by Ariana Nash
“Venali!” Kalie beamed. “Well, don’t you look mighty fine tonight? Better than when Trey and I peeled your ass off the floor.”
Venali leaned against the bar, caught Kalie’s chin with his gloved fingers, and leaned in, placing a delicate kiss on her forehead. “What would I do without you?”
“Drink yourself into Alumn’s garden?” She playfully batted his hand away. “Get out of here. The three of you making eyes at each is distracting as hell.”
Venali turned his head, looking behind him. Conor raised his cup, wearing a lopsided grin. Venali faced Trey, making Trey’s skin simmer. They all knew what they wanted, but getting there required small talk nobody wanted. “That room from last night… The one out back…” Trey began, letting the sentence hang, possibilities lingering in the unspoken.
Venali pushed off the bar and headed for Conor, leaving Trey to assume he was following. Kalie waggled her eyebrows and blew him a kiss, waving him away. He drifted after Venali, watching the sentinel offer Conor his hand and gracefully lift him to his feet. Heat touched Conor’s cheeks. He melted around Venali, likely even loved him, but if he wanted to share, which clearly he did, Trey would play the third wheel. He couldn’t expect any more, not with a messenger’s life.
Any evidence of Venali’s episode had been cleaned away from the room. A couch and a chair, no windows, nothing fancy, just the one door in and out. Venali entered first, fingers already unlacing his waistcoat. Conor lit the single lamp, chasing the dark into the corners, and then turned the flame down, making the shadows slide across the walls.
Trey’s heart beat in his throat, making him breathless. He closed the door behind them. He was already hard and acutely aware of both males. Venali’s long fingers laid his waistcoat gently on the back of the couch, his every motion precise and elegant. Artful. Elegance was the last thing from Trey’s mind. Patience was pretty far off too. There was pleasure to be had in the wait, but Alumn, it was killing him to hold back and pretend nonchalance.
Conor pulled off his shirt, and as Venali turned to face him, Conor kissed him, long and slow, mouth open, tongue gently probing. Venali had his hand in his hair, holding Conor firm, but his gaze flicked to Trey and burned, making Trey’s cock jump. Venali’s attention roamed downward, finding his target eagerly pushing against the inside of Trey’s trousers. Venali undressed Trey with his eyes, and it was all Trey could do to stand still and let it happen. Then Conor broke the kiss, switching to Venali’s neck. Unbuttoning Venali’s shirt, Conor roamed his kisses down Venali’s warm, hard chest.
The last time they’d done this, Trey had pleasured Venali from behind. He hadn’t needed to look the sentinel in the eyes. Now, Venali’s intense glare had skewed him to the spot as Venali guided Conor’s head downward. On his knees, Conor worked on Venali’s trouser ties, yanking them open. He grasped his prize and licked from balls to tip.
Venali’s lips parted, his eyes bright with color, pupils blown wide.
Trey was done observing. He pulled his sweater off, leaving his snug undershirt on. Venali could remove it if he wanted more.
Conor closed his mouth over Venali’s taut cock, making Venali’s lashes flutter closed. Trey caught Venali’s jaw and turned his head away. He wanted Venali’s mouth on him, but not yet. There would be time for that. Right now, he needed to exert control. Trey kissed his neck and slipped a hand around Venali’s waist, relishing the hard warmth of lean muscle shuddering at his touch.
Venali’s breaths came fast, Conor working his erection as Trey swirled his tongue over his neck and down his shoulder, nipping here and there, pinching enough to make Venali gasp. Venali found Trey’s pant ties and yanked, jerking Trey’s crotch against Venali’s hip. Sensation blurred, Trey’s thoughts lost to the feel of Venali cupping Trey’s arousal through the trousers. He groped hard, lifting Trey’s balls, hinting at where this would go. Venali’s fingers worked, loosening off the pant ties and freeing Trey’s cock. Gloved fingers immediately closed over Trey’s swollen rod, squeezing over the tip, triggering Trey to buck.
“Ah, fuck—”
Venali’s hot mouth captured his. Trey had planned to pleasure him first, but Venali clearly had his own ideas. He kissed like he played, fast and hard, thrusting in and devouring.
