by Nhys Glover
Darkin came to the side of the bed and put his hand on Calun's forehead. "He doesn't feel hot to me. Didn't you say he had a fever?"
"Yes. That was why I thought the bath might help." I put my now cool hand onto Calun's forehead after Darkin removed his. I shook my head in wonder.
"It was much hotter than that before. Do you think I might have done some good?"
Darkin laughed. "Do I think you have miraculous powers given to you as the Chosen One of the Goddess? Aye, I do. Do I think one of those powers is healing, and that you have done some good? Aye, I do think exactly that. And I can only be grateful to the Goddess for it."
My other husbands piled into the room then, all questions and piqued interest. Flea told them what she'd seen, and I blushed as Rama and Jaron stared at me with mouths agape.
Then Jaron shifted the mood. "If you can heal my brother's thick head, any chance you can make my cock larger?"
Darkin slapped him upside the head in disgust. "Remember Flea's here! Keep your mind out of the gutter."
But I knew what Jaron was doing and I appreciated it. So I played along. "I can try. Because I can understand why you might feel inadequate in that area, compared to −"
"Inadequate? I'm not inadequate. I just thought I'd like to be the biggest for a change."
"You've already got the biggest head," Rama sniped. "And I'm not talking about the one with only one eye."
Jaron gave Rama a shove, and he shoved back.
'What're the lads fighting about?' I heard a weak voice say in my head.
Movement in the bed sent the room into instant silence.
We all turned to find Calun looking at us as if we'd lost our minds. But his green eyes were filled with merriment.
I promptly burst into tears and Flea did too. Darkin leaned in to give his brother a clumsy hug and then scrambled out of the way so the others could have their turn. Suddenly everyone was talking at once. It was madness. But the madness of relief and joy.
Chapter Eleven
AIRSHA
The days passed quickly as Calun continued to recover from his injuries. I spent as much time at his bedside as Calun and his brothers would allow, which was a lot less than I wanted. Yet I knew I needed to keep my body active and properly rested. Sitting at a bedside for long stretches of time did neither.
Flea replaced me at the bedside more often than not. Her devotion to Calun bordered on hero-worship. I knew I had nothing to worry about. I was not in competition with her for his affections. But it didn't stop me feeling territorial. That Calun felt only brotherly affection for her eased my annoyance, but it didn't end it completely. If I was a better person I wouldn't mind her puppy-love, especially after the lengths she had gone to, to save him. But I was not a better person, and I couldn't help feeling that mayhap Calun would be better off with another wife. A better wife. One wife. Rather than having to share one with his three brothers. I hadn't even joined with him, one-to-one. The only pleasure we had shared alone had been on the back of his airling, and that felt so long ago as to be another lifetime.
A quarter moon after his return, Calun was ready to get out of bed. He'd been bad tempered and restless all the day before. Darkin told me it was because he was healed and ready to get back to work. But I'd made him stay down for another day, just to make sure.
But today he would not let me have my way any longer.
'I'm getting up. I've been doing it to use the privy for days. I can do this, Airsha," he said firmly, swinging his long legs over the side of the bed and sitting up. 'The others are all at work, where I should be. Where you should be, instead of sitting here like a guard watching over me.'
I couldn't deny his argument. Being short-handed would put our schedule behind. We had a deadline to meet for the rebels, and the Goddess. So far we were meeting that schedule, but the last quarter moon had put us close to the edge, especially as Calun hadn't completed his survey of suitable free range land to harvest for the coming winter.
"All right, you win. Can I help you up?"
He grumbled in his mind about not being a child, and hefted himself up onto his wobbly legs. Though the fall hadn't broken anything, it had shaken him up badly. His body was slow to recover, though the darkness in his head was now fully gone.
When he swayed on his feet, I ignored him and pressed myself to his side. I might be small but I was strong, and if Flea could help carry his unconscious body a league through the darkness, I could hold him up for a few minutes while his head cleared.
'What's with you?' he grumbled. 'You're closed off to me. You've been like than since the accident.'
"It wasn't an accident. You were knocked from your airling by our enemies and kept prisoner by them. Without Flea, we never would have got you back."
'I know that. But that doesn't explain why you're blocking me. Are you angry because I put myself in danger somehow?' His voice had lost its sullenness, and hurt had replaced it. I realised suddenly that half his bad temper had been caused by me keeping him at a distance.
"No, of course not. You couldn't have known the army was using camouflage. It's just been a hard time. I thought we'd lost you."
He nodded, sliding his hands around my waist so we stood face-to-face. I had to look way up, as always, kinking my neck.
'I know that too. But that's still no answer. Let me in so I can find it, or tell me.'
I didn't want to let him in, so he could see the extent of my concerns. I knew if I did that his innate kindness would rush to reassure me, whether it was the right thing for him or not.
I decided to do my best to explain it in words. "Flea loves you. She put herself at risk to save you. And you deserve to be loved with that kind of total focus. Instead, I keep you tied to me, where you only ever get a small part of me. You deserve better than I can give you. I... I'm jealous of her. I don't want to share you with her. But I expect you to share me with all your brothers. It isn't right. It isn't fair. On you. On any of you."
