Rafe stepped nearer to the tableau that was a fantasy in the making. The scent of her orgasm flooded the air, and damned if his Wolf and the man weren’t in complete accord that they wanted a piece of Thalia’s ass.
A harsh cry escaped Thalia as Mikkel moved, then she bit off, “Stop it. Mikkel! Stop it. I need more. More. Fuck!”
The word ‘stop’ in conjunction with the word ‘more’ seemed to have an effect on the male where it hadn’t before. He pulled back, and Rafe looked down at him quickly—taking note of the fact his pupils were still the size of pins.
“More. Yes. More,” he gasped out, his mouth soaked with Thalia’s cum.
Rafe winced at the sight as his Wolf let out a long howl that was close to mournful. Mournful because he missed Thalia’s She-Wolf, but also because he wanted some of that too.
“More, yes, more,” Mikkel repeated, the garbled statement sounding delirious as he reached down and freed his cock from the confines of his pants.
Rafe grimaced at the sight, because the man was seriously in need.
His cock was close to fucking purple, and the last time he’d seen a cock that goddamn color was when he’d had to help detach a cock ring from a man’s dick that a dominatrix had cinched too tight.
Yeah, that had had every male resident on call that night wincing with discomfort and misery for the dude.
But that color? It was like Mikkel’s. It was angry and throbbing and looked so fucking painful, Rafe wanted to ease some of the male’s pain. And it was pain, it had to be. Rafe knew his cock was hard, but it wasn’t that hard, and sweet Gods, the pre-cum spouting from the tip was like a fucking fountain.
Whatever the fuck was going on here, it obviously messed with a human’s body chemistry.
Thalia gasped at the sight of Mikkel’s cock. She dropped down into a squat and carefully maneuvered herself onto his lap. With little ado, she grabbed his cock, pressed it to her slick pussy, and slid him home.
The sharp cry that escaped Mikkel was loaded with agony. Thalia wrapped her arms around his shoulders, hugging him close, and Theo and Rafe watched on as Mikkel pressed his face to her shoulder, resting his forehead there as though it were a natural ledge.
Mikkel sobbed out a breath that had Rafe’s throat clutching, and the human male’s hands came down to her hips when she tried to move.
Holding her in place, they watched as he began to shudder like he was having some kind of fucking fit. Rafe, concerned, reached down and pressed a hand to Mikkel’s shoulder. About to test his pulse, Mikkel stilled when Theo’s hand went to his other side.
What the hell?
Rafe’s hand pulled back, and Mikkel began to shudder again, so he quickly placed his fingers on Mikkel’s throat once more.
“We’re grounding him,” Theo stated slowly, softly, as though he were stating a hypothesis that was in the making.
“Grounding him to what?” Rafe demanded, concerned and hurting for the human male who was in the throes of something that no one could explain.
Thalia was as frantic now, like she’d caught some of the crazy that was going around, and from her scent, Rafe knew it was because Mikkel wasn’t letting her move.
“What the hell’s going on?” Theo whispered to himself, but he pressed his hand to her shoulder too. Cutting Rafe a glance, he insisted, “Touch her.”
Blindly obeying, they watched as Rafe’s hand connected with her skin, and she too stopped twitching.
With them both still now, the only ones not affected, looked at each other.
“Are you healing them?” Theo asked, scowling.
“No. There’s nothing to heal,” Rafe replied, sending a swift burst of his powers through his fingertips to try to discern if that was the case.
But when he did, when the heat hit both of them, the moans that escaped them had Theo frowning. “What did you do?”
“I just examined them with my healing powers,” he explained, gaping at their reaction to the little burst of heat.
“That seem like a good moan to you?” Theo asked, and Rafe had to withhold a snort at that kind of question.
“Think I’m some kind of moan whisperer?” he retorted. “I don’t fucking know.” When Theo just glowered at him, he sighed. “I guess so. It was different than before when it sounded like they were in pain.”
