[Merry Gentry 04] - A Stroke of Midnight

by Laurell K. Hamilton

“Won’t that hurt you?”

  Nicca laid his head against my thigh, and said, “You were in the hallway, right? You saw her with Mistral.”

  He nodded. “I saw.” There was a hunching of his shoulders when he said it.

  I ran my fingers down the front of his body, down his chest, his stomach, and only him rolling away kept me from wrapping my hand around him. “What is wrong?” I asked.

  “I will never be comfortable being that rough with anyone.”

  “You don’t have to be rough tonight, just give me the length of you. Let me feel you in my mouth all the way down to your balls. I want all of you in me in every conceivable way. If there’s an opening that can hold you, I want it.”

  He gave me a look.

  “Galen, Galen, we’re running out of time, don’t you understand that? Doyle and Frost already think the ring has chosen Mistral for me.”

  He looked stricken, as if I’d stabbed him low and hard with something made of cold iron.

  “I don’t believe they are right, but I do not know. None of us do. So while I have you, I want you. Don’t you understand that?”

  He looked down, and he was small again, his foreskin covering him. “If what you did with Mistral is what you want, then why do you want

  me?”

  “I don’t want rough every night, Galen. Some nights I like gentle. Some nights I like to make love, not fuck.”

  “But some nights you like to fuck,” he said. “I pretty much always want to make love.”

  I smiled at him. “I could argue that.”

  He tried not to smile, but failed. “Not if what you did in the hallway was fucking.”

  “That was fucking with Mistral. Sex depends on the person you’re with, Galen. Lovemaking rises and falls on the rhythms of the people involved.” I held my hand out to him. “Come to me.”

  He shook his head. “If I come to you now, I won’t be able to come to you when Nicca finally enters you.”

  “I can bring you back with a little bit of magic.”

  “Yeah, but if you do it immediately, it hurts a little.”

  “You never told me.”

  I looked down my body at Nicca, who had gone very quiet, his head resting on my thigh more for a pillow now than for sex. “Does it? Hurt, I mean?”

  “Until recently I almost always shared my night with Rhys, so with two of us in the bed there was more waiting between times. So no, it did not hurt. But if I had to go straight back to it, it might,” he said.

  “Doyle and Frost never complained,” I said.

  “I think pain is more useful for them in the bedroom than it is for me or Galen.”

  I thought about that for a second. “Maybe.”

  Galen’s voice came soft. “Is the reason you want me this way that you don’t want me to be your king?”

  I started to say no, then hesitated. It wasn’t my motive for the oral sex, but the last part was true enough, or had been.

  “I want you like this because I want you,” I said.

  Nicca spoke with his head still pillowed on my thigh. “I’ve seen her do this with more than just Mistral. She does seem to enjoy it.”

  “Sage, you mean,” Galen said, but still didn’t sound happy. His face did what it almost always did: it showed his every emotion.

  “Yes,” I said, and wasn’t sure what to do to reassure him. It wasn’t like Galen to pout this much. This was more Frost’s speed.

  “Sage,” he said again, “another who won’t ever be your king.”

  I sighed. “We have a night of ecstasy in front of us, and you’re spoiling it with hard questions, it’s not like you.”

  “No, it’s more like Frost.”

  He’d spoken exactly what I’d just finished thinking. He’d done that several times tonight.

  He continued with, “You complain about his moods, but you seem to like him better and better. Maybe you like your men a little more complicated.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. Why do you love one man and not another? Why is it that one person’s touch fills you with shivery heat, and the same touch from another leaves you cold? It is a mystery. But I could answer truthfully and still be comforting.

  “I love you, Galen.”

  He just looked at me.

  “Maybe I had forgotten just how much, but today . . . when I saw you lying there . . .” My voice failed me, and I had to close my eyes to keep from seeing him lying in a pool of his own blood.

  Nicca stroked my thigh, not for sex but to comfort.

  “When I saw you there, like that, I thought I would die from grief. To never see your smile again.” My eyes felt hot, and I couldn’t decide if crying would make me feel better or worse.

