by Kenna Bardot
When I lifted my eyes from her tail and looked to where they sat in the main space, nobody moved a muscle. No one even dared to twitch a cheek as they stared at me.
"What did you just say?" Char asked, his voice barely a whisper. Worry flooded me. Char's voice going quiet usually meant anger. It usually meant a punishment would follow.
Had I miscalculated their desire for a child?
"I'm pregnant," I repeated, forcing my voice louder than I wanted it to be. The words sounded like the crack of a whip through the air, too sharp in the quiet room. Tate flung himself to his feet, crowding into my space in an ambush as he wrapped me up in his arms and held me to his chest tightly. Gentle hands stroked over my hair as he whispered into my head. With his voice so mumbled, I couldn't even begin to understand what he said, but there was no questioning the way he clung to me.
Ryle's enormous arms tugged me away from him finally, pressing my back to his chest as he peppered my face and neck with soft touches of his lips against my skin. Hollis touched my other cheek, staring down at me with warmth in those intense red eyes. "It's only been a year, are you sure?" he whispered, and his voice was full of the marvel I'd only been able to dream of hearing.
Uncertain that I'd know how to mother, questioning if I'd be able to devote the attention I wanted to my child, I'd worried my Sires would feel that about me. That they would question me as much as I questioned myself. The thought had driven me near insanity, but at least if I couldn't believe in myself, they didn't seem to share my concerns. “Yes, I’m sure. My tongue turned blue when I ate the Valen leaf.”
As Shephard took control and drew me away from the other three, he and Char surrounded me. "Most couples struggle for many years before they conceive," Char said, ever the pragmatist.
"Maybe there is something to having a harem of men who fuck you constantly. Who could have known?" I snorted at my sarcasm, because the reality would always be pregnancy being more achievable for me. I had five times the suppliers as the other wives.
"You should have told us earlier!" Shephard scolded me, confirming all the fears I felt regarding the overprotective nature they were already determined to implement even when I was not pregnant. Now that I was, I knew I stood zero chance. "You shouldn't have been trucking around in fields all day."
"Don't start with me," I warned. My finger raised, pointing in his face and trying to make it clear from early on that I wouldn't tolerate his bullshit. "I'm pregnant, not crippled, and the last I checked I didn't sprout a giant belly overnight, Shep." Resisting the urge to roll my eyes, I tried not to let the grin on his face bother me.
I had to hope that in time he would understand his desire to constantly protect me to the point of ridiculousness would suffocate me. We would have time to figure out the new dynamics and the new compromises we needed to meet to survive my pregnancy without killing each other. Char seemed to decide he was done with watching me glare at the stormy man, taking my hand and guiding me to the bedroom. Behind me, the stove clicked off as the others moved to follow.
"You know, you don't have to fuck me now. One of you already knocked me up," I teased, making Char's face explode in a blinding grin that was so unlike him that I felt my heart thaw just a little of the ice I'd tried to build up in anticipation of the fights I knew would come.
"We don't only fuck you to knock you up. Today, it’s because you need to be punished for not telling us," he murmured, guiding me over to the bed and sitting me down on the edge.
I opened my mouth to argue that it was unfair to blame me for being cautious.
"We also do it just because we love you," Tate whispered, kneeling on the edge next to me as Hollis crawled up behind me and loosened the fastenings of the uniform I never left the house without. When the leather armor gaped on my spine, Tate reached his hands up and helped guide it down my arms until he tugged it off each wrist gently and tossed it to the floor in the corner. Narrowing my eyes on him, I tried to compel him to pick it up.
They all knew how much it irritated me to see it on the floor. Char caught my attention when he snagged his fingers on my pants and tugged so I had to either let him fumble or lift my ass. Letting him guide them off my legs, I kicked at him when his fingers trailed over the arch in my foot after he'd tugged them and my boots off.