Venali’s hand abandoned Trey’s cock, making him groan the loss into Venali’s mouth, and then Conor’s warm, tight, wet mouth closed over Trey’s tip.
Trey gasped from Venali’s mouth and looked down to where Venali’s hand guided Conor’s pace, while Conor’s mouth worked Trey’s cock. Venali controlling Conor while Conor got Trey off had to be the hottest damn thing Trey had seen in years.
“You like that?” Venali purred.
Conor took him deep, gagging slightly as Trey more than filled him. The male’s lips slid down his shaft. Yes wasn’t a strong enough word. He was losing his mind to pleasure, falling into the feel of Conor’s wet, tight lips working his cock while Venali’s mouth owned his neck and mouth and lips in other ways.
Gloved fingers stroked down Trey’s neck tattoos, and then Venali’s mouth was on them too, his tongue a wet, probing tease.
Conor pulled free, leaving Trey’s cock jumping, aching for tightness to envelop him again.
Venali eased off and pulled Conor to his feet, guiding him to the couch, where Venali knelt on one side, and then guided Conor onto the middle cushions. The male went down on him again, so willing and eager.
Trey grasped his own erection, stroking it, then wished he hadn’t as pleasure shuddered tightly through him. Too much of that and he wouldn’t last.
Venali tipped his head, gesturing at the side table with its single drawer. Trey found a convenient bottle of oil inside. After lathering himself up, he climbed onto the other end of the couch and took Conor’s ass in his hands, stroking over his hole. With Conor placed between them, Trey couldn’t look away from the stunning sight of Venali with his cock in Conor’s mouth.
Trey licked down Conor’s salty back and reached around the male’s waist, clutching his erection. The oil made his grip loose and free. Trey circled his fingers and thumb, making a tight O, and pumped Conor’s rod. Conor gasped around Venali’s erection and Venali chuckled a filthy laugh.
His laughter was a wicked delight, making Trey’s lips quirk.
Trey kissed Conor’s back, checking every few breaths that Venali still soaked up the sight. Conor’s body strummed, his hips finding their pace, thrusting through Trey’s hand. He came, pulling free of Venali, spilling his seed in spurts over the couch.
While Conor shuddered out his released, Trey slid his oil-slicked cock into Conor’s tight hole and nearly fucking lost his load before he’d even begun. Venali’s studious observation dialed everything up to a mind-numbing intensity there was no escape from, and then Venali was rocking, fucking Conor’s mouth again, his eyes locked on Trey’s. Trey pumped into Conor’s hot sheath. Conor’s clenched passage sucked him off. Trey grunted out his pleasure.
Venali was fucking mesmerizing, his mouth open, teeth biting into his lip, his hands holding Conor beneath him, cock plunging deep.
There was no holding back, no control. Trey lost all measure of sanity, and when Venali threw his head back, shuddering his seed down Conor’s throat, Trey came undone too, thrusting hard, grunting like a fucking animal, needing it faster, harder, until the pleasure snapped and the pulses pumped his seed deep into Conor’s ass. He swore, gasping out the words, and shuddered from after-pulses. Alumn, he wasn’t sure he’d ever come harder.
Pulling free twisted pleasure to pain. Seed dribbled from Conor’s hole. Trey collected his cream on his fingertips and gently stroked around Conor’s sensitive hole, making the male purr.
The burning look in Venali’s eyes said this was far from over.
They dressed, exchanging short, sharp, intent-filled glances, and left the room, weaving through the crowd and out, up the stairs, needing few words to know exactly where Venali was leading them next.
I
nside his home, Venali carelessly discarded his waistcoat over the back of a chair, picked up a convenient bottle of his strong mixture, and drank without missing a stride. He tore off his shirt and turned, grinned, and crooked a finger at Trey.
Trey remembered going to him, remembered making it to the bed, remembered Venali pouring the potent mix over his tongue, dribbling it down Trey’s chest, then Venali lapping it up. Conor was somewhere in the midst of it all too. His grip rougher than Venali’s gloved fingers, but his mouth was softer, more giving, less taking. Venali fucking owned Trey, thrusting his fingers in while his mouth took him too. There wasn’t much room for thought, just touch and taste, hard muscle and shimmering skin. Once the bed was knotted and drenched, Venali had them move to the shower and started all over again, fucking and probing every hand, hole, and mouth like it was Trey’s last night alive. Alumn, it was raw and hard and rough, and Trey couldn’t get enough of Venali in him to satisfy his rampant lust.
