by Holley Trent
“You’re assuming I haven’t.”
“Whoa.” Asher put up his hands and moved between the two of them. “Everything was fine, and now it’s not?”
“I had a revelation,” Mallory said, folding her arms over her chest.
Frustration radiated off Keith like heat off a broiler, but she needed to speak her truth.
“Everything we do makes a ripple,” she explained. “First Tess and Jody will notice that something on the web has changed and then Ótama and Muriel. And then it’ll start spreading. How long do you think you’ll be able to keep secret the fact that we’re sleeping together?”
“You seem to think I care if people know.”
“You should care. Think about it, Keith. The optics are horrible. What is it going to look like to people on the fringes who don’t know us well? Right now, most just know my father to be an adulterer, and that’s bad enough because people in this community don’t cheat. People are tolerating us Petersen kids because Muriel has pulled us close to her bosom, but none of us have dared to get this close to you before now. You may not be able to anticipate bullshit, but I can. Call it my stupid human trick if you want to. But I’ve got to be careful.”
“For how long?”
“What?”
“How long, Mallory? How long are you going to keep me on the hook? Are you going to tell me to wait until all this mess has passed, and then see what happens? And then what? After your father has been gone for a year? Two? When will you decide the coast is clear enough to come back? Maybe when your kids have left for college?”
“That’s not fair!”
He slapped his hand over his heart. “You don’t get to tell me what’s not fair. I know what the risks are. I know that my family is comfortable with this. They’ll form a circle around you to keep you safe, and you’re worried about fucking optics?”
He just didn’t get it, and she didn’t have the energy to explain it.
She turned off the side of the bed and marched to her clothes.
“So, you’re just going to leave?” he yelled as she snatched her pants from the dresser.
“Call it a cooling off. Get your head straight. You’ll come to your senses soon enough, I promise.”
“You’re scared, Mallory. You, of all fucking people.”
“Don’t try to psychoanalyze me.” She fixed her shirt, grabbed her keys, and unlocked the door. Turning to them, she had her mouth already open to say one more thing, but the sight of the men’s deeply etched expressions chased away whatever those words were.
Asher looked abandoned, which she’d never wanted. She loved that man to pieces and was usually so mindful of his sensitivities, but they were apparently all too woven together. She couldn’t have one without having the other, and the other was staring at her with such coldness that she could no longer draw breath.
That wasn’t magic. She didn’t think Keith would ever use magic in a hostile way toward her, even if he were righteously pissed.
That was just disappointment.
He thought she was a coward.
Maybe she was.
Being a daughter of the community’s most notorious traitor, maybe it was in her blood. She hoped it wasn’t, but they needed time to see. She wasn’t going to ruin things, not for him, and not for her.
She could be happy in Norseton. Tess had promised. Muriel had promised. They’d all promised. She couldn’t sully the waters just yet.
So, she left without another word.
*
Asher
“Hey. No. No. Stop.”
Before Keith could work up a decent snarl, Asher was sitting on his thighs and grabbing his cheeks.
“Look at me, Viking.”
“Go away.”
“No.”
“Why are you still here? You gonna tease me? Spend an hour or two making me miserable before running after her?”
Asher rolled his eyes and said low, “I could make you miserable in five minutes if I wanted to. I know all the right buttons to push and how often to push them. No, I don’t want to make you miserable, because then Muriel will want to know why there’s a stink on your little plot of the web, and you’ll blame me. I’m quite comfortable in Norseton, so I’d like not to be pitched out on my fairy ass.”
“They wouldn’t kick you out,” Keith grumbled. “They’d kick me out first.”
Asher shrugged and rubbed Keith’s ruddy hair out of his eyes. They probably wouldn’t expel him, but the fear was always at the back of his mind. He was an outsider and was there only because of his long association with Keith. But his reasons for staying were myriad, and it wasn’t just that he had a warm place to rest his head at night and enough food to keep even a creature with an engine as efficient as his satisfied.
