"Are you saying you would use me to give magic to mortals?"
"I am saying that if the sidhe turn away from me and mine, then we should see if there are other more grateful hearts and minds."
"The sidhe are magic, Mother; humans are not."
"The very workings of their bodies are magic, Meredith. It is all miracles. Now sleep, and wake rested, and know that I will do what I can for you. I will speak loudly to those who still listen. To those who have shut their hearts and minds to me, I can only put obstacles in their paths." She gestured toward me, and Her hand was young again. "Rest now, and when you wake you will go back to the mortal world."
The vision began to fade, and I was once more aware that I was in bed with my men. My hand no longer ached from the thorns, and I could move it so Sholto and I were free of our hand-binding. The thought was solid enough to wake me, but the blanket of flower petals tucked itself under my chin, like a mother tucking you in when you are very small, and again I had that feeling that nothing could harm me. Mother was there, and all was right with the world. I had a moment to find it strange that this abstract feeling of the Goddess was more comforting than she herself had been on the hillside. I felt the brush of a kiss on my forehead, and heard her voice, Gran's voice. "Sleep, Merry-girl. I will keep watch." And as I had when I was small, I believed, and slept.
Chapter Sixteen
I woke to the brush of flowers, and the spill of hair as warm as fur across my face. Doyle's face was the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes, and I couldn't have thought of anything better to wake up to. I reached up to touch his face. His smile widened, a flash of white in his dark face. His eyes filled with a look that was only for me. A look that once, not so long ago, I hadn't believed would ever be in those black eyes for anyone, let alone for me. Had he ever looked at anyone like that before? He was more than a thousand years old, so the answer had to be yes, didn't it? But for this moment, in my bed, the look was only for me, and that was enough.
"Doyle... " But whatever I was going to say was lost to a kiss. His lips on mine made me press into his body for more of a kiss. It grew into hands and arms, as if our bodies had been starving for each other.
I began to kiss my way down the smooth muscles of his chest, while he stayed above me and finally went to all fours. I wanted to celebrate that the burns on his torso were healed by touching every inch of him. I found his nipple ring and played with it, using my lips and teeth, and finally setting my mouth past the ring, and into the nipple beneath, to suck and play and tease, until he cried out "Enough" in a strangled voice.
That voice made me smile, because I had worked long and hard to get my Darkness to tell me when he'd had enough of anything. The queen had taught him, and the rest, to simply take what she gave them, for any touch was a blessing. I wanted to know what my men wanted, and to give it to them.
I laid down underneath him. His body was like a roof above me, so that I could gaze down the line of him and see all that he had to offer. His hair was a black richness that he'd thrown to one side of his body, like a living cloak. I was sheltered and content under the covering of his body.
I caressed my fingers down his body, wiggling lower so that I could cup the hard, swelling richness of his body in my hands. I wrapped one hand around that hardness, and put my other hand on the softness below so that I could cup him gently as I began to stroke him with my first hand.
"Meredith... " he said.
"I thought I'd lost you," I said, and wiggled down between his legs while he still held himself above me on his hands and knees. With my hand wrapped around him, there was still much of him bare, and I lowered that nakedness to my mouth. I licked the tip of him, peeking out from the circle of his foreskin, then slipped my mouth over him, tongue playing with the extra bit, rolling it, and sucking on it seperately from the rest of him, until I felt his body spasm above me. Only then did I take the meat of him more firmly in the center of my mouth, and suck him down, until I met my hand where it gripped the base of him. With this much of him in my mouth, I could no longer trust myself to be gentle enough to play on those softer bits, so I put my other hand on the smoothness of his hip to steady myself as I rose off the bed to take more of him inside me.
He moved one hand to touch my shoulder. "Meredith, if you do not stop, I will go."
I drew myself off him so I could talk, but kept my hands playing with him, and began to gently work that soft extra bit downward, so that when I put him back in my mouth, there would be only naked shaft to suck. I liked the sensation of the foreskin to play with, but I was sometimes too enthusiastic not to move something so delicate away from my teeth. I had wanted to do this with Doyle for so long, and been denied. He would not waste his seed in any way that would not gain him a child with me, but now...
"I want you to go into my mouth," I said.
"Meredith," he said, and he had to swallow hard, and finally put his hand on mine. "I cannot think with you doing that."
"I don't want you to think."
He held my hands still, coming to his knees so he could hold both my hands, which were still around his body. "We have had this talk."
"But I'm pregnant," I said. "We can make love just for pleasure, and my pleasure is you in my mouth for the first time."
He stared down at me, then a strange look came over his face. I couldn't decipher it at first, then he smiled. He smiled down at me, shaking his head.
"Where in faerie are we?" he asked.
"We are safe. You are healed. I am with your child. I want to drown in your body. Let all the questions wait, Doyle, please."
He gazed down the line of his body to where I lay back against the bed, my hands still wrapped around him. My hands were hidden where his much larger one had closed around them, from hand to past my wrists, so that my pale skin was very white against all his darkness.
He glanced to both sides. "I'm not sure the others wish to wait."
