Knight in Leather

by Holley Trent

  “This…long-distance thing is a problem for me.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you. I’ve made a life in San Francisco.”

  “And I go where the crew goes. There’s safety in numbers. You should be with me.”

  “I’m not in your crew, Ethan.”

  “Aren’t you?” He hoisted her up a little, forcing her to look down at him. And she did. There was so much eagerness and sincerity in his gaze that she knew she would be eaten up inside if she let him down in any way. She didn’t want to make him sad or to make him think that she was cold.

  She wasn’t. Just…scared.

  “Stop thinking,” he said. “Just tell me.”

  “Am I? I don’t know. This isn’t my world.”

  Sighing, he let her back down and tucked her against his side. His fingertips teased down the inside of her arm, tickling and titillating, but she couldn’t say for sure that either was his goal. The gesture seemed to be an idle one. “This is your world, Dasha. If you weren’t meant to be in it, you wouldn’t belong to me. You probably would have never met the princess.”

  “She wasn’t a princess when I met her.”

  “She was, in her own right, through her father’s tribe. Just because Rhiannon and Brandan sit on the high thrones in the segregated realm doesn’t mean there aren’t other groups who don’t agree that their authority is legitimate. Their marriage simply joined the two largest remaining bands of Sídhe. There are many others.”

  “Why don’t the others fight back against her?”

  “Too hard to organize, being so spread out. Many of her opponents, like Princess Simone’s father’s people, are outside the realm. They were never pulled inside. They escaped the punishment it was meant to be.”

  “So that’s why their home is such a good place for Katie to hide.”

  Ethan grunted. “I don’t know that she knew that when she set out in search of a place. Fortunately, I guess, she happened upon her mate that way.”

  “Where are the other groups? Simone’s father’s is rooted in the Serengeti, right?”

  “Aye. There are many disparate ones, some Rhiannon knows of—like the ones she often tries to intimidate in what’s now Australia. There are some in South America who are very secretive. Prince Heath has yet to encounter them face-to-face, but they often correspond. Those are simply the larger organized groups. But, I imagine that wherever there are humans, there are Sídhe. We evolved not to be better than mankind, but to serve it.”

  “And that’s why the gods punished you—because you stopped?”

  “Not me, as I wasn’t alive then, but in general, yes. That’s a fair assessment.”

  Dasha scoffed. “Typical. Rhiannon seems to have forgotten her history. Maybe someone should remind her.” She dragged a fingertip around his nipple, watching entranced as it stiffened and his breaths went ragged.

  Oops.

  She pulled her hand away. Just that quickly, she’d forgotten that every inch of him was a trigger to orgasm, and she wanted to play with those triggers very much.

  “Perhaps someone should remind her of her history.” He kissed the back of her hand and turned it over to brush his lips across her sensitive wrist.

  She rolled reflexively toward him and slung her leg over his. “Maybe someone should, but who? Obviously, she doesn’t take much heed to anything her children tell her.”

  “Perhaps the people should remind her…as they leave the realm.” His voice deepened at the end and came out sounding like a bear’s growl rather than spoken thoughts.

  She pushed up onto her hands and knees and looked down at his face—his furrowed brow and narrowed eyes.

  “What are you up to, Ethan?”

  “Nothing. I suspect my father may be, though. He wouldn’t have sent his sword ahead without having more than one reason to. I think he knows something’s coming and is trying to cover his bases, so to speak.”

  “He said the sword was yours.”

  “The sword is his, sweeting. Although his love for me may know no bounds, he wouldn’t gift me with his sword unless he believed his demise was imminent. He sent it ahead so that it would be here for him.”

  “How do you know he’s covering bases?”

  “I didn’t put the pieces together until you said that perhaps Rhiannon had forgotten her history. Sometimes, the rest of us do, too. We forget what our magic can do. We forget about the lesser gifts because we tend to only nurture the major ones. Which is why I only now remembered that there is a way to pull Sídhe from the realm without Rhiannon knowing.”