He was sitting on one of those reasons. His cock was hard for one of those reasons.
“I’m spreading myself very thin for the two of you,” Asher said against his ear. Keith smelled like a pine forest. Asher hated that body wash scent. Keith had never been the type to get attached to any product. He didn’t even read labels. Asher was going to have to make him start reading labels.
“So don’t,” Keith grumbled. “Go away.”
“No. Maybe Mallory has some revelations of her own to work through, but I’ve already worked out mine. I’ve decided that someone needs to be the grownup here. May as well be me. Your cock’s not hard anymore. Should I take offense?”
“What is wrong with you?”
Asher grinned and let go of Keith’s face. “Right now, you’re what’s wrong with me. You know, the surly Viking thing is sexy sometimes, but ever so often, it gets wearying. I’m so fucking weary right now.”
“So go away.”
“No. I think that would be the absolute worst possible thing for you, hmm? Admit it. You’re dependent on me. You spent ages with only me as your company. We’re joined at the hip, Viking.”
Keith growled.
“Yes, yes. I know.” Asher slung his arms over Keith’s shoulders and kissed his creased forehead. “It was foolish of me to think that I could amputate myself from you. I won’t make that mistake again.”
“What do you want, Asher?” Keith’s tone was clipped, but there was a note of resignation in his delivery that made Asher want to hold him tighter—to hug all the sadness out of him.
“I suppose you loving me back after all these years would be a good start.”
Keith tried to pull himself away, likely to get a good look at Asher, but Asher wouldn’t let him. He held him tighter, rubbing his back, grazing his lips against the shell of his ear.
“I think in my entire life, I’ve been in love with three different people. Mallory, Rock Keith, and Norseton Keith.”
Keith’s body was rigid as a concrete wall against him, but Asher kept petting him. Kept soothing him.
“As sad as I am to let go of that man I cared about for so long, I’m looking to the future. I’m looking to what I can have with the Keith who actually recognizes that I’m here all the time.”
“You should get your head checked, Asher. Maybe you hit it hard that night I pushed you away from the tree.”
“My head is fine. And as much as I hate to give you any new leverage over me, I’m doing it anyway. Someone thinks you’re lovable. How ’bout that?”
Keith gave his head a brisk shake.
Asher wouldn’t allow him more than that. He wasn’t going to let Keith talk himself out of the truth that Asher already knew.
“I love you. Do you hear me? For some reason, I do, and I’m not going to stop. Now, make me feel better about it.”
Silence. So much uncomfortable silence.
But then Keith swallowed thickly and wound his arms around Asher’s thighs. “How?”
“Kiss me, for starters. I deserve at least that much.”
He didn’t let Keith’s quiet huff deter him. Keith was never going to give him an enthusiastic yes about anything. Wasn’t his style. Asher was going to have to figur
e out how to translate his cues into actions.
He bent, pressed his lips against Keith’s, and let out his own small moan at the tickle of scruff and his lover’s hands gliding up his back.
For a man who was so rarely tentative about anything, Keith’s kiss was slow and cautious. It was the kind of kiss Asher would have expected P.N.—pre-Norseton when they were living in that rock, and being on tenterhooks was all they knew.
Asher knew better now.
He shoved his fingers into the sides of Keith’s hair and gave it a tug of warning. “Do better,” he demanded before sliding his tongue between Keith’s lips again.
Growling, Keith increased his arms’ pressure around Asher and pressed him so tight against his body that Asher had to pull away to gasp. And then Keith was right back, forcefully thrusting his tongue, nipping Asher’s lips, swallowing his words.
He pulled Asher down on top of him and dug his fingertips into the scant meat of Asher’s hips, angling his core where he wanted it. Their cocks were aligned, tip-to-tip, and someone was wet—Asher, probably—and Keith was hard again.
