Divine Misdemeanors

He rose onto his arms, the bigger tentacles helping support his weight above me, as he sucked all three spots expertly. He knew I liked to watch him going in and out of me, so he parted all those extras like a curtain so I could raise my head enough to look down the length of our bodies. I had begun by enjoying watching him go in and out between my legs, but now I also liked seeing where he sucked my breasts and between my legs, so it was all him, all long, and firm, and giving me pleasure.

He had finally worked me open enough to move faster inside me. His body began to find its rhythm, and I felt the warmth begin to build between my legs from it, but the other building pressure of pleasure was coming faster.

I found my breath enough to say, “I’m coming soon.” He liked to know.

“Which?”

“Upper,” I said.

He smiled, and his eyes flashed to life, gold, amber, and yellow glowing above me, and suddenly his body was a glowing, vibrating thing. Magic struck gold and silver lightning along those extra parts of him. He caused my skin to glow, as if the moon were rising inside me to meet the glow and rise of him above me.

I had enough energy left to raise my hands and touch the moving bits, and my soft glowing hands caused colored lights to burst under his skin, one magic calling the other. But it was the vibrating of his magic along his skin inside me, outside me, and against me that finally pushed that first wave of warm, bursting pleasure over my body, so that I screamed, writhing underneath him. My fingers found the hard, solidness of the heavy flesh and marked them. I painted my pleasure down the colored lights of the heavy tentacles, and where he bled the red glowed so that it spattered against my skin like rubies scattered across the moon.

He fought his body to keep the slow, deep rhythm going between my legs. His head fell forward, his hair mingling with everything, and the hair filled with light so it was like making love inside something spun of crystal. And then between one thrust and the next he brought me, and we screamed together the light of our pleasure so bright that we filled the room with colored shadows.

He collapsed above me, and for a moment I was buried underneath the weight of him, with his heart pounding so hard that it seemed to be trying to come out of his chest where the pulse of it beat against the side of my face. Then he moved enough of his upper body so I wasn’t trapped and I could breathe a little more easily. He pulled out from between my legs, the smaller pieces of him already faded, lying against me as if every bit of him were exhausted.

He lay on his side next to me while we both relearned how to breathe. “I love you, Meredith,” he whispered.

“I love you, too.” And in that moment it was as true as any words I had ever spoken.

Chapter Twenty-seven

Sholto and I got dressed and joined everyone in the small living room just off the kitchen and dining room. Since there were no walls to speak of, I thought it was just all the “great room,” but the ones living here called it the small living room, so that’s what we all called it.

Hafwyn and Dogmaela were on the biggest couch. Dogmaela was still crying softly into the other woman’s shoulder. Their blond braids were intertwined and were so close to the same color that I couldn’t tell at a glance which hair belonged to whom.

Saraid stood near the huge bank of windows with her shoulders hunched, her arms crossed over her chest, cradling her small, tight breasts. You didn’t need magic to feel the anger rolling off of her. The sunlight sparkled in her golden hair. As Frost’s was silver, hers was truly golden, as if the precious metal had been woven into hair. I wondered if her hair was as soft as Frost’s.

Brii was standing beside her, his yellow hair seeming pale and unfinished next to her true gold. He tried to touch her shoulder, and she glared at him until he dropped his hand, but he kept speaking quietly to her. He was obviously trying to soothe her.

Ivi was near the sliding-glass doors talking quietly and urgently to Doyle and Frost. Barinthus and Galen stood to one side. The bigger man was talking to Galen and obviously upset. But it had to be about Dogmaela and Ivi, because if he’d figured out that Galen had almost rolled his mind with glamour he’d have been more upset. It was a serious insult for one highborn sidhe to try to bespell another. It said clearly that the spell-caster felt superior and more powerful than the one they were bespelling. Galen hadn’t meant it like that, but Barinthus would most likely have taken it that way.

Cathbodua and Usna were on the love seat, with her holding him. Cathbodua’s raven-black hair spilled only to her shoulders, part of it mingling with the black trench coat that she’d laid on the back of the love seat. The coat was a cloak of raven feathers, but like some other powerful items it could change, chameleonlike, into what worked best for the setting. Her skin looked paler against the pure blackness of the hair, though I knew it was no more white than my own. Usna was a contrast of colors compared to her. He looked like a calico cat, his white moonlight skin marked with black and red. Like the cat his mother had been shape-shifted into when she bore him, he was curled up in her lap, or as much of his six-foot-tall frame as would fit was curled up in her lap.

He’d undone his hair so that it spilled around her black clothes and her stark beauty like a fur blanket. Cathbodua stroked his hair idly as they both watched the emotional show before them. His gray eyes, the most uncatlike thing about him, and her black ones had almost the same expression in them. They were enjoying the turmoil in that dispassionate way that some animals have. Once he’d been able to turn into the cat he was colored to match, and once she could shift into the shape of a raven or a crow, and not have to depend on borrowing the eyes of some true bird for her spying. It made them both a little less human, or sidhe, and something more basic.

Of course, I hadn’t realized until that moment that they’d been sleeping together. They’d been partners on guard duty, but until I saw the distant and somewhat scary Cathbodua petting him, I hadn’t realized it was more. They had hidden it well.

Sholto seemed to understand, or maybe I looked surprised because he said, “You letting the other guards sleep together made them reveal their own liaison.”

“Nothing makes either of them do anything. They chose to share because they thought it was safe.”

Sholto nodded. “Agreed.” He moved forward farther into the room, and since I had my arm in his, he moved me with him like it was the begi

Galen started toward us, smiling, and then Barinthus moved in a blur that I couldn’t follow with my eyes. Galen was suddenly airborne and heading toward the big glass windows and the sea, and rocks, below.