“What do you want the first time?” I asked, and my voice had gone deeper, thickening with the feel of him in my hands.
“I want to be inside you, between your legs—I want to make you come before I do. But I do not know if I still have that kind of discipline.”
“Then don’t be disciplined. This time, the first time, don’t worry about it.”
He shook his head, and the blue lines in his hair seemed to pulse brighter. “I want to bring you such pleasure that you will want me in your bed every night. So many men, Meredith, so many men in your bed. I don’t want to wait my turn. I want you to come to me again and again, because no one brings you as much pleasure as I do.”
A sound made us both turn our heads; we found Mistral kneeling beside us. “Hurry up and finish this, Abeloec, or I will not wait to be second.”
“Would you not worry, as I do, that you pleasure the princess?” Abeloec asked.
“Unlike you, I’ll have no second chance here, Abeloec. The queen has decreed that this time is all I will ever have with the princess. So no, I am not so worried about my performance.” He ran his hand through my hair, pushing deep so that his fingers brushed my scalp. It made me cuddle my head against his hand. He closed his fingers into a fist, and was suddenly jerking my hair tight in his hand. It sped my pulse in my throat, tearing a sound from my mouth that was not pain. My skin blazed to white-hot life.
“We do not have to be gentle,” Mistral said. He leaned his face near mine. “Do we, Princess?”
I whispered, “No.”
He pulled my hair tighter, and I cried out. I felt rather than saw some of the other men move toward us. Mistral pulled my hair tight again, bending my neck to one side, moving my body a little out from under Abeloec. “I am not hurting you, am I, Princess?”
“No.” All I could do was whisper.
“I don’t think they heard you,” he said. He twisted his hand tight and sudden in my hair. He put his lips against my cheek and whispered, “Scream for me.” The blue lines crawled from my skin to his, and again I saw that outline of lightning on his cheek.I whispered, “What will you do, if I don’t scream?”
He kissed me, ever so gently against my cheek. “Hurt you.”
My breath came out in a shudder. “Please,” I sighed.
Mistral laughed, a wonderful deep laugh, with his face pressed against mine and his hand still tight in my hair. “Hurry, Abeloec, hurry, or we will have to fight to see who is first.” He let go of my hair so abruptly that this motion, too, hurt a little, and forced a sound from me. Mistral turned me back over to Abeloec with my eyes unfocused, and my breath either coming too fast or nearly stopping for a moment—I couldn’t quite tell. My pulse seemed uncertan if I was afraid or thrilled. But it was as if now that Mistral touched me again, he could not quite give up touching me. He kept his fingers against the side of my neck, as if he wanted to help my pulse decide.
“I do not like to cause pain,” Abeloec said. His body was not quite as happy as it had been.
“Pain is not the only way to pleasure,” I said.
His dark eyes narrowed at me from the shine of his face. “You do not have to have pain to be pleasured?”
I shook my head, feeling the lingering ache where Mistral’s hand had been. “No.”
Doyle’s deep voice came out of the dark. “Meredith likes violence, but she also likes gentleness. It depends on her mood, and yours.”
Both Abe and Mistral looked at him. “The queen cares nothing for our moods,” Mistral said.
“This one will,” Doyle said.
Abeloec looked down at me and began to slowly lower himself toward my body, for all the world like a push-up, except that I was in the way. His mouth found mine before his body pressed into me. He kissed me, and the blue was neon-bright and flared with lines of crimson and emerald. The lines of color flared down Mistral’s hand, and it felt as if those lines were made of rope, drawing his mouth to mine, and drawing Abeloec down my body. He half knelt and half lay across my lower body. He spread my legs so that his body spilled between them. But it was his finger that found me first—testing the waters, I think.
His voice was strangled as he said, “You’re still wet.”
I would have answered but Mistral’s mouth found mine, and I gave the only answer I could. I raised my hips toward Abeloec’s searching hand. The next thing I felt was his hands moving to my hips. The tip of him of him rubbing against my opening.
Mistral raised his mouth from mine and half whispered, half groaned, “Fuck her, fuck her, fuck her, please,” and the last word was drawn out into a long sigh that ended in something close to a scream.
Abeloec pushed himself inside me, and only then did he begin to throb with power. It was almost like some huge vibrator, except this vibrator was warm and alive, and had a mind and a body behind it.