  “How?”

  “They have to leave a part of themselves behind.”

  She cringed. “That sounds ominous.”

  “To some Sídhe, it may be. Many wouldn’t choose to willingly give up any of the parts of them that makes them godly, but some would. Those are the ones we need to concern ourselves with right now.”

  “We, huh?”

  “The idea was yours, Dasha. You’re not a fairy, so you make me answer questions I don’t think to ask myself. You help me see the holes in the cage rather than focusing on the bigger prison.”

  “Glad to help.”

  “Mmm.” He pushed her hips down to make her sit on his erection. “I believe you’ll be helping me a great deal before the day is over.”

  “Is that so?” She ground her panty-covered sex against his shaft and leaning forward, balanced against his chest.

  “I know so.” He nudged the crotch of her panties aside and sucked in a breath through clenched teeth when her wet slit caught his cock head.

  “I can’t do very much of this,” she reminded him.

  She hadn’t been kidding. She wasn’t an enduring partner, and that was probably why she’d never gotten into kink. After a while, all that touching and teasing was unwelcome and tedious.

  “So let’s do this quickly,” he said. “Forgive me.”

  “For what?”

  His response was the ripping of her panties, and then the dull probing against her sex with his fat dick that he was struggling to get inside.

  Well, jeez. I should help.

  Balancing on one hand, she wrapped her fist around his shaft and helped him find her entrance.

  She sucked in a bolstering breath as he slowly sheathed himself, and she could hardly move. Her muscles seemed to have become paralyzed from the overload of sensation, and some needed to stop before she could move again—she couldn’t move until he was all the way inside her.

  “Breathe,” he said teasingly.

  “What’s breath?” she whimpered.

  He grabbed her hips and raised her off of him before working her slowly back down. The going was a little easier, less tight, but there was still a lot of him inside her. She wouldn’t just be having an orgasm, but giving birth to one.

  “Been waiting so long for this.” He brought her head down to his and took her mouth the same way he was taking her down below. Slow, masterful thrusts inside her that she could only submit to and encourage.

  His tongue darted forcefully into her mouth, flicking and teasing, and just…fucking, and she didn’t know what she could do to contribute except to lock her knees against his sides and encourage his thrusts.

  “Harder,” she said against his lips. “Don’t…don’t draw this out.”

  “Dasha…”

  “Please.”

  His cock spasmed inside her and she felt the hot surge before, with a snarl, he rolled her over and looked down at her with an apology.

  “Get inside me again. If you can,” she said. “Make me come. I don’t need much.”

  He thrust back into her, and if he’d gone soft at all after ejaculating, she certainly couldn’t tell.

  The extra lubrication deadened the friction somewhat, which helped her push back the tide of her encroaching orgasm, but she was getting close, anyway, and there was nothing she could do about it.

  Just looking at him made her want to come—the intensity in his handsome features
, the strength in his arms as he held himself up, the way his ripped belly contracted with each thrust.

  She wrapped her legs around his back and pulled him down more. Thirty seconds of his weight wasn’t going to kill her. “Fuck me,” she whispered. “Come on.”

  “Don’t want to hurt you.”

  “I want you to tap the end of me. Give it to me, Ethan. Fuck me the way you wanted to in all that time I was away.”

  “You wouldn’t survive.”

  “Then give me the next best thing.”

  He made that snarling sound again, then increased the speed of his thrusts and the length of them. There was no way in hell he was going to get his whole cock inside her, but she was filled to the brink and squeezing him so tight. With each tap of her cervix she cried out, and every time he tried to back off, she dug her nails deeper into his flesh and kept him moving.

  “Just…like that.” She threw her head back and tried not to run away from the explosion mounting inside her. She didn’t want to back off from the sensation, because experience showed that if she did, she’d never be able to stoke the fire back up. She couldn’t throw it away, not when she needed desperately to show Ethan what he did to her. And not when she was so badly in need of release.

