11. Eleven - Parting
Eleven - Parting
Ana
“Still with us?” Penny—I feel like I’ve earned the right to think of him by that nickname—asks, pressing a kiss to my shoulder.
I hum in response and say, “Very happily so.”
“Good girl.” His fingers rake across my thighs and he draws back again, leaving me completely and I feel the cum leaking from me.
I manage to bite my tongue instead of whimpering.
A moment later, Viggo lifts me from him and another gush pours out.
I will take care of that in the morning. The potion is made and waiting for me at the shop.
They roll me onto my back and collapse on either side of me. Both of them look as exhausted as I feel.
Sliding his warm hand across my stomach, Penny snuggles close, nuzzling one side of my neck, and Viggo rolls against my other side, his lips caressing the spot just below my ear.
They ask me questions I’m too tired to fully understand, and then, I let them help me up. I let them clean me off. And I let them carry me to a different bed in a room so dark I know that Viggo is safe from the coming dawn…
Exhaustion creeps through me and I let it pull me under.
My eyes flutter open to darkness and I am not sure what time it is, but I do know it’s too late and too early all at once.
When I try to move, the two men on either side of me only snuggle closer.
“Ten more minutes,” Penny says, pressing a kiss to my shoulder and throwing his arm across my waist and over Viggo’s hip. “What would you like for breakfast?”
I hum and let myself imagine I could stay for a moment. “Tea and scones and apricot jam. Ham and eggs and mushrooms sauteed with onions.”
“You can have all of that.” Viggo, for his part, also rolls closer. “But it’s only almost dawn. We’ve got hours and hours before we need to get up.”
But dawn holds a different threat for me.
“I have to get home before the sun is up,” I say, wriggling, but not really trying to get free.
Penny shakes his head and even in the darkness, I can feel him pout against my skin. “Why do you have to go?”
“Because my mother will riot if she finds out I was out all night.”
They both go horribly still on either side of me.
“How old are you?” Penny asks, sternly.
I sigh at the implications, but manage to get free. “I am twenty-nine. But as long as I live under her roof, I have to follow her rules. And if she finds out I’ve been out all night... especially if she finds out I was with not one man, but two…”
I shudder to think of the fit she would throw. She might be averse to vampires.
Lamps flicker and flare to life, not flames, but bright bundles of light flicked from Penny’s fingers.
I snatch up my chemise and dress, shimmying into both before turning my back to them. “Will one of you lace me up, please?”
I don’t look back. I wish I didn’t know that it was Penny who slid from the bed and is tying my laces now. I wish I didn’t automatically lean back toward his warm fingers.
Maybe it’s elf magic that has made me so aware of them.
Maybe it will fade with time and distance.
They don’t argue with me, or try to make me stay. Viggo doesn’t say a word.
When Penny’s done, I turn back and drag him down to kiss me.
“I want to stay, but…” but words spoken in the heat of passion don’t always prove true the next day.
When I turn to Viggo, he holds up his hand. “Don’t come to me. If you get close enough, I will drag you back up onto this bed, tear that dress to shreds and use it to tie you down, so you can’t leave us.”
I bite my tongue, because I would enjoy that too much. “If it was another dress…”
“What he is trying to say,” Penny says, “is that we don’t want you to go.”
I don’t want to go either. At the moment, my choices affect others. I can’t risk my mother’s wrath overflowing onto them.
Penny pulls on a long dressing gown and leads me out into the hall. “You were wrong last night,” he says as he closes the door behind us. “You are the one we’ve been looking for.”
I open my mouth to tell him he couldn’t possibly know that yet, but shut it immediately when an older elf man steps out of another doorway and jumps back with a gasp.
“Oh!” The man is dressed in traditional work slacks and a plain coat. He hops backward out of my way... clutching my shoes to his chest.
A darker blue than Celese, he’s one of a very few elves I’ve seen who have short hair.
“You’re still here,” he says, eyes wide as he looks at Penny for answers.
“Yes.” I say, pulling his attention back to me. “But I shouldn’t be.”
I hold out my hand tentatively and for a moment, I think I might need to wrestle him for the slippers, but he goes to his knees instead and helps me put them on.
I want to ask him not to, but there is a determined look on his face that tells me I wouldn’t get anywhere.
“Thank you,” I say, gathering up my skirts and hurrying down the stairs. “Have a nice day.”
I hear Penny gently arguing with the man as I reach the front door, but when I haul it open…
Viggo offers me a sad sort of smile, still sitting on the bed upstairs, and then looks at the door panels. “Let her leave Dorrian.”
The jumbled face made of knots and burls reforms in the panel and scowls at me. “This is where she ought to be.”
“Dorrian,” Penny says from behind me. “We’ve had this conversation before. You can’t make those decisions for other people.”
“The two of us, yes.” Viggo says, “but not Ana. She doesn’t live here, you have no right to stop her leaving.”
The man in the door shifts, glaring at me... I think. “Do you promise to come back, flower?”
“Of course.” I look from him to Viggo. I am tempted to run back to the bed right now. “If invited, I will come back.”
The door creaks and huffs. “Close me and open me again.”
I look once more at Viggo, wishing the night was longer, but shut the door.
Penny puts my cloak over my shoulders, but he doesn’t need to.
One last kiss and when I open the door again, it’s not out into the dark of predawn, it’s straight into my bedroom at home.
“How?”
Penny’s smile is soft and sad. “You’ll have to wrest that secret from Dorrian.”
The dryad remains silent.
“We will see you soon,” Penny says and I nod, hoping it’s true.
He catches my wrist before I can slip inside. “Please do us a favor. The village isn’t ready to know about Viggo.”
“I won’t tell a soul.”
Kissing the back of my hand, Penny releases me and I step across the threshold of my bedroom.
When it closes again, the door is just my door and I open it a crack to be sure the house I grew up in is on the other side.
It already feels like the night was a dream.
The sun has already begun to peek over the village roofs out my rain dotted window and I lean back against the door. Sliding to the floor, I let out a huff of a breath, trying to imprint my memories.
Mina sits bolt upright in my bed and stares at me with wide eyes. “You’re back!”
“Hush!” I hiss at her. “You weren’t supposed to wait up for me.”
She rolls her eyes, waving a dismissive hand at me. “Someone had to pretend to be you. She might have checked.”
As much as I hate to admit it, she’s right. Our mother would have checked to be sure I was in bed, but ignored Mina.
“How was it?” She asks, leaning forward, eyes wide with expectation.
I want to lie, but I can’t.
“It was... amazing.”
Bone tired, I shoo her from the room and change into my nightgown.
I can sneak in a few more hours of sleep before I have to open the shop and return to my real life.
Slipping between my sheets, I let sleep take me as I wish my blankets were as heavy as two men.