Hels's Gauntlet [Forbidden Legacy 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (24 page)

“It will help us grow things again, restore the land, and soon, if I am any judge, we will have rain.” Helcyon exhaled. The circle of life would begin again. The balance of magic flowed to and fro with the human world replenishing the starved stores of the Underhill and bringing the promise of hope to his people.

“My lord?” A white-haired man with a delicate frame and fragile features approached, bowing low. Helcyon recognized the palace steward.

“Rise. You need not show such obeisance to me.”

“Forgive me, my lord. I served her majesty for nearly her entire length upon the throne. I have long forgotten what it is to look upon the master I serve.” The man’s expression betrayed no emotion, yet humor glimmered in his pale blue eyes.

“What can I do for you, Steward…?” Helcyon didn’t know the man’s name. Even during his tenure in the Court, he rarely had occasion to speak to him.

“Toban, my lord. My name is Toban.”

“I am honored with your acquaintance, Steward Toban.”

“I am inquiring about your quarters, my lord. I should set about the preparations for them and quarters for your Lady and the Lord Jacob. It will take us some time to deconstruct the Queen’s chambers.”

“Rest easy, Steward Toban. We will be withdrawing to our home in the outside this night. There is plenty of time for the appointment of quarters as needed.” Not that Helcyon ever planned to sleep under that roof. If not for the staff and the groundskeepers that called the palace their home and relied upon it for their livelihood and purpose, he’d destroy it stone by stone.

“I see.” Toban frowned, clearly troubled, but uncertain of what to say.

“Steward, speak your mind and know it will be heard, not judged.” The Danae’s frequent tempers and inconstant moods would be harder to overcome than the damage she inflicted to the land. Hearts and minds took longer to heal.

“Her Majesty’s…” Toban paused and corrected himself. “Your guard wishes a word with you, my lord, and any assignments you wish to give them.”

His guard. Helcyon sighed. They were the royal guards, the guard he led once upon a time, and they were not really guards at all. They were Lords, slumbering under the weight of magical destruction and likely beginning to wake. They were his enemies and his allies, his friends and his foes.

Then leave them for now. Let us settle what we need to between the three of us before you face them.
Jacob’s suggestion was sound.

“Steward Toban, please pass along the word to the guard that they are to maintain the order as the land mourns its Queen. They are to exercise restraint when dealing with the populace, to rest, and to ruminate upon the choices that will soon be theirs to make.” One benefit to a servant like Toban, he didn’t question the order. Instead, he bowed and left to handle exactly that.

“Are you really King now?” Cassandra slipped away from Jacob to lean against him. Helcyon shifted so his sword was away from her fragile skin and rubbed her arm soothingly.

“We have a lot to discuss, Cassandra. If you are tired, we can go now.” He gave her a small smile and watched the light brighten in her golden eyes.

Wouldn’t it be easier to just say let’s go?
Good humor or not, Jacob continued to be cranky.

It wouldn’t be polite.
Helcyon shrugged.

“Let’s go home.” Cassandra threaded her fingers through his and reached back for Jacob. Helcyon swept another long look over the crowd and turned to take his family home.

They had a great many things to settle.

He’d stepped them out right into his bedroom and picked Cassandra up with one arm to deposit her on the bed. One glance at Jacob and the Wizard nodded, exiting to head downstairs to find food. Helcyon unbuckled his sword and slid it back into the other where he could reach it as needed.

“You do realize when I said come home, I was thinking that you both needed to rest.” Cassandra sprawled in the middle of his bed, her lush body filling out the ornate dress.

“We have much to discuss.” Helcyon tugged her shoes off and shooed her hands away when she tried to help. From the moment she was back in their arms, he’d be loath to take his eyes off her. Sharing so many memories with Jacob reopened old scars and deeper fears.

“You told the guard it could wait.” She yawned once, but moved when he patted the edge of the bed.

“They can wait. This cannot.” He worked his fingers along the ties of her dress and loosened them. Soon she sat in only a skimpy little black bra and stretch panties that edged below her belly.

