“Oh, how sweet and tight you are,” Gryphon crooned and the room radiated with our light, was brilliant with our glowing pleasure.
As if given some signal, Amber bent his head and took a tightly beaded nipple into his hot mouth. He sucked and tugged on the incredibly sensitive, elongated tip at the same time that Gryphon pulled his finger halfway out and then pushed back into me with slow determined force. I cried out and exploded. Shafting brilliance burst from me like a physical expression of the undoing within me. Waves of convulsions overtook me and ecstasy blinded me to all but the rhythm of my own body spasming and clenching around the two thick things that stretched me, filled me, were within me. And I held them tightly, as if they were my only anchors in a world gone trembling wild.
The ground tilted and careened as my devastating release passed, and I realized, when my senses were able once more to sense normally, that we were on the floor. Amber was lying on his back with me braced on top of him, and he was still hard and thick within me, still glowing as my light absorbed back into me. His golden amber eyes glittered wild and feral with his leashed passion.
“You didn’t come,” I said.
“No,” he rumbled, and the sensation of that vibration passing up through me—felt most acutely where he still throbbed within me—forced my eyes to close and my breath to stop.
Before I could ask why he had held back his release, the feel of a hard velvet shaft sliding down from behind to touch me in that intimate space where Amber stretched me, shocked me silent. Gryphon’s length dipped and glided between my legs, rolling in the honeyed wetness that over-[ ]flowed from me.
“Gryphon?” I asked questioningly.
“Let me in,” he whispered, his warm breath a silky caress shivering my ear as his body blanketed me from above. “Let me come into you fully.”
I didn’t know what Gryphon meant until his finger slid out of my sphincter. The pull of his leaving tugged sound from my throat, and then I felt another hard presence there, wet from my own fluids, bigger, wider than his finger had been.
“Let me in,” he murmured and slowly pushed in.
“Oh!” The melting laxness left my body and I tensed unbearably tight again. “Oh, God…[ ]Gryphon.”
The stretching was almost painful. Pleasure and pain mixed and became sublime. Beneath me Amber arched up, his huge body straining with restraint not to move more as Gryphon slowly sank his shaft into my back entrance. Amber’s eyes locked with mine as he lifted his hips, rising up as if to meet Gryphon within me.
“Amber,” I whispered as my body began to glow with the moon’s lunar brightness once more. Behind me, above me, Gryphon’s radiance danced with ours, casting shadows on the ceiling and walls, making us creatures of light, creatures of darkness.
Within me, I felt them touch, separated only by one thin wall. They touched and held still. I writhed, moaned, whimpered, crammed so achingly full I almost couldn’t stand it.
“Move,” I commanded with a shaky breath. “Dear Lord, move!”
They did. And if I thought that what had come before was torture, feeling them both moving within me, pulling out in opposite directions, then plunging back in to meet within me, in and out, in and out, meeting, converging, bulbous tips rubbing one over the over, sliding my thin membranous wall between them, surrounding me both inside and out, pulling apart and then surging together once again in perfectly synchronized counterpoint movement…feeling them moving within me like that was pure devastating pleasure.
Sensation flashed like wildfire, engulfing me in a hot conflagration so that I was burning, burning, crying. Then Amber was swallowing up my cries, his mouth covering mine, his tongue surging into me in the same beating rhythm as how they moved within me, in front and behind. I was burning, stretching, and crying, so that I didn’t know where pleasure left off and pain began. The two were intertwined, one. Then even more sensation was added into the stormy, potent mix as Gryphon’s hands cupped my breasts, squeezed. As his teeth sank sharply, sweetly, into my neck, piercing me that way as well, tasting my blood.
The pressure—the incredible pleasure—built within me until it was one huge gigantic ache. Waves of intense pleasure climaxed in a cresting crescendo. And the orgasm burst over me, out from me, as if it could no longer be contained. My body heaved helplessly, caught up totally in the bucking throes of climax, lost to control but not to sensation. I felt Amber stiffen beneath me, gripped by his own shooting convulsions. I felt the powerful jet of his pleasure splash against the mouth of my womb. I felt Gryphon shudder behind me, his body seize. Felt the heat and wetness of his own release fill me in another passage.
