Chapter 38 #2
Zara turns away from us and releases our naked and eager Neo long enough to ease Lucius’ shirt from his shoulders.
The wolf stops frowning at me to shrug out of the garment.
Then Lucius pulls Zara into his arms with a possessive alpha rumble and bends her willing body backward in a deep claiming kiss.
“Yo, that’s sigma!” my irritating second cousin (once removed) pipes up. “Definite dibs for me on that dildo.”
I’m speaking, of course, of Mordred.
The wretch is huddled—thick as thieves—with Ronin and Vasili, all of them quaffing moon wine and murmuring over my dildo collection. Those three have been hotly debating the merits of the various options Zara down-selected for Vasili and me to use with Ash.
Unless I am much mistaken, my distant cousin—from whom I was violently estranged until quite recently—is speculating over which of the various options he intends that I use on him.
“Better get a move on, guys,” our bride calls to them over Lucius’ shoulder, voice husky with anticipation and sex. “I, uh, think Ash really needs you. And that dildo.”
Vasili pivots with a hiss and glides toward us, pale and naked, hips swaying, his pretty cock beautifully erect and bobbing gently with every supple stride.
By the moon, he’s so beautiful, this recent rival and enemy who has stolen my heart. Moonlight gilds his mop of hair and pools in his sapphire eyes and turns his features sharp and cruel and perfect.
In truth, he is far too beautiful for such a flawed creature as I, with my scarred face and twisted soul and missing eye. The prospect of having Vasili Romanov at last, despite all my flaws, sets my soul afire.
Here, tonight, under the Avalon moon, this endlessly alluring warlock will finally yield to me.
But first, we will share Ash and ensure my consort is well tended.
Deliberately, Vasili circles Ash, eyeing him from every angle with a coldly appraising stare.
Once I am able to wrest my gaze from his captivating body to his hands, I note Vasili has chosen one of Ash’s favorite dildos, crafted of sleek obsidian from the Avalon volcano, thick and bulbous, of prodigious length.
He has also chosen one of my favorite floggers, dyed black and fashioned of stiffened rawhide, the tails sporting knotted tips.
Ash’s head turns to follow him, face blazing with anticipation and arousal.
Still, my consort knows not to speak unless addressed when he is strapped to that cross.
So I speak for him.
“He’ll welt up beautifully if you wield that flogger with skill, Vasili Romanov,” I murmur into the spellbound silence. “Still, in an unschooled hand, that instrument will do true damage. Have you ever flogged a man before?”
Of course, the snake disdains a direct answer. Instead he gives me a sidelong smirk. “What’s the matter, darling? Don’t you trust me?”
“Prove to me that I can, beautiful one.” I fix the treacherous creature with a burning look. “I will have your answer. Have you ever flogged a man before?”
Our love is still new, as is our friendship.
But Zara trusts him absolutely.
Even now, where she is sharing long hot kisses with Lucius and coaxing Neo to his knees between them, with the boy’s hands busy unbuttoning the wolf’s trousers, she has positioned them all so they can watch us without impediment.
Truly, ’twould be a pity to disappoint her.
“When you’re a gay boy in open rebellion against your grotesquely homophobic parents, there isn’t much you won’t do to a man, merely to prove your point.
” As Vasili slinks between me and Ash with the flogger trailing on the ground at his heels, the creature is at his most provocative.
“Is there a problem, Your Resplendence? Can you be… oh, I don’t know… afraid to trust me?”
“Not afraid.” No man can match a Dark Fae royal for speed. My hand flashes out to capture his slim wrist and drag him close. “But I am also not a fool.”
“Well, that’s certainly open to debate—”
I silence his silky, smirky, infuriating mouth in the manner I have found to be most effective.
With a kiss.
Kissing him is like kissing an adder, twisting and coiling and fanged.
But he is mine and I make a thorough business of claiming him.
My tongue swirls into the fermented sweetness of moon wine that drenches his mouth to twine around his. He licks my fangs as though he savors the sting of violence as much as I.
