by Eva Chase
His brawn is equally impressive, with even more of the interlaced lines dappling his darker skin. Taking it in, I have the sudden urge to taste those solid ridges of muscle.
When I lean closer, the fae lord’s rich earthy scent with its hint of woodsmoke fills my nose. A low, hungry growl escapes him at the cautious graze of my lips. He tastes even smokier than he smells, like a midnight campfire in the depths of a dense forest.
I test Sylas’s skin with the tip of my tongue, and a rumble sounds from lower in his chest. His fingers tangle in my hair, trailing across my scalp in a way that makes my own skin shiver eagerly. August kisses a scorching line from the nape of my neck to partway down my spine, fondling my breast with his warm, broad hand, and certainty swells through the twist of longing inside me.
This is where I’m meant to be. This is who I’m meant to be with. It may have taken the most horrific of paths to get me here, but I can’t imagine feeling any happier than I am right now, doused in affection from these two different but equally awe-inspiring men.
I raise my head so I can kiss Sylas on the mouth, melting into him skin to naked skin. The throbbing between my legs intensifies. I roll over, their hands tracing lines of pleasure across my body with the movement, and reach for August. His mouth collides with mine just as passionately, drawing a needy whimper out of me.
Our breaths mingle and part, back and forth. I drink in both of them until my head spins. Every inch of my skin that brushes theirs lights up with a sharper flame of pleasure.
August ducks down to suck the peak of my breast into his mouth, and when my head arches back with a breathless moan, Sylas is there to meet me, his mouth blazing against my jaw, my neck. I slip my arm back in a partial embrace, hugging him to me, and stroke my other hand down August’s bulging arm. My hips sway between them, driven by more desire than I can hold in.
I don’t want slow anymore. I’ve waited weeks to see all this desire through to its natural finale, and my body is so ready my blood sings with it.
But first I want them to know just how much this means to me.
August swipes his tongue over my nipple once more and releases me. I slide my fingers along his jaw so he raises his gaze to catch mine. All the emotion in me bubbles over.
“I love you,” I say, quiet but steady, and twist so I can meet Sylas’s mismatched eyes. “And I love you. Both of you. So much.”
August’s voice comes out hoarse, maybe even shocked. “Talia…”
Sylas cups my face, his dark eye as intent as I’ve ever seen it. “You are a treasure, and I will treasure you as you deserve.”
It isn’t exactly the same sentiment I expressed, but it’s more than I expected. I lean into him as he captures my mouth, grasping August’s hand when he wraps his arm around my waist, not so much lost between the two of them as so very deeply found.
August rains kisses across my shoulder blades. His hand glides down my belly to the fly of my jeans. My breath spills shaky against Sylas’s mouth, and I squeeze August’s forearm to urge him on.
As he tugs the zipper open and peels the jeans off me, I flip over and kiss him hard. Sylas’s hands smooth over my hips and join August’s in freeing my legs. I reach for August’s trousers with a jerk of the waist, and he growls against my lips as he kicks out of them. Then he turns me back toward Sylas, his mouth burning where he nips my earlobe, his hardness unmistakeable against my thigh.
I keep one hand on August’s shoulder, clutching tightly, and run the other down Sylas’s chest, watching his expression. The smolder in his unscarred eye deepens as he rids himself of his own slacks. He grazes my lips with a teasing kiss that travels down my throat to my collarbone and then devours the tip of my breast.
August dips his fingers between my legs over my panties, sparking a bolt of electricity. I buck into his touch, the pressure of his fingers showing me just how wet I already am.
More pleasure pulses from his caress, tingling through my limbs and lungs. He keeps stroking me there as Sylas works over my breasts with devout attention, until I’m squirming between them, caught in the currents of heated desire.
“Please,” I mumble. “I want—I want everything.” The core of me aches with emptiness. Every particle in me demands to know how it feels to be truly filled.
August exhales in a shudder against my back. He yanks my panties down and tucks his fingers right against my slick folds. His touch inflames me.
