A Shiver of Light (25 page)

“Essus was always wise, and correct, but since not all nobles of the court were true leaders it helped for all of us to look impressive and powerful.”

“Even if we were not,” Galen said.

Rhys nodded. “Even if some of us were not.”

I noticed he said “some of us.” I was betting he didn’t consider himself one of the powerless ones. Rhys had been one of the lesser lights in the court during my lifetime, but I was learning that once upon a time he had been very major indeed.

“What’s the towel for?” Galen asked.

“In case we want to bring Merry again, while she screams her pleasure around our bodies.”

Galen had a look that was almost pain. “In case, why wouldn’t we?”

“We don’t want to make her sore.”

Galen nodded. “Oh, right, sorry, I’m a little distracted.”

“A little,” I said, and slid my hand over his balls to cup them loosely in my hand.

He went very still and then looked down at me, eyes slightly wide.

“I want you more than a little distracted,” I said, and moved in toward his body, letting the braid drop to his side. I leaned in toward the soft, waiting part of him, my eyes rolled upward so I could watch his face. His body was already partially erect before I got a lick along the shaft of him. His body gave that involuntary quiver that I loved, because it was something that they couldn’t control, a sign of pure eagerness.

Licking him meant that he was mostly erect by the time I slid my mouth over the ripe head of him and down that long, thick shaft. He wasn’t as hard as he could get, but from one spill of my mouth over him, to come up for air, and then down again, he was harder yet—hard and eager.

I slid my mouth over him again, and he flexed inside my mouth, that eager involuntary twitch against the roof of my mouth. It made me tighten my hand around the base of him and make soft, eager sounds around him as I began to drive my mouth harder and faster over him.

“Goddess,” Galen said, his eyes closed, and he reached outward, as if searching for something to steady himself with, but there was no headboard to this bed.

Rhys climbed onto the bed and grabbed Galen’s hand. Galen turned and looked at him, eyes wide, and managed to gasp out, “Thanks.”

“You can return the favor,” Rhys said, grinning.

Seeing the two of them on the bed hand in hand both excited me and made me want to make Rhys work for it. I started sucking harder as I slid over Galen, and then taking as much of that delicious hardness into my mouth as I could and still be able to suck on him.

Galen’s hand convulsed, and I watched Rhys’s arm flex, muscles cording as he held the other man steady on the soft surface of the mattress.

“Now you’re just being mean,” Rhys said, with another grin.

I couldn’t actually smile with Galen in my mouth, but my eyes smiled for me, and Rhys shook his head at me, smiling, too.

Galen began to burn for me as if the spring leaves could swallow the sun and make it shine out through the fresh, pale green of those first fragile leaves. Each green curl was edged with sunlight; the thin braid sparkled as if thin gold wire had been woven in with the green. I’d seen Galen shine before, but never edged in gold, as if sunlight and molten metal were edging the moonlight paleness of him.

Every inch of him was shining and thrumming with energy, including the part that I was going down on, so that it was like a reverse hummer, his body humming with energy inside my mouth and down my throat as I pushed it those last few inches so that it was impossible to suck anymore, or swallow, or breathe. I didn’t stay down that far long, but the sensation of that power vibrating across my tongue, between my teeth, and down my throat was incredible. When I had enough air to make sounds they spilled from my mouth in eager, excited whimpering noises. Gods, it felt so … good!

My skin began to fill with moonlight again, an answering moon to the sunrise of Galen’s power. He made a harsh sound and managed to gasp, “Close, I’m close.”

We’d been doing this together often enough that he knew to warn me so I could decide whether I was swallowing or he was finishing by spilling on me. I tasted the first sweet hint that he was very close.

Rhys’s skin began to run with shining white light, his arm cording with muscle as Galen’s grip on his hand tightened and strained his own muscles to hold on. Then from one minute to the next Galen’s body spasmed, and he cried out, and I plunged that vibrating thrumming down my throat as far as I could, burying my mouth against his body so that every delicious inch of him was in my mouth, down my throat, so thick, filling me up, and that was it: I orgasmed with him in my mouth, my body bucking with him as deep inside my mouth as he would have been between my legs. I felt the flexing as he came down my throat in a hot spill of power and grace. I came up off him enough to scream my orgasm around his body. It made him cry out again, back arching, head thrown back, eyes closed, the muscles on his arm etched in bold relief under his skin as he held on to Rhys’s hand to hold himself on his knees, upright, as a second orgasm took him.

