“Must I take oath for you to believe me?” he asked.
“No,” I said, “and yes, you may use glamour, but behave yourself.”
He grinned at me and there should have been no heat possible in a man his size. He should have looked more like a cat curled between my breasts, sexless, and pretty, but a cat couldn’t look at you like that. And then he dropped his shields much as I had in the lab, but where my shields kept me from seeing magic everywhere Royal’s shields kept him from befuddling the world with his magic.
One moment I was puzzled by how a man the size of a doll could make me nervous and the next he was sliding down the side of my body, spilling back my robe until he bared my breasts. I’d always kept him away from intimate things, but tonight I’d forgotten to negotiate as firmly as usual. I knew vaguely that there was a reason not to let him put that tiny rosebud of a mouth on one of my nipples, but while I was still trying to form the thought of why, he set his mouth around me, and from the moment he began to suck I couldn’t remember why he wasn’t supposed to do it, or rather, I no longer cared.
I’d had demi-fey suck fingertips, and from such innocent kisses they could make you feel as if they were sucking on much more intimate things. Now he was on something intimate and it was as if there was a line from there all the way to that most intimate of places where a man can suck on a woman. But it was more than that; it was as if I could feel his body all along the edge of mine. Royal could use his glamour to give the illusion that he was bigger. I could feel the weight of him against the side of my body, so warm, so real, as he sucked on my breast.
I had to put my hand on the delicate brush of his wings to make certain he was only so big and no more. He flicked his wings against my fingers and suddenly they, too, felt bigger, as if they rose above his back like sails on a ship, but sails that were brushed with velvet scales and flicked delicate and beautiful against my hand.
He bit me just enough to make me cry out for him and suddenly the world smelled of roses. Wild roses and summer heat filled the world. I had to open my eyes to make certain we were still in the pale bedroom with its satin and silk. Rose petals began to fall from nowhere onto the bed.
His hands cupped my breast, mounding it up so he could get a better seal on my nipple, and his hands felt bigger, his mouth kissing me hard and harder as he drew my nipple out to one long, harsh line, but the pain was just right, just what I needed to cry out for him again. I thought it was his glamour when he was suddenly staring down at me, his body on top of mine. I’d felt his glamour make him seem big enough to do all that. I opened my eyes to find his wings rising above us both in a spill of color and movement. His face was still a delicate triangle, but it was as big as my own, and he was still beautiful, but as I watched him lean in for a kiss I realized it wasn’t illusion.
Rose petals fell on him, framing him in a rain of pink and white as he kissed me—a real kiss with lips big enough to do it right. One of my hands found the back of his neck and the curls of his hair while my other hand traced the line of his back until I found where his wings joined his body, and we kissed, gently and long, and his body settled closer to mine. I realized that he had grown bigger but his clothing had not. He was nude against my body and I was nude under the robe as we kissed.
He rose from the kiss enough to say, “Please, Merry, please. I may never get my wish again.”
“What did you wish?”
“You know what I wished.” His hand slid down between our bodies until his fingers found my opening. He slid a finger inside me and even that small entering made me catch my breath and writhe for him. He smiled down at me. “You’re wet.”
I nodded. “Yes.” I slid my own hand between our bodies and found him hard and long and big enough to please any woman. I wrapped my hand around him until he shuddered above me.“Please,” he said.
“Yes,” I said, and I let go of him and moved my hips up to meet his body.
He opened his eyes and gazed down at me. “Yes?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
He smiled and then he raised his body enough and used his hand to guide himself to my opening. I lifted my hips to help him find his way and suddenly he was sliding inside me. “So tight, but so wet.” He rose on his arms so he could push a little more with his lower body. The movement gave me a clear view down the line of our bodies so I could see him pushing his way inside me, see his body going inside mine for the first time.
I cried out, “Goddess!” The rain of petals thickened like soft, perfumed snow except this snow was warm and silken against our bare skin.