I glanced to one side, then the other. Sholto lay on his side of the bed, on his stomach, which meant he'd turned his tentacles back to the tattoo, or he couldn't have lain that flat. He was watching us, with careful, hungry eyes. "I'll wait, for my turn."
"I will leave," Mistral said, and stood beside the bed. The wounds on his body had vanished, as if the arrows had never touched all that muscled beauty. His gray hair covered his body, almost as if he hid from me with it.
Doyle was going a little softer in the nest our hands had made, but I had to concentrate on Mistral's mood for a moment. One of the hardest things about all the men was tending everyone's emotions. I knew Mistral less well than any of the other fathers, so here was my first moment to quiet that hurt look in the way he held his body, as if something had hurt him that had nothing to do with iron arrows.
"I want to celebrate that Doyle is alive and with me, Mistral."
He shook his head, not looking at us, and moved toward the path leading out. "I understand."
It was Doyle who helped. "But once we have," and he smiled at me, "celebrated, then you are one of us, and not to be exiled from the bed."
Mistral looked out through that veil of gray. His eyes had gone the green of a sky before a serious storm hits. I knew just enough of him to know that it showed great anxiety. I wasn't sure why, but our Storm Lord was worried.
"We are safe, Mistral, I swear," I said.
"You would truly let me join you?"
"If Merry wills it, then we share," Sholto said, not like he was entirely happy, but as if it were true.
Mistral moved back toward the bed, sweeping his hair back so more of his face showed, and his body was revealed in all its lovely potential. "I am not to be exiled?"
"You are my Storm Lord, Mistral. We risked much to save you. Why would we cast you out?" I asked.
Doyle squeezed my hands gently, and I released him so he could talk to the other man without being distracted. "You think Meredith is like the queen, but she is not." He held his hand out to the other man. "None of us hav
e to leave. None of us have to watch while others satisfy their lust and know that we will go wanting. Meredith does not play such games."
Sholto spoke from the other side of the bed, on his knees now. "He speaks truly, Mistral. She is not Andais. She is not the other sidhe bitches who tease and torment. She is Merry, and she would not invite you to join her unless she meant it."
I looked at Sholto then, because it was a speech that I wouldn't have thought he knew me well enough to make. He answered the unasked question in my eyes. "You are honorable, Meredith, and just, and beautiful, and a goddess of lust and love." He looked past me to Mistral. "She is a warmer thing than we have had in any court of faerie in a very long time."
"I didn't know I still had hope," Mistral said. "To find it gone was more than I could bear."
I didn't completely understand his mood or his words, but I wanted to chase them all away. I held my hand out to him. "Come to me," I said.
"Come to us," Doyle said. "There is no cruelty here, no hidden tricks, I swear."
He came at last and took my hand, as Doyle touched his shoulder in that very male greeting when you would not dream of hugging. I'd noticed that when nude, the men were less open to hugs from one another.
Mistral looked down at me with eyes that were still anxious green. "Why would you want me now?"
"Why would I not?" I asked.
"I thought you would have no use for me."
I went to my knees and drew him down into a kiss that started soft and ended fierce and nearly bruising. His body was already happier than it had been just moments ago. I caressed him gently, and his face showed a pleasure so intense it was almost pain. He had truly thought I would not let him touch me again. I might have asked why or what, or even who had lied to him, but Doyle's hands came at my back, pulling me a little back from the other man.
"I would finish what we started."
"You are our Captain," Mistral said. "It is your right."
"It's not because of rank," I said. "It's because I thought I lost him, and I want the taste of him in my mouth to remind me that I have not lost everything I love."
Mistral kissed me more gently, then let Doyle pull me away. "To be third in your bed is more than I had hoped for, Princess. I am content."
"Meredith. I am simply Meredith here and like this," I said.
He smiled. "Meredith in the bedroom, then."
Doyle pulled me back to the center of the bed, and into his arms and his body. Sholto went back to lying on his side of the bed. Mistral climbed on it, but stayed sitting in one corner, his legs drawn up. Neither of them turned away, but I didn't mind an audience of my choosing, and neither did Doyle.
Chapter Seventeen
Doyle lay back on the blanket of petals, all that rich, black skin against the soft pastel of it. I admitted to myself that he looked like the devil slipped into some springtime heaven, but he was my devil, and all I wanted in that moment. There had been nights with Frost when I had had them both touching me at the same time, but tonight I wanted to concentrate just on Doyle. I didn't mind the audience, but I didn't want to be distracted either.
He let me crawl over his body until I could put my hands and mouth back where I wanted them. He'd accepted my logic, and I could finally taste him in my mouth. I played with that loose skin one more time, then teased it back, until he lay long and hard, exposed to my hands, my lips, my mouth, and, ever so gently, my teeth. I was using less pressure than a bite, but you have to be careful not to scrape, or what is an added pleasure becomes pain. I wanted no pain tonight for my Darkness. I wanted only pleasure for him and for me.
He protested, "But it will not be enjoyable for you."
"I can fix that," Sholto said.
We all looked at him. He smiled, and motioned at the tattoo on his body. "If you will allow, I can return the favor you are doing our captain so that you are equally pleasured."