He stepped back, stripping out of his own clothes, and I vaguely saw Shep and Ryle doing the same on either side of the bed as Tate and Hollis each took an arm and guided me to my back in our bed. The moment my bare skin met the silky cushioning of our duvet, I sighed in contentment. Letting my eyes drift shut, I waited, anticipating the moment when one of them would touch me. Somehow, they always seemed to be so in sync without words, to know exactly what they wanted to do to me.
It was no exception when full lips touched mine, teasing my mouth open with a gentle stroke of tongue. Hollis' scent washed over me, all seduction and clean spice as I sighed my relief and reached up a hand to touch his short curls. I wanted more of him, wanted him to touch me elsewhere, but his hands never touched any inch of my flesh.
There was no contact but his mouth on mine, not until the moment when another mouth touched my left breast, teasing my nipple with gentle flicks of a tongue. Another wrapped around my right nipple, sucking and biting harshly. I wanted to look down and see who touched me, wanted to watch the faces of the men I loved as they worshiped my body, but Hollis demanded all my attention. He held me prisoner with his mouth, with the artful strokes of his tongue against mine as a fourth mouth touched the sensitive skin just above my hip bone. My hips rose off the bed as my legs spread of their own accord, too overwhelmed by all the dueling sensations. All the wet points of contact where a mouth touched my skin. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Until finally, two hands touched the inside of my thighs, spreading my legs even wider and a weight settled between them. Whoever it was wrapped his arms around the bottom of my ass, his hands coming to rest on the tops of my thighs as he dragged his tongue through my wet slit. I writhed beneath the touch, unable to control the way it jarred my body out of the languid stupor of desire the others had worked me into. It was only then that hands came down on my body.
One at my hip, pinning me to the bed.
One on each of my ribs, below my breasts and at my shoulder.
And one to the side of my face, keeping my head turned to give Hollis the angle he wanted to work my mouth over and melt me into a puddle.
The fact that I couldn't see - that aside from knowing it was Hollis' mouth on mine - I had no idea who touched me where, only drove me higher. Safe knowing that the five of them would never tolerate another man touching me, that my body was theirs and theirs alone, I relaxed into the feeling of complete adoration as they dedicated themselves to my orgasm.
It loomed just over the horizon that they drove me toward.
I knew it was Tate between my legs when he groaned, abandoning his soft, worshipful ministrations in favor of burying his face against me and devouring me like the sweetest dijari fruit in Demiorgo. I whimpered into Hollis' mouth, wanting the orgasm more than my next breath.
When Tate slid two fingers inside me, I clenched around them and came with a scream, feeling each of the men continue to lick and suck and taste me until my breathing evened out and I collapsed to the bed. Spent of all energy, I contemplated telling them to take care of one another, but I knew without a doubt that they would just take whatever it was they wanted, anyway.
At some point, I'd become okay with that. I'd grown to love that, even.
There were no boundaries between us, and while I knew for most couples that probably seemed like an unnatural progression, it worked for us in a way that left me feeling complete in their arms.
Like their brutality was a part of me I'd been missing all my life. Until I found them. It was wrong, but right because it made me feel so complete.
Strong arms gathered me up as Hollis, Ryle, and Tate scrambled off the bed. Char laid out where I'd been as Shep positioned me on
my knees at the edge of the bed. Guiding himself to my center, he shoved deep on the first thrust and I tossed my head back on a cry. Char's fingers laced in my hair, his other hand grasping the base of his cock so he could press my head toward it. Opening with a playful glare, I drew him inside while Shep fucked me from behind. With his rough fingers digging into my hips and Char's pulling my hair as he guided my mouth up and down on his length, the harshness of it all was so at odds with the gentle touches of their mouths on me when they'd first touched me.
The change drove me higher as Shep battered into me, finally emitting a roar as he filled me with warmth and sent me tumbling over the edge as I screamed my release around Char and took him with me.
Swallowing while in the blinds of an orgasm was never easy, but they often gave me no choice. As soon as Char recovered, he climbed off the bed. Tate took his place, spinning me to face away from him as he lowered me down on his length. Shep still hovered at the edge of the bed, twitching in the final pulses of his own release with his shaft hanging heavy and slick in front of him.
