CHAPTER 23 #2
Zara huffed, and the fragile edge in her eased. "Better. Kai, kneel. Kael, stay where you are until I move you."
I knelt because I had never been smarter than when obeying Zara Vale.
The black stone was warm under my knees. Her hand slid into my hair. My hands went to her hips and stopped there, waiting. Kael remained behind and slightly to her side, separate from me, joined only by her choice.
"May I?" I asked, mouth near her stomach.
"Yes. Kiss lower. Slowly."
I kissed the soft skin below her navel. Her muscles tightened, then released. I kissed the line where silk still covered her, then looked up.
"Take them off," she said.
I hooked my fingers in the underlayer and drew it down her thighs, giving her time with every inch. She stepped free. Her hand trembled once in my hair. Kael murmured something too low to be law, and she leaned back against his steadiness.
She was wet when I parted her with my thumbs.
My fire pulled tight inside my chest, a sun on a leash.
"Zara."
"I know," she said, breath catching. "Mouth."
I put my mouth on her because she wanted pleasure, not reverence polished into another cage.
The first stroke of my tongue over her clit made her hips jerk. Kael's hand tightened at her waist and immediately softened when she pressed back by choice. I licked her again, slower, learning the angle that drew breath from her lungs and made her fingers grip my hair.
"There," she said. "Again."
I gave her again.
Kael touched her breasts with careful pressure, thumb circling one nipple as his mouth brushed her shoulder. He asked before each change, and she answered in fragments.
"Yes. More. Kai, do not stop. Kael, harder. No teeth. Good."
Good nearly ruined both of us.
She tugged once at my hair. "One finger, Kai. Slow, while you use your mouth."
I slid one finger into her cunt when she told me to, slow and slick, and curled it when her thighs shook.
The taste of her filled my mouth, salt and heat and decision.
The sanctuary around us faded to firelight, black stone, Kael's ruby flashing red when his hand moved, and the orange seam in my broken cuff pulsing every time she said my name.
She came standing, held by Kael's arm and my mouth, with no effort to hide the sound. It rang up into the amber dome like a verdict no Council clerk would ever be allowed to edit.
I eased her down carefully until her grip in my hair loosened.
"Stay or space?" Kael asked against her temple.
"Stay," she said. Then, because fear had left her precision intact, "Both. I want the cushions. Kai inside me first. Kael with my mouth and hands. If I want to change, I will say it."
Every thought I owned caught fire and became useless.
Kael's eyes met mine over her shoulder. Care for her steadied his gaze, and for the line we were done turning into a rope.
I nodded once.
We moved because Zara directed us. Kael guided her to the low ember-silk cushions before the hearth while I stripped off the rest of my clothes with less grace than urgency. He undressed with old-world control, folding nothing, thank the mountain.
Zara watched us both with desire free of shyness or debt. Her gaze moved over my bare body, my scars, the angry glow under the broken cuff. Then over Kael's pale chest, the old execution scar through his lower ribs, the hard line of his cock.
"Beautiful," she said.
Kael went still as if the word had struck blood.
I swallowed a joke and let it become truth instead. "You too. Please tell me you knew."
"I knew men looked," she said. "This is different."
"Yes," Kael said. "It is."
She lay back on the cushions and crooked two fingers at me. "Kai. Slowly. I want to feel myself choose every inch."
I came over her, braced on my right forearm, keeping the cuffed arm away from her skin. "If anything feels wrong, say it. Change your mind after I start, and I stop."
"I will."
"Kai."
"Yes?"
"Inside me."
I guided my cock to her and pushed in with a restraint that made my vision spark. She was slick from my mouth, tight and hot around me, and alive under me in a way that had nothing to do with fate and everything to do with her eyes open on mine. I stopped halfway because her breath caught.
"Good?"
"Good. More."
I gave her more until I was seated deep and shaking with the effort not to move before she asked.
Kael knelt beside her shoulder, leaving clear space between our bodies. Zara reached for him. He bent at once and kissed her, slow, while her hand wrapped around his cock. The sight nearly ended me because she had made the impossible arrangement simple by choosing each piece of it.
"Move," she breathed against Kael's mouth.
I moved.
Slow at first, then deeper when her heels pressed into the cushions and she lifted to meet me. Kael's mouth stayed on hers, taking only what she gave. Her hand moved on him with the rhythm she set for me, and I watched his control crack one careful line at a time.
Competition and tally had burned off. Only Zara remained in the center of her own desire, and us finally intelligent enough to follow.
"Touch my clit," she told Kael.
He asked with his eyes. She nodded. His free hand moved down her stomach, careful to keep clear of me. His fingers found her clit above where my cock slid into her. The first circle made her arch, cunt clenching around me so hard I had to stop moving.
"Do not stop," she ordered.