Pounding Earth

by ERIN BEDFORD

  “Just breath,” Raiden told me circling his fingers inside of me. Soon, I was moving again, my breath coming out in gasps and groans. “That’s it, love. Just relax.” Raiden moved closer to me, his length rubbing against my butt. I had a feeling I knew where this was going, and I wanted it. Oh, did I want it.

  I didn’t even stop when I felt an emptiness where his fingers had been before, because it was soon replaced by the head of him pressed where his hand had been before. The next rock of my hips sank him into me, and my breath caught. My tongue darted out as I met Jack’s eyes. He nodded as if to say I could do this. Not that I needed the encouragement, but it was appreciated. At a snail’s pace, I lowered my hips, pulling Jack and Raiden inside of me.

  Stilling, I closed my eyes as I tried to get used to the fullness. If I had thought Raiden’s fingers before had been great, it didn’t even compare to this.

  Neither of them moved or forced me to go any faster than I wanted to but even I couldn’t wait any longer. I lifted myself back up and then lowered my hips. The second time was even better than the first, so much so I did it again. Jack’s hands on my hips tightened and helped move me. My breathing became labored, the heat of Raiden on my back and Jack cool against my front only adding to the pleasure. I could feel my orgasm closing in on me, and for the first time, I worried I’d have a repeat of the other morning.

  “It’s okay,” Jack said as if knowing what I was thinking. “We’ve got you.”

  My breath hitched, and I couldn’t stop my release from coming. I closed my eyes and prayed I would keep it together. Jack reached it first, stilling beneath me, my own not far behind him.

  An overwhelming feeling of chaos spread throughout, and I couldn’t breathe. Jack’s fingers pinched at my hip, making my eyes open and lock with his again. The pain helped reign in the uncontrollable feeling I had just enough to let my orgasm take me without losing it.

  Raiden thrust a few more times before he too grunted and stilled behind me. He pressed his face against my back, the sticky feel of his skin not bothering me but the thought of crushing the triplets did. I shifted, gesturing for him to let me out from under him. I collapsed on the bed beside Jack, Raiden following behind me to lay on the other side.

  The only sound in the room were three sets of breathing. My body tingled and ached in all the right places. I’d never felt so satisfied before in my life.

  I stared up at the ceiling and then gaped, “Wow.”

  “Wow, indeed.” Jack echoed after me, his fingertips making designs on my arm.

  Raiden held my hand and brought it to his lips. “No more talk of going after Firestar.”

  I scoffed. “You think you can screw me into submission?”

  Raiden and Jack chuckled, that male kind of laugh that meant they knew what they were capable of. It’d have made me ready for round two if I wasn’t already thoroughly sexed up.

  When they didn’t respond, I sighed. “Fine, it’s not like I could walk right now anyway.” They laughed, and we settled in for the night, which I hoped wouldn’t end with just sleep.

  11

  Several days later, I sat on the floor of my bedroom, staring down at my hand. A flame flickered in my palm, small at first and then larger as I focused harder. I molded the fire into a ball the size of a baseball.

  I tossed it once and then twice in the air making it dance before me. It twisted and spiraled into a butterfly, its wings spread out in flight. Then it moved on its own, shifting into a familiar face. One I’d dreamed about for several nights now.

  I sighed and stared at the silhouette. Firestar. Where are you?

  The image warped again back into a ball of fire that settled on my palm. Controlling fire was much different than commanding any other element. With earth, I didn’t create it. I coaxed it and plants to do my bidding. The fire, on the other hand, couldn’t be coaxed. It had to be commanded, shown who was boss.

  My lips quirked up slightly. A bit like its owner. Firestar was volatile and could get out of control if not watched carefully. The rest of the elements were a bit different, no weaker than fire but a bit easier to manage.

  I held up my other hand, and it began to glow softly. The light grew slowly as the low hum turned into a crackle, sparks of electricity dancing around my hand. Electricity flirted. It teased. It didn’t take much to get it to do what you wanted. A promise of fun things to come was all the bargaining it took to get it to do what I wanted.