  He touched my face, and without opening my eyes, I knew it was his hand. His warm, gentle hand. I laid my cheek into that hand. I was reminded sharply of doing the same thing to Doyle only a few hours ago. Galen had failed me then, had not understood why Gillette’s failing me had made me cry. But giving Galen into the hands of another woman who could give him his nights of gentle love was one thing; giving him up to death was another. That I could not bear.

  I opened my eyes and gazed up at him. I met those green, green eyes.

  “You’re crying,” he said, and the look on his face was one of wonderment.

  “Not quite,” I said, but my voice sounded it. I had to swallow hard to say the next part. “Maybe I have been pulling back from you. I didn’t mean to.” I touched his hand with mine, kept it pressed against my face. “What terrified me about you being king was that our enemies would kill you. If I was picking men who could survive that kind of treachery, it wouldn’t be you, my gentle love.”

  “Like Dormath thinking I would just forgive him for almost killing me.”

  “Yes.”

  “The last thing I thought, the very last thought, was you. I was afraid that it was the beginning of an assault on all of us.” He lowered his gaze and wouldn’t look at me. “I thought, Doyle and Frost will keep her safe. That if one of us had to die first, it was better that it was me.” His smile was more sad than happy. “I guess my actual last, last thought was, why me? If I’d killed someone first, it would have been Doyle, not me. I prayed to the Goddess for your safety, and I died.”

  “Not quite,” I whispered.

  He looked at me then, and the smile was almost a real one. “How can I blame you for looking to them for your king, when as I lay dying, they were who I thought of, too? Damn it, being a good person is not enough here, not to help keep us alive. I’m sorry for that.”

  “I thought it would endanger you more to be my king, Galen, but now I understand that they’re going to try to kill you anyway.” I spoke to the look on his face. “I didn’t know about the green man bringing life to the court until the queen said it, but they are still going to kill as many of my allies as they can. They will strip me of my help, if they dare. So if you’re in danger either way, then you might as well be king.”

  “I’m dead either way,” he said, and the smile was back to being more sad.

  I sat up, trying to hug him, but he moved away just a little. My movement forced Nicca to move from my thigh to the mound between my legs for his pillow. Not for sex, but gently, as a pillow for his cheek.

  “Come to me, Galen, please.”

  “I cannot be your king, Merry. It would be the death of us all.” There was a hardness to his face that I had never seen before. In that moment I watched years be added, not in wrinkles, or lines, but in experience, in the depths of his eyes.

  “Will you give up your place in her bed?” Nicca asked, and his voice held the lilt of surprise.

  “No,” Galen said, his voice as grim as the look in his eyes. “I’m not strong enough to give that up, not yet, not until I have to. But it does open things up.” He smiled with that somber look still clinging to his eyes, still making him look not like my Galen at all. “But I could take Nicca’s place, and kiss you with more than mouths.”

 
“You’ve done that before.”

  “But never where you could return the favor,” he said.

  “You will have other nights,” Nicca said. “Would you deny me my last moments with our Merry?”

  “No, not if it’s what you want. I know if it were my last night with her, I’d want it exactly the way I wanted it.” He looked almost back to normal, but there was a glint in his eyes that didn’t go away, and that I was both relieved and sad to see.

  “I want to bring her with my lips and tongue, then I want to see another man in her mouth. I want us both to fuck her, until we go inside her. That’s what I want.”

  Galen nodded. “Okay.”

  “I do not care which of you it is at her mouth, but if it is you, Galen, I have one request.”

  Galen said, “Ask.”

  “You are taller than Kitto. If you could come at her from the side, and not in front. You partially block my view of her breasts, and since it is my last night with the largest breasts in the entire court, I want to see them.”

  “From the side it is,” Galen said.

  “I’ll need my head propped up if we’re going to do it like that,” I said.

  “We can mound the towels up,” Galen said.

  “Let me be Merry’s pillow,” Kitto said. “Rest your head in my lap, Princess.”

  The rest of us exchanged a glance, and the glance was enough. “Okay,” I said.