At my whimper, he groans. Then he raises his head to look over my shoulder as he slides his hand along my leg to open my thighs.
“I believe she’s ready for you, my lord,” he says. He doesn’t sound disappointed at the thought of offering me up to Sylas—not with that rasp of eagerness in his voice.
Sylas releases my breast, taking in August’s expression and then mine. His fingers trace a gentle line down my cheek. “Do you agree, Talia?”
“Yes,” I gasp out. I let my hand drop to the fae lord’s silky boxers, almost gasping again at the corded length pressing so solidly against the fabric. I want all of him.
Sylas kisses me fiercely, stroking my belly and then my sex as I trail my fingers up and down his rigid erection. August teases my inner thigh a little longer before taking over fondling my breasts. Somewhere in the midst of that whirlwind of sensation, Sylas tugs his boxers off. I wrap my fingers around his length, shivering with delight at his groan, guiding him toward me.
He clasps my hip and rubs the head of his erection from my most sensitive spot to my opening and back until I’m throbbing twice as urgently as before. Easing my leg over his thigh, he pushes ever so carefully inside me.
That first moment of penetration comes with a burn that’s both pain and pleasure. A sigh stutters out of me, and Sylas stops completely. He stays there, no more than an inch inside me, circling his thumb over the sensitive nub above, kissing me gently. August squeezes my nipple and nibbles along my shoulder with little flicks of his tongue.
The burning eases back into a headier heat. I flex my hips just slightly, and Sylas groans. He presses a little farther in, and a little more, until the stretch is nothing but a blissful ache. I clutch at him. “It’s good. It’s good.”
I can feel the control wound through the fae lord’s muscles as he pulls back and plunges in, again and again, each time a little deeper than before. The bursts of pleasure make me cry out. I rock into him, our careful pace gathering momentum.
Some distant, wild part of me calls out for him to unleash every bit of his passion, but I’m not sure I’m ready for that yet. This is so much on its own.
He’s treasuring me with every movement of his body, just as he promised he would. The expanding fullness inside is like nothing I’ve ever experienced before, as if he’s splitting me in two but in a way that’s inexplicably satisfying, like I’ve been waiting all my life to be cleaved apart.
Sylas’s mouth melds with mine and pulls away again, his breath erratic. August keeps up his dizzying caresses of my chest. He lifts his head to kiss my jaw, and I manage to turn enough to meet his lips. His tongue twines with mine as his lord drives into me.
We’re all one being, one act, moving and burning together. The glow I felt looking into this room sears through me to light up my skin.
Somehow my need is growing again, even though I couldn’t be more filled. I push into Sylas’s thrusts, trying to find that final horizon. He rocks harder to meet me, but it’s not quite—not quite—
Just as the pressure inside me skirts the edge of painful again, Sylas’s voice tumbles out hoarsely. “Let’s both bring our lady to the finish she deserves.”
“Yes, my lord.” Without hesitation, August drops his hand from my breasts to my sex, to the spot that throbs the most just above where Sylas and I are joined. He teases over that spot and presses harder, and something in me crackles right apart.
I shudder and moan, my fingernails digging so deep into August’s arm and Sylas’s shoulder that I must leave marks. The surge of my release crashes
through me from the deepest part of my being to my curling toes and my quaking scalp.
Sylas pulls me even tighter against him with a few last bucks of his hips. His muscles go taut beneath my fingers, and his head bows next to mine with a searing exhalation.
After a few moments, he eases out of me as gently as he first entered, running his fingers along the side of my face, over my arm, and then stealing a peck from my lips. His eye searches mine, brightening when I beam at him. I’m spent and riding on a ripple of the pleasure still echoing through me. Not just thanks to him.
I shift over to tug August into a proper kiss. He returns it so enthusiastically that it steals my breath all over again. After, still nestled against Sylas’s chest, I peek up at him. “You—I should do something for you.”