  A snort slipped out. Raiden wasn’t far off from the same.

  It took a while for me to be able to switch between the powers with such ease. Even now, I had a hard time keeping the fire from overwhelming the electricity. I closed my hand over the fire, willing it to go down, but the heat in my hand didn’t lessen. The ball of fire built up, shoving my fingers open as a large ball of flame took up most of my hand.

  Taking a deep breath, I stared down the flame, demanding it to disperse. When it didn’t work, I reached inside of myself and found the cold piece of me. A gentle outstretched hand was all it needed to come forth. My arm cooled as the magic crept through my veins and settled into my palm. The fireball that had gotten a mind of its own hissed and sizzled as the ice overtook it. Soon the fire extinguished, and a ball of ice took its place. It slipped out of my hand and crashed to the floor with a loud thud.

  The sound caused me to lose my concentration, and the energy in my other hand disappeared. I sighed and frowned at the ball of ice. Nudging it with my foot, I watched it roll across the floor and bump against the wall.

  I leaned back until I laid on the floor. I closed my eyes and breathed in and out. Raiden and Jack had tried their best to keep me so busy enough in the bedroom not to think about Firestar at night but during the day - it was harder.

  If I wasn’t in the library, searching every book I could for anything on my power situation, then I was in my room practicing. I had plates piled by the door that were taken by one of the servants every once in a while. I rarely went to the dining hall anymore. Carl, though, made sure I had anything I wanted to be delivered to my room. I had a constant pot of tea on the table near the window. It had probably gone long cold by now. Not that I had drunk any of it.

  I was tired of being calm.

  Sometimes, I practiced in the training fields but usually by myself or with a dummy. The guys had tried to help me at first, but after the first day, they started to be available less and less. I’d have been worried had I not known they were locked up in Lord Fafnir’s office all day. They saw him more than me at that point.

  Of course, I wasn’t allowed in the meetings. For my own good and those around me. Though I could argue that I hadn’t caught anything on fire in a few days. I could even have an orgasm without worrying about the upholstery.

  Unfortunately, that didn’t go the same for idiot douche bags with big mouths. I really didn’t like that Deric. Lord Fafnir was afraid I’d accidentally hit him with a fireball like I did Jack the other day. Believe me, if I attacked Deric, it wouldn’t be an accident.

  Nevertheless, here I was, practicing.

  I wasn’t missing out on anything really. Not the way Raiden explained it. It was a lot of arguing and boring tactician discussions.

  Should they attack from the north or to from the coast? What about the differences in magic? Would it harder for the ice dragons to fight against the electric ones? On and on it went. I’d had to stop Raiden long before he could give me the complete run down. Though I had a hard time being interested in the conversation, I still wanted to feel like I was a part of it, not just sitting on the sidelines, playing with magic.

  What made it worse was that Aeis got to be in on the meetings as the head of the Western Army. That made complete sense, of course, and I shouldn’t have been bitter about it, but I couldn’t help it. I was tired of being cooped up in my room or on the training field, practicing like I was some adolescent learning how to control my powers for the first time. Which I guess I was, when I thought about it that way.<
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  I blew out a hard breath and sat up. This was stupid. The scouts should have been back by now. It was worrying that we hadn’t heard anything yet. Firestar couldn’t have gotten far before he was taken, and there were only so many places he could be taken to.

  A bubbling in my stomach made me glanced down. “You guys think so too, huh?”

  “Oh no,” a voice groaned from behind me, followed by a chuckle. “Please tell me you haven’t broken down and started talking to yourself?”

  I twisted around to see Raiden leaning against the bedroom door, a lopsided grin on his face. Grunting, I pushed myself to my knees and then to my feet.

  Raiden reached out to help me just as I settled on my feet. I held onto his arm until I was steady before I turned and smacked him on the chest. “I’m not talking to myself, I’m talking to the babies.”