  Kitto’s smile was bright, and so very happy. Such a small thing to cause him such pleasure.

  Nicca moved his head back down my body, his hands encircling my thighs again. “Now, where were we?”

  My mouth suddenly dry, I asked, “Isn’t Galen supposed to be up here?”

  “I won’t last in your mouth if you’re screaming an orgasm around me. I just won’t. Let him bring you, then Kitto and I will go where Nicca wants us.”

  I might have argued for Galen to come closer sooner, but Nicca’s mouth found me again, and his tongue and lips stole my words, stole my breath, and finally stole the world away. For a few precious moments, I forgot that we were in danger, that there was a throne to win, or that there was anything but Nicca’s mouth between my legs. His mouth and my body became pleasure, as if there were no skin, no bones, nothing solid, only the overwhelming shivering joy of orgasm.

  CHAPTER 33

  WHEN MY EYES STOPPED ROLLING BACK INTO MY HEAD SO THAT I could see again, Nicca was grinning up at me. “That was a good one.”

  I still couldn’t talk, so I nodded.

  “You’re good,” Galen said.

  “I have never talked to Biddy about sex. You run into a few women, now and then, who won’t let you do this.”

  My voice didn’t sound like mine when I said, “They’re mad.”

  “Perhaps, but just in case it’s the last, I wanted it to be good.”

  I had a little trouble focusing, but finally managed it. “I don’t want to send you to her bed with regrets.”

  He came to his knees, and then climbed over my body until he could lay his nakedness along my own. The feel of his testicles pressed tight against where his mouth had just been made me writhe underneath him.

  He stared down at me, supporting his upper body on his arms, but keeping his lower body pressed tight against me. No matter how gentle a lover, the look in his eyes was the look of every man, eventually. That knowledge, that fierce joy, that they have given you pleasure, and now they get to take their own. I do not know why all men have that look somewhere in their eyes, waiting to come out, but I have seen it too often not to know that it is there.

  “Kiss me, take the sweet taste of you from my mouth.” He lowered his face to me, and I raised up to meet him. We kissed, and he was wet from me, and tasted of something clean and fresh, like the first breath of morning after a rain, when the world is wet and pure.

  He kissed me until our tongues, our hands, our arms, found each other. He kissed me until I had licked him clean of that taste, and left the wetness of my mouth behind. He drew back breathless, and said, “Perfect.”

  I understood what he meant, not that I was perfect, but that the kiss had been exactly what he’d wanted in that moment.

  He raised himself above me on arms and knees. He was stretched tight and hard against the front of his own body. “I am ready.”

  “I can see that,” I said, and my voice was breathy.

  Nicca looked at the other men, and said, “Places, gentlemen.” There was a note of command in his voice that I’d seldom heard, even in the midst of sex. I realized that this was the first time I’d had sex with him since he’d been brought into his power. Not his wings, but his power. We weren’t certain what magic he had gained from it, but he’d gained other things that had nothing to do with magic, and everything with being comfortable in his own skin.

  Kitto hesitated at my head as if he wasn’t sure what to do next.

  “Raise up, Merry,” Galen said, “let him know where he’s supposed to be.” His voice and face were gentle when he said it, as if he’d picked up on Kitto’s nervousness. Galen and I had kept our nights in Los Angeles to ourselves, so I’d really never seen him interact in an intimate setting with any of the other men. You can learn a lot about a man in the bedroom when it’s not just two, but more. Someone who refuses to share, well, that tells you something about a man, too.

  I raised up on my elbows. “Come, Kitto, let me rest my head in your lap.”

  He moved behind me, still uncertain, as if he expected one of the other men to protest. He settled behind me with his legs folded tailor fashion. I did not lay my head in his lap immediately, but bowed my head backwards so I could sweep my hair across his groin. I trailed my hair back and forth until he made noises for me.

  I laid my head in the cradle of his legs, and found his sex pressed against the top of my head. Interesting, but his knees were also higher than my face. I rubbed my head against him like a cat. His breathing sped for me, but it wasn’t going to work as a prop for Galen.

