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.”
He moved his body closer to my mouth, settled his knees more firmly on either side of my shoulders. His groin filled my view, not just the head and shaft, but the tight firmness of his testicles, in their close-curled nest of darker green hair. My hands were trapped underneath his weight. I could touch his thighs, his ass, and the lowest edge of his back, but that was all my hands could reach. If I had known that I would have a chance to finally have Galen in my mouth, I might not have agreed to the change in positioning. With me on top I would have been able to guide more of what went into my mouth, and how. In this position I had to let the man direct it more. I wanted a hand to help angle him for my mouth. But I shouldn’t have worried. Galen stared down at me, his eyes filling with that darkness that men get only in the most intimate of moments. He used his hand to move himself so that the angle was better. And once my mouth slid over the head of him, he adjusted his upper body so that when I sucked him down, I was able to suck all of him. He was soft, and silken inside my mouth, the foreskin rolling, something extra for my tongue to play with. I sucked eagerly to get all of him inside me. My lips rested solid against his body. I rolled him in my mouth, sucking, stroking, playing with him with tongue and mouth, while I still could. Even as I enjoyed the sensation of him soft, he grew in my mouth. I felt that bit of flesh go from soft and silken to hard and ripe. He filled my mouth and then my throat. I had to back off of him to draw a breath.
Galen drew himself out of my mouth. “This is supposed to be foreplay, Merry.”
“You know what I want,” I said.
He shook his head.
I trailed my hands along his ass. “Nicca will go between my legs, then with a touch, I will bring him back again. He will service me and Biddy this night. Why can’t you go twice tonight, too?”
“I usually do.”
I pressed my body upward, gripping his ass with my hands. I raised up enough so I could lick lightly on his balls. “Go once in my mouth, and once between my legs. Please, Galen, please.”
Nicca’s hands slid down my thighs, and I felt him settling between my legs a second before his tongue touched me, a quick caress that made me writhe and dig my nails, just a little, into Galen’s body.
It made him close his eyes, and count his breaths.
“I would give almost anything to have a woman beg me like that,” Kitto said. “Do not refuse such a gift.”
I didn’t look at Kitto, because I only had eyes for Galen.
Nicca’s tongue licked inside my opening, then up in a sure, firm stroke. I had to learn how to breathe again, and when I opened my eyes, Galen was still there, looking down at me. Nicca began to lick in circles around the edge of me, long sure strokes, for he had found that quick ones only worked later, not at the beginning. That sensation of fullness was already beginning to grow low in my body.
“Please,” I said simply.
He settled his body over me again, wrapped his own hand around himself, and gave me the angle my mouth needed. “A princess shouldn’t have to beg” was the last thing he said before he slid inside my mouth.