  “Oh, well, that’s different,” Raiden smirked, and I smacked him again. “How are my lovelies today?” He placed his hands on either side of my stomach, a soft look of adoration on his face. My heart warmed at the sight. He was going to be a great father.

  “They're good, a bit gassy.” I felt a series of bubbles in my stomach again and smiled as Raiden’s eyes widened.

  “What was that?”

  “They do move, you know.” I chuckled, amused by the look of terror on his face. It was like he expected them to pop out of me or something, like a cheap horror movie.

  Raiden moved his hands over my stomach, a sense of wonder in his eyes. “Do they do this often?”

  I shrugged and rotated my neck. “Only about every other minute. Especially, when I’m trying to sleep.” I shifted away from him, so his hand dropped. “I’m afraid before too long I won’t be able to sleep at all.” I shifted uncomfortably. “Or fit in my clothes.”

  “Well, there’s an easy fix for that.” Raiden slipped his arms in from behind me. “We’ll just have to get rid of them.”

  “The babies?” I jerked in his arms, my mouth dropping open. How could he even think such a thing? These were our babies. I couldn’t get rid of them just because I was a little inconvenienced. So, what if I couldn’t quite touch my toes anymore, and the sight of fish made me want to vomit? I wouldn’t trade them for all the world.

  Chuckling behind me unaware of my distress, Raiden nuzzled my neck. “No, your clothes.”

  “Ugh, don’t do that. I thought you wanted to …” I shook my head. “Never mind.” I pushed my way out of his arms and turned around. “Did you just come in here to flirt, or did you have a reason for disturbing my training?”

  “Can’t I do both?” He gave me a lopsided grin.

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “No, and where’s Jack? I thought he was with you.” I angled my head to look around him, like Jack was hiding back there or something.

  “He’s talking to his uncle.”

  “When is he not?” I rolled my eyes and sighed. “Did you guys at least figure anything out?”

  Tucking his hands into his pockets, Raiden rocked on his heels. His brow furrowed, and his tongue licked across his teeth. He was hiding something. Something he didn’t want to tell me.

  “What is it?” I stepped toward him, my chest tightening at what he might say. “Is it Firestar? Did you find him? He’s dead, isn’t he?” His silence was getting to me, making my mind call up all sorts of things.

  “Shh, shush now.” Raiden took me by the shoulders and pulled me to him. “Nothing like that. He’s not dead, but he has been taken.”

  I jerked my head back to look up at him. “Who? Who took him?”

  Raiden met my gaze and sighed. “The unaligned.”

  “The unaligned?” My face scrunched up. “Why would they want him?”

  Raiden released me and stepped back. “From what the trackers saw, it was the guys from his old regiment. The ones who wanted him to share you.” He stared me down as if trying to get me to remember.

  It wasn’t hard though. Everyone and their moms have wanted me to mate with them so I could give them powers. The joke was on them though, because I was pretty sure the only way they’d get it was if I wanted them back.

  Not that they would believe me.

  “I remember.” I gulped and inclined my head. “So, what do we do now? We’re going after him, right?”

  “Of course, we are,” Raiden reassured me. “We are gathering men as we speak to infiltrate the unaligned camp.”

  “Good, let’s go.” I started for the door, but Raiden caught my arm, stopping me. “What? Don’t think that I’m staying behind, not after everything that’s happened.”

  “Would it make a difference?” he asked. I glared at him, and he let out a bitter laugh. “I didn’t think so.” Dragging hand through his hair, Raiden huffed. “Lord Fafnir wants us to be diplomatic about all this. To contact the leader of the unaligned first, asking him to let Firestar go before we go charging in.”

  “Okay?”

  “And he thinks that the best way to do that is for us to go in there … together.” He circled between us with a frown.

  “Is that safe?” I questioned. While I didn’t want to be left behind, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be in the middle of the unaligned camp either.

