Five to Love Him (Phoenix Immortal: Hive #1)

23. LEOPOLD

twenty-three

I didn’t want to get up, but I didn’t want to poke a hiveling with my morning wood either. The problem was that they were everywhere, that I was sandwiched between them, and that, as far as I could tell while still being sleepy, they were already pretty much awake.

“Uhmm,” I said. Moving my ass back meant it pressed against the other hiveling. They would think I was weird. Worse, they would think I was like a teenager, still working through spontaneous arousal at the most inopportune moments.

“Leo,” one of them said, then the other, “Tell us what you want us to do.”

Well, fuck. That was not what I’d expected. My mind was reeling, as much as reeling was possible at this time of day.

“I…I don’t know,” I mumbled, probably not loud enough for them to hear.

One of them tilted up my chin with the gentlest of touches, their eyes a bright blue.

“If you want to, we can touch you. Or not. We can do more—we want to give you everything, Leo, that’s the truth. If or when you consent.”

I dug my teeth into my bottom lip, slightly swollen from sleep. This was it , this was sex , potentially. And so far, they hadn’t fled the room or laughed at me.

Sex comes with being mated , Instructor Arick had told the class before carefully leading the conversation toward accepting that things might look different than what we were used to from humans, anatomically speaking. It had been a fun lesson, although we had spent a lot of time talking about centaurs and how all of that worked. No one had thought to ask what you were supposed to do when your mate came in multiple copies.

I still wasn’t sure I knew.

The hive—my hive—held my gaze, not a clue that I was secretly freaking out. How they managed to be so calm and patient, I had no fucking idea.

“You’re not like me, right?” I asked, speaking out loud instead of keeping my thoughts to myself.

The hiveling blinked in surprise, and the other one’s fingers trailed along my forearm.

“What do you mean?”

I felt the embarrassment in my cheeks. “A virgin. You’re not a virgin, right?”

An odd little expression passed over the one’s face, maybe wistfulness, or did they look hurt, did they think I expected them to be?

“No. Are you scared?”

I swallowed, my throat tight, and I tried escaping that blue-eyed gaze, but the hive kept my chin in place.

“I think so. And just to be clear, I’m glad you have experience.” I looked away nervously, a tenseness in their jaw almost shutting me up, but then I’d come this far. “I watched porn, you know, and I read stuff. I know what we could do, deep-throating and anal of course, also docking, sounding…”

They released my chin and kissed my forehead. “Did you make a list? We like making lists too when we’re anxious. It helps us calm down. When we met you two days ago, we made one about you.”

I tilted my head, my nose brushing their lips awkwardly. “You took notes about me? Hey, are you taking notes now?”

They grinned. “No. We want to focus on you right now. Or do you think we should be taking notes, Leo?”

“N-no! That would be weird.”

“Good weird?”

Well, their grin had a toxic quality to it, making them really handsome but adding a dash of bad boy vibes. I couldn’t remember ever really craving either handsome or bad boy, but there was a first time for everything, and I wanted this. Wanted the hive.

“You think you’re funny, huh. Is there a joke that starts with, a hive walks into a bar?”

“We’re not really that funny, and if we walked into a bar, it would take us one, two, three, four, and so on. You’d have to count hivelings like sheep, and it would put you to sleep, which is the opposite of a good joke. Would you like us to tickle you instead, Leo?”

I relaxed, laughed. “You are so weird, hive. The good weird. To answer your question, I don’t do that. Make lists, I mean. What I said, the docking and stuff, those are just the things…I guess that’s what people like.” Then realization hit me. I’d watched porn and followed all those tags, had inevitably seen things before I was mentally ready for them, but all the same, it had been…educational. “You’re several. Y-you want to, ah, you want to do double penetration?”

Warm hands stroked over my limbs, and the hive tangled their feet with mine. Only now did I notice that I was warm without having to wear socks in bed. Despite not actually being in a bed, this was already more comfortable than I had been in a long while.

“We can imagine it. We can imagine all the things you said, but just because you know what they are doesn’t mean you have to try them all right away. If you gave us permission, we think we’d like to touch you first. We also want to kiss you all over. We’d want to watch you closely because we don’t want to miss what you look like when you let go, when you cum.”

“Oh.”

It felt as if I was sweating bullets. The hive was calm, composed, sure of themself. Maybe nothing could really shake them because they were several.

“We think you are very pretty.” They ran a hand along my cheek, their touch warm and soft.

With a pang, I realized I wanted more of it, more than I already had with two of them being so close to me. Yes, I was curiously scared about the sex, but it was this, the intimacy and their gentleness that tipped me over.

“Okay, yes.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, consent. Yes. You can…we can. I’m not sure what I should be doing, but if you tell me, I’ll do it.”

Their smile glowed with warmth. “Ah. We’d like it best if you enjoyed.” The door opened, light and three more hivelings filtering into the room. “Is this okay?”

My eyes darted around as the other hivelings sat on the bed nest around me.

“I’m never sure where to look.”

“Wherever you want. Keep your eyes open.”

“Why?”

Their pale cheeks took on color. “We just want you to look at us. We want you to see us.”

“O-okay.”

Hands settled on my legs, my hip. “Leo. Are you ready?”

My throat was dry. I nodded. “Yes.”

“And…you still want to?”

“I do. You do, too, right?”

Subdued laughter came from one or two of them. “Yes. Very much so. We’ll show you in a moment. We’ll have to undress you. We’ll go slowly. Tell us if you want us to stop, okay?”

“Yeah. Uh. You too.”

“We promise,” they said and kissed me.

It was just the one who didn’t have a shirt on. His body was warm—I imagined that or maybe it was because I was enjoying waking in a warm bed for once, but his mouth, his mouth was like a small, glowing flame that I tried to take into myself.

He—they—were so much better at kissing than I was. Jealousy struck, a possessive urge. Mates weren’t supposed to kiss other people, Instructor Arick hadn’t said that, but it was implied. Logically, I knew they had a past, my mind was simply spinning as the moment stretched and my thoughts scattered all over the place.

“So good,” one of them whispered into my ear while they pulled my shirt off my shoulders. I’d not even noticed them undoing the buttons.

Before long, the noises in the room distracted me. The other hivelings were stripping, I watched them out of the corner of my eye while all of them were focused on me.

I moaned, interrupting the kiss when they pulled my pants down, touched my cock. The hiveling who’d been kissing me shifted his—their—attention to my neck, and I shivered, jerked in their arms.

“Leo, you are so sensitive.” “We have to be careful. If we touch you too much, then it’ll be over too quickly.”

“W-what are you saying?” I looked around as they coaxed me into a semi-sitting position, stripping me all the way.

One of them caught my eyes. “We don’t want you to cum too fast.”

“Oh. Right. Yeah, I guess that makes seee-aah!”

One of them was running his hot tongue over my left nipple while another rubbed the right one between his fingers. The intensity of the sensation was unreal, nothing like trying this by myself.

“Is it good?” they whispered in my ear. “Do you like being licked?”

“Hnngh…it’s…I like it,” I said, not thinking at all.

“You look like you like it,” another one said, and when I turned my head to see where they were, it gave them an opening to get to my neck once more, kiss and suck, probably marking me.

I made an awfully embarrassing sound, my body tingling, my fingers curling around thin air, and with my vision blurring slightly, I couldn’t see which one of them lifted me and adjusted me to their liking or which were still administering their kisses and touches.

I had no idea whether this was normal for sex with a hive—I knew this wasn’t even really sex yet—but I was pretty sure they had the advantage here, could turn me into soft putty in their hands. All their hands, ten of them. Heavens knew what all they could do with those.