A Stroke Of Midnight

“The goblins were the last of faerie to embrace the idea of only one spouse at a time. Once, if the husband, the dominant partner, could protect, feed, and house more, then you were allowed more if they all agreed.”

“I wouldn’t think that the husband would care what the wife thought,” Galen said.

“Technically, husband only means dominant partner, not the sex of a goblin, and he or she could bring anyone in without the wife’s permission. But in reality, if you bring in someone your wife hates, then your home life becomes a battleground, and not even a goblin wants that.”

“So you could be someone’s wife?” I asked.

He nodded. “Yes.”

“But not a husband,” Galen said.

“I am not strong enough to be one.” He writhed on the bed of towels. “Why do I smell honeysuckle as if summer has arrived and I am standing in the sun? It’s so warm.”

“You were in the hall when Merry and Mistral had their little fling,” Galen said, his voice almost as light as his words. “Apple blossoms for me.”

“Like standing in the orchard in spring,” Nicca said.

The two men smiled at each other.

“Spring energy,” Kitto said.

I looked at him. “What?”

“They’re both spring energy,” he said.

“And what are you?”

“Summer, when the land is hot and ripening.” He writhed on the towels as he said it, his legs straining out as if he were close to orgasm. His body was thick and ripe again.

“And what am I?” I asked.

“Autumn,” he said. “You are the land when the harvest comes. You are what the year works toward, Merry.”

“And what is winter?”

“The long sleep,” Kitto said.

I laid back against him, using his groin as a pillow. It brought a small sound from him. I gazed back at Nicca where he still knelt. “Tell me what you want, Nicca. Tell me exactly what you want.”

“I want you on your back. I want to see another man push his way inside your mouth while I mount you. I want you to scream your pleasure around his body while I fuck you.”

I nodded, rolling the back of my hair across Kitto’s groin. He writhed for me. “We can do that,” I said.

Nicca smiled.

Kitto’s voice came shaky, but clear. “I do not know how to position myself for what you ask. Where do my legs go?”

“I’ll show you,” Galen said, and his voice was low with need.

I rolled my head back so I could see him still sitting behind us. The movement made Kitto writhe again. Two birds with one caress. “You’ve refused before,” I said.

“I didn’t say I would go that way, only that I’ll help Kitto figure out where his legs go. A hundred words can’t make as much sense as one good demonstration.” His eyes were far more serious than his words, serious and dark with need.

“Well, as long as it’s a good demonstration,” I said, and my own voice was a little breathy.

“Oh, it will be,” he said, and the look on his face was all male. I believed him.

CHAPTER 31

IT WAS MY TURN TO LIE BACK AGAINST THE TOWELS. TO LIE THERE and watch Galen crawl toward me. His body was already thick and hard, dark with the extra blood, darker than the rest of his body.

I wanted a lot of things from Galen, and had gotten most of them, but he like the rest of the men was so intent on making babies that he wouldn’t chance going elsewhere. I watched him crawling closer and felt positively covetous.

He gave a laugh that was more nerves and anticipation than humor. “The look on your face, like I’m something good to eat.”

“She did not look at me that way,” Kitto said.

Which put me back to having to soothe his ego. I’d begun to notice the hardest thing about having this many men in my life wasn’t figuring out what position for sex tonight but how to keep from hurting anyone’s feelings or making anyone feel left out. It wasn’t the number of bodies in the bed that made it complicated but the number of hearts and hands.

I reached out and touched Kitto’s knee where he knelt so close. He was supposed to be watching, so he could learn where the legs went. “Galen was my first crush, Kitto, the first man that I ever lusted over. The first that I ever loved. I’d spent years fantasizing about him before he came to my bed. You’re new on the menu. I haven’t had a chance to fantasize about you for so many unrequited years.”

“Don’t feel slighted,” Nicca said. “She doesn’t look at me that way either.”

I looked down my body at him. “I didn’t realize…”

He held up a hand to stop my words. “I do not feel slighted, Merry. All that had eyes knew how long you pined after Galen. You followed him around like a puppy when you were so young you didn’t even realize why you found him so compelling.”

I wasn’t sure I liked the puppy remark, but I let it go, because when I was fourteen, it was probably embarrassingly accurate.

“Merry,” Galen said, “you’re blushing.”

I covered my face with my hands, because I rarely if ever blushed. I wasn’t blushing for me now, but for that long ago girl. The girl that I had been would have been mortified to know that her “secret” love was no secret at all.

Hands touched my wrists. “Merry.” Galen’s voice was as gentle as his hands, as he moved mine away from my face. “You blushed for me.”

I actually couldn’t look at him. “It’s just the thought that everyone knew. I didn’t know I was being that obvious when I was fourteen.”

“We’re all that obvious when we’re fourteen,” he said with a smile.

“It’s been a few centuries since I was fourteen,” Nicca said, “but if memory serves, Galen’s right.”

Kitto’s comment was, “The goblins are not a subtle race.”

“What does that mean, exactly?” Galen asked.

“It means that if a goblin lusts after another, everyone knows it. We do not see the point of hiding our admiration, unless we fear the goblin we lust after will take it as an insult. We are not subtle, but we can hide what we feel if we must.”

I held my hand out to him, palm up. He took my hand, looking puzzled. “What would you have of me, Princess?”

“A smile,” I said.

He looked even more puzzled.

Galen explained, “She wants to chase that shadow from your eyes.”

Kitto rewarded us both with a shy smile, then shook his head. “I like being sidhe.”

I squeezed his hand and would have said something comforting, but Nicca chose that moment to play his hand between my legs and suddenly I couldn’t think of any words.

“You’re not wet enough,” Nicca said.

It took me two swallows to say with a suddenly dry throat, “Bath, always does that.”

“Odd that such wetness makes a woman dry,” he said, and his finger found my opening, slipped inside. It made me gasp, made my hand convulse around Kitto’s. Nicca moved his finger inside me, gently, slowly. “I am not so large as some, but not small either. This dry it will hurt.”

My voice came breathy. “Then make me wet.”

“As my princess commands,” he said, with a smile. He took his hand away from my body, and said to Galen, “Show Kitto where the legs go, so that when she is ready to be entered, I will have my view.”

“Let me know when you’re ready,” Galen said.

“I won’t have to tell you,” Nicca said, “you’ll know.”

The scent of flowers had faded, like the dream of roses in a long-closed room. You open the door and get the hint of perfume, then it fades, and you wonder if you imagined it. Such is the passing of many spirits and powers in the human world. Many things that humans take for ghosts are the shadows of things that were never truly mortal.

Galen had faded a little, too, with all the talk, and I liked that better for oral sex. A little softness first, a little less size to begin with. He straddled my upper body, and as soon as he was close enough I tried to take him in my mouth.

He laughed, and held his hand in the way. “Let me get settled first; you’ll pull a muscle in your neck doing it that way.”