Chapter 72
It took all Raye’s courage to keep standing there, smiling up at Gaelfr, while her audacious request shimmered out into the garden around them.
Take me on this altar, and make me your mate.
Gaelfr froze to utter stillness before her, gaping down at her with stunned, unblinking eyes, and Raye kept fighting for courage, for all the ways she knew he wanted this, too.
The way he’d fucked her that morning, the letter he’d written her, the sword she still had hanging at her side.
The way he’d said, I wished to be your mate, woman. I have always wished for this.
“Please, Gael?” she murmured, spreading her fingers against his muddy chest, feeling the furious thrum of his heartbeat. “I would be — so honoured, to be your mate. So blessed.”
Her eyes flicked up to the sky, to the watching silvery eye of their goddess, and Gaelfr glanced up, too, and betrayed a deep, full-body shudder.
Enough that Kalfr huffed a laugh and circled his arm around Gaelfr’s back, inhaling at his neck.
“Ach, the scent of you, Gael,” he murmured.
“Now come. You should not wish to disappoint my brave, lovely mate, should you?”
Gaelfr reflexively shook his head, though he otherwise didn’t move, his eyes still wide and shocked on Raye’s face. And with another amused chuckle, Kalfr nudged him toward the altar, and drew Raye along beside them, too.
Gaelfr’s dazed eyes slightly sharpened as Kalfr turned him to face Raye beside the altar, and then began unfastening Gaelfr’s trousers, his fingers moving with deft, familiar ease.
While Raye’s hands settled against Gaelfr’s chest again, smoothing over the mud and familiar scars, and the faint streaks of ash and blood from earlier that day, too, proof of his fealty that hadn’t quite washed away.
“W-woman,” Gaelfr finally stammered. “You — wish for this. From me.”
He sounded uncertain, incredulous, and it flooded Raye with relief, with a surge of bright, dangerous affection. “Yes, Gael,” she murmured, and her hand slid downwards, toward where Kalfr had released his hard, heavy cock from his trousers, ready and waiting for her touch. “I want this, from you.”
His shaft spasmed in her hand, already spurting its wetness against her wrist, and she was only half-aware of Kalfr slipping around behind her, and undressing her, too.
Drawing off her belt and her sword, and then slipping off her dress and chemise, too, until she was fully bared together with Gaelfr beneath the cool watching moonlight.
A state that Raye would have once found unsettling, or alarming, but instead it drew up more hunger, more bravery, especially when Kalfr’s warm hand caressed up her bare side, his mouth kissing softly at her throat.
“I’ve wanted to be your mate for a long time, Gael,” Raye continued, holding his eyes, stroking his ever-swelling hardness in her fingers. “I didn’t even try fighting it, all this time, did I?”
Kalfr laughed indulgently against her neck, and his body shifted closer behind her, so he could run one hand down her front, and join her in stroking Gaelfr’s shaft with the other.
Their hands now curving together as they pumped him, milking him out for them, spattering a splash of his warm sweetness across Raye’s belly.
“Ach, he never fought this, either, saeta,” Kalfr murmured, as his deft fingers slid further down Gaelfr’s front, cupping and rolling his heavy bollocks.
“You ought to have scented him, whenever you welcomed his touch and his care — and most of all whenever he watched me plough you, and fill you with my seed. So greedy. So jealous.”
Raye’s breath escaped in a laugh, too, and she shot an astonished look toward Kalfr behind her — but his own eyes were wicked, conspiratorial, pleased.
“You hungered for my mate, ástin mín,” he drawled toward Gaelfr.
“You longed to touch her, and tend her, and bury yourself deep inside her with me. You wished to make her squeal and spurt for you, and swell with your good strong seed.”
Gaelfr’s breath heaved, his eyes holding helplessly on Kalfr’s face, while Kalfr flashed him a stunning, teasing grin, and slipped his hand down over Raye’s belly.
To where it felt softer, fuller, than it had even that morning, and when she let it fill with her breath, pressing its roundness into Kalfr’s touch, he rewarded her with a knowing nibble to her neck, another low, approving laugh.
As if he wanted to taunt Gaelfr with her, to taste that jealousy in his scent.
“And she has granted you this, Gael,” Kalfr murmured, and oh, now Raye could feel the hardness in his own trousers, too, prodding hungry against her back.
“She has welcomed your good care and feeding. She has swallowed dozens of your good loads inside her. She has welcomed your filling, your fucking, your new life in her empty womb. Our new life.”
