Gift of the Goddess

  Anje swayed with shock as the link shut down and Trey’s arms circled her from behind. “I’ll be with you.” His voice was warm against the side of her throat. “Remember it, Anje. Always.”

  Chelisand put a hand on his arm. “Come, little cousin. You can’t help them now.”

  Slowly, Trey released Anje and stepped back. The despair in his expressive face wrung her heart. She tilted her chin and forced a smile, though her belly roiled with fear. “Go,” she said. “I love you.” Then she turned and walked after Brin into the dimness of the forest.

  Behind her, she heard Chelisand say, “Let’s have a cup of roberry and a chat.” Trey’s noncommittal grunt made her lips quirk.

  Before she could reach the shade of the trees, a stocky man stepped in front of her, forcing her to a halt. “Lady Anje.” He bowed deeply. “I am Laran, your team leader.”

  “Team?”

  His teeth gleamed as he smiled, but his dark brown eyes were very serious. “We will be responsible for your care until the Rite commences.” He gestured. “There are four of us who have been honored. This is Ged.” Ged was young, lean and lithe, with a wide, laughing mouth and a long tail of dark blond hair hanging down his back.

  “Berde.” As he bowed his greeting, she thought Berde might be another relation of Trey’s. There was a distinct glint of red in his thick curls, though his expression was so grave it didn’t resemble Trey’s at all. The overall impression was of dignified composure.

  “Jasha.” This one had dreamy eyes and a poet’s mouth. His cheeks were flushed with excitement. He was brown and compact, no taller than she was.

  “This way.” Laran ushered her down a different path.

  “Brin had six.”

  “Your pardon, Lady?”

  “Brin had six,” she repeated. “But I only have four.”

  “There’s a lot of him to go around.” Jasha laughed. “Four is customary, but so many of the priestesses volunteered, Chelisand increased the numbers and drew lots.”

  “I see.” As she relaxed her fists with an effort of will, she caught Laran and Berde exchanging a glance over her head.

  “Here we are, Lady.” They’d reached a low building set in a lovely clearing. The gentle chatter of running water filled the air as a small stream cascaded over a set of pinkish rocks, setting lacy ferns nodding. It was very pretty and it filled Anje with the darkest suspicion.

  “Come in, please.” Ged held a door open for her, his smile guileless.

  “This way.” Gently, Laran took her arm and guided her into what was clearly an ablutions room. It was far more luxurious than Brin’s, with a huge bath big enough for…

  Anje came to an abrupt halt.

  “Lady Anje?” It was Laran again.

  “What?” she said gracelessly, her heart banging against her ribs.

  “Do you understand what we are to do here?”

  “I think so.”

  “Nonetheless, I will make it clear.” Laran looked past her shoulder and nodded. Immediately, Ged knelt to remove her boots and Berde unlaced her shirt and pushed it back, baring her breasts. Jasha was swishing a hand in the bath water, cheerfully naked, displaying a taut, muscular ass.

  Anje choked. “No. Stop. I—”

  Laran ignored her instinctive protest. “In order to participate in the Great Rite, you must be at an absolute razor’s edge of sexual tension. Powerful enough to send you mad. We have only three days to get you to that point.”

  Berde pulled down her trews. Anje fought the urge to cross her arms across her body. Her mouth was as dry as dust. Submit, she thought, don’t fight. But it was so hard, when they smelled wrong. She gritted her teeth, wanting Brin and Trey so badly it hurt.

  “Each of us has been chosen for a particular gift.” For the first time, Laran smiled and the effect was beautiful with his earnest brown eyes. “The only prohibitions are that we may not hurt you unless you wish it and that you must not offer to the Goddess until the Rite. If it’s any consolation, we may not offer either.” He stepped back and scanned her from head to toe. A strange expression flitted across his face. It looked very much like regret. “You are exquisite, Lady Anje. The Law means that we cannot fuck you, but it will be our privilege to pleasure you to madness. But first you must be clean.” He nudged her toward the bath.

  “I bathed last night!”

  “You must be clean, inside and out.”

  After a startled second, Anje perceived his meaning and her self-control shattered. “No!” she growled and palmed the knife from her forearm sheath, the only thing she was wearing.