After they were spent and sore and fallen atop one another, Trey dozed, knowing two nights would never be enough.
Trey woke slowly, blinking into the harsh winter sunlight pouring in through Venali’s bedroom windows. Rays of sunlight draped over Venali’s longbow resting against the wall. The weapon was almost as tall as its owner, its curves just as desirable. A formidable weapon, like the male himself.
Warmth radiated beside Trey. He turned toward him and groaned around his body’s soreness, but it was a good soreness, the kind he’d be feeling for days.
Venali lay on his back, mouth quirked in a smile, naked body spread like a buffet for Trey’s enjoyment. His eyes were closed, but his half smile said he was very much awake.
Rolling onto his side, Trey stroked his fingertips down Venali’s chest, scraping his nails lower, skirting the male’s erection lying against his lower stomach, making Venali’s smile twitch. His cock twitched, too, and Trey’s mouth watered. He’d tasted all of him last night and was still fuzzy enough from the wine to want to mount Venali in the sunlight and make him cry out again. They were both clean from the shower, going another round was definitely an option. He’d lick him from cock to balls to ass. But if he did that, he’d want to stay, and the sun was already high enough.
Trey hooked a leg over Venali’s thigh and flicked his tongue over his nipple.
Venali’s eyes fluttered open, piercing through Trey.
He could go another round. Several, in fact. Spend the whole day wrapped in Venali. Though, they were missing their third. “Where’s Conor?” Trey croaked, almost ashamed he hadn’t noticed his absence sooner.
“Left at dawn,” Venali grumbled, his voice wrecked. “Goats or something…”
He sounded washed-up but deliciously sated, and in his sleepy, post-sex-and-alcohol state, he looked good enough to eat. His hair was a mess, sticking out at odd angles, and his smile was the softest Trey had ever seen on his lips. Trey’s heart did that strange little hiccup. He rolled onto Venali, trapping Venali’s hips under his thighs, making Venali’s alert cock ride up the valley of Trey’s ass.
Venali’s expectant expression did nothing to ease Trey’s arousal, propped up between them. Trey leaned down and kissed him slowly, savoring the male he’d trapped.
Venali stroked a finger up Trey’s spine, making him moan, turning the kiss messy and hungry and all the things they didn’t have time for.
“Stay,” Venali whispered, his chest rising and falling too fast. His fingers tangled in Trey’s hair. Not gloved, Trey noticed, watching Venali twirl a lock of hair. “One more night?” His green eyes skipped away from Trey’s scrutiny.
Someone like Venali didn’t ask for company, it was freely thrown at his feet. What did it mean that he’d asked Trey?
Trey’s skipping breaths and heart answered for him. “One more night,” he agreed against the corner of Venali’s mouth, then probed his tongue around its curve, luring Venali’s thoughts back into the moment.
Venali’s bare fingers stroked down Trey’s cheek, his smile shifting, and then traveled over the tattoos and down Trey’s neck. The touch felt divine and impossibly soft from someone as hard as Venali appeared to be on the outside.
“I can’t feel anything…” he admitted. “I can see from your expression that it’s good. I know you like it, but I can’t feel you beneath my hands.”
Trey stilled, but Venali continued to stroke over his shoulder and skim across his collarbone, circling and teasing his burned fingers across Trey’s skin in all the right ways.
“I pulled a friend from the flames.” Venali swallowed with an audible click. “He died anyway.” He dropped his hand, and his guard, too, letting Trey see the hurt in his eyes. He still wore a smile, but it was a battered, broken thing. The friend meant more to him than just-friends usually do. “These are my marks.” He turned his hand over in the sunlight, admiring how the light rippled over a patchwork of mottled scars.
“Does it hurt?”
“They ache sometimes. But I miss touch the most.”