I giggled, the sound only stifling when Tate lowered me to his hips and guided me to my back on top of him. He fucked me in a few leisurely strokes through my swollen flesh, and by some unseen command Hollis knew the exact moment he should reach underneath me and guide him to my ass. The other man helped Tate work inside me slowly, and then he moved to my head and held his cock in front of my face with a silent command to open up. But I couldn't focus, couldn't think of anything else as Ryle settled between Tate's legs and pressed my legs together.
Resting them against his shoulder, he kept them together and slid his cock through the tight passage that my pussy pressed together created. With my legs squeezed together so fiercely, he felt even bigger inside me.
That was only compounded by the fullness in my ass as Tate made shallow thrusts and allowed his brother to slide inside me. When I gasped, Hollis grinned down at me and touched his head to my parted lips. I darted my tongue out to taste him, teasing him before I finally opened my mouth.
It seemed fitting that he'd use my mouth, when he'd been the one to use it to turn me on originally. As Ryle and Tate set their alternating rhythm inside me, the one that they'd perfected with all the twin sandwiches they'd given me in our year together, Hollis drove as deep as the position allowed. With his girth, it wasn't much, and I felt horrible for it. My hand reached up, stroking what length I just couldn't take. I wanted to do more. Wanted to do everything I could to please him in the way he always took care of us, but I couldn't focus.
Couldn't function.
Not with the way Ryle's hips bucked against me and seemed to increase to such a fevered pitch that he almost drove his twin out of me, but Tate only groaned beneath me, his lips coasting over the skin of my shoulder and neck as he waited for his twin to finish inside me.
When Ryle finally came, it was with a deafening roar that made my body pulse between the two of them. The orgasm was more slight, my body nearly wrung dry from the two orgasms they'd already given me, but unable to resist the pull of the Sire bond. When Ryle collapsed to the bed, Hollis hurried to fill the gap and took his place. He didn't keep my legs together the way the other man had, letting them spread wide as he leaned his weight over me and he and Tate took me in a more languid pace. Working together, filling me fully and retreating, even though it felt like they might spread me open completely.
It was ridiculous to think it, when they'd made me accept worse.
Faint whispers of lips and fingers coasting over my skin were gentle teases as they made love to me.
When we finally came, it was as a unit. An explosion of all three of us triggering one another's releases and collapsing into a puddle of sex and sweat.
When Hollis finally pried himself off me, he glanced down at my still flat belly and touched it with admiring hands. "So beautiful. You'll be even more beautiful when you start to show," he whispered, and I smiled up at him sleepily.
I was only vaguely aware of Tate rolling my weight off him. Of someone cleaning between my legs with a wet towel.
Then I fell asleep to the soft murmurs of the men I loved surrounding me.
Chapter Thirty
Mireyah
The stone of the wash basin felt cold as I gripped it with my hands. I was still a little weak from having puked out my lunch so I needed the support to prop myself up to stand. At my feet, Hydra cooed as I stared at my reflection in the mirror.
My face was pale, bags under my eye, and my lungs heaved with the effort to breathe. I turned on the tap, splashing cool water on my face, feeling absolutely human when I realized I could have achieved the same thing with my Kald.
Did pregnancy brain set in so early?
One would think being a Goddess meant I could have escaped all the natural aches and pains a gestating mother would go through, but it appeared that wasn't the case. Or at least, not for those of us with human origins according to Jas. Having finally confided in her about my pregnancy, she’d made me an elixir formulated for human born Goddesses.
I loved humans, and I didn’t regret having once been one. But it seemed like just one more way I was different from a born Goddess. Ascension should have meant freedom from the battle human women faced when pregnant. I dropped beside the toilet again, groaning as another wave of nausea crashed over me.
“Why must it be like this, Hydra? I feel so horrible.” She cooed in response and traipsed over to the sink where I had placed the elixir. She brought it over to me, clasping it in her snout and nuzzling the side of my head as she did.
