“But you know that you haven’t hurt me.”
He closed his eyes, briefly.
“I hope I have not hurt you.”
“No, love. No, no.”
“I hated every cruel word I had to say to you.”
“I know that.”
“I hated having to keep you like that; I hated letting you go.”
“I know that too.”
“I love you.”
She had to pause then.
Just long enough to catch her breath.
“That was . . . slightly less clear.”
“But the fever, the fever—”
“I don’t think the fever really means automatic love, Merrick. I think it happens because . . . you’ve developed feelings for someone.”
“So you developed feelings for me?”
“I did, I do, I have.”
“Explain to me. Tell me why,” he asked, as though it would be hard.
For a second, she even thought so too. Then it simply . . . poured out of her.
“It’s the little things, you know? The way someone looks at you across a hallway; the hint of something deeper underneath. The slow swing of their words or the clipped cold way they keep them in, their smell like something sharp in the middle of a winter forest, their small kindnesses, their great sacrifices, their willingness to welcome you in even when they’re sure they can’t.”
“Or their ability to stay by your side even when you are sure you are lost,” he said, and she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he meant her. She was the one who stayed by his side, by Zeke’s side, no matter what. She was the one who kept going, even when things looked lost. She wouldn’t have believed the compliment before, but she believed it now.
They gave her no reason to doubt.
She was beyond doubting, now.
She was a creature who hardly cared to stop herself kissing him, in case it wasn’t what he wanted. And when Zeke came in and touched her hair, she thought nothing of touching him back. She wound a hand in his, and he wound his hand in hers, and then suddenly it was no longer just affectionate touching and kissing.
She felt him reach down inside her nightdress to play with her breasts. That was Merrick’s tongue in her mouth, all hot and wet and desperate for deeper. Those were her little moans of delight and eagerness—getting higher and louder the further they allowed this to go. One of them stripped her naked in one long rip of material, and she made a sound like a startled cat. Followed by garbled words at the feel of Zeke’s hands on her tits, squeezing and pinching her nipples into unbearably tight points.
“Yes, more now,” she told him, and he obeyed. Both of them obeyed. They couldn’t seem to help it. Whenever they paused over one particular thing, perhaps wondering if they should do it or not, some baser instinct simply took the wheel. They didn’t wait for her to say okay. Part of them probably knew they didn’t need to wait for her to say okay.
They could lick her between her legs, if they wanted to. They could touch her and then taste her on each other’s fingers—why on earth not? She did the same to them. When Merrick held out his palm, slick with Zeke’s pre-come. When Zeke murmured, “Here, here,” and turned Merrick’s head so she could lap at the bite marks he’d just left. She went after it all with the same eagerness and abandon that they did.
There was no reason to do anything else.
It was clear there wasn’t, because in the middle of it all she was sure she caught Merrick smiling. Just for a second and not broadly enough to be called normal, but it was there and she knew it. He was as happy as he could be—and she would work to make him happier. He seemed to like it best when she kissed him, as Zeke slowly eased in and out of her pussy. And when she said his name as he stroked her clit . . . yeah, he liked that too.
He liked it when anyone said his name, in fact.
Though maybe not as much as he liked it when they sucked his cock. That was when he really expressed his appreciation. His head went back, as hers had for him, hands fisting in the sheets before they’d even done anything. She almost licked one side of his stiff shaft and Zeke almost licked the other, and that was it. That was all it took to completely undo him—just the idea of it, hovering there in front of him.
She understood, however. She remembered how it felt for her, to have two people touching and stroking and licking her, all their attention purely on her. It was like taking a warm bath in sex and love and other good stuff, and apparently even Merrick wasn’t immune to it. He wasn’t immune to anything when it came to sex—which only made it more fun.
There were no haughty comments about his long life here. He reacted the same as anyone else, when both of them actually licked him. He groaned and tore things to shreds. He begged for more even after they’d given him everything—long wet kisses around the head of his cock, hands stroking and touching him from head to toe, fingers in the lewdest of places.
