” William promised her, cupping her chin and looking into her eyes. She looked into his, trying to see the man she hoped he was through the layers of fear he’d instilled in her.
“I won’t let him do it,” Christoffer said.
“You will if he asks,” Mirela said.
> Christoffer sighed. “Things are different now.”
“Why?”
“Because I love you,” William said. “What I want is for you, for us, to be happy. And I am ordering Christoffer to protect you, even from me.”
“Truly?”
William nodded.
“That’s right,” Christoffer added. “I will never let him hurt you or make you a prisoner again. I should have stopped him. I should have helped you, but I was jealous.”
“Why?”
“Because he loves you.”
Mirela wiggled until they gave her space to turn around. She looked Christoffer in the eye. He loved William, not her. He was probably saying these things only because William wanted to hear them.
“I care for you too.” He cupped her cheek. “I think I’m falling in love with you. I hate myself for hurting you and yes, I will protect you from William, even if it would mean he’d hate me.”
She believed him. His bright-blue eyes were steady and deep. He seemed older and more capable than ever before. Her falcon trusted the wolf. Did she trust the man?
Tentatively, Mirela rose onto her toes, tipping her face up. Christoffer lowered his lips to hers.
Her nipples, sensitive from their earlier fondling, rubbed against Christoffer’s chest. William gathered her hair in his hands, moving it to the side to kiss the back of her neck as Christoffer deepened their kiss, sweeping his tongue over her lips.
Mirela felt flushed. Their big male bodies surrounded her, protected her, threatened her. She didn’t know if she wanted it hard or soft, rough or gentle. Her arousal was so acute she was shaking with it, her sex already wet.
“My knight,” she said, touching Christoffer’s face. “My king.” She tipped her head back against William.
William spun her around, lifted her onto her toes and kissed her. Mirela’s lips felt bruised from their kisses, her face rubbed raw by each man’s slight stubble, but she felt loved and safe in a way she’d never known before.
Christoffer spread her legs, reaching between them to fondle her sex. “She’s wet,” he told William.
In response, William pulled Mirela down with him, onto a bed of grass and cool earth. “We’re both going to pleasure you,” William told her.