Gaelfr’s breath came out in a desperate growl this time, his eyes darting between Kalfr and Raye’s faces, and then down to Raye’s belly.
His entire body had begun slightly vibrating, as if he was forcing himself to stay still, and Kalfr responded by drawing Raye backwards, up onto the altar beside him.
Both of them kneeling together on the soft fur someone had helpfully spread across it, while Gaelfr kept watching them with hazy, greedy eyes.
“So come, Gael,” came Kalfr’s heated voice, as his hand slid down between Raye’s thighs, caressing gentle and approving against where she was already slick and quivering. “Take what I offer you, upon this altar. What my mate offers you, also.”
Gaelfr came a quick, jerky step closer, another guttural growl rumbling from his throat, and Raye held his blazing eyes as she stroked her belly, too. Showing him what he’d done, flaunting how she was already forever changed, because of him.
“Please, Gael,” she whispered. “Please, make me your mate. I need you, I’ve always needed you, I —”
But then, oh hell, Gaelfr lunged forward, and up onto the altar.
Prowling on all fours toward Raye, huge and dangerous and powerful, his claws out, his teeth bared, that growl still burning from his throat.
“Mine,” he rasped, as he came still closer, crowding her backwards, down onto the fur. “Mine.”
Raye gasped and nodded, sinking fully back onto the fur, spreading her legs wide around him.
Inviting him even closer, wanting him to crawl over her like this, to trap her here beneath him.
And fuck, that was the feel of his heavy, hanging cock, already hungrily rooting between her spread legs, flexing and shoving as it searched for its way inside.
And beside them, Kalfr let out another heated laugh as he slipped his hand down, and notched Gaelfr’s bulbous, spasming, dripping-wet crown into Raye’s slick open heat.
“Good, ástin mín,” Kalfr breathed in his ear, soft and soothing. “My sweet mate is wide open for you. Ready to offer herself for your ploughing. Your claiming.”
Gaelfr barked another low, feral growl, his body convulsing, his eyes rolling back, his cock wildly spasming against Raye’s trembling heat. As if he was about to snap, to explode, to drive himself home and howl to the moon above —
But instead, he dragged in a great, wrenching breath, gasping something that might have been a prayer — and with obvious effort, he dropped his frenzied eyes to Raye’s face. “You are yet,” he gasped, between breaths, “sure of this? Of me?”
But it was the easiest, most natural thing in the world for Raye to nod, to smile fondly back up at Gaelfr, to stroke at his beloved face. “Yes, Gael,” she whispered back. “I’m sure. I swear to you. Before the goddess, before my mate, before —”
Her eyes flicked sideways, toward what she’d perhaps already scented, here all around them.
Their band. Eyolf and Iyolf, Skirvir and Fengr, Rurik and Julian, Soren and William, Egil and Othan.
All of them here, witnessing this, and as Raye blinked toward them, Eyolf and Iyolf stepped closer, and began shyly spreading something white and green onto the altar around them.
Fresh flowers, for them. For their blessing.
“Before all our generous, brilliant band,” Raye whispered, as she met Gaelfr’s gaze again, “I swear it, Gael.”
It was her showing it, proving it, beyond all doubt, for anyone who wanted to see — and she could feel the way it struck Gaelfr, could taste the stark, dizzying relief in his eyes and his scent.
And his tooth bit his lip, hard enough to draw up red beneath it, as he shakily drew his fist to his heart, and then slid it down to clench over Raye’s thundering heart, too.
“Good, saeta,” he choked. “Good. I am — most honoured.”
Most honoured. For a breath, there was only more shaky, sweeping relief, a rising wheeling euphoria, Kalfr’s grin toward them so warm and pleased and triumphant — but then it all shot away, blasted into the fierce, head-swarming power of Gaelfr’s huge cock driving deep inside her, filling her, claiming her, making her his.
Raye’s cry rang through the garden, her body quivering and seizing around him, her hands scrabbling against his broad back, dragging him down closer.
And fuck, the feel of him as he sank heavy onto her, his body so big and hot and overwhelming, covering her, closing her in, while his spasming pole began pounding in and out, rapid and compulsive, as if it couldn’t bear to be still.
As if every last part of him needed to rut, to fuck, to feed, to fill.
“Please, Gael,” Raye gasped, as she clung to him, arched herself up to meet him, felt her greedy heat stroking him, milking him, needing more and more of him. “Fuck. Yes. Please.”