  He’d obviously dug deep and found a fresh fount of energy, because his hips moved faster, and if possible, his cock felt bigger.

  “I’m going to fucking come,” he said.

  “That explains…” She couldn’t get the words out. Her body began to twist and writhe, and she couldn’t draw in enough air to breathe much less shout.

  Her sex was milking his cock as she lay shaking beneath him, and he looked down at her with an odd reverence she didn’t understand, but that she sure liked to be at the other end of.

  “Fuck,” she finally managed to say, and at that point, the word seemed inadequate.

  “Did I hurt you?” he whispered.

  He slipped out of her, dragging his engorged cock head against her G-spot, which knocked another vulgar oath from her mouth.

  “Dasha?”

  His cock was slick—covered in his her fluids and his—and still so hard.

  “Oh, God,” she whimpered

  “Dasha.”

  “I’m fine.” She dropped her hands from her back. The moment they hit the bed, she picked them right back up and sat up quick because there was blood under nails. “Oh, my God!”

  He chuckled.

  “That’s not funny! I ripped skin off your back.”

  “Seems to me like a good problem to have,” Sully said from somewhere.

  Ethan rolled his eyes.

  Dasha covered her face, cheeks burning with shame. “Shit. I can’t believe I—”

  “That you what? Responded to pleasure?”

  “You’re never going to want to do it again.”

  “That’s funny, because I was thinking the same thing.”

  “Whatever, Ethan.”

  He craned his neck and looked over his shoulder, but she doubted he could see his back. “I’ll heal quickly enough. Even if I scar, the reason would be an excellent one, in my opinion.”

  “Don’t go around showing off, asshole,” Sully muttered. He sounded like he was closer—possibly near the kitchenette.

  “Just bide your time,” Ethan said to him. “I’m sure you’ll get scratched up soon enough, if that’s what you like.”

  “Tired of waiting.”

  “We all have to wait. Waiting is part of the deal.” Ethan raked his thumbs over Dasha’s hips and then ridded her of her useless panties.

  “How much longer?”

  The question was reasonable enough, in Dasha’s opinion. For all the gang knew, Zenia would respond perfectly well to knowing she’d been rubbing elbows with supernatural thugs for half of a year.

  “I don’t think she’s going to run,” Dasha mused.

  Ethan scooted off the bed and grabbed his shorts off the floor. “No?”

  “I mean, at least not immediately.”

  Sully poked his head into the room and, listless as she was, Dasha had the good sense to pull the covers over her before his gaze completely fanned the room.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “Just that she puts up with a lot of crazy shit in general. She might think this situation is weird, but I suspect she’d go with the flow thinking everything is all in good fun until she sees that it isn’t.”

  Leaning into the doorway as Ethan passed through, Sully rubbed his chin.

  As she’d suspected, Ethan’s back was a bloody ruin. She cringed as he disappeared, probably into the bathroom.

  “What do you think I should do?” Sully asked.

  “You’re asking the exact wrong person for counsel. You should be asking Simone or Heath.”

  “Maybe, but you know her just as well.”

  “Perhaps.” Dasha knew Zenia as well as anyone could know Zenia, anyway. The waitress was a bit of a mystery, and seemed to prefer she been seen that way. “Besides, I wouldn’t want to suggest you do anything that would get you in trouble with your prince.”

  “If you broached the idea to him, he wouldn’t get too upset.”

  “I think you overestimate how much clout I have.”

  “You’ve got plenty. He’d take your suggestions to heart simply because you’re Princess Simone’s friend and she trusts you.”

  “Interesting.” Dasha scooted up and put her spine against the headboard.

  “So, you’ll talk to him?”

  “I don’t know what I can say. I mean, I can ask Zenia if she wants to take a little field trip into the realm and see how much she freaks out, and if she does okay, maybe you could drop the mate bomb on her later.”

  “You’ll talk to her today?”