  But not even a Child of the Mother could hold off four determined men indefinitely. Half an hour later, she lay panting on a high, padded table, rigid with humiliation, every orifice sluiced, every crease scrubbed. They’d enjoyed it, the bastards. Every one of the four was naked and they were all hard. The odor of male musk hung heavy in the air. She jerked her attention away from all that jutting flesh, from intriguing differences in length and girth and list. Tastes lingered on her tongue, Brin’s imperious bulk, spiced with heat and darkness, Trey spilling into her eager mouth, hot and metallic and beloved.

  As if to add insult to injury, her nostrils were also teased by the scent she loved, reminding her painfully of Brin’s herbal soap, of the smell of his skin. Goddess daisy, he’d said.

  Mother of the world, if this was what was happening to her, what were those women doing to him? She fumbled for the Bond link, searching desperately, but he’d shielded himself so completely, it was like beating her head against a wall. Trey she could reach, a tiny green ember at the back of her mind. He was exposed, raw and trembling, feeling all that she felt.

  Shit.

  Drawing on all she’d learned, she emulated Brin, pulling back into herself, erecting a wall to protect those she loved. Lonely, she keened, deep inside. It was so lonely being brave. She barely felt Jasha rubbing her hair with a towel, Berde’s hands spreading warm, fragrant oil over her back.

  There could be no doubt about Berde’s gift. He had superb hands, hands that tortured and soothed, titillated and teased. By the time he’d finished her shoulders and neck, she was so unglued, she could barely remember her name.

  Jasha crouched by her head and fed her sips of a chilled fruit drink through a straw. It was delicious, tangy and refreshing. As he set the cup aside and began to comb out her hair, Berde shifted his attentions to her lower back and buttocks. The gentle friction, the delightful pressure, heated her flesh, beginning at the base of her spine. The tingle was like the taste of iced sherbet on a hot day.

  At Laran‘s murmured command, they rolled her over and Jasha and Ged began massaging her feet, pulling gently at her toes. Berde stood back, sucked in a breath and flexed his fingers. Anje tensed, but he grinned and bent to her upper arms. Her nipples had stiffened, moisture leaked from between her legs.

  “Drink.” Laran proffered more of the golden fruit juice and she gulped thirstily. He followed it with small cubes of fruit. It was all luscious.

  Her head began to swim. Unconsciously, she arched her back, but Berde’s talented fingers slid past her breasts and traveled to her ribs. Anje bit her lip.

  By the time he reached her thighs, she was at a slow boil, shifting restlessly under his touch. A pulse beat in her sex, teasing and tightening her clit. Runnels of fluid trickled down the inside of her thighs.

  “Drink,” insisted Laran, and suddenly, she knew.

  “Drugged,” she gasped and was horrified to discover she could barely speak.

  “That’s right,” he agreed. “It’s herbs. An aphrodisiac mixed with an inhibitor. There’s so little time.” Now she recognized the expression on his face. It was pity.

  “No.” With an enormous effort, she raised a hand and pushed the cup aside.

  “For the moment, then. But it’s working.” Laran studied her with a narrowed gaze. “Your eyes are flaming.” Turning to Berde, he asked, “Finished?”

  Mother, no! She opened her
mouth and snapped it shut again. Her nipples throbbed for a touch, her sex was swollen and wet as a ripe fruit.

  But Berde nodded. He was.

  Anje moaned as he stepped away. When she glimpsed a beautifully sturdy cock springing out of a nest of brown curls, she slammed her eyes shut.

  But the torture had only begun.

  Jasha’s tender touch as he massaged her hands and shaped and buffed her fingernails made her breath come short. When he slipped her forefinger into the warm wetness of his mouth and sucked, she choked, her hips lifting off the table.

  It didn’t seem to matter where they touched her, every contact, every brush of flesh on flesh electrified her skin, swamped her mind. She writhed.

  “Lady Anje.” Laran swung her up in his muscled arms and strode into an adjoining room. As he lowered her to a vast bed, she got her hands around his neck and plastered her lips against his, thrusting with her tongue, desperate for relief.

