Лорел Гамильтон - A Stroke Of Midnight

It made him close his eyes, and count his breaths.

“I would give almost anything to have a woman beg me like that,” Kitto said. “Do not refuse such a gift.”

I didn’t look at Kitto, because I only had eyes for Galen.

Nicca’s tongue licked inside my opening, then up in a sure, firm stroke. I had to learn how to breathe again, and when I opened my eyes, Galen was still there, looking down at me. Nicca began to lick in circles around the edge of me, long sure strokes, for he had found that quick ones only worked later, not at the beginning. That sensation of fullness was already beginning to grow low in my body.

“Please,” I said simply.

He settled his body over me again, wrapped his own hand around himself, and gave me the angle my mouth needed. “A princess shouldn’t have to beg” was the last thing he said before he slid inside my mouth.

THE WEIGHT GREW LOW IN MY BODY, AS NICCA’S TONGUE CARESSED in long, heavy circles, and at the top of that circle he found that spot, the one that would eventually turn that growing warm weight into pleasure. But he had to work me wet first, otherwise it would hurt and rub, not pleasure.

Galen had gotten over his reluctance. He put his hands on the floor just past my head, so that he could move his hips as if he were making love to my mouth. And it was making love, not a pounding, but a caress of muscled velvet sliding between my lips, a sweet, hard weight that made me open my mouth wide to him, so he could glide every inch from the smooth head to the end of the shaft where it met his body. Except we never got that far. He never put that much of himself inside me. Nicca had stopped what he was doing. I knew he was still lying between my legs, because I could feel his hands wrapped around my thighs, but he was still, giving only an occasional lick, just enough to not lose ground, but not even close to making me come. Normally, it would have been irritating, but it freed me to concentrate on the sensation of Galen in my mouth in a way he had never allowed before. Except that he was holding back. Never once did the soft, hanging weight of his testicles touch my face. He wasn’t giving me his all, not even close.

He spoke, and his voice showed the strain, the control he was wasting on his movements. “You stopped,” he said in a strangled voice. “Nicca, why did you stop?”

“I thought to let you both enjoy it without me distracting her too much. Though from what I saw her do with Sage and Mistral, you are being overly careful.”

“I don’t want to hurt her.”

That was it. I managed to get my hands free and pushed. He came up off of me, holding himself above me effortlessly, as if he could have held himself poised and perfect forever. Just gazing down the length of his body like that made me shiver.

“I want to feel all of you in my mouth, Galen, all of you.”

“Won’t that hurt you?”

Nicca laid his head against my thigh, and said, “You were in the hallway, right? You saw her with Mistral.”

He nodded. “I saw.” There was a hunching of his shoulders when he said it.

I ran my fingers down the front of his body, down his chest, his stomach, and only him rolling away kept me from wrapping my hand around him. “What is wrong?” I asked.

“I will never be comfortable being that rough with anyone.”

“You don’t have to be rough tonight, just give me the length of you. Let me feel you in my mouth all the way down to your balls. I want all of you in me in every conceivable way. If there’s an opening that can hold you, I want it.”

He gave me a look.

“Galen, Galen, we’re running out of time, don’t you understand that? Doyle and Frost already think the ring has chosen Mistral for me.”

He looked stricken, as if I’d stabbed him low and hard with something made of cold iron.

“I don’t believe they are right, but I do not know. None of us do. So while I have you, I want you. Don’t you understand that?”

He looked down, and he was small again, his foreskin covering him. “If what you did with Mistral is what you want, then why do you want me?”

“I don’t want rough every night, Galen. Some nights I like gentle. Some nights I like to make love, not fuck.”

“But some nights you like to fuck,” he said. “I pretty much always want to make love.”

I smiled at him. “I could argue that.”

He tried not to smile, but failed. “Not if what you did in the hallway was fucking.”

“That was fucking with Mistral. Sex depends on the person you’re with, Galen. Lovemaking rises and falls on the rhythms of the people involved.” I held my hand out to him. “Come to me.”

He shook his head. “If I come to you now, I won’t be able to come to you when Nicca finally enters you.”

“I can bring you back with a little bit of magic.”

“Yeah, but if you do it immediately, it hurts a little.”

“You never told me.”

I looked down my body at Nicca, who had gone very quiet, his head resting on my thigh more for a pillow now than for sex. “Does it? Hurt, I mean?”

“Until recently I almost always shared my night with Rhys, so with two of us in the bed there was more waiting between times. So no, it did not hurt. But if I had to go straight back to it, it might,” he said.

“Doyle and Frost never complained,” I said.

“I think pain is more useful for them in the bedroom than it is for me or Galen.”

I thought about that for a second. “Maybe.”

Galen’s voice came soft. “Is the reason you want me this way that you don’t want me to be your king?”

I started to say no, then hesitated. It wasn’t my motive for the oral sex, but the last part was true enough, or had been.

“I want you like this because I want you,” I said.

Nicca spoke with his head still pillowed on my thigh. “I’ve seen her do this with more than just Mistral. She does seem to enjoy it.”

“Sage, you mean,” Galen said, but still didn’t sound happy. His face did what it almost always did: it showed his every emotion.

“Yes,” I said, and wasn’t sure what to do to reassure him. It wasn’t like Galen to pout this much. This was more Frost’s speed.

“Sage,” he said again, “another who won’t ever be your king.”

I sighed. “We have a night of ecstasy in front of us, and you’re spoiling it with hard questions, it’s not like you.”

“No, it’s more like Frost.”

He’d spoken exactly what I’d just finished thinking. He’d done that several times tonight.

He continued with, “You complain about his moods, but you seem to like him better and better. Maybe you like your men a little more complicated.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. Why do you love one man and not another? Why is it that one person’s touch fills you with shivery heat, and the same touch from another leaves you cold? It is a mystery. But I could answer truthfully and still be comforting.

“I love you, Galen.”

He just looked at me.

“Maybe I had forgotten just how much, but today. . when I saw you lying there…” My voice failed me, and I had to close my eyes to keep from seeing him lying in a pool of his own blood.

Nicca stroked my thigh, not for sex but to comfort.

“When I saw you there, like that, I thought I would die from grief. To never see your smile again.” My eyes felt hot, and I couldn’t decide if crying would make me feel better or worse.

He touched my face, and without opening my eyes, I knew it was his hand. His warm, gentle hand. I laid my cheek into that hand. I was reminded sharply of doing the same thing to Doyle only a few hours ago. Galen had failed me then, had not understood why Gillette’s failing me had made me cry. But giving Galen into the hands of another woman who could give him his nights of gentle love was one thing; giving him up to death was another. That I could not bear.