Byzantine Heartbreak (27 page)

Cáel groaned and found himself reaching for him quite without meaning to.

Ryan pulled away. But not far away. He rested his hand on Cáel’s shoulder, heavy and hot. “Nia and I have had our time, Cáel. Six hundred years of it. We lost it, that time, but now we have it back again, thanks to you. You’re not going anywhere,
m
o
leannán
. Not until we’ve left you limp and drained and as content as a well fed lion lying in the sun.”

Cáel swallowed. “If you insist,” he said, his voice just slightly hoarse and not simply because of Ryan’s promise.

Nia stroked her soapy hand over his shoulder. Her eyes were warm, even tender. “Kiss me, now, Cáel,” she said.

That was easy enough to do. Except that Cáel was mortally aware of Ryan’s arm around her back and that Ryan was watching him steadily.

Cáel hesitated, swallowing.

“Isn’t this what you always intended, Cáel?” Ryan asked softly.

Cáel was too tense to jump in surprise. He looked at Ryan. “Have my motives been that transparent? I’m slipping.”

Ryan smiled a little. “As a political strategist, you’re truly in a class of your own. Even I didn’t figure out what you were aiming for until just now at the supper table, when I put together all the small hints and clues you’ve let slip over the last few weeks...and there were damned few of those.” He glanced at Nayara. “I’m presuming you didn’t tell Nia, either, but when she guessed, you confirmed it. Sometime in the last two weeks, while you were searching for me, yes?”

“No,” Cáel said. “I haven’t confirmed it at all. I suspected she knew only because she shanghaied me into the jump to find you.” He looked at Nia. “Yes?”

Nayara’s smile was warm. “You were more eloquent with me, Cáel. It was easier to read between the lines. Men...” She rolled her eyes. “You should learn to talk about your feelings more. It solves a lot of problems.” She twisted herself around to press her lips against his. “And now you have us, Cáel. What do you intend to do with us?”

His heart began to gallop. Hard. “Then you haven’t guessed all of it,” he said. He wasn’t surprised by how uneven his voice was. He caught her lathered hand in his. “Now isn’t the time for that confession,” he said. “Not when I can barely think for looking at the pair of you in each other’s arms and imagining what I want to do with you both.”

Ryan grinned. “Listen to him. There’s a man who has been indulging in more than the odd fantasy or two, Nia.”

“Definitely,” Cáel agreed.

Nia look at Ryan. It was a glance loaded with meaning. Ryan’s grin widened. “Yes,” he said, his voice low.

Nia moved through the warm water, sending a surge of it against Cáel’s chest. She reached for his lower legs and lifted. Because he was naturally buoyant in the water, she was able to lift him easily even with her diminished human strength.

Ryan’s hands slipped under Cáel’s shoulders and he was lifted out of the water and laid on the mat that ran the length of the pool, along the edge. Cáel felt the touch of the room’s ambient air as cold, but not for long, for Nia’s hands immediately smoothed their way over his chest, spreading soap. But she wasn’t just distributing the liquid. Her hands were stroking in long, leisurely sweeps across his flesh. Designed to stimulate.

Cáel drew in a steadying breath as he found himself looking into her liquid green eyes.

“Hello,” she murmured, the corners of her lips curving up into a smile for which he could find no words other than ‘wicked’ to use to describe it. Standing in the pool as she was, her head was only a few inches above his. She leaned down and Cáel thought he was about to be kissed, but the tip of her tongue swept over his lips, tracing the outline of them.

His pulse, his whole body, leapt as he realized that Nayara was playing with him. Seducing him.

When Ryan’s hands slipped across his lower abdomen, spreading more of the soap, Cáel’s hips lifted and he sucked in a sharp breath in surprise. Nia had very neatly distracted him.

It wasn’t Nia who was seducing him. It was both of them.

Ryan’s hand were circling over his abs, tripping over the sensitive skin of his hips, sweeping down his thighs and pushing between them, easing his legs further apart with each gliding sweep of his fingers.

Ryan and he had only been together a handful of times, but Ryan had quickly learned all Cáel’s most sensitive trigger points and weaknesses and he didn’t spare him now.

Nia’s hands rode the dents and caps of his shoulders and chest and her tongue teased and tasted his jaw and mouth and throat.

Cáel tried to keep track of what each individual hand and Nia’s mouth was doing, but it was impossible. Sensory overload. He couldn’t process all the sensations separately. Even his feet and toes were not spared and Cáel learned that his inner ankle was a personal erogenous spot that could leave him writhing, given the right attention.

Ryan gave it the right attention.

