A Stroke Of Midnight

“What?” I asked, in a voice that was already grown lower with need.

“That you’re about to do something to me that I’m going to like,” he said. “Let me help you and Galen get clean.”

“And then?” I asked.

He gave me a look that I’ve seen in men’s eyes before, a look that says they know what we’re about to do, and that there will be no going back, no stopping. “And then I will let you have your way with me.”

“Other than the little you’ve allowed Merry to do to you, have you ever had anyone do oral sex on you?” Galen asked.

Kitto looked at him. “No.”

I took in a long shaking breath and shivered when my breath ran out. I’d never gotten to be the first for anyone before. I was almost certain that the rest of the guard had had this particular pleasure performed by someone else once upon a time. I would be the first one to ever hold Kitto in their mouth, and suck, and lick, and bite, if he wished.

“Your face,” Galen said, “like it’s Winter Solstice and you’ve gotten every present you asked for.”

“If you’d let me go down on you, you’d see this expression on my face more often,” I said.

He gave me a look. “You’re incorrigible.”

I leaned around Kitto, closer to Galen. “If you’d only say yes, you’d find out just how incorrigible I can be.”

I was rewarded with a look almost of pain, as if he wanted to say yes, but… intercourse had become everyone’s goal, because we pursued a baby like some infertile couple.

“Me first,” Kitto said.

“Me second,” Nicca said, “though I think the queen will be upset if we do oral and not something that would gain you a child.”

I nodded. “She was very specific about that, so yes. I don’t want to disappoint Andais.”

We all shivered in unison, and this time it had nothing to do with pleasure.

CHAPTER 30

THE TILE WAS TOO COLD TO LIE ON, BUT TOWELS TOOK CARE OF that. Kitto lay back on them, knees up, legs slightly spread so I could reach him better, an ivory dream against all that burgundy darkness. His sex was swollen and thick even before I got to kneel between his legs. Anticipation had done much of my work for me.

I slid my mouth over the swollen tip of him, like taking in a whole, ripe plum until my mouth was so full I couldn’t bite down, and couldn’t swallow. My mouth is full of the ripe, firm flesh, but with this plum, filling my mouth was only the begi

Kitto’s hands dug at the towels underneath him, bunching them in his hands, clutching the only thing he could find while he rode the pleasure.

Nicca’s hands stroked along my ass, making me writhe and push myself against him, but he kept me from more of his body. He cupped my buttocks in both his hands, and the feel of him holding me like that made me suck at Kitto, hard and fast. Kitto cried out. I waited for Nicca to push himself against me, but nothing came, nothing but the promise of his hands on me.

Galen said what I was thinking. “Consort save us, Nicca, finish it.” It made me roll my eyes past Kitto, to my green man as he knelt near Kitto’s head on the edge of the towels.

Nicca’s fingertips dug into my flesh, just a little, no nails, just the strength in his fingers that let me know that if he wished he could plunge his fingers inside my flesh. So strong, so very strong.

I writhed for him, and had to fight not to be too fierce on the tender flesh inside my mouth. I had to raise my mouth off of Kitto for a moment. Had to catch my breath, and fight off the urge to bite down. I kept one hand on the base of him, but changed the grip, so that my hand covered as much of him as I could. I came up off of his body with my hand already stroking his wet, quivering shaft.

I looked back at Nicca who was kneeling behind me, but no longer touching me. He looked brown and perfect kneeling there, with his hair still wet from the tub, clinging to his body in thick strands that tangled around his shoulders, arms, waist, and legs. His wings rose against all that chocolate-colored goodness like some spun sugar fantasy. I had a moment of regret about him going elsewhere, but only a moment. I wanted him happy more than I wanted him.

“Why were you waiting?”

“You are sending me to what amounts to my marriage bed, Merry. If this is to be my last time with you, I would like it to be exactly as I want it. You can say no.”

I had to smile. “Ask, and I’ll know the answer.” Then I thought of something. “Are you unhappy about Biddy?”

“No,” he said, but he frowned. “No, but there will be things I will miss.”

“Such as?” I wasn’t fishing for compliments. I truly wanted to know.

It was his turn to smile. “Such as watching you stretched underneath me, screaming your pleasure around another man’s body, while I bring you, and pour my pleasure between your legs.”

Just hearing him describe it with that look in his eyes tightened things low in my body. “I was offering that,” I said.

“I want you on your back as you were with Sage. I want to see your breasts rise and fall with your breathing.”

I went to him, touching his face, trying to see through this combination of passion and seriousness. It wasn’t like him. “I want Biddy and you to be a happy time, not a sad one.”

He smiled, but it held an edge of something that was not happy. “I remember a time when marriage was not the end of such joys but the begi

He was speaking of a time before Andais was queen. A time before Christianity was anything but a heretic Jewish sect. Most of the sidhe didn’t speak of it, for they didn’t like talking about what they had lost. Who wants to talk of a time when the sidhe had not been outnumbered by the humans. A time when we married for love and not simply for children. A time when sex was about joy and sharing and not a relentless pursuit of pregnancy. A time when an unpla

Suddenly I smelled roses. “Do you smell apple blossoms?” Galen asked.

“Yes,” Nicca said, “like in the hallway with Mistral.”

“Honeysuckle,” Kitto said.

The scent was growing stronger. I had a moment of inspiration. It wasn’t the same as cha

He blinked at me. “I can taste the perfume on the air.”

“Answer my question.”

“I don’t know,” he said, “long ago.”

“Did we stop having children after we adopted the human ideal of one partner?”

“We adopted monogamy because the humans outbred us using it,” Nicca said.

“Did they really?” I said. “Or did we begin to be outbred when we stopped being who and what we are?”

“What do you mean, Merry?” Galen asked.

I held up my hand to show the dull metal gleam of the queen’s ring. “She said she took this off her enemy’s body, but that she never saw babies with it. Lust, love, infatuation, but she could not see the babies. What if this is not the queen’s ring, but a ring meant for a fertility deity? We were nature deities originally, before human need turned some of us more civilized. We are that which is primal, basic.”

“The sidhe have not been that in a very long time,” Kitto said.

I turned to find him still lying in the nest of towels, as if he hadn’t moved. “What do you mean, Kitto?”