Pleasure's Offering (9 page)

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Izar was in his tent, alone and grumpy about it, when he heard someone enter. The lack of greeting told him who it was better than if Jeric had shouted, and he looked up. “Done so soon?”

He did a good job at keeping the resentment out of his voice. He’d hated seeing Zoa take Jeric into her tent. Of course, he had no reason to feel that way. They were both Avatars and he had no claim on either. But while Izar was typically a logical being to his bones, there was nothing logical about the deep, possessive feelings his second and the beautiful Chosen inspired in him.

That might have had something to do with the spectacular magical orgasm they’d given him yesterday morning, but honestly, the hooks had been sinking in since Zoa had first suggested they spend the night together. Izar wasn’t normally a man who liked being hooked, but he enjoyed these barbs all too much, which was why he’d been so irrationally angry when Zoa and Jeric had left him alone and was now equally irrationally happy that Jeric was back.

“Not hardly,” Jeric said, answering his question. “Zoa says we need someone to practice on.”

Izar’s irrational happiness jumped to full-blown, body-hardening excitement. “Well,” he said, buttoning his jacket again. “Never let it be said that I left a friend in need.”

Jeric’s eyes were hot as his own as he led them out of the tent and across the trampled snow where the soldiers had set up the cook fires to Zoa’s tent. Zoa grinned when they came in, the expression lighting up her lovely face until Izar’s heart ached and his cock grew uncomfortably hard.

Gods, he thought as he sat down on the layered rugs, he had it bad. The problem was, he couldn’t say who he had it worse for, Zoa or Jeric. If such a thing could even be termed a problem.

Once he was seated, Jeric sat down beside him, forming a triangle with the lovely Zoa at the pinnacle Even in the large tent, it was close quarters, but Izar didn’t mind in the least. He only wished they weren’t wearing all these clothes.

“Going to be teaching Jeric how to project,” Zoa was saying, her dark eyes twinkling at him. “All you have to do is sit there and tell us when you feel something.”

“Easy enough,” Izar said, leaning back. “Fire away.”

Zoa and Jeric exchanged a look, and then Jeric leaned forward, staring at the captain like he was studying him. Izar knew nothing about magic, god given or otherwise, so he just tried to sit still, no easy feat with Jeric and Zoa so close. Just seeing them brought up delicious memories of their time together, Zoa below him, sucking his cock with that gorgeous mouth while Jeric pounded into her from behind, his well-defined muscles taut and straining. He remembered holding Zoa in front of him as he and Jeric both took her, the amazing feeling of closeness, fullness as he felt his second’s hard cock through the wall of the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen.

The memories were flashes, barely a second each, but he hadn’t even gotten to their fun in the morning before his cock was straining against his trousers. His fingers clutched in the carpet as the power of his arousal seized him, and he had to grit his teeth to keep from groaning.

“Good.” Zoa’s voice was distant, a foggy, insubstantial sound. “A little strong, but good. Just like that.”

As her words finished, a flash of lust hit Izar so hard he could barely breathe. His cock was painfully hard now, almost as hard as it had been that glorious morning.

“Too strong!” Zoa cried.

Izar disagreed. This was amazing. The heady rush of it, the amazing, overpowering lust. It wasn’t too strong, it was too perfect. But as Zoa spoke, the lust eased off as quickly as it had come, leaving him panting.

“No,” he breathed.

Zoa and Jeric both looked up. “Are you all right?” Jeric said. When Izar didn’t answer, Jeric looked at Zoa. “Maybe I should stop?”

Stopping was the last thing Izar wanted. He was starting to realize through the haze that the lust was most likely magical, just as it had been that morning, but even as he figured out the truth, Izar threw it away. They might have fanned him up faster than he could have gotten here himself, but the lust Izar felt now had nothing to do with magic and everything to do with the two perfect, beautiful, amazingly sexy people in front of him. His cock, rock hard and straining, jerked madly at the thought, and suddenly, they were all wearing too many clothes.

With the practiced skill of a career fighter, Izar sprang forward, grabbing Zoa with one arm and pulling Jeric with the other. His attack took them both by surprise, and they all fell in a tangle with Izar on top, which was exactly what he wanted.

