I started to ask if he was all right, but the pulse of Sage’s body froze the words in my mouth, and I turned to meet that tiny, glittering black gaze. His golden luminescence hadn’t faded; if anything, he glowed brighter than ever, his wings like colored fire framing the central flame of his body. There was more of fierceness, of triumph, of power, than lust on his face. “Whatever my lady wishes, so shall it be,” he whispered.
Nicca held a shaking hand up and Sage laughed. “So eager, I like that.”
“No gloating, Sage,” I said, my voice still uncertain, as if I wasn’t quite sure it was my voice.
“Oh, but Merry, I must. The donnan has paid me a high compliment.”
“Donnan?” Nicca made it a question, then shook his head. “I was no one’s chief, little, brown, or otherwise, Sage.” His voice was shaky, but through the haze of glamour with Rhys and I beginning to fade like the moon sinking behind the trees, Nicca seemed determined not to be called what he had never been.
“As you will, then, Nicca,” Sage said. He grabbed Nicca’s fingers and pulled his hand across mine, so that Nicca’s hand was cradled between Sage’s body and my fingers. The back of his hand was hot gliding across my fingers and palm. That one simple touch brought the fading light in my skin back to a glow as if the moon had decided to rise twice that night.
Sage dragged Nicca’s hand across his own lap until he bent his tiny, swollen mouth over the wrist. He laid that red kiss against Nicca’s wrist, where the blue vein pulsed just under the skin, so close to the surface it was like an eager lover waiting to be taken.
Nicca crawled up my body so that he lay half upon me, using his free arm to support his weight; for a moment I looked down the length of his body to see him long and firm and full of a golden light that began to spread through his pale brown skin, as if the sun were rising inside his body. I felt his magic vibrate just above me like a trembling sheet of heat in the air. Sage’s magic had caught Rhys unawares, but Nicca had learned from the other man’s mistake, if it was a mistake, and he was using his own magic, trying to work through the glamour.
Sage bit into Nicca’s wrist, and the pain distracted him, closed his eyes, shuddered his breath, but he held his body above mine in a sort of one-armed push-up. I couldn’t taste Nicca’s pulse as I had Rhys’s. Nicca was fighting the glamour.
He managed to maneuver himself over my body, between my legs, and he began to lower himself down, pushing through the vibrating heat of his own magic, shoving it into me and over Sage. It made Sage hesitate and shiver himself.
I ran my free hand down Nicca’s chest, stomach, and wrapped my hand around the long hardness of him. My touch bowed his back, lost him his concentration. Sage’s glamour flooded over us both, and the blood that raced through my body spilled in white light out of my skin, danced my hair around my face. Nicca’s skin was the color of deep golden amber, like dark honey if it could burn. For burn he did, with a golden light that I’d never seen from him before. It was as if Sage’s glamour had stripped his skin away to reveal nothing but power.I held him in my hand, firm and real, but he glowed so bright that I could not look upon him and had to close my eyes. It was like holding onto some vibrating, pulsing, piece of magic made solid. He was hot velvet against my palm, a gliding smoothness that throbbed down my hand to dance inside my veins, to spill heat through my body, like a searching hand that touched and glided over and through me, searching, searching, searching until his power found me, found my center, found that part that nothing should touch, and the power filled me from the inside out. His golden power raced with my magic, my body, my pleasure, so that his glow ran before mine, coaxed mine to shine bright and brighter, until the room was full of shadows from the shining of us, full of shadows that had no place in this room, as if our lights showed us hints of what lay around us, and it had nothing to do with this room, this bed, these bodies. The magic spilled out of us raw and wild, and Sage burned in the middle of it.
I fell back into my body screaming, bucking, fighting the bed, the men, everything, anything I could touch. I felt my nails slicing into flesh, and it wasn’t enough. Three things brought me back to myself: blood in a hot rain across my face, Nicca shrieking, over and over again, and the feel of wings under my hands. Somewhere in all of it, I didn’t want to tear Sage’s wings, as he’d grown large under my hands.
