Лорел Гамильтон - Incubus Dreams

He nodded, then smiled again. “Just like that, you agree to it all.”

I reached out my hand, and after a moment’s hesitation, he took it. There was no flash of munin or Raina, it was just his hand so warm in mine. “We’ll try it, see if it works, depends on what I have to do as your lupa. I just want you to know that you can walk out the door right now, and I’ll still try to play lupanar with you.”

He squeezed my hand. “You won’t force me?”

“Not my kick.”

“Nor mine,” Jean-Claude said. “I have been victim too many times over the centuries. It has given me no taste for it.”

Richard took in a big breath, which moved his chest and shoulders, and raised his stomach up and down, as if he’d drawn air all the way down to his toes. He let it out slowly, then nodded. “Let’s try. If I can’t do it, then I can’t do it, but I’ll try.”

I kept my hand in Jean-Claude’s, but stepped away from him, until I was standing in front of Richard. I went up on tiptoes, and he bent down so I could kiss him, gently, on the mouth. “Have I told you recently that I think you are very brave?”

His eyes filled with something warm and good. “Never.”

“Then I’m saying it now.”

“Thank you,” he said, and his arm slid around my waist, the warmth of his skin pulsing even through the silk. No, not his warmth, his power.

Jean-Claude stood up, and I drew him into the back of my body.

Richard tensed when Jean-Claude’s body pinned his arm, but he fought it. Fought to relax. He wasn’t entirely successful, but he tried. A for effort.

“Now, let’s get naked,” I said.

I actually made them both choke and laugh at the same time. “Ma petite, what has made you so bold?”

“It takes the three of us forever to do anything. We discuss it, we argue it, we fight, we make up, we fight. I don’t want to discuss anymore. If we’re going to do this, let’s do it.”

“Just like that,” Richard said, “off with the clothes, no sweet talk first.”

I leaned into the circle of his arm, and the weight of Jean-Claude behind my back. I looked up Richard’s face, and said, “I want to see if I can deep throat you.”

He blinked at me, then started to laugh, then stopped, and finally said in a strained voice, “You couldn’t before. It was great, but you never quite-”

“I’ve been practicing,” I said. I smiled up at him.

“That smile,” he said.

“What smile?” I said.

Jean-Claude answered, “The knowing smile.”

“The one that says you’re thinking dirty thoughts, and you want to do them all with me. You’re the only woman I know that can put innocence and evil into the same look.”

“Evil,” I said. “Am I supposed to be offended?”

“I just never expected to see that smile directed at me again.” He kissed me on the forehead. “For that smile, I’d do a lot.”

“I still don’t get the idea of innocence and evil in the same smile.”

“You have the look of a fallen angel, ma petite. An angel does not stop being an angel merely because they fall from grace; their wings are not so easily taken.”

I remembered thinking almost the same thing about Richard earlier.

Like a fallen angel. Should it have bothered me that Jean-Claude and I were using the same analogy? Yeah, but out loud all I said was, “I thought you were the dark angel here?” I turned so I could see his face.

He smiled and whispered, “Nothing I could have offered would have gotten him out of his pants.”

“I heard that,” Richard said.

Jean-Claude laughed. “And will you refuse her offer?”

He looked from Jean-Claude to me, then back to Jean-Claude.

Richard laughed, a very masculine laugh. “No.”

I was suddenly very aware of the two of them pressed on either side of me. Enough foreplay, off with the clothes.

The clothes came off, then Richard argued with me on what position.

I’d be better able to deep throat him. Like I said, the three of us together have to argue about everything. Jean-Claude settled the argument by simply saying, “Letma petite try her way, and if it does not work, we can try yours.” I began to realize that Richard and I as a couple was truly impossible, but as a threesome, if the third was our diplomat, it might work. What does it say when you need another adult in the bed to referee? Nothing I wanted to think about too deeply, not at that moment. At that moment, I let all the doubts go, all of them. I knew Richard and I too well not to suspect that we would wreck this later. But for now, right now, we had this moment. I tried to get out of my way and enjoy it, and had to trust the men to do the same.

I’d seen Richard nude, and recently, but it had been a long time since I’d seen him stretched nude on a bed, on his back, with the long length of his body spilled out in front of me. I made him spread his legs so I could lie down between them, rest my head against the muscled swell of his thigh, and gaze up the length of him. It was a form of teasing myself, almost. So close to his groin, but not touching. But it wasn’t that I just wanted to look, it was the whole package. And it wasn’t just that he was lovely to look at, it was that after I’d looked at the groin, only partially erect, and still impressive, the flat plain of his stomach with its perfect dimple of belly button, the swell of his chest with his nipples like dark brown punctuation to all that permanently tanned muscle; the swell of his shoulders, and finally his face. His face gazing down at me. The pure brown of his eyes like chocolate, the look in them already a little unfocused, when all I’d done was lay my cheek against his thigh and breathed out along his testicles. A feather of a touch, and already his face was showing the effect, as were other parts of his body.

It wasn’t just the body, it was Richard looking down at me. The weight of him in his eyes. Him staring down the line of his own body, while I lay between his thighs. I used to think that only death would take someone away from me. But I had learned that so many lesser things can steal someone away, just as completely, just as forever.

They live, they breathe, but you never get to touch them, you never see them nude, you never wake to their smile, the smell of their skin on your sheets. There are things so much less dramatic than death that are just as permanent. If I never got to be here like this with Richard again, I wanted it to last. I wanted to take my time.

Where was Jean-Claude? Sitting in the far corner of the bed opposite us. He was nude, but sitting with his back against the wall, one knee drawn up so that he was covered, for the most part, even if you looked directly at him. He looked like a great pale cat curled on the pillows. Once I would have said he looked utterly relaxed, but I knew him too well now. I saw the way he held his shoulders, the tension in one leg. He was holding himself in check, being oh, so careful.

I settled my cheek against Richard’s thigh, the way a cat will scent mark you, rubbing back and forth. Just that, nothing more, but it made him writhe. His legs tensing around me, so that his legs flexed on either side of my body. The feel of even that much made me close my eyes and rest my cheek between his legs, so that my face was cradled, oh, so gently against the soft warmth of his testicles. I nestled my mouth against that silky skin. The tiny stiff hairs tickled along my face as I licked that soft, moveable skin. More hair to tickle along my lips. I preferred smoother skin, a little less fuzzy.

But of course, I could have that by simply moving up.

I went up on my knees and licked along the front of his shaft, licked it like it was a big piece of candy, and I didn’t want it to melt. Licked it back and forth, up and down, just on the front of the shaft, until he cried out, and his hands convulsed on the red sheets.