Through the frenzy of anticipation and aggression this man rouses in me so easily, I am barely aware when the dildo falls from his fingers to the bed. His arms wind around me with a sigh, the knotted tails of his flogger tickling my calves in a silent promise of violence.
Then the flogger’s hardened leather grip glides between my buttocks to nudge my ass—still uncharted terrain for most of the males (and the female) in this harem—and thus greatly coveted.
I twist free from Vasili’s entwining arms and surface from his kiss with a gasp.
Only to suffer that knowing smirk of his all over again.
This time from barely a handspan away.
“I selected the dildo for Ash,” the villain whispers wickedly, “but perhaps it might be best employed to stretch out your radiant ass instead. I enjoy a nice tight hole as much as the next boy, but you’ll need to be thoroughly prepped for my reaming.
Since I’m not known for being gentle, and you’re still practically a virgin. ”
I am normally known for my silver tongue, yet I find I can barely stammer. “Ronin and I—we—”
“Yes, I know, you were his first and he was yours.” Vasili rolls his expressive eyes. “But that was once and years ago, when you were both little more than children. Rest assured I intend to do the deed properly.”
I am still grappling wordlessly with this alarming proposal when Maxim Rasputin skulks up beside us.
“I assume we are now finished trying to expel this one from the harem,” he says to Vasili, sparing a dour look at me. “Since now you are not only kissing him. But also planning to fuck him.”
Of course, I have long suspected these two of plotting against me. This dragon is not a subtle creature, even if the snake is sly as any demon.
But this is the first time anyone has referred openly to Vasili’s wily scheme—because it was manifestly his scheme, with Maxim somehow pressured into the role of accomplice—to expel me from Zara’s harem.
“Sweet Jesus,” Zara exclaims. Violet sparks pop and dance around her fingers. Her wild mane rises and crackles with electricity. “I knew the two of you were up to something. I fucking knew it. What the hell were you thinking?”
“I was not thinking anything. It was Vasili who wanted that one gone,” Max mutters, shoulders slumped in discouragement at our queen’s ire. “I merely agreed to humor Vasili. In exchange for his, er, favors.”
“Oh, fuck me. You—V—you bribed Max with sex—to help you get rid of Zephyr?” Zara is so outraged on Max’s behalf and mine that she is sputtering. “ That’s why you finally gave in and let Max fuck you? The guy who’s loved you since you were boys? You snake!”
“That and other reasons.” Vasili sulks very prettily, but Zara looks unappeased. “It wasn’t all scheming, you know. I fell thoroughly in love with the dragon myself, somewhere or other along the way.”
“You… you did?” Max looks both thunderstruck and hopeful. “You fell in love with me ? Sweetheart. You have never told me this.”
“Well, consider yourself informed.” Still breathtakingly naked in the moonlight, Vasili waves my most vicious flogger and looks disgruntled. “This is what I look like when I’m in love with you.”
“Oh, bloody hell,” Ronin says in disgust. He has rejoined the main group and is holding a tube of lubricant.
Now, truly, he looks tempted to throw it at Vasili’s infuriating head.
“You couldn’t just tell Max you loved him?
Had to hide it behind some cocked-up plot to get rid of Zeph instead?
When you knew Zara and I were both in love with him—and with Max too? What. The actual. Fuck? ”
“I genuinely thought this Fae would hurt you,” Vasili huffs.
“So, yes, I violently wanted Zephyr gone. Kindly recall the way he hurt you before, Ronin. Plus he ghosted Zara for weeks after their mating. As for Maxim—by that point, this fool of a dragon was so hot to fuck me, he would’ve agreed to anything. ”
Unsurprisingly, no one seems mollified or satisfied in any way by this sham of a confession.
V pouts at our angry mates. “Oh, come. As you can clearly see, all my diabolical plans came to nothing. Because, well…”
Vasili waves an eloquent hand that encompasses my erection and his, the bed, our various mates, and the naked consort shackled to my cross waiting patiently for the two of us to share him.
