Chapter 30 #2
Ivy reaches over to pat the daimon’s arm reassuringly.
“They must have passed on some kind of message. Just before I left the town, I overheard a couple of soldiers discussing the uprising. They mentioned the claim that the conspirators were sending an army this way… and laughed about it. It sounded as if they decided it must have been a lie to distract the patrols from hunting us.”
“Naturally,” Stavros mutters, and shakes his head. “I have a few ideas, but I don’t think I’m in a good state to make a wise decision right now. Once I’ve slept on it, we can put some kind of plan into motion in the morning.”
Even though he’s talking about taking action soon, a shadow crosses Ivy’s face. Something I see her gird herself against a moment later to put on an unflappable front with the rest of us.
What else is bothering her that she doesn’t want us to see?
As we clean up the remains of our dinner, I consider the best approach.
It may be difficult to encourage her to open up even with the three of us who’ve been with her from the start.
I’m not sure how much she’ll want to reveal to Rheave as well, especially given how extreme his reactions can be to anything that distresses her.
As Stavros and Ivy start laying out the sleeping mats, I turn to the daimon. “For extra security, I’m thinking we should have someone on watch just outside the door, to let us know if any other visitors arrive. Are you up to taking the first shift?”
Rheave draws his posture straighter with a flash of determination in his eyes. “Of course. No one will get past that door.”
He hurries over without any further discussion. I certainly can’t fault his dedication.
Alek watches him go. “Do you really think we have reason to worry? You said the temple should be secure.”
“After what we’ve already been through, I don’t think we should skimp on precautions,” I say, and grab a couple of blankets from a shelf.
I lay mine out on the unrolled mat next to Ivy’s and reach over to rub her shoulder. “How are you holding up, Kindness? You’ve had to stretch your talents more than any of the rest of us.”
Ivy shrugs, but she leans into my touch with a muted sigh. Tension twines through her muscles even as my light massage starts to loosen a few of them. “I’m just glad to have the chance to rest.”
“Did anything else come up during your trip to the city that worried you?”
She pauses for just long enough for me to believe there was and then gives a short laugh. “What is there that doesn’t give us reason to worry these days? I’m getting by.”
I brush some of her pale amber hair aside in a gentler caress. “I just want you to know that you can talk to us about anything, no matter what’s on your mind. We’re here for you in every way.”
Her shoulders stiffen slightly, but then she glances at me through her eyelashes with an arch of one eyebrow that makes my heart skip a beat despite my intentions. “You know, it’s been too long since I’ve gotten to enjoy you being here in one particular way.”
She leans over to claim a kiss, her fingers tracing the line of my jaw.
Heat flows across my skin with the gesture. I can’t help kissing her back.
I’ve missed our most physical intimacies too… but I can’t shake the impression that she’s dodging the question.
When our lips part, I keep my head bowed close to hers. “Ivy—”
Before I can do more than murmur her name, she glances toward Alek with a beckoning motion. Her gaze slides to Stavros in turn.
Both of the other men step closer and then hesitate. Ivy lets out a soft huff—and reaches for the tie of her robe.
She tugs it loose and lets the fabric slip from her slim form, leaving her sitting naked in a pool of linen.
There’s still a little self-consciousness in the way she holds her arms as if to partly cover her breasts, but I can’t help smiling at the confidence she has gained since our earliest encounters.
“We’ve come this far,” she says in a low voice. “It’s about time you showed me that I really am your Signy.”
A sharper heat rushes through me and condenses in my groin. This isn’t how I intended our private moment to go, but—if I’m not meant for this kind of request, what am I good for?
With a slight flex of my jaw, I reach for my gift, fixing my attention on Ivy. Taking in the stream of images that follow, which should tell me what I can do that would really make her happiest right now.
The swell of sensation only heightens my desire, fed by what I can sense of her own. There really is nothing that would set her more at ease than tapping into my greatest talent.
Nothing I could do, anyway. But how can I refuse what I’m able to offer?
Alek is already in motion, sinking down next to Ivy with his arm tucking around her back beneath the worst of her scars. His voice comes out rough. “You’re more than our Signy. You’re our Ivy.”