“Izar!” Zoa cried as he began to undo her buttons. “We’re supposed to be practicing.”

“Why?” he breathed, lowering his head to graze his blunt teeth against the column of her throat. “Looks like you’re experts to me.”

He ground his rock-hard cock against her as he spoke and Zoa gave a little gasp. Izar just smiled and kept working on her buttons. “Jeric,” he growled as he pulled her coat open. “Undress. That’s an order.”

“Didn’t you say he’s not yours to command anymore?” Zoa laughed beneath him, her eyes dark.

Izar grinned madly at the naked lust on her face. “Jeric doesn’t need a chain of command to know what’s best for him,” he said, moving down to nuzzle the soft material of her shirt where it lay across her breasts. “Do you?”

“No, sir,” Jeric said from behind him, and then Izar felt the warm wall of his lieutenant’s hard chest as Jeric pulled the captain’s own winter cover off his shoulders.

Izar broke away only to shove Zoa’s shirt up, sliding it over her head to reveal the breasts he’d been thinking about all day. They were white gold in the lamplight, the pert nipples pale pink as apple blossoms. He tossed her shirt away with a growl and then he bent down to run his hands and mouth over Zoa’s skin, pinning her lovely, curvy, supple body to the floor with his weight.

His shirt went next, then Jeric’s, and then the two men worked together to remove Zoa’s trousers, Jeric using his hands to undo the ties at her ankles while Izar used his teeth on the ties at her hips. By the time they were done, Zoa was panting beneath him, rubbing herself against Izar’s rock-hard cock in blatant invitation. The motion made his whole body stiffen, but lovely as Zoa was, she wasn’t the only one he wanted.

Jeric was behind him, shirtless and beautiful, his dusky skin as hot to the touch as Izar’s own. And touch Izar did. Hands shaking with desire, Izar ran them across Jeric’s beautiful, dark skin, over his wide shoulders and down his muscled arms. Jeric breathed deeply at the contact, his skin twitching under his captain’s fingers.

Izar had touched him only briefly in their other encounters, at first because Jeric had come in late and they’d both been focused on Zoa, but later he’d deliberately kept himself from it. He’d heard rumors Jeric had been with men before, but the lieutenant had never shown interest in Izar that way, not even on the front where there were no women at all. But he’d seen the hunger in Jeric’s eyes when his second had watched him the morning they woke Zoa, a hunger that matched his own, and now that Izar knew for sure, he wasn’t going to leave his second wanting.

“Jeric,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Less clothes.”

“Aye, Captain,” Jeric answered, his voice just as husky.

The two of them sat up and removed the last of their clothes. Zoa rose to help a second later, rubbing her beautiful body across Izar’s as she helped Jeric undo his trousers and pull off his boots with such painful slowness Izar thought he would go mad. Finally, when they were all naked at last, Izar directed Jeric to sit on the camp stool. When he was in place, the captain lifted Zoa up and set her in his second’s lap, and then he leaned back on his heels to admire the view.

The light of the flickering lamp painted their contrast in beautiful colors, Jeric dark and strong, his arms wrapped around Zoa’s thighs as he spread them apart. Sitting on top of him, Zoa looked white as a dove, her beautiful skin glowing in the soft light. The whiteness of her drew Izar’s eyes to the dark patch between her legs and the beautiful cleft at its center, glistening pink in invitation. Just the sight of it was enough to make his brain shut down, but then, against all odds, it got even better as Jeric reached down to spread Zoa’s inner lips, his long fingers sliding effortlessly against her slickness to open her wider still for his captain. Zoa moaned beautifully at the intrusion and threw her head back, hips jutting out toward Izar. Jeric growled at the sound and pressed his lips against the white column of Zoa’s throat, sucking her pale skin while his dark eyes watched Izar with shining hunger, urging him on.