That mind moved the body in rhythms that no mere mechanical aid could ever have produced. I watched Abeloec push in and out of my body like some shining shaft of light, though it was undoubtedly flesh that went in and out of me. Soft, firm, vibrating flesh.
Mistral grabbed my hair again, pulled my head back so that I could no longer watch Abeloec work his magic in my body. The look on Mistral’s face would have frightened me if we’d been alone. He kissed me hard, so hard that it was bruising. I had a choice of opening my mouth to him or cutting my lips on my own teeth. I opened my mouth.
His tongue plunged inside me, as if he were trying to do to my mouth what Abeloec was doing between my legs. It was only his tongue, but he kept pushing inside, pushing until he shoved my mouth so wide that my jaw began to ache. He shoved his tongue so far down my throat that I gagged, and he drew back. I thought he did it to let me swallow and catch my breath, but he drew back so he could laugh. He let loose a roll of masculine pleasure that spilled from his mouth and danced over my skin. There was an echo to it, that laughter—an echo like distant thunder.
His pausing gave me a chance to concentrate on Abeloec. He had found a rhythm that plunged to the end of me, and out, in a rolling slide, a rhythm that would have brought me eventually. But even beyond that, his body pulsed inside mine. It was as if his magic throbbed with the rhythm of his body, so that each time he plunged deep inside me the magic throbbed harder, and vibrated faster.
I took the chance Mistral had given me to say, “Abeloec, are you making your magic pulse in time to your lovemaking?”
His voice came tight with concentration. “Yes.”
I started to say, Oh, Goddess, but Mistral’s mouth found mine again, and I got only as far as, “Oh, God—”
Mistral thrust his tongue so deep and hard into my mouth that it was like oral sex when the man is too big for comfort. If you fight it, it hurts, but if you relax, sometimes, you can do it. You can let the man have his way with your mouth without breaking your jaw. I’d never had anyone kiss me like this, and even as I fought to let him do it, I thought about him being this forceful with other things, and the thought made me open wider to him, wider to them both.
They were both so skilled, but in such opposite ways that I wondered what it would be like to have their full attention one at a time. But there was no way to ask Mistral to wait, to give us room, because I could barely breathe with his tongue down my throat, let alone speak. I wanted to speak; I wanted to stop having to fight him to breathe. My jaw was aching hard enough to distract me from Abeloec’s amazing fucking. Mistral had crossed that line from feels good to fucking stop.
We hadn’t arranged a sign that would let him know I wanted him to stop. When you can’t speak, you usually have some prearranged way to tap out. I started pushing at his shoulders, pushing like I meant it. I wasn’t as strong as a full-blooded sidhe, but I had once put my hand through a car door to scare away some would-be muggers, if that’s an indication. I had bloodied my hand, but not broken it. So I pushed, and he pushed back.
He had his mouth so far inside mine that I couldn’t even bite him. I was choking, and he didn’t care.
I could feel the orgasm beginning to build. I did not want Abeloec’s good work spoiled by the fact that I was choking.
Nails could be used for pleasure, or to make a point. I set my nails in the firm flesh of Mistral’s neck and dug them in. I carved bloody furrows in his skin. He jerked back from me, and seeing the rage on his face, again, I was glad we weren’t alone.
“When I say stop, you stop,” I said. And I realized that I was angry, too.“You didn’t say stop.”
“Because you made certain I couldn’t.”
“You said you liked pain.”
I was having trouble controlling my breathing, because Abeloec was still vibrating and moving inside me. I was close. “I like pain to a point, but not a broken jaw. We’ll need to lay some ground rules before…you…get…your turn,” and the last word was a scream as I threw my head back and my body spasmed. Mistral caught my head or I would have smashed it against the hard ground.
Abeloec’s pleasure spread through me, over me, in me, in waves. Waves of pleasure, waves of power, over and over, as if here, too, he was able to control what was happening. As if he could control my release the way he’d controlled everything else. The orgasm would roll over me from my groin to every inch of my body, then it would start again, spreading from between my legs over my skin in a rush that sent my hands seeking something to hold on to, my body thrashing. My entire upper body left the ground and smashed back, over and over, while Abeloec held my hips and legs trapped against his body.