Slowly, the terrible tension left us. Light dimmed, faded, was absorbed back into us. And we melted one atop the other like fallen combatants after a fierce battle.
CHAPTER 4
So much for alternating weeks. I didn’t know how to feel—appalled or delighted that I’d made love to Amber and Gryphon both at the same time. So I shoved the thought away from me. Put it away for another time to ponder. Maybe to savor.
I showered and dressed in a comfortable cotton shirt and cable-knit sweater I hadn’t yet packed, sore in places usual and unusual. Gryphon had to wear his new shirt. His old one was completely ruined. First time I’d literally ripped the clothes off a man. Probably wouldn’t be the last. I found myself grinning at that happy thought. With the pleasant task of keeping my men clothed, shopping might even become enjoyable.
Amber’s old attire was safe and whole, though, and he donned them once more, insisting on saving his new clothes for when we arrived in my new territory.
Packing…well, we’d have to finish that another time. I couldn’t stay in the apartment after our recent ménage; too discomforting, the thought of it. So we left, and I made the executive decision to take everybody out and have some fun that night. We were in the Big Apple, about to go to Louisiana. I wanted to play…on ice. Something I’d never done before. Something I doubted New Orleans would have. And even if they did have skating rinks, none of them would be as splendid as the famous Rockefeller Center rink.
The first time I’d come to Manhattan and walked by the world-renowned center the Rockefeller name had made famous, I’d glanced at the happy, laughing people twirling beneath the giant Christmas tree, the country’s largest, skating with their boyfriends, girlfriends, family members, and loved ones, and I had daydreamed one day of it being me down there. An orphan’s dream. But tonight it wasn’t a dream; it was reality.
My skates suddenly went one way while my body decided to go another, and the slippery blades flew out from beneath me. My arms windmilled—yes, people really do that when they’re about to fall—and with a shriek, I landed on my derrière, pulling Gryphon down with me.
The startled look of surprise and mild affront in Gryphon’s eyes as he crashed onto the ice set me off laughing so hard that it brought tears to my eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I gasped, dabbing my eyes, “but if you could only see the look on your face. Like”—I mimicked his Old World manner of speech—“‘How dare this graceless thing happen to me.’” I lay back on the ice and howled.
“I fell,” Gryphon said with slow dignity, “because you made me fall.”
“Yeah,” I grinned as other skaters veered around us, “I know.”
Carefully, he tried to pick himself up. The skates slid out from under him, and with that shocked look of surprise again on his face that I found so hilarious, Gryphon fell splat once more onto his butt—setting me off in another rollicking-rolling, laugh-till-you-split-your-sides fit.
He cut me off mid-chortle with a kiss. “Are you having fun?” Gryphon asked, his tender blue eyes smiling down at me with a soft light.
I kissed him back, face flushed, a happy smile plastered on my face. “Yes.”
“Surprisingly, so am I. Though I would much rather be standing with Amber.”
Amber was the only one I had not coaxed onto the ice.
“I would crack the
ice if I fell,” he’d said with inarguable truth. “I shall keep watch while the rest of you frolic on the frozen water.” He shook his head as if to say: The odd follies of humans.
A pair of black skates swooshed expertly to a stop before us, and I looked up into a pair of dark slanting eyes so poignantly like mine. Dark hair fell in sharp straightness around a face that looked even younger than his sixteen years. It was Thaddeus, my brother whom I’d just recently found. A Mixed Blood like me, he had been abandoned at birth to an orphanage, the same as I. But he had fared better. His adoptive parents had loved him and raised him to maturity until they had been killed by a truck that had drifted into their lane and hit their car head-on. Only Thaddeus had survived the accident and the white fiberglass cast on his arm was a stark, grim reminder of that recent tragedy. We were not immortal, but we sure as hell were harder to kill.
“Show-off,” I said to Thaddeus.