She beams at him in the instant before their mouths collide. Another niggling thought passes through my head—that he fits her better than I ever could, with their scars and the ways they’ve kept themselves hidden.
She still wants me too. And it’s beautiful watching them together, feeling their way through the sort of intimacy I almost take for granted.
Ivy clearly isn’t in the mood to draw things out. She breaks from the kiss only to swing her legs around so she can straddle Alek.
As she kisses him again, yanking at the tie on his robe, I scoot closer and dapple kisses over the peak of her shoulder and down her arm. My hand strokes her back in tender circles with the wish that I could smooth away all the remainders of her mother’s abuse.
Then I glance past her toward the final member of our quartet. Stavros stands poised just a couple of paces away, his hands flexing at his sides, his gaze smoldering.
Oh, he wants to be a part of this interlude. The hunger is written all over him.
But I suppose the only practice he’s had at navigating this kind of sharing is when he joined Ivy and me toward the end of our encounter at the Haven.
I catch his gaze and lift my eyebrows as if to say, Well, are you getting over here or what?
After a momentary and only half-hearted glower, he kneels at Ivy’s other side. He rests his hand on her bare waist and tilts his head to kiss the side of her neck. I can tell he’s being careful not to impose too much on her attention to Alek.
When Ivy trails her fingers down Alek’s lean frame to grasp his cock, he groans. I slip my hand around her thigh to tease between her legs. The slickness I find there makes my own dick jump to sharper attention.
“Already so ready for us,” I murmur. I give her earlobe an affectionate nip before gazing past her toward Alek. “Maybe you have some suggestions from that poetry book for how we can best please our woman together?”
A ruddy cast has formed beneath the scholar’s rich brown skin.
He wets his lips, his eyelids drooping as his hips rock with Ivy’s attentions.
“There is… It’s sounded as if it can be quite satisfying for a woman to be entered from…
ah, both directions. At the same time. I’m not sure how easy that is outside of poetics. ”
A smile stretches across my face. “Oh, we can definitely offer her that experience.” I caress Ivy’s cheek. “If you’d like to give it a try.”
I’m not sure there’s anything in the world as lovely as the blush that turns her paleness the perfect shade of rosy. “That sounds rather incredible.”
I swirl my thumb over her clit with just enough pressure to earn me a whimper and withdraw. “Why don’t you fill yourself with Alek as you’ll both enjoy, and I’ll get the necessary supplies?”
This is still a temple of the godlen of sensuality, after all. I spotted just the thing in a little basket at the back of the bathing area: a pot of lubricating gel.
I return with it to find Ivy has followed my instructions to great effect.
She eases up and down over Alek in steady strokes, their bodies united, their shaky breaths carrying into the air like the most thrilling music.
He’s just ducking his head to brush his lips against her collarbone while she turns her head to share a kiss with Stavros.
As their mouths meld together, the military professor slides his hand down her back and squeezes her ass. Ivy bucks onto Alek a little faster, both of their chests hitching with ragged exhalations.
They slow down the pace again when I lower myself next to them. Stavros lets the kiss linger a moment longer and then looks over at me.
Excitement wars with trepidation in his expression. “I think you’d better do the honors. I’d be a lot to take.”
I’ve never seen the man naked, but considering the size of the rest of him, I find that easy to believe.
Ivy punctuates his suggestion with a breathless laugh. “We can work up to that.”
Stavros stares at her as if startled that she’d even want to try, and I can’t look away from her face either. I don’t know what was weighing on her mind before, but no trace of turmoil remains there now.
This is the gift I can give her, the benefit of the arts I’ve studied. Gods forgive me for not being able to imagine offering it to anyone else while she’s claimed so much of my heart.
I shrug off my robe and sink down behind her. With Alek kneeling beneath her, she’s in the perfect position.
I dip my fingers into the gel and trace them into the cleft of her ass.
As they glide over her back opening, Ivy gasps. A little shiver passes through her body.
Leaning closer, I kiss her spine at the top of her back. “Good?”
“Mmm,” she hums, still swaying over Alek. “I have the feeling it’s going to get even better.”