Keith grabbed Asher’s ass and rocked him in a slow, torturous grind that made Asher’s diaphragm convulse and his spine bow.
In the fairy realm, he’d always been accused of having too big of an imagination. He’d been told that one day, it was probably going to get him killed. In his wildest dreams, he would have never imagined sliding his dick against that of someone who he could hardly look at because he was just too…exquisitely made. And what he was doing didn’t feel like death in the slightest bit. He didn’t know why people called orgasms little deaths. He was feeling life.
He closed his eyes and, with reluctance, broke Keith’s hungry kiss and pushed himself upright. Gasping and unfocused, he reached between their bodies and gripped their two shafts in one hand. Or tried to, anyway. “L-look at this so you remember.”
Keith’s teeth were clenched and forehead creased with annoyance. “Look…at what?”
“Look at who’s holding you, Keith. Look at who’s in your bed. I’ll not have you imagining me to be anyone else.”
“What makes you think I’d do that?”
“I’m not stupid.”
Keith’s eyes narrowed at that, but Asher couldn’t tell if it was because Keith disagreed or because Asher wouldn’t stop working his hand up and down their combined lengths. He liked doing that—liked knowing he was staking his own claim on the Viking in a way, rubbing his essence all along him.
Asher would give up any little bit of magic he had, if he could, if it meant everyone would know Asher had been there and that he had no intentions to relinquish his claim. He didn’t care if that made him greedy. He’d have them both.
Again, he bent to brush his lips over Keith’s, pulling back before Keith could try to control his mouth.
The last time Asher had rooted through Keith’s nightstand in search of a particular balm his doctor had prescribed and that Keith refused to use, he’d found an interesting assortment of latex and lubricants. He hadn’t let himself think anything of it. At the time, he hadn’t been sexually aware. Although he was annoyed at the idea Keith had been using those things since their return to Norseton, he couldn’t criticize. Not for the past. Only for the present.
“Ah.” He found a condom and an opened bottle of lubricant that he supposed would suffice.
“What are you going with that?”
Asher put a finger to Keith’s lips and eased down his legs.
Keith sat up onto his forearms.
“No, no. You stay where you are.” Asher pushed him back down and grabbed his fat cock at the root. He gave the tip a teasing lick that made Keith try to sit up again, but he didn’t plan to linger. He already had the condom packet in hand and was carefully tearing the foil open.
He didn’t know if the physics would work, but fairies relied on instinct when it came to touching. His body told him, Do it, and so he would.
With Keith sheathed and lubed, Asher crawled toward him, smirking. “Be very, very still.”
Evidently confused, Keith blinked.
“I’m putting you inside me,” Asher said, sitting on Keith’s belly and slowly working himself backward. He loved the feel of that thick, hard shaft against the base of his spine. Loved the chaser of exhilaration he got every time he thought, “This shouldn’t work.”
He was going to make it work. There was nothing new about what he was going to do except for him being the one doing it.
“I’m putting you inside me,” he repeated and levered himself onto all fours. “And you’re going to be good, aren’t you? You’re going to be very still until I tell you to move.”
The creases in Keith’s brow smoothed and his gaze went distant. “I’ll…be still.” His eyelids fluttered down, but his hands were moving. He found the lube, coated his fingers, and murmured, “Come here.”
Asher crept forward on his knees and tried not to telegraph his nervousness as Keith’s fingers played with his hole and worked lube into the tight channel.
“That’s enough,” Asher said, gasping. Keith had started to rock his fingers in and out, stretching and massaging him, but it was Asher’s party. He hadn’t asked to be coddled. He didn’t want that from Keith. Only Mallory. They gave him different things. Together, they gave him all he needed.
He grabbed Keith’s wrist and pressed it against the bed. Balancing himself carefully on his knees, he eased back until the turgid heat of Keith’s erection bumped his spine.
He angled Keith’s cock and nestled the head between his cheeks.