But it didn’t matter. It was never enough.
Or was it that she didn’t know what enough was?
It certainly seemed so, when Zeke started to open up. “He likes it hard,” he told her. “He likes it when you bite as you suck him”—all of which was thrilling enough on its own. But as they plunged ever deeper into whatever this was, the suggestions turned darker and more revelatory until finally he said something that made her hair stand on end.
“Fuck him,” he gasped at her, around that thick and swollen cock.
And then just in case she’d heard wrong, he repeated it: “Fuck him.”
Of course her immediate urge was to blurt out, But I don’t have a cock, and only Zeke’s speed saved her. He seemed to realize that she hadn’t the faintest fucking clue what he was asking her to do, and took her hand in his. He took it, and then he sucked on her forefinger from knuckle to tip, in a way that made things really clear.
He meant fuck him with her finger, obviously. Christ, why hadn’t she understood that? She wasn’t some blushing virgin who barely grasped sex things, even if she completely was in every way possible, oh God oh God, why had she thought she was some new sexual being, she had absolutely no idea how to do this.
What if she hurt him?
“You won’t hurt him.”
Lord she wished Zeke would stop reading her mind. Earlier that day she’d been fretting that he might think she loved Merrick more than him, and he’d rolled his eyes at her before she’d even said a word. You ran out into the burning sunlight rather than let me catch a tan—but sure I’m going to think you love one of us more than the other, he’d told her, and he had a point. He had a point right now, too.
The thing about being a vampire was: you couldn’t really do a lot of damage.
Plus, he kind of seemed to like it when someone did damage to him. Both of them did, in fact. And if she was being honest—she felt exactly the same way. She wanted to bite and be bitten, and scratch and be scratched, and most of all she wanted to fuck him. She wanted to fuck him so hard the headboard rattled.
So she did.
It wasn’t even that hard, really. There was no resistance when she slid her slippery finger over his tightly clenched hole. He let her all the way in, without so much as a hiss of complaint. There were some moans and his back arched, but she didn’t think that counted as any kind of discontent. Both things looked much more like the overexcited reaction of a teenager just discovering sex for the first time—a response that would have been arousing if anyone had given it.
But was doubly so with someone like Merrick.
He didn’t seem to care about his composure. He wasn’t the slightest bit interested in who was doing the fucking and who was being fucked. He wanted her to do it, to the point where he actually said as much. “Go on, go on, take me,” he said, which was more than good enough on its own. Oh God, it made her wet to hear him talk like that.
And then he added “use me,” and suddenly the swell of pleasure rolling through her stomach was too much to take. Magical vampire stamina be damned—it was all so
new to her that sometimes it was still entirely overwhelming, all this freedom. All this possibility. She needed to lie down. She needed to stop watching what Zeke was doing—only she couldn’t, she couldn’t. He was sucking Merrick’s cock while she fucked his ass with one slippery finger and, good God, was it any wonder she was close to passing out? Had anyone ever legitimately been in this situation—having frantic, messy sex with two hot vampires—and managed to remain conscious?
She was sure that couldn’t be the case. The only thing that kept her from collapsing were the nails Zeke dug into her thigh. They were drawing blood, and that was good. That helped her focus long enough to put on a good show. She fucked Merrick until Zeke wanted to take over, and then at last she was able to lie down.
Of course the lying down came with an excellent view of one gorgeous man fucking another one, but that was fine. She could take that okay. As long as no one did anything to her or said anything in particular, she would be all right.
Shame really that both of them were talkers. They were talkers, and they were doers. They weren’t content with just fucking each other while she watched. They had to describe what they were feeling in great and varied detail. “Oh man, you’re so tight,” Zeke said, as he sank into that slick hole. And then Merrick . . . no, God, she didn’t want to think about what Merrick said. It was arousing enough just knowing he was doing all of this, without his insanely colorful commentary.