He held out a hand and helped me to my wobbling feet. “Hey,” he said, grinning as he pulled Gryphon upright next, “it’s one of the few things I can do better than you guys.” He looked over my shoulder. “Uh, oh. Looks like the others need my help again.”
I watched as he skated nimbly off, back to the others in our little group. Rosemary, the only Full Blood Monère woman among us, was gingerly step-walking with her skates, faring pretty well with that method, her plump face flushed pleasantly by her exertions. Tomas and Aquila, my two other guards, chivalrously supported her on either side. They were powerful warriors in their own right. But standing next to Rosemary, shorter than her by a couple of inches and far more slender, they didn’t look it. Rosemary stood six feet tall and was built like an Amazon. She had left her coveted position as High Court cook to follow me to my new territory. The reasons for her doing so were several meters behind her—her children, Tersa and Jamie, rare Mixed Bloods like Thaddeus and I. Only they were only half Monère. That quarter difference in blood made a crucial difference. They were essentially human, without a Full Blood’s greater strength or gifts.
I watched as Thaddeus slid to a smooth stop before Tersa. She’d fallen. Beside her, her brother, Jamie, was climbing clumsily to his feet. Their flaming russet hair gleamed like Christmas ornaments and their laughter was even brighter with the joy of youthful enjoyment. They were closest in age to Thaddeus and I—Jamie, nineteen, and Tersa, twenty-four. Tersa was actually older than I was by three years but I tended to view her as my junior. She was tiny, petite, only five feet tall, with delicate bones like a bird. But it wasn’t just her size that made me protective of her. Weaker, more vulnerable, without my strength, she’d been raped to draw me out to my enemies. To show their disdain for our mongrel blood. Their mother, Rosemary, had left her sought-after post, taking up a position with me, because she knew I would do my best to protect her children. And she was right.
My brother, Thaddeus, was the only one who did not know of Tersa’s brutal taking. All the other men were cautious and gentle around her, careful not to touch her or make her feel uncomfortable with their male presence. But Thaddeus didn’t know. He held out a hand to her. My breath caught, wanting to stop him, yet too late to do so.
With but the barest hesitation, Tersa reached out and took Thaddeus’s hand. Let him pull her up and help brush the ice from her clothes. Then, laughing, they helped clean up Jamie.
“They are good together,” Gryphon said quietly, echoing my thoughts.
“Yeah, they are.” My family. Thaddeus, the brother of my blood. Tersa and Jamie, the brother and sister of my heart. And the others…all of them mine, under my care.
“Mona Lisa.” Amber’s soft utterance of my name, spoken more than a hundred feet away, came to me clearly through the cacophony of sound. With so much noise bombarding our acute senses, it was a natural habit to tune it down until it became a low background hum. But some things, like the speaking of one’s name, cut sharply out and apart from the rest of the din, reaching your ears easily.
I turned my face and looked to where Amber stood at the edge of the rink, his massive size standing him apart from others. But even were my eyes blindfolded, I would have known precisely where he stood from his powerful presence alone. We sensed each other in ways humans could not. That innate draw of a Monère male to his Queen was a strong pull that went both ways. It was always there, sometimes muted. But never forgotten, always felt.
I looked into Amber’s stony face, blank with cool control. But I knew every nuance of those solid features so well now. I gazed into his eyes, dark blue like the color of the sea, saw the alert tension filling them, and knew that something was wrong.
I loosened that power that was within me, called it up from deep inside and flung it wide and searching, a tangible force trembling in the air in a full spreading radius outward. Searching, searching until it found one and then another’s presence like ours. Two Monère males, Full Bloods, above and behind me. And a short distance beyond them, two other males and a Queen. Her distinctive power brushed abrasively against mine in an irritative, stinging fashion, feeling a bit like fire ants biting your skin—an innate reaction when two queens came in contact with one another. Whereas we were drawn to males and they to us, we were repelled by other queens—nature’s way of ensuring that we disperse wide to propagate.