  “Well, now wait. I can’t just—”

  “Speaking of the realm…” Ethan returned with his toothbrush in his mouth and said around it, “You might be able to go today. See if the princess is up for creating a portal. I’d really like to know what my father is thinking.”

  Dasha sighed. Opening a portal was a hell of a favor to ask Simone for, but Dasha didn’t want to tell Ethan no if what he was asking was possible. She felt like taking another trip into the realm was the least she could do to help out the gang, and she might not have another chance soon as she had to return to work.

  “Please?”

  “Ugh, Ethan, don’t use that pleading voice on me.”

  She couldn’t deal. No man had ever begged her for anything before. They just demanded and took.

  She wrapped the sheet around herself toga-style, pushed her feet into her flip-flops, shoved her clothes into her purse, and then squeezed between the two fairies. “Fine.” She padded to the door and pulled it open. “I’ll go talk to Simone.”

  Ethan caught up to her in the doorway and wrapped his arms around her waist. He gave her a little squeeze and made a grunting noise that sounded a lot like the animal version of, “Thank you, sweeting,” but that may have just been Dasha’s overactive imagination.

  Her cheeks burned and lips twitched nervously at the corners as she patted his hands. “Yeah. You’re welcome.”

  He gave her ass a pinch and sent her on her way.

  She stumbled her way down the stairs, vision a bit hazy and heart pounding, and wondered what that exhilarating feeling was that made her want to giggle and grin.

  She didn’t know what the feeling was, but she wanted more of it—she wanted to turn on her heels and head straight back to the suite.

  “And to think, we could have been doing this six months ago.”

  Seemed like they’d wasted a lot of time. She suspected the delay was somehow her fault.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “You’re not the lead I was supposed to run down, are you?” Ethan asked flatly.

  Prince Heath’s second-in-command Thom snorted, and leaned his motorcycle against a tall pine tree.

  At Prince Heath’s instruction, Ethan was in the swamp.
<
br />   Again.

  But so was Thom, whom Ethan hadn’t expected to see. He hadn’t seen the man in weeks.

  “No. Good to see you, though,” Thom said.

  “And you. Gotta ask what you’re doing here. I figured you’d still be in New Mexico fucking your mates’ brains out.”

  Thom shrugged. “Gotta take a break sometimes. Besides, they both understand my allegiances are split and that I serve Prince Heath and Princess Simone as well as them. I’ll see my lovers again soon enough.”

  “Why are you here?” And Ethan didn’t just mean back in North Carolina in general, but on that particular desolate stretch of highway where there was nothing but trees and swampy marshes.

  Thom bounded over the ditch and waved Ethan over to his side.

  Ethan hated to leave his Harley exposed to the highway, but no vehicle had passed in at least five minutes. Their bikes would probably be safe if they walked away for a few minutes.

  Ethan stuffed his keys into a pants pocket and leaped over the water in the vast ditch.

  Thom gestured toward the swamp. “Heath told me you’d been having some troubles with a certain mer-fairy and her brother.”

  “Aye?”

  “I tagged Quinton years ago. I put a trace on him because he’d been harassing Caryl and Daryn the same way Laurel’s been bugging you.”

  “For similar reasons, I’m sure.”

  “I’d say so. By the way, we need to carefully guard the most fertile and unusual of us during the upcoming upheaval. I’m sure you’ve already given that some thought.” Thom stopped in front of a pond of stagnant water and crouched.

  “Have you been thinking what I’ve been thinking, then? Dasha asked some questions this morning that jogged my memory about how some Sídhe could leave without Rhiannon detecting them.”

  Thom grunted and dipped his hand into the water. He stirred the green murk, making waves and ripples, but didn’t seem to be idly molesting it, as far as Ethan could tell. Very little that Thom did was ever for idle purposes. “So you’ve been strategizing with Dasha, have you?”

  “Just pillow talk.”

  “Don’t discount pillow talk. I’m certain there have been wars won from the advice dispensed during it. I’m pleased that things are coming together for you.”