He took a breath. Tried to relax his body, even as his fingers tightened around Keith’s wrist.
A wicked smile spread across Keith’s face.
Asher chose to ignore it. He notched his teeth into his lower lip and descended onto the hardness, slowly taking in. The flared head. Then a bit more after catching his breath. A bit more with excruciating slowness while the ache and burn ebbed and the pleasurable sensation of fullness took its place.
Leaning his weight onto his palms, he backed off some and then retook the inches he’d earned. More and more until he had no choice but to stop—until the fingers in Keith’s hand Asher was pinning down were quivering and Asher wondered if he could find enough room in his body to breathe.
Looking at Keith, with his parted lips and reddened cheeks, he couldn’t. The sight was far too winsome. It was a flag of victory—Asher had won one battle against his Viking and wanted to revel.
So he took his time, teasingly working his body up and down, delighting in the nervous sparks prickling inside him. Savoring the way Keith’s free hand tugged lazily and yet ruthlessly on Asher’s cock.
He hadn’t known that was what pleasure could feel like—an entirely different set of sensations than what he’d experienced with Mallory. Both delicious and addictive. He craved it all. Greedy fairy that he was, he wanted to own them both and feast on everything they had to offer, and perhaps he could find some way to make himself useful in return. He’d figure it out. He’d do what was necessary to make things right for them.
He was erupting before he could rein back the impulse, his heat spilling over Keith’s hand and down his wrist. Any worry Asher might have had about Keith being put off—by the reminder of who he was in bed with—evaporated with Keith’s indiscreet smearing of the liquid across his belly before grabbing Asher’s ass hard.
“Easier to clean than the sheets,” he murmured, digging in. Probably waiting for Asher to give him some sign that he should proceed.
But Asher was too busy trying to get his thighs to cooperate and trying to make his brain tell his arms to keep holding him up. His body was still quaking and still setting off those internal fireworks, and his heart still pounding. “I…”
“Let me, Asher,” Keith said urgently. “Please?”
“C-Can you?”
“I think so. For a bit. We’ll see?”
Asher nodded.
“Grab my knees,
will you?”
Asher managed to reach back and bend up one heavy leg and then the other. He looped his arms around them and hovered himself, impaled, on Keith’s pulsing cock. He watched the fierce set of determination in Keith’s jaw and went breathless at the first tentative thrusting of his hips. His strength was in his core and his arms. His balance was shit, but he knew what he wanted. No one else had to see how artless the joining was or how rough. That was between them. Their secret. Their business.
“Why do you always have to do things the hard way?” Asher asked haltingly as Keith slid in fast and deep enough to make his balls dance against Asher’s ass.
“It’s not about how hard it is. It’s about control. I…” Keith slapped his hands to the bed and used them to help lever his body up, up, up. Faster, harder, legs shaking in Asher’s grip, mouth hanging open as his breath hammered out. “I… I need some.”
Thrust, thrust, thrust.
“Have it, then,” Asher rasped.
He didn’t know how much longer he could hold on. His hips were throbbing—unused to being made to work in such a way—and thighs were burning. And every slick glide of Keith’s shaft inside him incited a whole new wave of sensations Asher couldn’t digest. They didn’t disperse. They pooled inside him and pressed at his seams. Ferocious starbursts that somehow made his balls quiver and his belly burn low all over again.
“Keith, I—”
No one had been tugging him off that time, but his spend was everywhere—on him, on Keith, on the sheets—and Asher was mortified. Keith persisted. Tilting, grunting, snarling to slam harder and faster until his hands started to shake again, too.
Until Asher could feel Keith’s cock go impossibly fat and hard inside him and Keith cried out.
He let Asher fall on him, and Asher needed to catch his breath before saying anything.
He was seeing stars and his head was spinning fast. If he hadn’t have been lying down, he would have collapsed. Digging his fingers into Keith’s hair, he closed his eyes and waited for the pounding in his ears to abate.