Theo nodded. “I agree. Do it again.”
And because there was no reason not to, when his healing powers would do no harm, he worked on channeling the heat that was the base of his gift into their bodies.
It was hard though, because there was nothing to heal. He’d never done anything like this before, and wasn’t sure if he wanted to do it again. He could feel the sweat start to bead on his brow as his powers, knowing there was nothing to heal, tried to surge back into him where they belonged.
As he panted, suffering with the hard, tumultuous energies roaring through him, Mikkel and Thalia seemed to ease some. Mikkel’s grip on her hips was still ferocious but he allowed her to start riding him, and as she did, Rafe had to wonder if he’d ever been in a more bizarre situation. Watching his woman fuck another man, even if that man was bound to the pair of them, while a third male who was also theirs, watched on. And that was nothing to the thousands-strong orgy going down behind a huge, golden door. Of all things.
Caelus, he’d been to smaller concerts!
With the four of them connected through touch, the climax that Mikkel and Thalia found together was a strangely moving moment. That wasn’t to say Rafe wasn’t feeling it, because he was. He did feel it. Hard. His need was there, running under his skin, making every pore feel tight like when he reversed the shift and the fur retracted to the fine hair that covered his body. But the amount of control he was exerting on himself to keep the healing warmth flooding both his mates was no small feat.
When they came and the delirium seemed to pour off both of them, it was with relief that he moved back and away from them.
His hands burned with the controlled fire he’d had to manage, and he stared down at them, stunned to see they were almost ruby red in color.
“Fucking hell,” Theo hissed, drawing Rafe’s attention, and when he saw where the other male’s focus was aimed, he understood why.
Right on their shoulders, where Rafe had touched them both, was the shape of his hand seared onto their flesh.
9
Mikkel
“Can’t we just go back to our quarters?” Mikkel asked, and he felt both dazed, punch-drunk with pleasure, and pissed.
The trifecta was an unusual cocktail and it made him feel agitated as well as sleepy.
A combo that also didn’t improve his mood any.
“No. The festivities are for us,” Theo said, the grimace marring his features saying exactly how it was—he hated this shit as much as they did.
“How can a sexfest be on our behalf?” Thalia mumbled under her breath.
With a click of his fingers, Theo had dressed both him and her as though the last twenty minutes hadn’t happened, but just because they looked okay on the outside didn’t mean they weren’t feeling the after-effects on the inside.
Running his hand over his head, he came to a stop at his neck and rubbed it. Though the weird stupor he’d fallen into had abated, it was still there. Humming in his blood.
To say he hated that was a gross understatement.
It was all kinds of wrong.
Something had controlled him. Had taken over him, made him behave like some kind of fucking…
He gritted his jaw.
He wasn’t known for being a tender lover, but when a woman said, ‘Stop!’?
He fucking stopped.
Guilt warred with self-disgust, and when combined with the emotions he was feeling in the aftermath of what had just happened, he wasn’t ashamed to crouch on the ground. That he did it in the middle of a conversation had said conversation braking to a halt.
Thalia’s hand came up to cup the back of his neck. “Baby?” she asked quie
tly, and the term of endearment about broke his heart because how could she call him that? How could she speak to him so tenderly when he’d forced himself on her?
He closed his eyes even though they couldn’t see them because he was staring straight down at the ground. His body tensed with an anger that was aimed inward until he felt the air shift next to him, and he smelled Thalia’s delicious perfume as she crouched down at his side.
“It’s okay, Mikkel.”
“How can you say that?” he bit off, his rage not aimed at her, but it didn’t make his words come out any kinder.
“I say that because…”
He didn’t let her finish, “I heard you tell me to stop and I didn’t stop.”
“Because you were reading my body’s signals,” she tried to excuse.
“Bullshit. A woman says stop, you stop. It’s cut and dry. Simple.” He shuddered, hating that that simplicity had been complicated no more than ten minutes ago.