With a chuckle, I continue. The ring of muscle there loosens gradually with my massage. When I delve my fingers right inside her, my lover lets out a truly glorious series of needy sounds.
While I stretch her with two and then three fingers, she alternates between kissing Alek and Stavros. Stavros cups one of her breasts and rolls her nipple under his thumb. Alek slips his hand between them, provoking a moan when he must find her clit.
A curse tumbles from the scholar’s lips at the sound. “I don’t know how much longer I’m going to last,” he admits.
Ivy gives a defiant little growl. “Stay with us. Not done yet.”
His laugh is strained with building desire.
I kiss Ivy’s shoulder blade and slick my fingers over my cock to prepare it. “Let’s see how this goes, then. Stop me if you’re feeling anything but amazing.”
At her impatient noise, I line myself up with her opening. As she stills, I press inside her.
Her entrance is so tight, the heat of her enveloping my cock so intense, that suddenly I’m not sure how long I’m going to last. Arousal pulses through my shaft, my release already swelling at the base.
“Oh, gods,” Ivy mumbles. She clutches at Alek with one hand and reaches back to clasp my braced arm with the other.
As I sink in as far as I can go, my head bows over her. Pleasure reverberates through my body, so heady it’s dizzying. “Let’s take this slow. We move together.”
I pull back a fraction as Ivy eases up over both me and Alek. When she sinks down again, a guttural moan spills from her lips.
The scholar echoes it with a choked sound. I swallow a groan of my own, buoyed by the blissful haze.
But as we start to find our rhythm between the three of us, I can’t help noticing that our fourth companion has sat back on his heels, simply watching.
Reaching around Ivy, I tap Alek’s arm. “Do you have any inspired ideas for how we might bring Stav into the fun?”
Alek peers around, his bright eyes glazed with pleasure. He pauses for a second, and I think his flush deepens.
“Hands or mouth?” His gaze darts to Ivy. “Whatever you’d like most.”
Ivy lets out a husky chuckle. “Maybe I could try both.”
She waves Stavros closer and grasps the tie of his robe. As he sheds it, she tugs him higher on his knees.
Stavros watches her with the same air of disbelief I saw before, mingled with the passion flaring in his gaze. When she grips the base of his erection and dips her head to flick her tongue over the tip, his eyes roll back.
“Fuck,” he rasps, tangling his fingers in her hair. “Ivy, you don’t need to—”
She interrupts him with a dismissive noise. “I want to have all of you.”
Then she takes the head of his cock right into her mouth, and he rocks to meet her with a groan. “Gods, you’re a fucking miracle.”
That she is.
All of us move together, we three thrusting up to meet Ivy as she descends over us. She swallows us up again and again by every means she has.
The quivers of pleasure that race through her body in answer to my own delight reassure me that she’s enjoying this interlude just as much as I am.
We’re like a wave, surging up over and over. Lifting her higher and higher while we spiral toward our own climaxes.
I dapple kisses across her shoulder blades between my panting breaths. “So lovely. Our Ivy. You’re perfect.”
The giddy heat builds in my groin. I push into her harder, faster, determined to bring her over the edge before I give in—
Ivy gasps around Stavros’s cock. Her muscles clench around me, and I’m lost, spilling myself with my last several thrusts, clasping her tightly as she shudders against me. The ecstasy of the moment sears through me like a surge of the most delicious fire.
With Ivy’s cry of release, Alek grunts and stiffens too. He buries his face against her neck.
Stavros shifts as if to withdraw, but Ivy’s hand tightens around his shaft. She pumps him faster, her lips pursing around the head of his cock as if determined to haul him with the rest of us.
His hand twitches in her hair, and his breath hisses out through his teeth as he gives himself over to her demand.
Ivy slumps between us with a wordless but happy murmur. I wrap my arms around her and kiss the side of her neck, not willing to let go of the moment just yet.
I may not be serving my mother’s ambitions for me or the godlen I dedicated myself as fully as I’m capable of… but I’m not sure I could regret what I’ve given to this woman. Even if this is the last chance I get before this quest proves my undoing.