Rhys’s skin shone brighter and I saw the glimmer as his threefold blue eye began to glow. Galen gasped out, “Enough, enough, Consort save us, too sensitive, stop, stop, stop.”

I came up off him smiling, trailing an edge of saliva and a bit of him from his body to my lips. He collapsed slowly to his side, letting go of Rhys’s hand and half-laughing.

Rhys slid his hand through my hair, and I found myself staring at his body, muscled and lean from all the extra time he spent in the gym. No other guard paid as much attention to weights and diet so that the six-pack of his abdomen was carved into his flesh. He was already thick and ready, held tight in front of those amazing abs.

He used his hand in my hair to direct me toward all that yummy goodness, and just that extra bit of dominance from him sped my pulse, started my eyes glowing; my hair was spun garnets and rubies wrapped around the shining white metal of his hand. He pushed himself between my lips and I had to open up wide enough so he didn’t catch himself on my teeth. He began to push himself in and out of my mouth in shallow strokes, nothing that would make me choke, just enough to make me eager for more. I opened my mouth wider, relaxing my throat, and he felt it, because he began to push himself deeper inside me. Now when he thrust deep there was that moment when I couldn’t breathe and my body knew it. Whereas with Galen I had been in total control of how deep, how long, all of it, Rhys had changed the rules with his hand in my hair, at the back of my head, and his own thrusting hips. I made eager noises for him, but not for long and not as loud as for Galen, because he thrust too deep for me to breathe, and without breath there is no sound, just my eyes too wide rolled up to stare into his face, as he looked down at me with a look that made me shudder and finally try to scream my pleasure around him. He moved back far enough so I could scream around him, and then thrust himself deep and hard down my throat, and this time he held my head so I couldn’t come back up right away.

He let me up, and I gasped, catching my breath in harsh, overeager breaths, and then he thrust himself into my mouth and down my throat again. He found a rhythm that was just hard enough, just fast enough, just deep enough that it was nearly the perfect blend of force and pleasure.

Rhys liked gentler, but he knew I didn’t, and he’d learned to adapt himself to what I wanted and needed. I rewarded him by screaming my pleasure around him, and then he thrust one last time, deeper, forcing my mouth tight against his body so that every last inch of him was shoved as deep inside my mouth as he could get, and whereas with Galen it had been my control, my choice, so I hadn’t fought, this wasn’t, and I started struggling just a little. Rhys stared down at me, holding me in place until my eyes watered, and when he drew me back I coughed and choked. He drew himself completely out of my mouth.

“Is it too much?”

I shook my head, coughed, and said, “No, it’s amazing.”

“Do you want me to finish that way, or on those beautiful breasts of yours?”

“On,” I said.

He tightened his hold in my hair; if it had been Mistral I’d have asked for tighter, but Rhys was already rougher than he preferred and I appreciated that. He forced himself into my mouth and down my throat again, and this time he was harder, faster, deeper, so that I had to fight for breath, fight not to choke too much; if his hold on my hair had been tighter it would have hit that switch and I could have taken more, but he wasn’t quite rough enough to make me enjoy all of it.

He noticed and drew back. “Am I hurting you?”

“If you tighten your hold on my hair, take control even more, I’ll be able to enjoy it more.”

He looked a little skeptical, but he did what I asked, fingers digging into my hair until it was painful, but for me that translated into finally relaxing into it, giving myself over to the hand in my hair, Rhys’s strength, the thrust of him plunging down my throat as he held me where he wanted me, and began to use my hair as a lever so that he thrust into my mouth and drove my mouth down on him at the same time. It rolled my eyes back into my head and spilled emerald and gold light inside my closed eyelids, so bright that it was like daylight with my eyes closed.

