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 beginning, so much left to swallow. The warm thick firmness of the fruit doesn’t writhe in your mouth, as you move over it. It doesn’t cry out as you lick along it inside your mouth.
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 beginnings of them. The sidhe never cheated on their partners, but if we agreed then others were brought into our beds.”
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 unplanned baby didn’t condemn you to a loveless marriage. I had felt such happiness when the ring chose Nicca and Biddy for each other. But was it a true love match? Yes, they were infatuated with each other, and yes there might be a child, but would there be happy-ever-after? Or would Nicca love her, bed her, share a child with her, yet regret. And would those regrets eventually destroy their love?
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 channeling the Goddess, but… “When did the sidhe stop having children, Nicca?”
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?”
“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.