I can’t offer him everything I just did with Sylas. A faint burn lingers inside me, like muscles on the verge of strain after an intense workout—unused to this intimate act, for now. But I could still—
August shakes his head and brushes his lips to my temple. “You’ve given me plenty. All I want is this.”
He tilts my head on the pillow so it’s tucked against his chin. Sylas ducks his own face close enough that his warm, slowing breath ruffles my hair, his arm hooking around my waist. My adoration of these two men swells inside me and tingles onto my tongue. I can give them one more thing.
I hold up my hand toward the starry sprawl beyond the skylight and murmur with all the joy inside me, “Sole-un-straw.”
It’s more than a spark this time. A flicker like a flame wavers from my palm, a visible manifestation of my love. It’s there and then gone, but clear enough to bring delight into the faces on either side of me.
“Beautiful,” Sylas says, kissing my temple. August hums in agreement and nestles even closer to me.
As I relax into the bed, I wonder why anyone has to be so cruel as to try to tear a happiness like this apart.
Chapter Sixteen
Talia
Brilliant sunlight streams over my closed eyelids, but not from the angle I’m used to. I yawn and blink at the odd glow—coming from above me rather than beside my bed.
Because I’m not in my bed in the bedroom that’s only mine. The sunlight is beaming from a skylight overhead in the room Sylas made—through magic?—for those times when I want to do something in a bed other than sleep. Apparently I was content and cozy enough after last night’s tryst that I drifted off accidentally.
The fluffy duvet has been drawn up over me to my shoulders, but I’m not the only one warming the space beneath. My arm rests against August’s bare chest. As I stir in my waking, he wraps his arm around me and nuzzles my hair. “Good morning, Sweetness.”
It is good. I’ve never slept next to August before, and he’s definitely an excellent morning companion. I snuggle closer to him before registering that it’s just the two of us in the bed.
As I glance toward the other end of the mattress, my pulse stutters. It isn’t totally unexpected that Sylas might have gone—he seems to be an early riser, based on the times I’ve slept in his bed—but after the intimacy we shared last night…
Before my doubts can fully form into words, August rolls me toward him so his golden eyes can seek out mine. “Sylas wanted me to apologize to you for him. It was urgent that he check with the night sentries as soon as they came in from their shift.” A smile crosses his lips, lit with unmistakeable pride. “He said he’s glad our arrangement means you nonetheless have someone worthy you can wake up to.”
I can almost hear Sylas’s voice saying those words, and they send a thrill through me as bright as August’s face. So far, the two men—especially Sylas—have treated my refusal to let one or the other of them claim me solely for himself as a challenging situation they’re only tentatively accepting. For him to suggest that sharing my affections might be a better situation is a big deal, and he included a compliment that obviously pleased August as well.
I can’t resist meeting August’s smile with a quick peck. “He said that’s why cadres sometimes share mates—isn’t it? Because you’re all so busy with your duties you can’t devote as much time to a partner as a regular fae could?”
August chuckles. “Yes, but lords generally aren’t expected to be so generous with their lovers. The honor of being chosen is supposed to make up for the limited attention, I guess. You get the best of both worlds.” A sparkle dances in his eyes.
“Yes, I do,” I say, meaning it with every particle of my being, and cuddle up to him again.
August tucks his arm right around me and rests his chin against my forehead. “You’re still feeling good about everything that happened last night, then?”
“No regrets,” I assure him, remembering the worries about fae-human relations he admitted to before.
“It must have been different from how you’d have imagined your first time would be.”
I shrug and breathe in his musky sweet scent, like manly fresh-baked cookies. Yum. “I didn’t have much of a chance to imagine it before. It felt exactly right for what my life is and who I’m with right now.”
“Good.”
We lie there for a bit just enjoying each other’s warmth. I skim my fingers over August’s shoulder and chest, tracing the lines of his true-word tattoos. The one that circles the right edge of his collarbone looks like a teardrop that’s grown claws. Curiosity nibbles at me. “What’s this one for?”