He paused to run his fingers over it. Wonder filled him every time he saw it. He’d seen Katherine only once during her pregnancy, when she’d been heavy with child. She was far more beautiful than she had been the night he seduced her. Cassandra outshone her in every way, except this. In this, they were absolutely alike.

His child grew inside of her. A child he would hold, he would carry, he would teach, and by everything in his soul, he would protect.

“I love you, Hels.” Cassandra’s soft declaration eased back the old grief, not removing it, but pushing it away enough to let him enjoy the moment.

“And I you, my lady.” He cupped the back of her neck and slanted his mouth across hers. Her lips parted, tongue stroking out to welcome his. It seemed years since their last kiss. He drank in the flavor of her love with every delicate touch.

The door bumped open, and Helcyon lifted his face to gaze at her drowsy eyes. She bit her lip and looked past him slowly to Jacob. The Wizard balanced a tray laden with food and drink for them all, including a customary beer for himself. A beer he’d more than earned according to his diatribe while he’d been slaving over the microwave, reheating all the food.

Helcyon rolled to lie next to Cassandra, elbow propped up on the bed. Jacob balanced the tray as he joined them, framing her on the other side. Her gaze flickered back and forth.

“I thought you didn’t like sharing like this.”

“A lot of things have changed, princess.” Jacob paused and leaned forward to kiss her belly once and arched up to capture her lips in a kiss of his own. Helcyon caught the tray before it slipped away. There was something deeply moving about the way they clung to each other and how softly Jacob’s mouth worked across her lips. For all the man’s brute force and abrasive personality, he was a gentle lover for her.

If you hold up a score card, I’ll kick your ass.
Jacob leaned back from the kiss and winked.

Helcyon laughed. That joke he understood. The Olympics dated back to long before their more modern scoring system.

“What is going on with you two?” Wonder and curiosity filled Cassandra’s expression.

Cassie couldn’t get over the change in them. They were laughing together and seemed totally at ease bracketing her on each side. Helcyon never seemed to mind Jacob’s presence in her bed, but this was different. She lounged, propped up by pillows and nibbling on the vegetable medley with grilled chicken while Jacob and Helcyon laughed over some conversation she wasn’t privy to.

You opened the door. You have to let them walk through it.
Leitha’s words drifted up. She’d spent an agonizing day waiting in the Brownie’s cottage, unable to think of anything but both of them. She barely slept, though Leitha made her eat, and as sunset approached, nearly twenty-four hours after the Danae took them, they came back for her.

They hardly seemed the worse for wear, yet she’d seen the bodies outside or at least what remained of them. Like the attackers in the Wizarding Council’s chambers, the bodies disintegrated, leaving only their black garb behind.

A lot of garb.

“You’re thinking too hard, princess. Eat.” Jacob stroked her leg, the pads of his fingers sparking her nerves with every caress.

“I don’t want to eat. I want to know what happened. You’re both different…and I can’t even tell how.”
Had the Danae done something to them? Had walking through that metaphorical door changed something in the men she loved?

“Cassandra. Eat your food. We will explain. Jacob and I are trying to figure out how to close off our minds enough to allow general privacy. It is difficult when only one is sworn. If we gain others, it may be easier.”

“Yeah, then we can have mental committees. No, thank you.” Jacob shifted and plucked a bite of chicken off her plate and pressed it to her lips. “I accepted Helcyon as my liege lord, Cassie. That’s all. It changed us…a little. But I’m still me and he’s still a pain in the ass Elf.”

The absolute lack of conviction and heat in the last statement left her teetering on the knife’s edge between fear and laughter. “But you don’t sound like you.”

“Of course he does.” Helcyon shifted, sliding over so that he could pluck her up and pull her onto his lap. The heat of him warmed her bare skin and soothed her rattled nerves. “The Jacob we have known for the last several months existed torn between his loyalties.”