  He froze for a second, then sank his fingers into her hair and kissed her back with bruising force. Just as abruptly, he ripped his mouth from hers and pushed her away. “Gods!” One hand slid down to his cock and squeezed hard. Over his shoulder, Anje saw the other three ranged, their eyes wide, cocks rampant in their fists.

  She wet her lips, forced out words. “Do it. Please.”

  Laran shook his head, breathing hard. “Lufra’s tits, you’re something! Are you sure you’ve had no training?”

  “Only Brin.” Her head thrashed. “Want them. Trey.”

  Laran crouched by the side of the bed and took her hand. His brown eyes were soft, but determined. “My dear, I’m sorry.” He looked over his shoulder. “Someone get the blue vial.”

  When he removed the lid and the familiar summer-grass perfume wafted out, it took three of them to hold her down, while Laran spread the pink cream in a thick layer all over her sex, from her pubic mound right back to her anus. He was meticulous about the application, his dark brows drawn together in concentration, as he anointed every fold and crease.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Judge carefully. Pain in the right measure produces pleasure. But too much pleasure is pain and too much pain just—hurts.

  Precepts of the Lady Chelisand, High Priestess of Lufra.

  Anje had only a few seconds grace before waves of hard, driving lust rolled over her in a flood of sensation. Inside her, the tiny portion of her mind that retained some semblance of sanity watched in horror. Blood rushed to the petals of her sex, until they swelled and puffed, a dark sexual pink. Heavy battle drums set up a beat in her pelvis and her whole body shook to the rhythm of her frantic heart.

  Ged and Jasha held her legs open while Laran wiped the cream away with a warm, damp cloth, just as carefully as he’d applied it.

  Then they all stepped back, four masculine gazes riveted to her naked sex, four cocks quivering, gripped in hard fists.

  Ged let out a gusty breath. “Lufra, what a gorgeous cunt.” He ran admiring fingertips over her outer labial lips and she whimpered. “Smooth as silk. All plump.”

  “Hotter than the flames in her eyes,” agreed Jasha. “Gods, this is killing me!”

  Completely beyond shame, Anje splayed her legs open and tilted her hips. With a cry of triumph she plunged two fingers into her flooded sheath, pressing her thumb against her engorged clit. With the first violent rub, she felt her climax approach, thundering down her nerves like a stampede of vranee down a valley.

  Not one of the men moved so much as a muscle. Their faces were stark, intent. The orgasm swelled over her in a soaring chorus of ecstasy. Anje stiffened all over.

  It stopped.

  Mother damn it, it stopped!

  She threw her head back and screamed her rage and frustration. Then she leaped to her feet and hurled herself at the door. It was a matter of self-preservation. If she couldn’t touch Brin and Trey in the next two seconds, immerse herself in them, she was going to implode.

  Laran and Ged caught her after two strides. Jasha tossed them a length of black leather. Before she could collect her shattered wits, Laran had bound her hands.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re dangerous. Look what you did.” He jerked his head. His face scarlet, Berde was mopping his belly and genitals with a cloth.

  It got worse after that, much worse, the hours merging into a kind of delirium of pleasure so acute it was agonizing. Jasha whispered filthy stories of the Goddess in her ear, his voice husky with lust. Ged would lie and kiss her for hours—tender, nibbling touches over her face and neck, deep and drugging kisses on her mouth. Or he’d drag the hot, satiny skin of his cock over her ribs, her belly, her breasts. Berde massaged every muscle into satiation, every nerve into excruciating expectation.

  Laran orchestrated the torture. He was an expert at judging when she about to reach complete sensory overload. Then they’d let her sleep for a few hours. But inevitably, someone would wake her from fevered dreams in which Trey pummeled her without mercy, while Brin devoured her mouth as though the world was ending. Each time, she’d open her eyes smiling, her lovers’ hoarse endearments ringing in her ears, confident her release was only seconds away.

  Though the men shook with desire, they avoided touching her aching nipples or her naked, quivering sex. By the third day, their faces were grim with frustration, every cock rock-hard, each set of balls drawn painfully high. But they remained relentlessly tender.

  It grew harder and harder to rise above the frantic demands of the weeping void within her, until it was all but impossible. An animal, she was an animal, a beast in heat, her hips jerking, her sex weeping torrents of desire. All she wanted was to rut, to be penetrated. Again and again and again.