August cranes his neck to see which one I’m touching. “Slink salmon. Makes an excellent dinner. There were a lot of them in the main river that cuts through Hearthshire, so it made sense to pick up that one at the time.”
Of course he’d focus at least some of his magic on meal preparation. I tap one partway down his sternum next, an angular spindly shape. “And this one?”
“Skin. Which helped me fix this lovely color to your hair, since it’s nearly the same material.” He teases his fingers over the pink waves and then points to the other marks in a column down his chest from neck to belly. “All the bodily ones formed in a line. Bone, eyes, blood, skin, muscle, heart, stomach, teeth, liver, lungs. I’ve been working on brain for nearly a decade now, haven’t quite mastered it to get the mark. That’s the most difficult one. Many never fully conquer it.”
“I bet you will. I guess no one is teaching you like you’re teaching me light.”
He nods. “The simple ones—air, light, water, earth, and fire, basic metals, common plants and animals—get passed on in our early training. Anything more specialized, those who’ve mastered them guard the knowledge more closely. When I have time to spare, I meditate with the idea, I speak to the tissue in the animals I’ve hunted, that sort of thing. It’s hard to explain. The sound of the word slowly forms in your mind as you get closer to it.”
I’m pretty sure I’m never going to meditate my way into that kind of magic, considering how much trouble I have with total guidance. I’m about to ask what the mark for light looks like when my stomach gurgles loud enough that August laughs. “Sounds like I’d better magic up some breakfast.”
He presses one last kiss to my forehead and moves to get up. I push out from under the duvet after him. “I’ll help. Um, I just need to get some clean clothes.”
Since I’d rather not streak down the hall, I grab yesterday’s blouse and jeans from where they’ve fallen onto the floor and shimmy into them, not bothering with my foot brace when I’d just have to take it off again while I change. August tugs on only his shirt, but then, everyone else living in this building are his siblings, and he only has to walk one door down. He waits for me to finish and holds the door open for me all gentlemanly.
As he crosses the hall to his room, I set off for mine, buoyed by a vaguely floaty feeling, as if my happiness has grown wings. I’ve only made it to the branch that leads to the staircase when unexpected footsteps thump across the floor behind me.
Before I can turn more than halfway, August has caught me in his arms. He hugs me close and then kisses me wi
th an urgency that leaves me giddy, as if he thought he might have lost me just by letting me out of his sight for a few seconds. His voice spills out low and rough, his head still bowed next to mine.
“I love you too. I should have said it last night when you did, but I hadn’t thought about it quite so—I didn’t realize—and then I thought I’d wait until it was the perfect time. But I want you to know now. I love you. You are the sweetest, kindest, bravest woman that I’ve ever met, fae or human, and you should know that.”
An odd trembling spreads through my body. In that moment, I have the impression I’d float right up to the ceiling if he wasn’t holding me. I hug him back so tightly my shoulders ache, but not as much as the ache of joy that’s condensed around my heart.
“Thank you,” I say, not knowing how else to answer. That he could feel so much for me, that I could matter that much to him… It leaves me speechless.
But the sweetest and kindest man I’ve ever met doesn’t appear to need more than that answer. He kisses me again, more lingeringly, and forces himself to draw back to smile down at me. “I do still need to get some breakfast into you. I’ll meet you in the kitchen?”
Sudden inspiration sparks in my head. I squeeze his arm. “Meet me outside my bedroom after you’ve changed. I want to show you something first.”
As I hustle to my bedroom, even my warped foot barely seems to touch the ground. I throw open my wardrobe and grab the dress Harper gave me. She said I should show it off to August—and what better time could there be?
I slip it on, a little less nervous now that I’ve worn it before without doing any damage to it. The delicate material hugs my slender frame just as smoothly as I remember. Looking down at it, I feel as if I’ve become one with the forest outside. As if I could be almost as fae as the beings around me.
