by Ophelia Bell
“She’s a handful, isn’t she?” Gavra asked coolly.
The sound of his voice elicited a sudden clench of Assana’s muscles around Silas’s cock that made his eyes widen, and Silas grunted. She jerked her head up from where her cheek had been resting against his shoulder while she slowly rocked on top of him. One of her antlers banked hard against his temple and searing pain shot through his head.
“Fuck!” He pressed a hand to the wound and pulled it away. Blood coated his fingertips.
“Those are wicked. Need help getting her back in the box, brother?”
“I got this,” Silas said with a scowl. He gripped her by the hips and struggled to stand, falling back into the chair with a huff. “Maybe just … spell me for a few?”
“You know it’s easier when we work together.” Gavra strolled toward him, his body loose and languid, but his eyes glinted with need.
When he reached them, he bent and met Assana’s upturned mouth, a low rumble sounding in his chest as they kissed.
“How long until the guards catch you and haul you back to your cage?” Silas asked.
Gavra’s attention was fully on Assana when he answered. He cupped her cheeks, fingers brushing sweat-soaked strands of hair from her forehead. He seemed to be inspecting her for damage, and Silas sensed the opening of the dragon’s mind and an invitation to join him deep within that secret place the three shared.
“I’ve got all night, and if everything works out, I’ll never set foot in that prison again.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Gavra
The pair were in Gavra’s head again, though not as deep as they’d been earlier that day when they’d first completed the meld. The forced separation wasn’t ideal. This time, he’d make sure to take the time to do it right and add his own magic to the mix.
He clutched Silas by the back of the head, fingers digging in hard. The ursa moaned and his eyelids fell shut with his surrender. Inside his mind, Silas’s presence grew more potent while the glow of his aura brightened with fresh desire.
His hunger for this man surged to the surface in a torrent and he captured his mouth with a growl, plunging his tongue in deep. Silas reached up and cupped the back of Gavra’s head, pushed his fingers into the tightly bound hair at his nape, and pulled the thong free. Red curtains cascaded around Gavra’s face, framing the dark brows and mahogany skin before him.
“Sweet Mother, I missed you,” Gavra said when he released Silas’s mouth. His gaze flitted over the ursa’s face, committing the strong angles and curves to memory. He frowned when he saw the deep gouge in Silas’s forehead that still trickled red.
Blood. Their blood was the key, but a tricky argument to make. He lifted a hand and brushed his thumb beneath the cut, drawing away a smear of red and staring down at it. How much? Would it only take a drop from each of them for the meld to take?
“Gavra …” Silas said with desperate urgency.
Right. It was too soon to make the suggestion. Assana needed him too much now. He wiped the blood on his shirt and exhaled a short breath of red smoke. Wispy tendrils coiled from his lips, settled on Silas’s brow, and the wound knitted together within seconds.
“Come to the bed,” he commanded as he wrapped his arms around Assana and lifted her off Silas’s lap. The ursa’s cock slid free of her, slick and shining with her sweet juices. The aroma made Gavra’s mouth water.
He lay Assana on her bed, fending off her roaming hands that pawed at his clothes and her hungry mouth licking and sucking at any bit of exposed skin she could find.
“Need your cock. Please!” she cried over and over.
“I think what you need is my tongue. Lie back, baby. Let me take care of you.” He glanced over his shoulder to see Silas still sitting in the chair with a dazed expression. He jerked his head to the other side of the bed. “Get over here if you want to get fucked for a change. We’ll give that cock of yours a break for a little while, but your ass is mine.”
Silas’s head fell back and he sighed. “Thank fuck,” he said, every ounce of tension falling from his sweat-drenched body. “You can do whatever the fuck you want to me as long as I don’t have to decide … or move.”
He rose slowly and made it to the bed before collapsing beside Assana. Rolling toward her, he bent to suck one of her nipples as though he couldn’t resist one more taste of her. The muscular curve of his ass cheek beckoned to Gavra as strongly as the juicy petals between Assana’s spread thighs.
Standing back for a second, he took them both in. They embraced languidly, kissed, their hands roaming over each other with lazy desire. It was far past his turn to give to them.
With a breath, his conjured garments dissolved and he climbed onto the bed at their feet. As he crawled toward them, he pushed Assana’s legs wider, sliding one hand up the inside of her thigh.
His other hand took a similar path, gripping Silas by the back of one strong thigh and turning him onto his belly. The ursa complied, shifting closer so that his leg draped over hers. The pair remained half-entwined, kissing and touching while Gavra slowly moved in, hovering over them.
He teased one hand higher up Assana’s thigh, sliding along skin slick with her essence. She let out a soft moan into Silas’s mouth and bent her knee to spread herself wider. The movement pushed Silas’s leg higher. On his other side, Gavra cupped Silas’s ass, teased fingers along the tight opening and farther, caressing the underside of his balls and then along the length of his cock.
The slight contact made Silas twist even more, bending his leg and draping his thigh fully across Assana’s belly so his ass lifted and parted, his tight rosette bared for Gavra’s eyes.