I rested my forehead on his chest, so I didn't have to look into his eyes. Baring my soul like that hurt. And it was only a small part of what I was feeling.
'How can you say any of that!' he snapped angrily. 'You've been inside me, inside my mind. You know how I feel about you, as well as how I feel about Flea. She's little more than a child. I see her as my little sister. How can doubt me like that!'
Tears pricked at my eyes. "I don't doubt you. I just don't think it's fair, what I have forced on you. I'm the only woman you have ever been with, and that's only when you shared me with your brothers. I'm cheating you of what you deserve. What you could have with one woman. Mayhap not Flea. I know how you feel about her. But someone else. There are more women out there who would love you as you deserve. The whores' attitude to you isn't a fair reflection of all women. You don't have to settle for me..."
I'd rabbited on mindlessly, going around and around in circles. Calun stood stonily still the whole time.
'I don't feel as if I've settled for you,' he finally said, his voice gravelled. 'Just because I've only been with you, doesn't mean I don't know the difference between what we have and what other people have. That I don't know how lucky I am to have what we share. Maybe my brothers feel as if they get less than they want, but I don't. I get to be two people whenever I want. Except now. I get to experience what it's like to be totally united with another person, mind, body and soul. My brothers don't get that. Only I do. Only we do. Knowing what we are together, how can you think I'd ever want to give that up for a superficial bond, even with someone like Flea who can hear my thoughts.'
His words were like a balm to my self-mutilated soul. I had not thought of it the way he described it. I knew how much I appreciated what we shared, but I hadn't understood he felt that way too. No, that wasn't true. Of course I had. I'd been in his mind often enough to know all his feelings and thoughts. To be one person in two bodies. But I'd forgotten all that as soon as my self-doubts crept in, and I'd closed myself off to him.
I let down my barriers with a sense of homecoming. I felt him enter me as I entered him. Felt his annoyance with me at ever doubting him, felt his understanding when he fully read my doubts, which all centred on losing my brother. Because Airshin had devalued our special bond, I kept thinking Calun did too. Or would do one day when the novelty wore off. It was so hard to explain what the pain of Airshin's rejection had done to me all these suns. The little pricks of it as he moved further and further from me. The sword thrusts when he would look right past me as I waited in the shadows for him. The way he talked about women, knowing he saw me the same way. And the final gut-wrenching tear when he seemed happy for me to go to my death so he could sleep peacefully from then on.
Airshin had once loved me as much as Calun did now. We had once shared a connection that was almost as strong as the one I now shared with Calun. And yet he had rejected me. I couldn't help wondering if the same would happen with Calun.
I felt the intensity of his love. I saw how he saw me. I knew with everything in me that Calun was nothing like my brother. Calun was a strong man. A gentle man. He harboured no insecurities about himself that made him want... no, need to see himself as superior to women, to me. After all the abuse he'd been subjected to because of his inability to speak, he still saw himself as equal to anyone. That had to be due to his mother and brothers. They had given him that.
I saw it then, the times his mother had told him how amazing he was. The look of love in her tired eyes. The look of respect and admiration in his brothers' eyes. I had been right. Yet what had Mother and I done differently? Had I not treated Airshin with the same level of respect and admiration? Had loving him not been enough?
Again my doubts were challenged. I saw memories of Airshin as a boy, cowering away from Father, and me encouraging him to be the brave boy I knew he was. I saw him as an extension of me, and I was brave, so he must be too. It never entered my head that he wasn't like me. That he wasn't brave and strong.
It made me squirm to think how I made such assumptions.
'Airsha, you're not responsible for how your brother turned out,' Calun told me. 'He grew up in a world that saw men only one way. If you deviated from that at all, you were looked down on. I know what that feels like. I had to put up with the Godslunders' attitude to my inability to talk all the suncycles we were among them. And I was their image of a man, in all except that one area. Your brother wasn't what they saw as a man in any area. Maybe he never could be. But none of that is your fault. Or your mother's.'
"You were not a man, as far as the Godslunders were concerned, when you went to save your fallen brother," I reminded him with a teary laugh.
'And didn't I lose sleep over that!' he said sarcastically.
I laughed again, this time almost completely healed of my doubts. Calun let go of me suddenly and walked stiffly to the door. It was closed, but he turned the lock decisively.
My arousal surged to life. It had been dampened down in the last quarter moon because of Calun, but now it thrummed through me like spirits. I knew what he wanted. And I knew it was I wanted too.
There were no thoughts of it being fair. That I was giving him what I had given Dark and Rama. That kind of rational sharing was not what we were about. None of us. The sexual need ebbed and flowed where it would between us. Together, alone, it didn't matter. It was all the same in its quality, if not its consistency.
When he swept me up into his arms, I didn't notice that they were not as strong as before, or that I felt the pain through our connection when I inadvertently touched a healing bruise. None of it mattered. Only the growing passion igniting between us mattered.
"Keeping me all to yourself?" I joked just before he kissed me.
'Keeping myself all for you. Flea might drop in.'