“Yep.” Jacob’s brown gaze warmed as he stared at her. The comfortable, low lighting couldn’t disguise the warm flecks of gold scattered across a field of amber. “How could I reasonably have Hels as a friend, a brother, an ally, when all Fae are wicked, evil, and should be destroyed?”

“Or better phrased, how do you become allies when your people were the ones who so greatly crippled mine and vice versa?” Helcyon shrugged against her back. His breath tickled her ear as he trailed a kiss around the lobe. “Loving you let us put aside our differences, but putting them aside and confronting them are two very different things.”

Helcyon nibbled on her ear lobe, pulling at it in slow, sensuous tugs. She shivered at the assault and tried to right her tilting train of thought. “Okay, you’re both talking in the abstract, which is great…but I want to know what happened.”

“I told you she’d want to talk it out.” Jacob’s hand glided up her thigh and back again. Her pussy was already damp, and every stroke of their skin on hers just left her soaking through her panties.

“Yes,
she
does.” Her voice stretched around the words, a wild sense of hope unlocking in her belly to fan the flames of need and lust that marched on despite the desire for answers. Her body didn’t care about the whys or the wherefores, just the two of them, both touching her. Energy skated over her skin.

“Lords are powered by the faith of those around them. Our talents, our powers, and our skills—they all come from within. But when another swears fealty, we grow stronger. The more someones you add, the stronger we become. When the Wizards broke with the Fae, many Lords lost all their allegiances and their allies. That part of us, it went to sleep. Bonding to you and then to Jacob woke me up.” He stroked his hands up and down her sides, adding a second—or was it a third?—layer of sensation to the feeling of his lips on her ear and Jacob’s caresses on her thigh. Neither touched her nipples, though they were tight and straining against the thin layer of the bra, nor did they touch her clit, though it throbbed in echoing pulses with the pleasure arcing up and down her body.

“Okay, I got that.” Her voice came in short little pants. She wouldn’t be able to string two syllables together in a minute. She was one long aching need from the fire lighting over her skin. She wanted to touch them, but Helcyon’s arms trapped her against him and Jacob seemed content to just torture her with bliss. “But you were bonded before, right? That’s why Paul and Jude were so upset.”

Helcyon’s cock was at full mast, straining against her bottom, and she clenched her ass cheeks, a not-so-subtle-invitation. He growled lightly and nipped her ear. “Behave, if you want all the details.”

“You’re killing me here.”

“We’re just touching you,” Jacob teased, his hand caressing up the inside of her thigh and cupping against her pussy through the panties. “We happen to like touching you, and yes, we had formed the tacit beginnings of the bond…again, because of you. Well, because of both of you really. You saved me from Michael’s death curse. You drew it out and gave it to Helcyon. He destroyed it. Have I said thank you for that, by the way?”

His lips followed the trail blazed by his fingers, kissing a path along the inside of her leg until he could nibble on the sensitive flesh just inside her thigh. She wanted them to tell her everything that happened, but she was in the center of an all-you-can-eat buffet and starving for their touch.

Everything about them called to her. Their scent, the touches of their skin, the sight of Jacob’s head between her thighs, tormenting her as he licked and nipped her insensible, but he never touched her pussy. He didn’t peel away the damn panties or glide his tongue through her lips. He didn’t suckle her clit into his mouth or thrust his tongue inside the slick entrance to her cunt.

She arched her hips, but instead of obeying her, Jacob leaned up and with a lazy smile, slapped his hand against her pussy. Her mind went into sensory overload. The chiding slap made her wet with need, and she whimpered.

“If you want answers, you must behave.” Helcyon’s tongue glided over the whorls of her ear, sparking another wash of lust across her skin.

“To hell with answers.” Which wasn’t remotely true, but they could wait and talk about it later. Right now she wanted to touch them and feast on their skin, stroke their cocks and feel them touching her. She licked her lips. She could almost taste the salty, warm pre-cum they must both have glistening on the tips of their far overdressed cocks.