  “Um,” Galen said.

  Nicca said, “What if Kitto almost lies under Merry, with her head resting on his stomach?”

  We tried it. It took some maneuvering, especially to find a comfortable way for Kitto’s legs to be underneath me. Nicca suggested that Kitto turn over on his stomach, which probably would have been easier, but I vetoed it. I wanted the press of him against my head. I wanted not just Kitto’s body, but a very specific part, to be my pillow. I wanted the sensation of it, and I wanted to give Kitto at least that much. He’d given up his place for intercourse, and for oral sex. He deserved at least to be touched.

  So I lay back against the line of Kitto’s body, and my head was cradled on a pillow that was so warm, so firm, so erotic. I rubbed my head against that firm pillow, and Kitto cried out.

  “A little less body language, Merry, or he’ll go before anyone else,” Galen said, but he smiled when he said it, shaking his head.

  I stopped rubbing, and just lay there with my head pressed against Kitto. “What?” I asked.

  “Just watching how happy that made you.”

  “Do you have a problem with it?” I asked.

  “No,” he said, and grinned suddenly, “and I can prove it.” He crawled to us, and arched his body above my face, knees on one side, hands on the other. I wrapped my hands around him, and squeezed gently. It brought his breath out in a shuddering laugh. “Stop that.”

  “Why?” I asked, and put my other hand at his balls, cupping them, while I stroked along the length of him. I’d touched Galen hundreds of times by now, but I never quite got over the marvel of being allowed to touch him. I think it was because I’d wanted him long before it had occurred to me to want any of the other guards. They had been untouchable, and almost invisible to me, as I’d been to them. But Galen, he had always been real to me.

  He looked at Nicca and said, in a voice that couldn’t quite control itself, “I’d hurry if I were you, Nicca. She is so not going to behave herself.”

  Nic
ca gave that uniquely masculine laugh. “I’m not finishing until she does, I’ll warn you of that now.”

  I ran my thumb over the round tip of him, and rubbed my head against Kitto at the same time. Galen shuddered for me, and Kitto made another satisfying cry. “We’ll do our best,” Galen said. He gazed down at me, smiling, eyes a little wide. “Is this a test of how much control we have?”

  “No,” I said.

  “You’re mad because I’ve said no to this for so long, aren’t you?”

  I thought about that for a second or two, then frowned. “Maybe, I guess, yes. I’m sorry. I want this to be about joy, not pettiness.” My hands started to fall away from him, but he caught my wrist with one hand.

  “Do your best, or your worst, and so will we. I’m sorry I denied you any part of me. I promise it won’t happen again.”

  “Good,” I said, and I pulled him down toward me. He didn’t fight me. He just readjusted his hands and knees, and finally his hips until I could guide him between my lips. He was so full, so thick, that I had to open my mouth wider than was comfortable to let him push his way deeper inside. He pushed until he found the back of my throat. I forced myself to relax as he eased himself past that point of comfort. I loved the feel of a man so deep, but it was an acquired talent. I was blessed with no gag reflex, but there were other problems with the well-endowed. Breathing for one, and just finding an angle so they could fuck you but not hurt your throat. Badly done deep-throating gave an entirely new meaning to having a little sore throat. I moved my head, just a little, my head rocking gently on Kitto’s body, as I worked with Galen to find that special position. I knew from experience that once I got excited enough I would have less trouble, that nothing would hurt while I was doing it, so I worked to make sure things didn’t hurt later either. Galen was above me, truly trying to mouth-fuck me. It wasn’t the same as going down on a man from other positions, because they had more control than you did. And they could not feel your body, as you felt it. They could not know when you could draw breath, or swallow, or when you needed to do either. I was trusting Galen to be gentle. I was depending on it.

  He began to use his hips more, so that at the end of the thrust he was down my throat. I timed my breathing for when he was higher in my mouth, and swallowed about every other stroke. I moved my hands up his body until I found his testicles, so I could play with them as he went in and out.