Trey settled against Venali’s side and propped his head on his hand, looking down at the riddle of a male who seemed impossibly strong in the day, but so thoroughly vulnerable at night… and now. He felt things deeply, this stone-cold sentinel. More than he revealed in public.
“You mark yourself when you lose someone close.” Venali’s soft lashes fluttered, his eyes drinking Trey in. “Who did you lose?”
Trey touched the new tattoos on his neck. The memories all came back at once. The passion, moments stolen, and then how it all turned to darkness. Nye’s mind had been too far gone to save, but that hadn’t stopped Trey from trying. He dropped his hand. “A friend, like yours.”
“He meant a great deal to you?”
“He did, but he… I couldn’t save him either.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I.”
Hearing those words briefly choked him. Trey looked down, feeling the hurt keenly. He hadn’t allowed himself to hurt, not really. There had been assassins to train, and then messages to deliver, and he’d kept moving on. One foot in front of the other, time and time again. He’d failed Nye. He could have saved him, could have found a way…
“The war was never meant to end,” Venali whispered, blinking at the ceiling. “Alador tells us we must live our lives, tells us to make a pride of our own, to look to a future we were never supposed to have. He tells us to change who we are. I tell the assassins the same, but it’s a lie.”
“Why?”
Venali turned his head, facing Trey, and for the first time, Trey saw the real Venali, the male beneath the mask. His eyes shimmered, drowned in emotion, and his mouth tilted like he tried to dam everything inside. “How can I tell them to look to the future when I cannot see tomorrow?”
Alumn, he hurt, too. All the bluster and ego, it was an act, one he wore every night for everyone else, so they saw it was possible to survive, to keep moving forward, but inside, Venali was lost.
Venali blinked quickly, catching himself before he fell. He frowned, maybe at himself, maybe at Trey, and sat up, turning away.
Trey wanted to pull him back down, to kiss him and fuck him until they both forgot the hurt, like last night, like before. Instead, he watched Venali collect his fresh clothes and dress in the work colors stamped with the Ashford tree symbol. The symbol was his shield, keeping others out. There were no more monsters to fight, not outside. But the monsters still lingered, only now they were inside.
“Don’t you ever get a day off?” Trey asked, stretching beneath the sheet, hoping to lure Venali back to bed.
“Elves are dying. Nobody else is going to find out why.”
And now he was right back to being the untouchable Sentinel Venali. Pillar of Ashford.
Venali pulled on his gloves, completing the picture.
“I want to help. I have one more day…”
Venali opened his mouth to protest, like he would have done in the past, but he paused, considered it, straightened his
long coat, and nodded, tacking on a new, fragile smile, one that hooked into Trey’s heart.
There seemed little to base Venali’s murder theory on besides a hunch. If someone was killing assassins, that someone either had to be incredibly strong or well known to the victims. Assassins didn’t die easily.
Having a killer among them didn’t seem likely, but neither did suicide. Perhaps a dragonkin had snuck in among the humans, but dragons could be sniffed out. Any dragonkin wouldn’t have been able to hide in Ashford for long. That left human or elf.
After a second day of questioning, they’d failed to uncover any new information. This time, when dusk came around and Venali finished his work, he invited Trey inside his mind with no more than a flick of his hand.
Trey made the tea while Venali stripped out of his uniform and reappeared dressed to kill, yet again. There were other elves in Ashford who enjoyed similar luxuries; it wasn’t just Venali. But he made everyone else look like wild, ragged elflings scrabbling in the dirt.
“Who makes your clothes?” Trey fought off a laugh.
Venali folded his arms beside Trey and leaned a hip against the counter, looking like some perfect picture of sophisticated elf that Trey wanted to rip open with his teeth and dry fuck into a wall. “I can introduce you to her if you like? Alumn knows you could do with a little style. Yours is a little… wild.”
“My style is just fine. A fancy waistcoat won’t keep me warm on the trails.”
Venali stepped closer, reached around Trey for his tea, and brought the cup to his lips, standing firmly inside Trey’s personal space. Another inch and there’d be nothing between them. “Keep looking at me as you are, Trey, and we won’t make it to AD tonight.”
“That’s fine with me.” Trey set his cup down before he dropped it and lifted his gaze to the male who had tied his heart in knots.