I smiled as our kiss took me under. I revelled in the connection I had been denying a full quarter moon. And I marvelled at what we had. What it felt like to be inside him, feeling his passions rising, the need he felt for only me. How he ached for me, had been aching for me ever since he returned to full consciousness. Not just sexually, but because of the emptiness in his head. The loneliness I had returned him to by closing off to him.
When my guilt raced in at that realisation, Calun soothed it away. Making up made it all the better, he sent to me. Being alone for just a little more than a quarter moon was nothing like being alone his whole life. In the short time we had known each other he had started to experience what real living felt like. Not what others thought was living, because they knew no better. But what being whole was like.
Gods! How had I not seen it? I had known I'd taken the sadness from him, but I hadn't comprehended the depth of his loneliness. Not because he couldn't speak. But because on some level he'd known he was missing something. Something more than his voice. The airlings gave him some of what he was missing, but until he met me he hadn't known.
He pitied other people for not having this. He even pitied his brothers for not having the depth of this connection. Sure, they could get into my head when I experienced high emotion, but they didn't know what it was like to have me inside them, understanding them in a way that normally you could only understand yourself.
As our kisses grew more heated, I drew in these thoughts and feelings and climbed higher and higher. I was almost euphoric with love. Almost godlike in my power. I was indispensable to this amazing man. And where I had thought I had this connection with my twin, it had been an illusion. I had been like him, feeling half-empty inside. I'd thought my brother's closeness was filling. Until he took it away. And I felt the ache of his abandonment until I met Calun, and then realised what being truly close to another was really all about.
He tore at my gown and I helped him remove it. I was grateful he was already naked, though I worried that what we planned to do might be more than his repairing body could stand.
His rejection of that thought came in fast and confidently. I was babying him again. He was more than ready to share pleasure with me.
We fell on the narrow bed, me beneath him. The kisses grew even more fierce. His hands were everywhere. When I wrapped my hands around his aching cock, I felt his pleasure, felt his need intensifying almost to fever pitch. And he felt my own arousal as it surged in response.
There was no need for slowness, no need to feel our way, determining what the other liked best or wanted, at any given moment. I knew his every response, his every feeling, his every need, not just in this moment but from the many times I'd been with him with his brothers.
He seemed to feel none of the discomfort his brothers did about being in my head when I was gaining my pleasure from another. I realised that he'd always seen his brothers as extensions of himself. He'd shared their sexual pleasure with whores, thinking nothing of it. Being me while one of his brothers was inside me, was no different to him than being me with him inside me.
No, not the same exactly. Because he didn't get to feel his own sensual responses to my tight channel. The feelings of my inner muscles sucking at his cock like a hungry mouth.
With that thought, his or mine, I broke away. He didn't try to stop me because he knew what I wanted to do, what I needed to do. I was hungry for him. I was hungry to have his cock in my mouth. To taste its saltiness. To feel his pulse against my tongue.
And I got what I needed. As I wrapped my hands around his girth I took him into my mouth. He flattened himself against the bed, hands fisting into the sheets as the sensations roared through him. I felt every one. It drove me on. Drove me to take more of him, to suck harder as I slid up and down his length.
Just before it became too much, I reluctantly gave up. I knew he wanted to come inside my core, not in my mouth. I knew the difference. It was a more equal sharing of pleasure. I would come as he came inside me. I would have come anyway, as I rode his release. But this way it would be my body that stimulated my release not his.
It was hard to get it straight in my head, especially in the throes of passion, and I had no id
ea why I was worrying about it. I let go of who gave pleasure to who, and lowered myself onto his rampant cock. He gasped, and his green eyes grew huge as my hot, wet sheath slid over the full length of him. My mouth couldn't do this.
I smiled at his smug thought. My mouth could do many things my core could not, I'd discovered. But I didn't remind him of that right then. Not when his pleasure was so sublime. I felt it in every cell of my body.
'Gods, how could you have thought I was getting less than I deserved!' he thought so loudly it was almost yelling.
I knew what he meant. He had more of me than anyone could. I was his completely, even when I was sharing pleasure with one or more of his brothers. Because he got to feel what it was like to be me in those moments, as well as what it was like to be him. It was an overload of sensation that was so intense it pushed him to the very edge of sanity.
And I went there with him, every time, I went there with him. And because we were together as we fell over into the void, I was never afraid.
I lay on his chest some time later, panting, my body as slick with sweat as his was. In my head I felt the understanding settling into place. There would be no more need for reassurances from Calun. We had perfect understanding. And, from that place of perfect understanding, I could happily give him the pleasure he found in his friendship with Flea. And could share in it, through him.
Ours was a unique and powerful bond that sustained us both on so many levels. I was lucky to have found him. So very lucky.
'No, I was the lucky one,' came the satiated thought.
'Let's say we're both lucky.' I smiled and kissed his damp chest.
'You know, I think you might have been right about me needing another day in bed.' I knew he was joking but I went along.
I felt his forehead and frowned worriedly. 'You might be right. All this exertion may have fried your brain. You stay here and rest.'
He grinned and grabbed my hand, kissing each finger in turn. 'I love you more than life itself!'
