Chapter Eight Vasili
Chapter Eight
Vasili
Darling, what can I say? I never could resist a dare. Besides, this braided horsehair flogger was literally born to fit my hand.
And all too clearly, I was born to wield it.
So wield it I do, with my signature panache, despite the undeniable fact that my physical balance tonight feels… off.
Or, at the very least, different.
My bare feet, planted in the thick bearskin rug, feel somehow… weightier… more solid. My diabolical head feels heavier on my neck. My giant shadow, flaring high on the cottage wall, seems distinctly to be crowned with the twin horns of a monster.
Or a Krampus.
Still, because I’m me, I make a graceful Krampus.
Even a pretty one.
I can see that much in the pale oval of my reflection, black-lipped and sharp and cruel, wavering on the face of the grandfather clock that leans against the wall nearby. The clock’s wheezing innards tick through the seconds in perfect rhythm with my measured blows.
If only that pointy-eared Dark Fae tyrant I’m flogging would give way and cry out, I’d be merciful.
No, really. I would.
But he simply won’t.
That much has been perfectly obvious to me from the first blow I struck, long tails hissing through the air to slap the luscious taut globes of Zephyr’s bitable bare buttocks with a satisfying snap!
By now, it’s obvious to all of us.
His la-dee-dah Radiance, the Moon-Dazzled Dark Fae King, is stubbornly determined not to make a single blessed sound.
Well.
We’ll just see about that.
Every lash of my whip unfurls through the air to kiss his royal skin, gradually reddening his ass and the backs of his sinewy thighs from olive to pink to a deep brick red.
With every blow, Zephyr’s shoulders clench and his hands grip the mantle like he’s throttling it.
Every knuckle gleams white with strain. His labored breath is clearly audible, even over the playful strains of “Santa Baby” rising from the antique gramophone.
When I angle my next blow to lick the tender skin between his thighs—hoping to startle a yelp out of him that way—he snatches in a sharp breath. But he doesn’t utter a single syllable.
Dear fuck.
“Take it easy with him, love,” Ronin murmurs to me, low and heavy, near my feet.
Ronin is sprawled full length on his belly on the rug beside me, naked skin glowing golden against the black bearskin, hair spread over his shoulders in a banner of raven silk.
This position lets him keep a wary eye on the proceedings—namely the sight of me wielding my whip—while Ronin simultaneously nuzzles and suckles and worships Zara’s gloriously ripe and tender breasts.
“What he said, Goblin King,” Zara breathes. Oh, she’s delightfully breathy and lethargic from everything Ronin and Max (crouched between her lifted knees with his face buried between her thighs) are doing.
Our little queen too lies on the rug, propped against a pile of cushions, both to support her back and to give her a VIP seat for my star performance.
Her face is flushed and heavy-lidded with pleasure under her wild teal mane.
But her turquoise eyes are glowing with voltage.
If I overplay my hand with our silently suffering Dark Fae lover by a single card, Zara Gemini is eminently capable of hurling me through the wall—Krampus or no—with a bolt of her purple lightning.
She’d rather die than hurt me.
Ever.
I know this beyond question to be true.
True, too, that she’d act without flinching to protect any of us. Even from each other.
She’s the ironclad safe word Zephyr will never need to utter.
Nor is she his only defender.
Maxim lifts his head from between Zara’s luscious thighs, blond hair loosened from his braid and spilling over one shoulder. He finds my gaze with his tawny dragon eyes.
“Zephyr is no threat to you, sweetheart,” he says to me softly in his guttural Russian, the mother tongue we share. “He loves you. As you love him. And you will make everyone’s life in this harem much easier when you admit this to be true.”
Now that’s simply not playing fair.
Maxim knows as well as any of our mates that the quickest way to disarm me is to utter those three terrible words.
I’m indifferent to hatred, but utterly undone by love.
“For fuck’s sake, darlings.” I snap the flogger with an irritable crack! that makes Zephyr twitch. “You all know perfectly well how this game is played. I’ll ‘take it easy’ with His fucking Quintessence as soon as he makes a sound and fucking submits.”
I punctuate that statement of intent with another irritable smack—barely painful, but pissy—that lashes across the Dark Fae’s delectably fuckable ass.
Zephyr’s green head turns to fix me with a baleful stare.
With deliberate precision, he says, “Ow.”
Mordred throws back his head and lets out a great shout of laughter that rings from the rafters. My narrow stare spears him like a javelin.
That cackling demon is straddling Lucius’ hips, pinning our headmaster’s increasingly unresistant body to the floor, while Mordred unbuttons Lucius’ mannerly cardigan sweater.
Still chortling, the demon meets my censorious glare with a wink. “Gave you what you wanted, didn’t he, babydoll? You wanted Cousin Z to holler and he did… kinda. Looks like it’s time for some aftercare, true?”
I’m perfectly well aware that it is true. My responsibilities in this scenario now require that I behave… tenderly… toward our resident Dark Fae tyrant.
“How lovely to be you,” I say sourly to Zephyr. “Even your estranged sex demon second cousin once removed appears to be firmly on your side.”
