Лорел Гамильтон - A Stroke Of Midnight

I closed my mouth around Galen, forcing him to slow up enough for me to swallow and breathe, then I opened my mouth for him. If I could have spoken, I’d have said it was going to be soon.

Kitto began to move against me, rubbing himself through my hair, caressing my skin with the heat of his body. His hips were rising and falling underneath me.

I had never had so many men’s attention at one time. I had had three men in the bedroom, but never this intimately, never actual sex from so many at once.

Nicca began to glow first, but it was not the sun inside his skin this time, it was a candle that painted his skin the color of rich, dark amber, with hints of orange and gold, like the inner spark of some jewel. I could not see Kitto, but I felt him, incredibly warm against my body, as if he were a fire, settled and banked for the long winter’s night. What I could see of his body gleamed pearlescent, a soft, shining white.

When the light came to Galen, it chased all the colors from him but a soft glow, like a lamp left on in a dark house so you can find your way.

I kept expecting Nicca’s rhythm to speed up, but he stayed careful, gentle, so that he never varied. He knew he’d found the spot he wanted, we wanted, and he simply kept it.

Galen was fighting his rhythm, fighting to keep from moving too fast, too hard, for my mouth, my throat. I could feel the tension in his hips, the slight tremor in his arms, as he fought what he wanted to do. He wanted to fuck me, to truly fuck me, and he was simply too big for it, and he knew that. But the feel of him fighting it, the knowledge that he wanted to do things to me that would hurt and damage, and that only his discipline, his will, kept him from it, that was more exciting than anything else. What Nicca was doing felt better because of what he was touching. It was that that was filling me up with that heavy, warm weight. It was that movement that would eventually spill me over, but Galen’s fight for control was what made me writhe. What relaxed my mouth and throat, what helped me find my own rhythm for breath and swallowing, so that I could give him more room to push inside me. He had to feel the muscles of my throat relax, and it drew a sound from low in his throat. It drove a shudder through him, and stopped him in midthrust for a moment while he fought his body, fought himself.

Nicca’s hands grabbed my hips, kept me from moving there. But the rest of me writhed around Galen and against Kitto, where he lay quiveringly hard in my hair. Kitto responded by thrusting harder, the edge of him caressing the outer curve of my ear. That warm hardness curved along that hollow where the neck meets the ear, that warm place where a breath can make you shiver, and he was thrusting all of his sex over and over it. The silk of his balls brushed against my throat, while the rest of him kept touching that certain place just behind the ear, and up into my hair. To feel so much more of an intimate caress there made me writhe harder for Galen, and fight my own body not to move against Nicca. He had made it clear that if I moved, he’d lose the spot that we were both enjoying so much.

Somewhere in all that, I realized the room was black. That only our glow chased back the edges of the dark. My skin was a pale white luminescence, the gentle play of moonlight to guide you home through the dark.

That warmth between my legs built to heaviness, and I knew that we were only a few more caresses away. If I’d been able to talk, I would have told them, but since I had no words, I used what I did have. I made small, hungry noises around Galen’s body, as that tight, heavy weight between my legs grew and grew. Galen thrust harder into my mouth, as if the sensation of me calling around him was too much for his ragged self-control. I was about to reach up, to use hands to slow him, when Nicca’s body drove that one last time, and the last drop hit that heavy, warm pool deep inside me. It spilled me over in a rush of heat that spread out over my skin, through my body, and I screamed around Galen as he thrust as hard into my throat as ever he had thrust between my legs. Kitto cried out underneath me, his body arching against me. Nicca drove himself one last time inside me, as Galen spilled himself down my throat, and Kitto spilled hot against my skin, and decorated my hair with his seed.

Our bodies seemed to breathe in, and as we did, our glows all went dark, so that for an instant the room was in utter darkness. Then it was as if the entire world let out a collective breath that was warm and heavy and full of pleasure. That breath spread outward from us, so that we all glowed as if our skin could not hold such light, such warmth. We all screamed that pleasure, and the light burst out from us so that our eyes were dazzled and blinded by it. A tremendous crashing filled that light, a thunderous sound that shook the floor beneath me, and thrummed along my bones like the very walls of the sithen had convulsed with us.

We were left in the dark, collapsed upon one another. Galen dragged himself out of my mouth. And I had to cough, and turn my head to the side. “Did I hurt you?”

I had to clear my throat sharply to say, “Yes, but I liked it.” My voice sounded rough, not like me at all. It hurt to swallow, and my throat felt rubbed raw.

“Why did the lights go out?” Kitto asked.

“Why does the air taste like broken stone?” Nicca asked.

The first light into that darkness was a wavering, sickly greenish yellow flame. Doyle came with the fire on one hand and a gun gleaming dark in the other. Frost was at his side like the reverse of body and shadow. He threw a glittering ball of light into the room, and was down on one knee sighting down the guns in his hands, searching the room for targets.

“Where are they?” he asked.

“Who?” I asked.

“Your attackers,” Frost said.

All of us on the floor exchanged glances, as best we could. “We were not attacked,” Nicca said.

“Then what did that?” Frost pointed with one gun, and the glittering silver and white light moved where he pointed. The light hovered over the far wall of the bathroom, and we saw why he had asked who attacked us. The far wall was no more. Broken stone and debris showed a black, gaping hole.

Other guards, including Biddy, were at their backs, all with weapons drawn. “Is the princess hurt?” someone asked.

“No,” I said, but my voice was still rough, so I wasn’t sure they heard me. I had to try twice before I could make myself clearly heard. “I am fine.”

Doyle sent Hawthorne and Adair to approach the far wall cautiously, their own balls of colored light acting like pet lanterns hovering just above their shoulders. One of them called back, “It’s a garden. A small garden with a dry pool in the ground.”

“What surrounds the garden?” Doyle asked from where he stood near us.

“Stone,” Adair answered. “It is a cave of stone.”

Doyle and Frost were staring down at us. Frost’s face was pale under the arrogant mask. I glanced past them and saw the heavy door to the outer room hanging twisted and broken in its frame.

“We thought you’d been attacked,” Doyle said, and his voice held that edge of relieved fear that Frost’s face could not quite hide.

“We’re safe,” I said.

“Why does your voice sound so rough?” Frost asked.

Galen raised his hand. “My fault.”

Doyle shook his head, and put up his gun. He still held the sickly flame in the other hand, as if his hand was the wick for the candle. It was the only light I’d ever seen him call in the dark.

“Well, at least this answers one question,” he said. “Sex inside faerie is different.”

“The ring has chosen no one for me yet.”

He gave a quick smile, a flash of white in his dark face. “That is good to know.”