“You were…”
Theo didn’t let her finish this time, because he excused, “Mikkel, you were most definitely not yourself. Even if you were registering what Thalia had said, your body was reacting to something else. I think it must be the pheromones Fae give off when we mate, and considering the number inside the Court, that overpowered you. I also think that Thalia’s body subsequently responded to you. That’s why she was saying no but her body wasn’t.”
“That’s no fucking excuse,” he snarled down at the ground. “She said no!”
He felt fingers stir over the place on his shoulder where Rafe had touched them. Seconds after he’d released them, he’d healed them of the burns he’d caused, and it was then he realized something. “That should have hurt, shouldn’t it?”
“What should have?” she asked quietly, her hands combing through the faint growth of his hair.
That she was touching him at all made him want to fucking sob because it was so much more than he goddamn deserved.
He’d forced himself on her.
Mikkel Hessel. A man who prided himself on being a bit of a Casanova, but who’d never physically hurt a woman even if he did bruise her heart or her ego, had touched Thalia without her consent.
He shuddered, self-hatred slaloming in his veins.
“Enough!” The word barked from her, making him jolt at its sharpness. “Yes, I said stop, and yes, you should have listened. However, you were delirious, Mikkel. You were most definitely not in control of yourself, and if I’m being honest, I don’t think you are now. Something is definitely going on with you.”
He blinked. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, you were rougher with me the other day than you were just now, and you weren’t going to start crying after that, were you?” There was no sneer in her voice, no harshness, just sheer, blunt truth.
He blinked again, then whispered, “You didn’t tell me to stop the other day.”
“No, but we all know that wasn’t why I was saying no. It wasn’t that I didn’t want you, Mikkel. I did. I always damn well do. I just didn’t want to do it here in this hall.”
“Still no excuse.”
She blew out a breath. “Babe, I really appreciate you beating yourself up over this, and I laud you for it, I do. I’ve known a lot of jerks in my life, a lot of bastards who take advantage of women, and you’re not like that.
“I know that, you know that.
“I’m not saying you won’t love and leave a girl, but that was in your past, because if you try to leave me I’ll handcuff you to the fucking bed, and you can scream ‘Stop’ at me as many times as you damn well want, and I’ll still keep you cuffed there until you come to your fucking senses.”
Despite himself, his lips curved in a rueful smile—she wasn’t even close to kidding.
That cocktail of emotions seemed to tear into him, ripping him apart while her words taped him back together again, and it was then he knew.
Knew.
Point blank.
He tilted his head back so he could look at her. “I love you. Do you know that?”
The smile that beamed his way nearly made him tumble back on his ass.
Fuck!
Had he ever seen anything as beautiful in his life?
Jesus wept.
His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth again, and though she was still there—a heady flavor on his tongue—it wasn’t enough to sour his mood.
He’d always stop when she asked him to in future. He’d never forgive himself for pushing that on her, but the love he felt for her?
It would heal them. As well as Rafe could. And had. Because, Mikkel thought, those burns hadn’t hurt, and he knew point blank that not one of them would be able to explain why.
****
Theo
Theo kept a weathered eye on his mates as he let them stride ahead of them down the long path that led to his mother.
This was the throne room. It was the size of a cathedral with ceilings just as high as St Peter’s Basilica. Michelangelo had decorated the domed arches here as well before, sadly, he’d taken his life when a human lover he’d claimed was his fated, passed over.
That was the trouble with Fae males. They were the artists, the musicians, the creators. They were creative to their souls, and they were delicate as a result.
It wasn’t easy for a Fae to take their own life, and yet, some did, even though it brought dishonor to their name.
Take the frescoes above. The dancing cherubs, and the startlingly bright blue of a sky that didn’t even belong in Heden but on Earth. The tumble of Fae-kind as they tangled their limbs like the orgy going on now, forever depicted overhead, forever recorded for the annals…
Now, they weren’t officially painted by Michelangelo.