“Such a good girl.” I stroked her head as I removed the stopper in the tiny brown bottle and downed the thick contents inside. Jas promised that it would be a pleasant taste, but even that was gag worthy with my irritable stomach and nose.
Making a disgusted sound, I threw the bottle into the garbage and waited for it to take effect as the slimy feel of it slid down my throat. I shuddered to think I would have to take more the further along I got, but the discomfort of the elixir couldn’t rival the discomfort I underwent under Zia Dracari of House Vide. Not to mention the fact that Gaige had been there for my training, so Zia had gone all out.
I shared a look with Hydra, and I knew that she was recovering as much as I was from the training Zia, Zephyr and even Gaige had put us through to get us ready for serving in the Unwanted Lands. Even having a Vide as one of my Sires had not prepared me for the unique ways that one of their kind could dish out pain.
I slammed the lid of the toilet bowl closed and sat, heaving out a huge sigh. I didn't doubt that what he did to us was necessary, and as the weeks passed he pushed us beyond what I felt comfortable. One step further every day that passed until I felt I would break.
It was an inconvenient time to be pregnant. I laid a hand on my belly where I wasn't really showing yet, but where somehow I knew Hydra could already feel the new life. She padded over to me and laid her head on my lap, her snout nudging at my belly as the setting sun filtered in through the flimsy curtains that hung on the bathroom's windows.
It deepened the color of her scales to an almost burnt umber, cast a golden tint over the shining pale gray tiles in the guest bathroom of the home Haisley shared with her husband Chett. Not for the first or the last time that day, I wished I was home, with my feet up and sipping a nice big cup of hot herbal tea as Hollis knew how to fix for me in just the way I liked it.
But I was there because I was also a Dragon Guard, and being Dragon Guard was not just a duty but a member of a family. I was not just Mireyah, the wife and the soon-to-be mother.
The thought of being a mother made me gulp with nerves. I already loved and cherished the baby growing inside me because I'd made it with the men I loved, but I was still so uncertain if I would be enough for it.
I had said that I wanted to feel ready before I could have a child. I was nowhere even close to ready.
A knock sounded on the door. "Mireyah, you okay, honey? Do you need water, mayb
e some tea?"
I smiled and pushed myself off the improvised seat I'd taken and walked forward to open the bathroom door. "I'm fine, Haisley, thanks. Just a little peaked. Training was harsh today."
She reached out to rub my arm before bending down to give Hydra a stroke. "I'm sorry, darling. I really am. I'd ask if your training was speeding along too much because you don't look too well, but I figure it's because I've been out for three days.”
"You look fantastic, Haisley. For someone who's been asleep for the last seventy-two hours, you look no worse for wear. Hell, I should be the one asking if you want tea or water. It’s just not fair." I laughed as the tiny dragon that sat on Haisley's shoulder sniffed at Hydra, who offered one of her front claws for the younger dragon to examine.
"Thanks. I feel fantastic. Like a million dragons stampeding in my tummy, but nevertheless fantastic. If I didn't know that I'd just woken up this afternoon, I'd have said you were the one who'd been asleep for the last three days." She rubbed circles on my back, and I wanted to blurt it out.
Given that I wasn't showing yet and the fact that she'd been asleep for the last three days, I hadn't told her I was pregnant yet. I'd been unsure if I could, but seeing that nothing much had changed when I'd confided with Jas meant I should have been able to trust her.
I called her my friend, but I didn't afford her the courtesy of treating her like one. But as I looked at the way she glowed and muttered to herself, I knew I could not take from that. At least not at that very moment.
I touched the circlet that wrapped around my head, feeling the cool smoothness of the bloodstone that was displayed in the middle of my forehead. "Are you ready?"
Her eyes followed where my hand was and fixated there. "I think I am. It's hard when you've seen it happen so many times, celebrated with friends that their time has finally come. Then suddenly snap, it's your turn and it doesn't seem real when you've always stood to the side and hoped for yours. When I woke up earlier today and Chett was there, all I could do was cry in his arms." She reached up to rub her eyes where tears pooled.