  Primitive terror mixed with the mindless, hammering lust. What if she wasn’t human anymore? She was all straining nerves and wet, empty flesh. Where was Anje? All the Anjes she knew—the scout, the fond aunt, the canny hunter, the woman of honor?

  They would know—Brin in his shamanic wisdom, Trey with his groundedness, his perception.

  Berde stuck his head around the door. “Lady Chel just sent a lad with the one hour warning.” He leaned against the doorframe, staring, the hunger stark in his face. “She’s not quite there yet. What are you going to do?”

  Laran rubbed his chin. “She’s part of a three-way Bond. Some visual stimulation, I think,” he said. “Jasha, would you and Ged…”

  The two young men exchanged a glance. “Just us?” asked Jasha, a flush running up under his tanned cheek.

  Laran shrugged. “Let’s see what develops,” he said diplomatically, bending to secure Anje’s restraints to the bedposts.

  Ged clambered over her spread-eagled body, his dark blond hair brushing her cheek. Gently, he kissed her cheek. His words whispered past her ear. “Is this how they do it, Anje?”

  Her eyes widened as the mattress dipped and Jasha positioned himself, his brown hands gripping the fair skin of Ged’s hips. Ged went on, “Do you know, I dream of Brin and his fabulous cock? Gods, he’d split me in half.” He swallowed as Jasha slid into him. “But I’d die happy.”

  Anje’s teeth pulled back from her lips. “Mine.” The growl was so entirely beast, a fellwolf could have done no better.

  From the foot of the bed, Laran murmured, “Keep going.”

  Jasha pulled Ged back into his chest and reached around his body to grasp the other man’s cock in both hands. He tugged at it brutally, pulling it away from Ged’s belly and releasing it, again and again. His hips jerked rhythmically as he timed his thrusts, maximizing the sensations for his partner.

  Ged gurgled, deep in his throat, but he kept his eyes fixed on Anje’s, refusing to let her look away. “Do you watch them fuck, Anje?” he gasped.

  “Don’t—” Eyes squeezed shut, she thrashed beneath him, the leather straps biting into her wrists and ankles.

  Ged lowered himself until the satiny head of his cock rubbed her naked, slippery cleft. Her entire body went into a racking spasm and she shrieked. They
waited her out. When she stilled, panting open-mouthed, Jasha set up a careful rhythm that kept Ged’s delicious hardness sliding over her slickness. The relentless murmur started up again. “I could take them both at once, Anje. Think of it.”

  Mother help her, she could see it! Ged servicing them both, Trey’s gorgeous cock jammed down his throat, while Brin powered ruthlessly in and of his tender ass. All that hard, hot, masculine muscle and power.

  No! Love and possessiveness and lust swelled into a mighty conflagration. It exploded. Not yours! Mine. By Lufra, mine! She arched hard into the unyielding body above hers and Ged groaned. He dipped his head and plastered his mouth to hers, his tongue stroking deep, while his cock caressed every screamingly sensitive, sucking fold.

  “They could have me for the asking, Anje. Jasha too. Four of us, Anje. Sucking and fucking. Offering.”

  No! Every muscle in her body went rigid with rage. They are MINE!

  On the mental shout, the Bond link split wide open and every nerve, every organ, every cell, flooded with exquisitely excruciating sensation. Brin’s powerful presence swamped her and she rode within his massive body, experiencing pleasure so overwhelming it was agony beyond endurance. His balls ached as though they were crammed in a heated vise, muscles cramped all through his back and thighs, even his jaw hurt. And his cock was so swollen, so tight with the desire to blast its seed, that it wept blood with the torture.

  She hissed as she absorbed with the shock. Sweet Mother, the torments of the damned!

  His precarious, hard-won control shattered, driven to the brink by her weakness. Desperately, he tried to slam the link closed, shut her out, but it was too late. Their souls flew together and locked like the parts of an intricate puzzle.

  A puzzle made of lust and anguish and duty. A puzzle with a missing piece.

  Trey’s scream echoed in her head as the unshielded impact of both links slammed into him. Needle-sharp, the shards of pain and loss flayed her bloody. The leather about her right wrist stretched and tore as her muscles bunched.