They were painted by ‘Unknown’.
And considering the Fae never forgot, everyone knew what Unknown meant.
That someone had killed themselves and that the ultimate shame had been sown upon them—eradication.
Theo, who’d been friends with Michelangelo, gritted his teeth at his thoughts. Chela had been a wonderful guy, generous and kind, even if he was a tyrant when it came to his art. Losing him had been hard, but dealing with the blow of eradication?
It was why he hadn’t been back to the land of the Fae for two hundred years. That was when Michelangelo had taken his life and that was when the Fae, as a race, and spearheaded by Theo’s mother, began to erase him from existence like he’d never lived at all.
Being back here overwhelmed him with bad memories. And every day that passed, something else happened that reiterated how different things were here. How much harder life at Court was in contrast to life in the human realm.
Take this sorry display.
Thousands of armchairs and chaise lounges littered the red carpet covering the marble floor. Atop those were his mother’s Court. All of them fucking and sucking as though their lives depended on it.
What sort of people celebrated a fated’s claiming by welcoming them into the fold with a fucking orgy?
His parents.
That’s who.
No wonder the Goddess had cast them aside. Morningstar’s fall into temptation and subsequent rebellion were one thing, but the Mother had to be pissed at their odd cultural laws. He knew he was.
His mates strode down the central aisle of the room, passing their own personal porn film as they did. When they came to a sudden halt, he peered ahead to see why, and saw Thalia was the reason.
She’d half turned and, though he was pissed, he had to hide a smile. She was watching a woman being worked over by three males.
The Fae female, a woman he’d tumbled a time or two himself and who was renowned among the males for giving the best head, was being speared by three men Theo also knew. Two cocks in her pussy, one in her ass.
The feat took some maneuvering, and Tavelah was sandwiched between three thickly muscled bodies as they worked their way into her overwhelmed sex.
“How is that even possible
?” Theo heard Thalia whisper.
“You haven’t watched much porn, have you?” Rafe said drily, but he wasn’t mocking her, a fact that was proven when he didn’t laugh at her, just curved his arm about her shoulder and tugged her against his side. After he pressed a kiss to her temple, he murmured, “Do you like that?”
“I-I don’t know. I didn’t think it was possible?”
“Which part?” Mikkel’s voice was thick and dripping with longing. Theo thought his fucking Thalia had taken the edge off, but whenever Mikkel happened to turn back to look at him—seeking reassurance, maybe?—his eyes were like wide saucers.
The pheromones were working on him, but fucking Thalia, or maybe Rafe’s healing touch, had taken off the edge.
“Three cocks inside her,” Thalia answered quietly. “How doesn’t that hurt?”
“Patience and perseverance, I’d imagine,” Rafe said, his tone calm and free from any unease.
Theo almost wondered what it would take to shock the man, but he already knew.
Seeing their mate, felled and bleeding out on the forest floor—yeah, that had rattled Rafe. And fuck, it had more than rattled Theo.
As the memory acted like a spike to the heart, Theo murmured, “You’re too small now.”
She whipped her head around to gape at him. “Why?”
“That kind of thing takes time,” he explained, and his words had her jerking her chin up.
“You’ve done it?”
He winced, then decided not to prevaricate. “There are very few things I haven’t done.”
“You haven’t done them with me,” she told him, her tone a mixture of haughty and snooty.
He wasn’t sure why, but it made him smile. “No. I haven’t. And, slowly but surely, we’ll eradicate all my old memories and replace them with you.”
Though her eyes were narrowed, the way she angled her chin told him that pleased her. She was surprisingly relaxed when it came time to talk of other women her mates had been with, and considering her past and the visions she’d had to endure since coming of age, that was a blessing.
He didn’t doubt that such thoughts and talk hurt her; she’d tense up, and grow a bit haughty. What she wouldn’t do, however, is make them miserable for having a past.
Triad (The TriAlpha Chronicles Book 3) Page 17