“Do you like my hot little quim, boy?” he asked, and it shouldn’t have been a turn-on, it shouldn’t have been. It should have been utterly ridiculous, yet somehow it wasn’t. It wasn’t at all. Who knew she had a kink for olde worlde words for body parts? Or men calling their body parts by names usually applied to women?
She certainly hadn’t. But it was there all the same. She could actually feel her pussy swell and grow slicker at the sound of that word. The urge to put a hand between her legs sprang up, so hot and sudden she couldn’t really fight it. However, as it turned out she didn’t need to. Merrick’s hand was already there, before she’d even finished the thought.
And he had even more things to say about that.
“I think your efforts are making her cream herself,” he said, because he was awful, he was a bastard, oh fuck why had she imagined he wouldn’t be? Why had she thought he would always be as he was that first time—a touch stiff and not quite sure and utterly silent?
That clearly wasn’t the real him. The real him had a sharp tongue and a mocking manner, and now that all the cards were on the table he was going to use both.
She could have wept with happiness at the idea of him using both.
He is himself with us, he is himself. Her heart sang with joy even as her body tried to collapse in on itself under the pressure of too much pleasure. He didn’t even look as he stroked her clit. He didn’t even look, and Lord in heaven that felt good. She wasn’t sure why—but it did. It felt like being played by a master of the craft. He was so skillful he didn’t even need to see what he was doing.
He stroked her and stroked her until she couldn’t hold it in another second more. Her back arched; her clit swelled against his busy fingers. Pleasure tried to punch her in the stomach—or at the very least it got her around the throat. She wanted to say his name and let him know that it was him who had done this to her, but all that came out was a rather embarrassing grunt.
Plus she was scrabbling at the sheets with her feet like she’d somehow started riding a bike without the actual equipment. It must have looked insane. It felt insane. Every muscle seemed jammed up with thick and unending orgasmic sensation, and she knew it was making parts of her all weird and rigid. But neither of them appeared to care. In truth, she rather thought they preferred things that way. When she finally managed to squeeze her eyes open, they were looking at her like they couldn’t get enough. Zeke was actually failing at fucking Merrick, because he’d started to lean and lean toward her and couldn’t quite get the angle to thrust anymore. He was just sort of rocking a little, as he sagged over her.
And Merrick could hardly complain.
He was just as bad. He was supposed to be urging his hips up to meet Zeke, and was licking his fingers instead. Then when he was done with that, he kissed her. He kissed her with her taste still on his tongue—something that shouldn’t have made her crazy but did, all the same. It was as bad as her own blood. It was as bad as their blood.
It was worse when it came with kisses—first Merrick and then Zeke, each one hotter and wetter than the last, each one sweeter than the last. When Zeke finally came, she heard her own name, poured into her open and oh so hungry mouth. She felt Merrick press his lips hard against the side of her face the second he knew he was going over.
And both things made the blood sing in her veins, so high and hot she wasn’t sure she would ever be able to contain it. She would always be desperate for the taste of them, the feel of them, the sense of their bodies tangled around hers. No matter what she did or what they said, it was the way things were now—she was a fever for them.
And thank God for that, thank God for that.
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I’d like to thank Del, for getting me out of a jam.
Never Loved (Dark Obsession, #1)
Never Sweeter (Dark Obsession, #2)
Never Better (Dark Obsession, #3)
The Professor
Sweet Agony
Run to You
Control
Sheltered
Deep Desires
Addicted
Intrusion (Under the Skin, #1)
Forbidden (Under the Skin, #2)
Taken (Under the Skin, #3)
Curveball
Restraint
Charlotte Stein is the RT- and DABWAHA-nominated author of over fifty short stories, novellas, and novels. When not writing deeply emotional and intensely sexy books, she can be found eating jelly turtles, watching terrible sitcoms, and occasionally lusting after hunks. For more on Charlotte, visit: www.charlottestein.net.
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Charlotte Stein, Frostbitten
Frostbitten Page 9
