29. Chapter 29 #2
They undressed me between them, and there was no shyness left in it now, only the gold-lit warmth, and six hands where before there'd only ever been two.
I gave myself over to it, to being wanted this openly and this abundantly by three men who'd each learned a different part of me and brought it all together now in the amber dark.
* * *
Some frightened corner of me had feared that three at once would be a thing done to me. That I’d disappear inside it, reduced to a body passed from one man to the next.
It wasn’t like that at all.
What undid me was how closely they attended to me and to each other.
A hand shifted before another needed room.
A glance passed over my body and was answered.
Rivik drew back so Daska could kiss me; Daska steadied my hips beneath Tau’s mouth.
No one waited impatiently for his share.
The whole of it was one generous act, and I was at the living centre of it.
Daska laid me back into the deep furs, Rivik came down beside me with his mouth at my breast, and Tau settled between my thighs with that joyful reverence that was his alone.
Three men's hands were on me at once, and I lost the thread of who was doing what, because it stopped mattering.
Rivik sucked my nipple hard into his mouth and I gasped, and Daska caught the gasp with his own mouth, kissing me deep.
Then Tau's tongue dragged slow through my pussy and I forgot how to breathe entirely.
He found my clit and settled in with his usual open greed, and Daska gathered me back against his chest, my head on his shoulder, his low voice in my ear telling me to let go, that they had me, that I'd never once in this shelter have to hold myself up alone.
Rivik's teeth grazed my throat, his hand laced through mine and gripped hard, and the bond poured his want into me so I felt my own pleasure and his at once, doubled, dizzying.
"That's it," Rivik said rough against my ear, while Tau worked me with his mouth. "Let the lion have you. We've got the rest of you held safe. Come for us, Ellie."
I came apart the first time with Tau's mouth on my clit and two of his fingers curling deep inside me, Daska's arms around me, and Tau's name breaking first from my lips before the others tangled after it.
They held me through the whole shaking length of it, not one of them hurrying me toward anything more; they let me have it.
They let me simply feel it, wrung out and gasping in the gold-lit warmth, three men gentling me down with all the night in the world.
"There she is," Tau murmured, rising up over me with his mouth wet and his grin wicked. "There's our girl, come back to us. I think we'll have that again, if you're willing, I'm a great believer in again."
When he pushed his cock into me it was slow, watching my face, with Daska holding me from behind and his mouth at my shoulder and Rivik's hand still laced in mine.
I was surrounded, filled, held on every side by men who loved me, and the sheer abundance of it, the impossible plenty of being this wanted by this many good hearts at once, broke something open in me that had been locked since long before the Savoy.
I'd spent my whole life being handed less than I needed and told to be grateful for it: less love, less room to take up, less worth than the next person in the queue.
And here in a king's warm shelter, twenty-five thousand years from everyone who'd ever rationed me, I was being given more than I'd ever dared ask for, and I let myself simply take it.
I rolled my hips up to meet Tau's slow deep thrusts, and reached back to fist my hand in Rivik's hair, and Daska's fingers found my clit between Tau's strokes.
I came a second time with the king buried deep in me and both my other men holding me through it.
I didn't flinch from any of it. That was the new thing, the thing I turned over even in the middle of it with some quiet astonished part of my mind. I received it, all of it, every hand and mouth and cock and murmured word, and I didn't once brace for the bill.
They took their time with me through the long amber hours, but I didn’t lose count because the pleasure blurred them into one. I lost count because each time I thought my body had nothing left to give, one of them found a new way to ask for more.
Tau was the first to ask again. Of course he was. He stretched out beside me, propped on one elbow, his smile bright with satisfaction. Rivik lay on my other side, tracing the damp curve beneath my breast, while Daska’s broad hand moved slowly over my thigh.
“Still a great believer?” I asked Tau. My voice came out rough enough to make all three of them smile.
“More devout by the moment.” He bent and kissed the inside of my knee. “But our goddess has the final word.”
The easy laughter loosened something else in me. I looked from Tau’s wicked delight to Rivik’s fierce, watchful hunger, then back to Daska. He wasn’t smiling now. His gaze held mine, calm and searching, asking the question beneath Tau’s teasing.