Izar needed no more urging. He fell to his knees in front of them both and reached out, his steady, battle-hardened hands shaking visibly. The lust was pounding through him so hard he could barely think. All he knew, all he wanted, was that this would never end. Whatever had happened between them that night at Rosa’s had left a mark on him that could never be removed. He’d told them that he was ruined forever, that nothing would ever measure up to the night they’d shared, but what Zoa and Jeric didn’t know was how deeply Izar had meant those words. Even the one night he’d spent apart from them had been unbearable. Now, seeing them both together like this, Izar felt something changing deep inside him, filling a hole he’d never known he had.

When his shaking hand touched Zoa’s thigh, Izar nearly moaned. He’d never denied himself pleasure, but nothing had ever felt so right as this. He could feel Zoa’s heartbeat through her skin, feel Jeric’s eyes on him as he slid his fingers toward her core, and with every inch of skin he touched, every beautiful sight of them he drank in, the possessive feeling that had been lurking in him since he’d woken up that wondrous morning grew until he was nearly overwhelmed.

He was more than ruined, Izar decided. He was lost, lost to his two beautiful Chosen, not by the moon, but by him. They were his, and Captain Izar held on to what was his.

And with that knowledge burning in his mind, Izar leaned down to the banquet Jeric presented. As his mouth found Zoa’s clit, his hands slid down Jeric’s thighs to grasp his second’s long, throbbing shaft. His action was instantly rewarded by a double moan from both his lovers and Izar’s mind blanked completely as both of their moon-given powers slammed into him, filling his brain with a fog of lust where they were the only real things.

Izar fought it all the way, forcing himself to stay focused, to bring them both as much pleasure as he could. They were his, and if he meant to keep them, he’d need them as lost for him as he was for them. As Zoa’s hips rolled into his mouth, Izar smiled. He might not have magic, but he’d been seducing since he was sixteen. Now he was going to put all of that to use in his campaign to win over the two most beautiful, desirable people he’d ever encountered. As the lust hit him again, Izar grabbed that goal and held it, giving everything he had to his lovers in an offering of pleasure so great, even the Blessed Moon herself would look down from her ride across the night sky to see it.

Zoa felt like a new Avatar. Her body was on fire, her mind hazed with lust in a way it hadn’t been since she’d been brought into her power. The Chosen of Dezira were supposed to inspire mad desire, not succumb to it, but there was no other name for what Izar was doing to her. Doing to them both. Jeric’s body was like an iron statue beneath her, every muscle taut as Izar’s hand stroked his cock where it stood between Zoa’s spread legs. But Zoa only noticed that on the periphery. Her real attention, her whole
world
was centered on where Izar’s mouth was moving across her clit, his tongue sliding along the sensitive nub in light, quick motions that were slowly driving her completely insane. But just when she was trembling on the edge of release, Izar pulled away.

She made a frustrated sound, and the captain silenced it with a long kiss. “Not yet, dearest,” he moaned against her. “I want to watch you come.”

He pulled away from her and sat back, watching them both with dark, heavy-lidded eyes, a drunken smile on his wicked lips. Zoa fell panting back into Jeric, who was breathing just as hard. This was all wrong. Both she and Jeric were losing control of their magic. The lust in the room was like a living thing, rich with power. Izar should have been on the floor by now, not sitting back with that maddening look while they panted for him. But though he was only human, Izar was a captain of the Legion, used to command and control. They might be the Avatars of desire, but he was the one holding both their reins, and he used them now.

“Jeric,” the captain said, his voice husky, but surprisingly calm. “I want to see you inside her. Slowly.”

Jeric moaned at the order. In one smooth motion, he lifted Zoa from his lap and set her entrance above the head of his cock. Jeric’s member twitched at the contact and Zoa cried out. She was so close now, all he had to do was slide her down his long, hot shaft and she would explode in pleasure. But Jeric didn’t. He obeyed his captain, and slowly, so, so slowly, inch by maddening inch, he lowered her onto him.

Zoa could feel him shaking with the effort not to pound into her, but Jeric kept control. Even when she finally landed against his hips, his cock buried completely inside her, he stayed still. In front of them, Izar sat on his heels stroking his own cock with his hand as he watched. And then, as slowly as Jeric had lowered her down, the captain leaned over until his lips were a hairsbreadth away from Zoa’s clit.

“Now,” he whispered and Zoa nearly came from the puff of his words brushing over her nub. “Slowly.”