Royal pushed his way inside me until our bodies met and then he shuddered above me, his wings fanning out to frame the pale beauty of his body. He looked down at me and said, “You’re lying in a bed of rose petals.” And then he began to make love to me, his body going in and out of mine. He put one of my legs up over his shoulder to get a slightly deeper, slightly different angle and it was as if he’d known that would help him hit that spot just inside me. He began to glide himself over and over that spot as he rose above me, his wings flicking out to their widest as he buried himself the deepest in my body.
My breathing sped up, and I felt that heavy sweet sensation growing inside me. His breathing was faster, his body getting more frantic. I breathed out, “Almost, almost there.”
He nodded as if he’d understood or even heard me. He fought his body, his breathing, everything to push himself in and out of me just a few more strokes, and between one and the next he spilled me over the edge and I was screaming his name, my hands finding his sides, his back, holding on to him, as he brought me writhing and shrieking underneath him.
My skin glowed brightly enough to paint his winged shadow against the ceiling. He cried out above me, and thrust himself one last time inside me. We screamed together and then he held himself on his arms, his head down like a winded horse. His wings began to fold back behind him.
I saw movement in the room and realized that Mistral and Frost had seen at least the end of our lovemaking. Royal collapsed slowly on top of me, and it was only as he folded in against me so warm, and his head touched the pillow beside my head that I realized that in this form he was taller than Kitto. He was my height.
I held him, my hands careful with the edge of his wings as we both waited for our heartbeats to slow. I felt something cooler than the body fluid we’d just shared and it was on my shoulder. I petted his curls and he raised his face enough to look at me. He was crying. It was his tears against my skin.
I did the only thing I could think of to do. I kissed him, and we held each other until we could move enough to clean up in the bathroom. We’d been debating who would share my bed along with Mistral tonight. I knew who had my vote, if the storm lord would allow it, and maybe if he wouldn’t. Maybe as with Barinthus it was time for me to stop being nice to everyone and ask for what I wanted, and in that moment I couldn’t think of anything I wanted more than to keep Royal with me. Maybe it was his own glamour, or maybe it was the Goddess with her fall of rose petals, but whatever the reason, he was one of the men I wanted beside me as I slept tonight.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
I HAD FALLEN ASLEEP WITH ROYAL ON ONE SIDE, SLEEPING ON HIS stomach as you had to do when you had moth wings on your back. Mistral wouldn’t share the bed with him, not even with the rose petals still on the sheets to prove that it was the Goddess who had decreed that Royal was supposed to be brought into a larger form. It wasn’t really Mistral’s fault, but I’d had enough of trying to make everyone feel good about themselves at the expense of my own feelings. There was no way to be fair about it. Either I cast Royal out with the afterglow of the amazing sex, his new form, and the blessing of the Goddess still riding both of us, which made me sad to think about, or I told Mistral either he shared with whom I wanted to share with, or he slept without me. He wouldn’t relent, and I was left, as with Barinthus, to stand my ground.
The bed was big enough so that Frost and Doyle slept on one side and Royal on the other. They both saw Royal being brought into his larger form as another blessing. So did most of the men, but for Mistral it was two days without me and then the demi-fey got the sex that he somehow thought was his right. I’d informed him that I wasn’t up to his level of rough sex that night, and that hadn’t gone over well either.
I’d woken to Frost beside me, one arm flung out and his silver hair flung across the bed so that Royal’s wings flickered awake in a pool of silver as if his wings were a piece of exotic jewelry set in a base of melted silver. Doyle was on the other side of Frost, propped up on one elbow watching me when I opened my eyes. He’d put Frost next to me the night before saying, “Rhys wasn’t touching your skin directly. I’m thinking that may be why he was awake to guard your dreaming vision. I will give up the chance to touch you this one night to guard your safety.”
Frost had tried to protest that he wanted to help guard me, but Doyle had been insistent, and as in most things, when the Darkness was insistent he got his way with the other men. Mistral and Barinthus were the two exceptions to that rule and even they usually let him persuade them.