Chapter 5 #2
“Sleep on it,” I tell her. “The storm’s keeping you here for a few days anyways, whether you like it or not. And nothing happens in this house that you don’t ask for.”
And then we end up watching a show together, in the library, of Wren’s choosing. “You like human movies?” she questions.
“Humans are good at humor,” Maxim explains.
So, she chooses to have us start watching an outrageous comedy series about humans who work in an office together selling paper products, which is surprisingly funny. Humans, for all their faults, are indeed excellent comedians.
We all sit in the couches, with space between us. But I’m secretly wishing that within a few more nights she will want to sit between the two of us, allowing me to have a hand on her thigh while I laugh at the human’s antics. And Maxim would hold her hand.
And then our touching would progress further…
“You will sleep upstairs,” Maxim finally announces at a good stopping point. “Now.”
It isn’t a request and I notice that she doesn’t argue. Our female is tired from a long, eventful day. We turn off the TV and tidy up the throw blankets.
Then we take Wren up the grand staircase and down the corridor. We give her a tour of the second floor as we go.
I point at the nearest door. “My bedroom is here, and it’s the old customs master’s chamber, because he slept like a lord, even though he wasn’t one, and the bed is the size of a barge.
I kept it because it’s surprisingly comfortable.
Maxim’s room is at the far end. The guest room is between ours.
It was the secretary’s chamber, six hundred years ago. It has a connecting door to mine.”
Maxim opens the guest room for her. She steps inside and looks at the stone walls, the large fireplace and the four poster bed. He crouches and starts the fire for her. “The heating unit works good, but a fire is needed too so you have all the warmth you will need.”
I put her coat and bag on the bed. “And the bathroom’s through there. It’s new.”
She looks at the third door in the room and the one in the wall we share.
“That one connects to my room. It locks on your side.”
She nods. “Thank you.”
Maxim finishes and stands, pleased at the fire he’s built. We both walk out into the hallway. “Goodnight,” we say to our female.
“Goodnight.”
And then the door closes between us.
I lie on my back on top of the enormous bed in the dark and listen to her breathe through four feet of stone, which I shouldn’t be able to do, and can. This is what the Calling does to me. It puts a Krovenian on his back in the dark, counting a human’s breaths through a wall.
My cock is half-hard, as it’s always been since the moment I met her.
I wish she was in this bed with me. And I strangely want my brother, Maxim, here too, with her between us.
I feel that I would sleep better this way, having here between us than all of us in separate bedrooms. And of course all I want to do is sink my hard, leaking shaft inside of her and jet all my hot cum inside of her, starting our first offspring.
But this will have to wait. I do not know yet if this is what she even wants.
I have fallen in love with Wren Collins. And I know that Maxim loves her too. Does she feel the same? Is that what’s holding her back? She feels lust for us, but not long-term love, enough to sustain a life-long mating?
I hit the pillow and roll over, trying to find the sleep that keeps evading me.
And then the storm changes. I hear it before I understand. The sound goes deeper, lower, a pressure in the ear. I’ve heard it maybe three times in my life, all of them in the mountains.
The window flashes white. White on white. And then the thunder rumbles, so close the stones feel it.
The lights go out.
In the garage, the generator coughs, catches, coughs again—and dies. And the house goes silent. The little fire in the guest room won’t hold the cold for an hour. Mine will.
Another flash and then thunder shakes like the wall is coming down.
Wren shrieks, through the connecting door.
I sit up, ready to run to her.
And then both of my bedroom doors bang open at the same time. She’s standing with the guest room blanket wrapped around her shoulders and her hair down, lit white for one second by the next flash, and then gone. Barefoot on the stone.
Maxim is already in my room.
She’s not embarrassed. She’s scared, and she’s furious about being scared. “I hate storms,” Wren announces to the dark. “I have always hated storms. I’m from Chicago, this is—is that lightning? In a blizzard?”
“Thundersnow,” Maxim explains. “It happens in the mountains.”
“It should not happen anywhere.” There’s a third flash and she flinches, hard. She’s shaking, and it isn’t from the cold.
“Your fire is out and so is the generator,” Maxim says. “His will hold. I will restart the generator when we awake in the morning. Meanwhile, you can sleep in here tonight and you will be warm and safe.”
“With both of us. Nothing happens. It’s going to be the only warm bed in the house.”
She looks at the barge, then looks at the two of us. Outside, the thunder rolls away down the valley and comes back.
“Can I be in the middle?”