Someone grabbed my wrists, held them over my head, pinned them to the pillows, and I didn’t struggle. I couldn’t see. Blood had landed across my closed lids, and the lashes were too thick with it. There was too much blood for a little rough sex. I blinked frantically, and I thought I was seeing double. Two pairs of wings rose above me like neon glass. One pair belonged to Sage—now nearly as tall as I was, his weight pinning me underneath him. But the others were larger, almost larger than I was, brown and cream, edges of pink, whirls of blue and red like huge eyes dotting the wings. They were only half unfurled, like a butterfly fresh from its chrysalis.
I stared up into Nicca’s face. A face that was half pain, and half ecstasy, and all confusion. Blood glittered across us, glowing like liquid rubies, pulsing with the magic that still rode the air. The blood was Nicca’s, from where his wings had burst from his skin.
It was Rhys who held my wrists, though he was as close to being off the bed as he could get. He was spattered with blood, but even as I watched, it was absorbed, as if his skin were drinking it. “I thought you were going to tear their wings,” he said, and his voice held an edge of fear. I wondered how many of us had been screaming at the end. The blood seemed to like Rhys. He was drinking the power of this strange blood, this strange wound.
I was pinned under Sage and Nicca, though Sage was closer to center, and Nicca had spilled slightly off my body. I stared up at the wings, like stained glass with its own light. Nicca’s wings were unfurling even as I watched, pumping larger with each beat of his heart.
Sage’s mouth was smeared with liquid rubies. I’d never seen blood glow like that. He leaned down toward me, and I felt the power, not just of his glamour, or of Nicca, but of the blood itself. He kissed my lips, and the power burned against my skin, raised my face to his mouth, and we fed. He fed at my mouth like it was a flower, and I fed at his like it was a cup. We drank, sipped, and licked the power from each other’s mouths.
When we raised back from the kiss, most of the blood was gone, as if it had been something else altogether. Rhys looked as if he were carved of white light, and his eye burned like some blue sun. He slid off the bed, shaking his head. “I’ve had enough, thanks. I’ll just watch the rest of the show.”
I don’t know what I would have said, or if I had any words left, but one of the men still in the bed made some small movement and I turned back to them.
I lowered my hands to touch Sage’s hair. In his small form it was soft, but here like this, the softness was almost overwhelming; just running my fingers through the silken brush of it caused me to writhe underneath them both.
Nicca cried out, and I gazed up at him, watched the fear leave his eyes, consumed with something darker and brighter. His eyes glowed as he lowered his mouth to mine. Sage moved just enough to let Nicca taste me. He licked the inside of my mouth as if it were a bowl, and he was trying to get the last drops from it.
I brought my hands down to glide along the sides of both their bodies. Sage’s skin was like warm silk. Nicca’s skin was warmer, hotter. Sage writhed over me, impossibly soft and firm at the same time. But Nicca was like something carved of power, so that it was hard to feel anything but the throbbing beat of the magic inside him.
Sage dragged his body up mine, whispering against my skin. “Remember what you promised me, Princess?”
“Yes,” I whispered, “yes.”
I watched Sage move his body closer to mine, watched the thickness of him come closer to my face. Nicca had moved to one side, but he kept his hands gliding over my body so that he never lost contact with my skin. When Sage came to kneel in front of my face, I watched Nicca crawl between my legs, on his knees, so that the two of them echoed each other. I remembered the mirror on the bureau then, and I turned to see them. Sage’s wings overlapped Nicca’s body so that he was half hidden behind the gossamer colors. His own wings were almost full now, large and curved, luminous with color.
Sage touched my face, brought my attention back to him. I’d never seen him naked and full-size before. He was bigger than I’d expected, not longer, but wider. I flicked my tongue across the tip of him, and it was as unbelievably soft as the rest of him. I ran my hands over him, the shaft of him as soft as most men’s balls, and the skin of his testicles like something made of satin. I had no words for the fineness of the skin between his legs. It was softer than a dream, like a bag made to hold something magical.
He touched my hands, stopped them from moving along his skin. “Have a care, Merry, or you’ll have me go before I’ve seen the inside of your mouth.”
I pulled him between my lips, and it was like sucking on silk that happened to be warm and muscled, and alive. The sensation of the soft skin and the hardness of him made me cry out with him in my mouth. Which made him cry out, and arch above me.