  Nodding, Raiden took my hand. “We’ll meet him in a neutral spot, and then our men will sneak in and get Firestar out in case the talks goes south.”

  “So, it’s a setup. Won’t that piss the leader off?”

  Raiden snorted. “Probably, but we’ll be long gone by then. Besides, he doesn’t want to start a war with three out of the four regions, does he?” The grin on his face was positively lethal. I knew from the bottom of my heart, that if anyone could get Firestar out, it would be Raiden. After all, it’d be good practice for the fight to come.

  12

  The unaligned territory didn’t really belong to them. It sat on the junction of where the four kingdoms of Waesigar meet. Technically, they were in everyone’s territory. It’s how they had been able to stay there for so long without one of the lords coming in to kick them out. Any action by a lord to move against the unaligned would raise the tension between that lord and the others. No one liked armies near their borders, after all.

  Most of the time, the unaligned kept to themselves and didn’t make waves, another reason the lords didn’t find them worth the trouble. Lately, though, they’d begun to grow, and those newcomers weren’t just making waves. They were making tsunamis. My father was already on the verge of sending men in to take them out, and I had no doubt the rest of the lords would follow.

  Now, though, it wasn’t my father or the other lords they had to worry about. It was me, one pregnant, pissed-off dragon. A volatile combination that would decide if the unaligned even existed anymore after I was through with them.

  “Fix your face,” Raiden whispered next to me as we headed on foot toward the meeting place. It was just off the border of the North but not completely into the unaligned compound.

  “What’s wrong with my face?” I snapped, already irritable from the travel. I had a hard enough time getting comfortable in a real bed, sleeping on the cold hard ground wasn’t making it any easier.

  “You look ready to shed blood, love.” Jack touched my lower back. “We don’t want to give off the wrong kind of signal before we even start the talks.”

  “What kind of signal would that be?” I asked with as much snark as I could muster.

  “Threatening.”

  “They have one of my men. Of course, I’m threatening them.” I glared at Jack, my face heating up so much, I knew that I would accidentally light something on fire if I didn’t calm down. My fingers curled into fists, and I took deep cleansing breaths. Save the meltdown for the enemy.

  “We don’t know for sure that Orion sanctioned the capture,” my sister reminded me with a pointed look. Aeis, along with the twins, led the group and had to glance back over her shoulder to see me, but even then, I could feel the chastising coming off her in waves. “You don’t want to pick a fight wit
h the unaligned before you even become the Lady of the West, do you?”

  My jaw tightened, and I shook my head. “No, but if we find out that Orion was responsible for this, then all bets are off.” I flashed my fangs, my skin crackling with power. “They will burn with the rest of them.”

  “Maya.” My sister gave me a soft look. “You’re talking about women and children. Innocents who know nothing of what has happened. You can’t kill a whole group of people based on the actions of a few individuals among them.”

  My anger lessened, and I blew out a hard breath. “You’re right. But someone will pay, and it better be with blood.” I stomped forward until I passed my sister and the twins.

  “Is it just me, or is she getting pissier the bigger she gets?” Fujin muttered behind me, and my head snapped to look at him.

  “I heard that.”

  Fujin shrugged apologetically, but I’d already forgotten him, my attention turned to that of the large group standing over the hill. A dozen or so men gathered around one who, despite his simplistic dress, could not be mistaken for anything other than a lord.

  It was in the way he held himself. He didn’t shift or fiddle, his eyes firmly on the person who spoke to him. That was a younger man who I could only assume was his son. They were both handsome in their own way, with light brown hair and rugged features, definitely my sister’s type.

  “Maya.” Aeis’s warning voice made me realize I’d been grinning like a crazy person. “Whatever you’re thinking, stop. We’re here to save Firestar, remember?”

  I rolled my eyes. “How can I forget? But it wouldn’t hurt for you to use your feminine wiles on them. You know, soften them up a bit for us?” I smirked.