Sweet Mother, they were both so perfect and needy right now. Beyond any experience he’d had with past mates long dead. The females he’d claimed in the ancient past had been no more than vessels—human breeding stock whose minds barely withstood his mark before he lost them completely. He’d lost the taste for mating after only a couple centuries of it, resorting to simple trysts for the sake of replenishing his energy and no longer marking any partner to breed.
With the pair of them deep within his mind, there was no question about their mental strength. Assana may have seemed fragile the way her sanity vacillated, but imbalance was the nature of her kind, and she only needed attention from the right partners and an infusion of fertile seed strong enough to let her conceive a child. She would be so powerful, so glorious once she found that balance.
Holding them both in his mind like the treasures they were, he spread Assana’s folds and dipped his fingers into her. The slick walls of her pussy gripped him, pulling him in. He bent down over her mound, inhaling the rich scent of her sex mixed with Silas’s evergreen aroma.
Lashing out with his tongue, Gavra drew a pattern into the flesh above her cleft, the intricate mark appearing in glowing red almost before he had a chance to deliberate over whether it was right to give her now. It had to be right—there was no other moment better than this to mark her. She let out a soft yelp of surprise that turned to a sigh of ecstasy when he finished and sank his tongue deep into her, letting it fill her as full as it could.
He parted her folds wider, pulling back to admire the beauty of the blossom between her legs. The flesh was darker than the rest of her, the folds a deeper blue in her primal form where they were pink when she was in her human shape. He loved them either way, and especially loved the throbbing little pearl of pleasure nestled at the apex.
He took her clit into his mouth and sucked, swirling his tongue around and around, then flicking with determined rhythm until Assana arched into Silas’s embrace and cried to be filled again. The orgasm would tide her over for now, but he had an ursa to make love to first.
Gathering more of her copious fluids on his tongue, he shifted focus. He gripped Silas by the ass with both hands and spread him wide, then bent and slicked his fluid-c
oated tongue around the tight ring of muscle.
Silas squirmed, hips pushing back against Gavra’s mouth. He rose up on hands and knees and Gavra followed, tonguing him from behind while Silas repositioned himself between Assana’s thighs.
“Mark me first,” Silas said. “Then fuck me.”
Gavra pulled back, eyeing the slick, puckered opening in front of him. So tempting to put his mark right there. He idly rubbed a thumb around and around, pushed it in and enjoyed the way Silas moaned and his body shivered.
No, he decided he wanted to mark the ursa in a place where he could see it anytime he liked—not just when he was about to bury his cock in him.
The way Silas relaxed and opened for him told him the man was ready now, and he didn’t hesitate.
“I’ll mark you while I fuck you,” he said as he rose up and pressed the tip of his stiff, aching shaft to Silas’s ass.
With one shove, his cock slid deep like he belonged there. Silas grunted and let out a curse as he buried his face against Assana’s breasts. Gavra paused long enough to enjoy the tight heat of his lover, closed his eyes, and savored the tangled sensation of their minds. As he began to move, their mental connection deepened, the three of them descending once again into the shared depths that belonged to only them … the part of their souls reserved for each other … the part that only existed when they were bound this tightly by Assana’s nymphaea magic.
He was only peripherally aware of the movements of their bodies, inasmuch as the pleasure filled him while he fucked Silas with instinctive, rhythmic thrusts. Beneath him, he felt Silas pull Assana’s hips up and slide his cock into her yet again. Assana moved beneath them both, hips rising to take Silas into her.
In their minds they merged. Their souls became one. The fresh mark he’d made on Assana’s body had pierced through to these depths and shone like a beacon between him and Silas, drawing them both tightly to her.
Gavra sank his cock into Silas over and over, the friction pushing him closer to Nirvana and filling him with the potent magic that he always drew in when aroused, as easily as he drew breath. Focusing that power, he bent over Silas’s back, extended his tongue, and lashed it out across the expanse of Silas’s shoulders, down the middle of his back, and around until easily half of the dark skin was etched with the glowing red mark that signaled who this ursa belonged to.
When the power of the mark took hold, they broke through another mental barrier, falling even deeper into each other to the point that Gavra lost track of where he ended and they began. The pleasure grew threefold, and for the first time, he had a taste of what it would mean to meld them so deeply they not only shared a mind, but also a body and a soul that were inextricably bound.
Their combined power would be more than enough to prevail in their quest, and with their unending love to build on, the three of them would be invincible, but this simple melding wasn’t enough to reach that level of power.
The chorus of their voices merged in the night as they climaxed again and again. It didn’t matter who was inside whom when their minds were so connected. They were all three inside the other more deeply than their bodies were capable of achieving.
To imagine how much deeper their connection would become once they were blood melded … every definition of home he’d ever imagined shattered. This was the thing worth dying for, worth living for, worth bleeding for. He didn’t shed his own blood lightly, had only done so once for family, but for this … for these two people, he would gladly tear out his heart to have what a melding such as that promised.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Assana
Assana came back to herself in the warmth of a bath and couldn’t help but wonder if the last few hours had been a dream. She remembered feeling Silas inside her during her primal, lust-crazed attack on Gavra inside his cage. She remembered Silas carrying her back to her quarters and bathing her, then making love to her again with his slow, gentle, and oh so deliberate care. He’d brought her back down to earth, anchoring her with his tender touch, rooting her to her sanity once again.