“We are not estranged any longer. As you’re well aware, I’m fucking him,” Zephyr says calmly. “And by the moon, Vasili Romanov, we are—all of us—on the same side.”
Also true, of course. As I’m reluctantly compelled to acknowledge.
Still, my prickly pride is mollified to note the Dark Fae King hasn’t budged from his supplicant’s place, bent forward and braced against the mantle.
He’s still submitting to me. Even now. Waiting on my word to release him.
Deliberately, I let the flogger fall from my hand. I don’t hear it hit the floor and wonder briefly if the house has taken it back, the instrument’s dark purpose now fulfilled.
I sashay toward the fire, hips swaying with every step, feet thudding into the bearskin rug like hooves. In the process, I wind past Mordred, finally having his wicked way with Lucius, nuzzling and nipping his way down Lucius’ bare chest while our wolf growls and mutters in rising pleasure.
Next I prowl past Neo, deliciously naked and earnestly lubing up his thick bookworm dick while he kneels behind Ash.
Our Light Fae Prince waits patiently for Neo to ream him, planted on hands and knees, silver head lowered and firelight gleaming on the angel wings tattooed across his powerful shoulders.
Meanwhile, Maxim has returned to long slow licks of Zara’s glistening bare pussy. Truly, he’s a very devoted dragon. He loves nothing more than making our girl come until she screams with pleasure.
Still, Max pauses in his mission long enough to shoot me a pleading upward look.
Be nice to him, sweetheart, that look is saying. Zephyr has yielded. Now you must.
I give Max the lifted Romanov eyebrow and gesture with an airy swirl of my fingers for him to resume his business.
What he said, Goblin King, Zara whispers again through our mating bond.
She’s still closely linked with me and Max, even while Ronin has returned to licking and suckling her gorgeous tits and she’s racing toward a splendid big O that will probably blow every fuse in this cottage.
One hopes this house comes equipped with a diesel generator to kick in when the power goes down.
“I hardly know why everyone seems so terribly worried,” I say teasingly to Zephyr’s averted head, “about just what I’ll do to you next.”
Zephyr’s face turns toward me, revealing a glimpse of his hooded eye and the corner of his mouth, curled slightly in a private smile.
I glide into place behind him to block his escape (just in case he’s planning one). The narrow green band of his eyepatch slashes diagonally across his sleek head. I know the accessory chafes him. Yet he seems to feel it’s necessary to hide his supposed deformity from the outside world.
Well, we’re no outsiders. We’re his family.
Even me.
Gently I slide a finger under the band and ease the infernal thing from Zephyr’s head. His breath hitches and his back quivers. But he makes no move to stop me.
In truth, I’m deeply pleased that he trusts me enough to allow this singular intimacy. Trusts me enough to be vulnerable.
Carefully I place the eyepatch on the mantle, where it will be safe from harm.
Then I tuck myself behind him, hands rising to grip his taut waist. I lean into his smooth skin and tensile heat. His freshly flogged ass blazes with warmth against my cool thighs. The dwindling fire laps my skin and frames his body in a nimbus of dancing gold.
The rich spicy scent of burnt amber and sunbaked dragonhide rises from his silky hair to fill my head. I breathe in deep and graze the tip of his pointed ear with my lips.
That flicker of barely-there contact against the Dark Fae equivalent of a G spot makes Zephyr gasp more sharply than any lash. I note this effect with mingled annoyance and amusement.
But I find myself giving way to the latter.
With a low chuckle, I bend to whisper in his ear, “Darling, you do realize you’re the most vexing thing in my entire life?”
He exhales his reply on a barely audible whisper. “Then, forsooth, we have that in common.”
“Hmmm.” Being so close to him—my rival and my love—has my cock stiff and aching.
I flex and arch my throbbing length into the base of his spine.
I’m considerably taller than the slightly built Fae.
Still, from this angle, I only need to bend my knees a smidge to tuck my delectable dinky neatly into the hot snug crack between his reddened ass cheeks.
A hoarse groan rises from his lean tight body. He quivers head to foot, like a wild buck poised on the bare edge of flight.
Then he presses his pucker, very subtly, into the shaft of my probing dick.
By now, my ravenous cock is drooling with eagerness and straining to be buried balls deep in the Dark Fae King.
He’s mine. I’m his. Tonight and always.
Still, I mustn’t neglect the preliminary courtesies.
I flex a few fibers of telekinetic muscle. The invisible fist of my witchcraft lifts the open tube of lubricant Neo has discarded on the floor. I curl the fingers of my casting hand and send the tube sailing through the air into my waiting palm.
“Will you truly bend for me?” I murmur in Zephyr’s ear, because I can still barely grasp this unprecedented development. “If I promise to be… nice?”
Now it’s Zephyr’s turn to chuckle. He rubs into my eager dick like the cock-tease he’s been for as long as I’ve known him. Slick with my own precum, I hiss and undulate against the enticing heat of his pucker.
“Will you?” I press, sounding far hotter and more bothered—even desperate—than I meant to.
His reply emerges on a languid moan. “Try me and see, beautiful one.”