Too much? I knew he would stop them. More than that, I knew none of them would resent me for making him do it.
“Again,” I said, and reached for Tau myself.
His answering sound was pure lion—pleased, hungry, almost a purr.
He caught my wrist and kissed my palm before letting me pull him over me.
Rivik moved behind my shoulders, gathering my hair away from my neck.
Daska slid a folded fur beneath my hips, his care so matter-of-fact that warmth tightened my throat alongside the returning ache between my legs.
Tau entered me slowly. I was swollen and tender, and the first stretch made my breath catch.
Every man in the shelter went still.
Tau’s forehead lowered to mine. “Ellie?”
I breathed through the fullness while Daska’s thumb stroked once over the inside of my knee. Rivik pressed his mouth below my ear, giving me warmth without urging me forward.
“Stay,” I whispered.
Tau stayed. He held himself buried inside me without moving until the tightness eased and my hips shifted beneath him of their own accord.
“Now,” I said.
His grin flashed, but the first thrust remained careful.
The second went deeper. By the third, I had one hand fisted in the fur and the other locked around Rivik’s wrist while Daska watched my face.
Tau’s pleasure came openly, in every broken breath and helpless sound.
It drew an answering laugh from me even as my body tightened around him.
“You mock your king,” he accused, breathless.
“Your king makes ridiculous noises.”
“Our king,” Rivik said against my throat, “is trying very hard not to come too soon.”
Tau turned his head just far enough to bare his teeth at him. The movement changed the angle of his next thrust, and my laughter broke into a cry.
They all felt the change.
Daska’s hand closed over my hip, steadying rather than restraining. Rivik’s fingers slid between mine and tightened. Tau repeated the movement, slower this time, and watched the pleasure take me.
There was no space left in me for fear. Only their faces, their hands, the fire painting all three of them gold, and the astonishing certainty that I could ask for more.
“Again,” I said.
Tau gave it to me until the pleasure climbed too high for speech. When I came, he buried his face against my neck and held himself still inside me while Rivik took my mouth and Daska stroked me through every weakening pulse.
No one hurried to replace him.
Tau eased out and collapsed dramatically across my legs. Rivik shoved at his shoulder. Daska passed me water. I drank with shaking hands while Tau declared himself slain in battle and Rivik informed him that no one had ever died so noisily.
The laughter mattered as much as the rest. It gave me time to return to my body and discover I still wanted them.
I turned towards Rivik before he could ask.
The bond flared at my choice. Hunger struck through me—his, raw and almost painful—followed so quickly by tenderness that my eyes stung. He had waited through Tau’s pleasure without once making me feel watched for his turn, but now his restraint trembled under my hands.
“Come here,” I told him.
He did not pounce. That would have been easier. Rivik came over me slowly, as though the sight of me reaching for him had robbed him of every defence. I pushed my fingers into his hair and pulled his forehead down to mine.
“You don’t have to starve while you’re holding me,” I said.
Something in his face broke open.
His kiss was deep and fervent, but not careless. He tasted me as if he needed proof I was real. Daska settled behind me and drew my back against his chest. Tau, restored from his battlefield death, stretched alongside us and ran a warm hand down Rivik’s spine.
That touch undid Rivik almost as much as mine.
I felt it through the bond: not rivalry, not the hard edge of a man guarding what was his, but relief. Tau’s hand told him he belonged in this too. Daska’s arm around me told him I was held. He didn’t have to carry the whole weight of keeping me safe before he was allowed to want me.
I opened my thighs for him.
Rivik entered me on a groan he tried and failed to swallow.
I caught the sound with my mouth. His thrusts were deeper than Tau’s, stripped of humour but not of care, and every one of them travelled through the bond twice—first as the pleasure inside my body, then as his wonder at being welcomed there.
“Ellie.” My name sounded torn from him.
“I’ve got you,” I said, giving him back the promise they had given me.
Daska’s arms tightened around us both. Tau kissed Rivik’s shoulder, then mine. Rivik shuddered, and the bond blazed so white I could no longer tell whether the next cry belonged to him or to me.
Afterwards, he stayed folded over me, breathing hard. I stroked the back of his neck until the blaze between us softened to embers.
Daska checked my eyes before anyone moved again.
“Safe?” he asked.