Perhaps they were still there and she’d fallen asleep again. Perhaps she’d only dreamed losing her mind for a second time so that Silas was forced to pin her down and fuck her right on top of her mother’s dinner table.
Her mind objected to the idea that any of it could have been imagined. Her very sane, rational mind reminded her that every moment had indeed occurred the way she remembered it. Her body flushed with humiliation and she turned her head and pressed it into the strong shoulder she rested against.
“Please tell me I dreamed it,” she said, hoping that a second opinion might be enough to prove she was wrong, despite her own mind insisting she wasn’t. She still wasn’t quite used to trusting her awareness of events after the last few days of losing control when she least expected.
A warm rumble vibrated the chest beneath her and a soft brush of lips against her ear carried a low chuckle.
“Much of it happened inside your head, true, but every second was real, baby. Just look down and you’ll see.”
The voice was the first bit of evidence that her memory and senses weren’t betraying her. She was not in Silas’s arms, but in the arms of the man she had despaired of ever truly being sane enough to touch again.
She bit her lip and her heartbeat sped at the thrill. The humiliation meant nothing if he were truly here now, naked with her cradled in his arms. She wondered where Silas was.
The best part was that she felt completely fucking sane. There was no crazy, uncontrollable urge to devour his entire body with her snatch. Though the thought of having him inside that part of her did incite a pleasant tingle in her nether regions. She glanced down as he instructed and let out a soft gasp, then lifted her face to look at him.
“You beautiful fucking dragon, you did it. You marked me!”
“And not a second too soon. You were running us both ragged with that appetite of yours.”
“Did you mark Silas too? Where is he?” She looked toward the other side of the large, sunken tub but saw no sign of her sweeter, gentler lover, though if recent memories were accurate, he’d come to her rescue and fucked the ever-loving shit out of her for several hours earlier.
“He learned he doesn’t quite have the stamina for an ancient nymph in rut. Not even an ursa female in full estrous is as much of a challenge as you are.”
Gavra tilted his chin toward her bed and she craned her head around to see a massive, slumbering beast lying on his side. A mark as intricately beautiful as hers covered the entire expanse of dark skin on Silas’s back, pulsing with the rise and fall of his breathing.
“Poor thing,” she said, sighing and sinking back into Gavra’s arms.
“How do you feel?” Gavra asked.
She took a quick assessment of her body’s aches, noting a fading soreness between her thighs and fatigue in her muscles. She cataloged all these things quickly and clearly, with no encroaching haze of need like a looming thunderhead on the horizon. Her mind was nothing but clear, blue skies over calm water. What a relief.
She let out a deep breath and said, “I’ve never felt better. Thank you.”
“Good. Because there’s something we need to talk about.”
The tightness in his voice made her look into his eyes. He regarded her with slightly creased brows, his crimson irises aglow with determination, yet the connection she still had to his mind betrayed the slightest hesitance. What was he so afraid to tell her?
Her stomach lurched when the images from the evening came back.
He’d been having dinner with her mother, cleaned and dressed up in a manner befitting an honored guest of the Haven’s Dionarchs. She remembered the pang of jealousy she’d suffered when she and Silas walked into the room and she saw the pair smiling and leaning toward each other as though engaged in intimate conversation.
That spl
it-second had been the beginning of another swift descent into primal need for her. Need to claim him before her mother could touch him, though she’d told herself she could resist.
No. She calmed herself with a deep breath. He’d come to her tonight. Marked her. And he had stayed.
“You … didn’t seduce my mother.” She stated it as though it were fact, hoping like hell that she was right.
Gavra shook his head. “It was wrong of me to think I could … that I should. There’s no way I’d be able to get through to her, anyway, not as decisive as she is … as determined. I think there’s only one person in existence who could make her change her mind, and he isn’t here.”
“My father … You mean him, don’t you?”
“Yes. Which brings me to the difficult thing I have to say. After hearing what Silas learned from the Diviner today, I think there’s only one way to save your Thiasoi sisters from Nyx’s thrall, and I think we can get through to Nyx at the same time. The three of us together can make it work, but we all have to agree to this.”
His heartbeat pounded even harder in his chest beneath her hand, and the muscles of his jaw twitched when he paused, as though he didn’t relish the idea one bit.
“What is it?” she asked with a worried frown.
“Shit. Silas should be awake … Silas!” he called across the room. The sleeping ursa didn’t move or even twitch. “Silas!” Gavra called again, this time pushing a mental message through their minds to their other lover.
The huge man groaned a protest, stretched, and rolled over. He blinked blearily at them and scowled, but his expression cleared when he saw Assana. He smiled.
He sat up and scrubbed a hand over his face and through his hair.