“The fact that we all ended up together despite your fuckery? That’s not an excuse, Goblin King. Like, at all. ” Zara folds her arms across her luscious bare tits, taps her toes, and glares at her dominant alpha.
“I’m afraid I must agree with Zara and Ronin.” Lucius gives Vasili a reproachful look. “You’ve behaved very badly indeed, Mr. Romanov.”
Hearing our mates’ collective outrage and seeing Vasili’s rare chagrin, I can no longer contain the strange sensation bubbling in my chest.
I toss my flogger on the bed, throw my head back, and give way to a rare shout of laughter.
It’s only when I stop laughing long enough to look around at my mates that I realize just how rare my laughter must seem. Because they are all—down to the moon-damned kraken—staring at my mirthful face in bewilderment.
“What?” I blink at the circle of bemused faces. Even Ash is peering at me over his tattooed shoulder. “What is the matter?”
“Zang. Never heard you laugh before, cuz. Didn’t know you could.” Slowly Mordred shakes his head. “Neither did they, apparently. Dude. That’s skibbidi. But, uh, we’re glad to hear the shit now. Like, better late than never. So, you know, I guess keep doin’ it?”
I eye my distant cousin with sour suspicion. Mating that kraken was not my idea, no matter how often he featured in my illicit fantasies when I was a sex-starved adolescent with a crush on the only boy who ever risked my formidable mother’s wrath by kissing me.
Now, I’m all too well aware, I’ll be more than kissing him.
I’ll be fucking him and his two dicks, the way my bride so clearly wishes.
Zara diligently respects our boundaries and gives us all plenty of emotional space. But she’s also honest about what she desires.
Which is all her warlocks together.
Together with each other, as well as with her.
My smile fading, I turn slowly toward Vasili. He looms over me, because he is a tall mortal while I am an average-sized Fae. And mine is not a tall race. Still, despite the difference in our heights, this mortal warlock and I are peers and equals in this harem.
I am fully his match.
Just as he is mine.
I catch Vasili’s jaw in my hard hand and rub my thumb over his lower lip, still glistening with a layer of cherry-flavored lip gloss I haven’t (quite) licked off.
Swift as a spitting cobra, he bites my thumb, pricking my skin with one razor-sharp fang. Then he licks the droplet of blood that wells up with a flick of his wicked tongue.
For a shifter like him, this is foreplay.
A hint at the mating bite he eventually plans to inflict upon my still-unbitten flesh.
Under his teeth and tongue, a frisson of mingled pain and pleasure quickens my breath and hardens my cock.
Still, I am not so easily vanquished.
I tighten my grip on his jaw and give him a warning shake.
“I want you, ” I eye Vasili coolly, “on your best behavior, beautiful one, when you wield that flogger on Ash. If you’re not in complete control at all times—or if you don’t respect his safe word—I swear you’ll wish you’d never been born.”
“Hmmm.” The snake gives me a sly grin under his long lashes. “Is that supposed to be a threat or an incentive?”
Truly, there is no point threatening him. Either he will heed me or he will not.
“Only remember I warned you.” I release the creature with a final stern look.
With a coy look over his shoulder at my threatening face, Vasili slithers up behind Ash and draws the trailing ends of the flogger over Ash’s reddened ass. Watching carefully the way Ash shivers under that practiced touch, I’m certain my instincts are correct.
On both counts.
Vasili has indeed wielded a flogger before.
And Ash finally trusts him enough to submit to it.
“Tell me. What is your safe word, darling?” Vasili breathes in Ash’s pointed ear—an erogenous zone for any Fae—in a way that makes my consort shudder like a fever victim. “After all, I can hardly respect it if I don’t know it.”
“Like I said, never used it. Not in years. Haven’t needed to, ever, with Sparrow. But, uh, it’s my sister’s nickname,” Ash mumbles into the crook of his shackled arm, so muffled we can barely hear him. “Freckles.”