He pulled me off him, hand painful in my hair. I opened my eyes enough to see him stroking himself with his other hand. He spilled in a hot wave of shining white, as if moonlight could be made solid enough to pour down my breasts and drip across them in glistening lines.

He helped me lie down beside Galen, and then he collapsed on the other side of me. “Give me a minute and I’ll get you a washrag.” His voice was breathless with effort and orgasm.

“I’ll get it,” Galen said. “You rest.” I tried to focus on him enough to see the smile I could heard in his voice, but I couldn’t focus that much yet.

Rhys’s hand found mine and we lay there holding hands, relearning how to breathe and letting the fire and light of our bodies began to fade back to something resembling human-normal.

“I so needed that,” I managed to say.

“Me, too,” he said.

I squeezed his hand. “Thank you for being rougher than you wanted to be.”

“I knew that would make it better for you, and if you can’t have intercourse, you need to have the best I can give you.”

“That was good, bestest,” I said.

“I love you, Merry.”

I turned enough to smile at him. “I love you, too, Rhys.”

“I love you both,” Galen said, coming back from the bath with a rag.

“Don’t say that where the reporters can hear you. They’re already foaming at the mouth about Doyle and Frost.”

Galen grinned. “Dude, I love you like a brother. A brother that I get naked with and fuck the same woman silly with, but like a brother, totally.”

Rhys and I laughed, and then he said, “Totally.”

“Very bromance of you both, but it’s starting to run down onto the sheets.”

Galen brought the washrag. Rhys cleaned me up; he had made the mess, as he said. I used the towel he’d brought to dry off, and then we curled up on the bed, with Galen’s tall frame curled around the back of me and Rhys tight against me in front, so that we spooned perfectly. Galen’s long arm came over me and hugged along my arm that was holding around Rhys’s waist, because regardless of sexual orientation most fey had no problem with simple touch. We snuggled under the sheet with the sunlight filling the room and started to doze.

“How can I be so tired?”

“You had triplets less than a week ago,” Rhys said.

“I’m tired because the babies don’t really sleep yet,” Galen said, his voice muffled as if he’d plunged his face into the pillow. If he’d been shorter he would have buried his face against my hair, but if he did that we couldn’t spoon because it moved his body out of position; we’d tried.

“How much of the baby care is falling on you?” I asked.

“Kitto is always there; he helps a lot.”

“What about the rest?”

“Rhys does his share,” he said, and hugged us both with the one long arm.

“I find it restful. It always cleared my head to go hold a baby.”

“Really?” I asked.

“I did some of my best planning rocking babies to sleep.”

“I know you had other children before this, but there are no stories of you as a deity having any.”

His body was tense now, and the doze was no longer relaxing. “It was too long ago, and I didn’t tell my stories to the bards. Holding my son in my arms while he died didn’t feel like something I wanted to be remembered for.”

I hugged him tight, and Galen hugged us both. “I’m sorry, Rhys,” he said.

“I led him in battle, my son. He was tall like his mother, dark-haired like her, too. He was handsome and strong and brave and everything a father wants in his son. He followed me into a battle and he died there. Killed by one of the human inventions, explosives with iron filling. I hunted down every member of the tribe that had fought against us. I killed them all, down to the last baby. I destroyed them as a race, do you understand that, I killed their entire people, even the children, while their mothers begged for mercy. My grief was … terrible, and I tried to quench it in blood and death, and do you know what I discovered?”

“No, I don’t,” I said, voice soft. We held him while he told the awful things in an almost unemotional voice, the way to tell terrible things when they still hurt too much to feel.

“That killing them didn’t bring my son back, and it didn’t make the grief any less. I killed an entire race of people, centuries of culture and invention all gone, because they followed a different god than me, and they dared to fight against me. I forbade anyone to mention the name of their tribe. I wiped them from history itself, and when my vengeance was as complete as I could make it, then my rage left me. All that was left was my sorrow, and that was why I destroyed them, not because of what they had done, not really, but so I could focus my grief into vengeance and not feel the pain of his loss.”

We held him, because it was all we could do. I made comforting noises, but it was Galen who said, “I would die to protect the babies now; I can’t imagine how much I’ll love them in a few years. I understand why you did it.”