I turned around and looked up to the short encircling wall overlooking the rink, crowded with eager tourists who had come to the city and were enjoying the festive sight of the elaborately decorated giant tree and the circling skaters swishing small and tiny below it. The surrounding wall above us was packed three feet deep with gazing people, but the ones I sought were easily picked out among them. One man tall and dark-haired. The other with light brown hair, shorter, more beefy. Nothing usual about them but for the power they emanated in a low, steady thrum. I recognized their faces. Mona Sera’s men.
Chami came to a sliding halt beside Gryphon and I. Aquila and Tomas, aware now of our nonhuman observers, skated back with Rosemary to stand protectively in front of Tersa, Jamie, and Thaddeus.
Technically, I was a Queen—an uninvited Queen—in another Queen’s territory, Mona Sera’s. Reason enough to hunt me down and try to kill me and my people. Although that wasn’t what I really feared.
Why? Because I was Mona Sera’s daughter.
Before you get any other wrong ideas here, let me set you straight. Our recently renewed acquaintance was not what you would call a cozy mother-daughter relationship. She’d tossed me out like garbage when I was born because of my mixed blood. I’d only discovered she was my mother when I broke into her home seeking a cure for Gryphon. He’d once belonged to her and she’d poisoned him with silver because he no longer wished to serve her. Mona Sera was like the wicked Queen of the West—okay, I know we were technically in the east, but you get what I mean. She was vicious and cruel. Even among the Monère, who weren’t exactly known as the most gentle of creatures…even among them, Mona Sera was considered one of their worst Queens.
Before she’d found out I was her daughter, she’d ordered Amber to rape me. Being her daughter hadn’t saved me. It was the fact that I was a Queen and her daughter that had spared me that fate. I was of use to her. Nothing more. She’d taken me to High Court, and had me acknowledged as a Queen. Though a Mixed Blood, I was a precious Queen nonetheless. And she did so only to have her own fertility and Queen-bearing status recognized; it gained her brownie points with the Council, increased her own value.
She’d given me two gowns, two of her men, Amber and Gryphon, and then washed her hands of me once more.
Whether you live or die now is of no concern to me, she’d said.
Now some might think that giving me two of her men was a generous gesture on her part. Trust me, that wasn’t the case. They had become too powerful for her, and she did what Queens typically did when that happened: She tried to kill them. They were dying when she’d given them to me—Gryphon from the liquid silver she had poisoned him with, Amber from sun poisoning. She’d roasted Amber
under the sun’s hot rays, under the guise of punishing him for disobeying her, until he was one gigantic, weeping mass of boils and pus.
Mona Sera had only given Gryphon and Amber to me because I had asked for them and because they were dying. She hadn’t expected them to live; no one had. But I’d saved them and now they were mine.
We left the ice and changed back into our shoes. I didn’t really think Mona Sera was here to try and kill us. But with my mother, you never really knew. Safest, always, to treat her with caution. We made our way to the upper level.
“Stay here, please,” I said to Aquila and Tomas. Nodding, they remained at a far corner guarding Rosemary and the kids, as Chami, Gryphon, Amber, and I strode forward to see what my dear mother wanted.
Gryphon nodded first to the shorter, stocky warrior. “Kyle.” Then nodded to the taller, dark-haired one. “Francois.”
They nodded back.
“Warrior Lord Gryphon. Warrior Lord Amber,” Kyle said, politely addressing them by their proper titles.
These two men had once hunted Gryphon at their Queen’s order, and had considered Amber as good as dead. I wonder what they felt at their brethren’s elevated status, Warrior Lords now instead of roadkill. Were they jealous of them or happy for them? Nothing showed. Their eyes and faces were blank, wiped clean of all emotion and expression, as Amber and Gryphon’s had once been. Impassive, as all of Mona Sera’s men had to be.
“My Queen seeks a word with Queen Mona Lisa,” Kyle said, glancing over at two black cars parked at the curb. Both were Lincoln Town Cars, ubiquitous to Manhattan, looking innocuously like the thousands of others used for private car service here in the city. But the occupants within these two cars were not human businessmen or women returning home after a long day’s work.
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