It seemed like another lifetime ago when Sholto and I had managed to have our first encounter in Los Angeles. He had proven to me that the extra bits had more uses than the obvious. "You mean the little tentacles with the suction on them."
"Yes," he said, and there was a weight to his gaze. It wasn't an idle offer. He wanted to know how I truly felt about his extra bits, and he was wasting no time finding out. We'd had sex, but he had been terribly wounded, and no extra bits had been used.
I studied his face, then looked down at Doyle. He watched me patiently, almost passive in his waiting. He would abide by whatever I said, in that moment. Centuries of service to the queen had taken men who might have been more dominant and accustomed them to taking orders both in bed and out of it. Doyle could be a very dominant lover, but when it came to choices and preferences, he was like most of the queen's guard; he waited for my lead. It was up to me to make this moment what it was to be: good, ill, hurt feelings, or simply pleasure.
I said the only thing I could think of when a man offers me oral sex. I held my hand out toward him and said "Yes."
He gave me that smile that I had only recently known was possible for him, a smile that made all that handsomeness a little more human, a little more vulnerable. I valued that smile, and it made the yes worth it. I shoved my small doubts down, and watched his body go from an exotic tattoo to the reality of the image. I didn't know if it had been the magic of the wild hunt, or the times he had used the extra bits to comfort me this past night, but I could no longer see him in all his glory as anything but beautiful.
The tentacles were the same moonlight white as the rest of him; the thickest ones were just at the point where chest gave in to stomach. They were as thick as a good-sized python, but white with a marbling of gold on the skin. I knew from my nightflyer tutor, Bhátar, that those were for heavy lifting. They were what the nightflyers picked you up with, and carried you away. Under them was a line of longer, thinner tentacles, the equivalent of fingers, but a hundred times more flexible and sensitive. Then just above the belly button was a fringe of shorter tentacles with darker tips. I knew that those were secondary sexual organs like breasts because there was no human male equivalent. If I'd been a female nightflyer they would have had other tasks to do, but he had proven in our one brief moment in Los Angeles that there were uses for me too. Inches below all that was something as straight and thick and lovely as any man in court could boast. Without the extras in between, Sholto would have been welcome in any bed.
Once I had been horrified at the thought of having to embrace him with all the extras revealed, but as he knelt beside us and reached for me, all I could think of was how many uses we might find for so many of his extra bits. Was it the magic of faerie? Was it part of the magic that made me queen to his king that I could think of nothing but pleasure when reaching for him? If it was magic, it was good magic.
He took me in his arms, wrapped me against his body so that all of him touched me, but he did not try and embrace me with all of it. He simply laid it against my body as his two strong arms held me, and he kissed me. He kissed me, gently but firmly, but there was part of him that held back, like a tension in his body. I thought I understood; he was waiting for me to recoil from his touch. Instead I moved into that kiss, ground myself against all those extra bits, and let one hand caress one of those thick, muscular tentacles. He pressed himself harder against me, responding to my passion and my lack of fear. With most men I'd have been very aware that his erection was pressed against the front of my body, and I might have shuddered at the promise of it, but there were so many sensations with Sholto that it was almost as if my body couldn't pick and choose. The thicker parts streatched around me like extra arms. The thinner pieces caressed and tickled along my skin, and the lowest pieces eased their way between our bodies, between my legs, and I felt those searching "fingers" seeking that most intimate of spots. One of the long, stretching fingers found the spot, and proved to me once more that they had suction on the end, like small mouths that seemed designed to fit around that part of a woman's body, so that it was li
ke some perfect key to fit the lock of my body. The sensations began to build almost immediately.
I felt the hum of energy from Sholto before I opened my eyes to see that his skin glowed with power. The white of his skin was all moonlight, but the tentacles had other colors. The bigger arms had bands and shapes that moved like colored lightning around me. Some were marbled with gold to match the yellow and gold of his eyes. The lower ones glowed white, their tips like red embers. I knelt embraced in color and magic humming against my skin, so that I made a small sound just from that.
"I take it the tentacles do other things than just glow," said Doyle, still lying next to me.
I nodded wordlessly.
"It is a combination of sidhe and nightflyer," Sholto said.
"It looks like colored lightning," Mistral said. He reached out, as if to touch one of the tentacles, then drew his hand back.
Sholto reached a thick limb and touched the other man's fingertips. A tiny jolt of colored light jumped between them. The air smelled of ozone, and every hair on my body stood to attention.
Doyle sat up. "What was that?"
Mistral was rubbing his fingers together as if still feeling the sensation. Sholto had drawn his limb back, a considering look on his face. His limbs had pulled away from the more intimate part of my body.
"I'm not certain," Mistral said.
"Once," Sholto said, "the nightflyers answered to the gods of the sky. We flew for them, and rode the lightning that they could call. Some say the nightflyers were created by a god of the sky and a goddess of the dead."
Mistral looked at his hand, then across at the King of the sluagh. The look on Mistral's face was one of pain. His eyes were the black of the sky before it shatters to earth. "I had forgotten," he said, almost as if to himself. "I had made myself forget."
Laurell K Hamilton - Meredith Gentry 07 - Swallowing Darkness Page 15