By the time the pair of them began to rinse him of the foaming remains of the soap, Cáel was breathless and hovering on the edge of a powerful climax. All he needed was just a small amount of direct stimulation. It felt like his whole body was clenched, on a hair trigger. But Ryan had carefully avoided his genitals and Cáel’s cock stood quivering against his stomach, dark with blood and throbbing with the beat of his thundering heart, silent evidence of his frantic state.

When the soap had all been removed, Ryan flopped back into the water and Nia rinsed her hands below the surface churning of the pool. Then she turned her back on him and climbed leisurely out of the pool, using the steps in the far corner. Water streamed from her naked body as she walked over to where a robe in the exquisite green colour that matched her eyes hung from a hook.

Cáel sat up, moving carefully, trying to get his creaking mind to work faster, as he watched her, puzzled.

Nia put the robe on, her back to him and Ryan in the pool, then slowly walked away, heading for the other end of the big room.

“What the hell?” Cáel breathed.

“Wait. Watch,” Ryan murmured and Cáel realized that he was leaning against the far edge of the pool, watching Nia walk away, too.

Cáel watched her again.

She looked over her shoulder, back at them.

Cáel felt the impact down to his toes. Her eyes were no longer crystalline, wicked, or even simply lovely.

They smouldered. There was more than promise there. There was heated need, an invitation. Yearning.

“There it is,” Ryan said and sighed.

Cáel groaned. He got to his feet. “And you’re going to just lie there?” he asked him.

“I’m giving you a head start,” Ryan told him. “I’ll still get to her before you.”

“Don’t bet on it, Celt,” Cáel replied. He strode after Nia, who was climbing the three steps up to the big platform area where the bed was located. The whole platform was divided off with the sheerest of curtains, which didn’t provide any privacy, but did mark off the platform as a very special inner sanctum. Cáel had read enough Greek and Roman history to recognize the symbolism. So he paused at the top of the three steps, just before the wall of chiffon.

“May I?” he asked, indicating the curtains.

Nia nodded.

He stepped through.

Nia stood by the bed, on a carpet that looked soft underfoot. The robe was clinging to her damp body, hiding nothing and emphasizing all that Cáel had come to appreciate about her. Her lean length, the full, upright breasts, the softly curving hips and her long legs, with the strongly muscled thighs.

“Gods, you’re so beautiful,” Cáel breathed. “You humble me, Nia.”

Nia smiled. “I hope not.” She took a few steps forward, so that she was pressed up against him. “I was beginning to like your arrogant confidence.”

He reached for and pulled the clip from her hair and let it drop free around her shoulders. “It was a temporary lapse,” he assured her, letting his fingers snarl in her luxurious soft red curls and locks. He tilted her face up to his. “Now, before that Celt gets here—”

“Too late,” Ryan murmured, from behind.

Cáel felt the heat of him press up against his back and the warmth of his breath on the back of his neck.

“Kiss her,” Ryan commanded, his hands settling around Cáel’s hips.

His body, which had been so close to a heart-stopping climax only a few moments ago, had backed-off from that jaw-cracking tension. But now, with the pressure of Ryan’s body behind him and Nia snuggled up in his arms, Cáel felt the tension leap back almost to the same frantic level as before.

He let out a shaky breath, as his cock pulsed against his belly. “Careful...” he said, trying to warn them of his precarious state. He wanted to extend this moment as long as possible.

But being so close to the culmination of so many fantasies and dreams was driving his pleasure too far, too fast. He was gulping his vintage like an alcoholic and wasting it, when he should be sipping and savouring every single mouthful.

 
He kissed Nia, not trying to direct the kiss in any way. Nia tasted a little bit like honey and...something sweet he couldn’t pin down. And her scent curled around his head like a spell meant to drive him mad.

Cáel let himself enjoy the taste of her, the feel of her mouth and lips and the pleasure building from the kiss—and from Ryan’s hands on his body. Ryan seemed hotter against his back, possibly because he was naked and drier. Cáel noticed Ryan’s scent, too, simply because it was there when usually, it was absent. The scent triggered strong images of their time in New Orleans and that pushed Cáel’s excitement another notch or two higher.

Ryan’s cock nestling between his ass cheeks, while Nia’s breasts pushed against his chest, was almost more than Cáel could bear. He lifted his mouth from Nia’s with a groan and yanked at the belt of her robe. “Enough,” he declared.

Nia’s lips parted in a soft sigh, as if she agreed with him and that drove his need even higher. She helped Cáel remove the damp robe, peeling it from her flesh. When she dropped it to the floor, Cáel pulled her up against him again and immediately dropped his head so his lips could taste her breasts.

Ryan was steadying them both. “The bed,” he murmured.

Cáel agreed. He already had his arms around Nia, so he simply lifted her and carried her the few short paces to the bed. Ryan was already there, waiting. He helped lay her close to the middle of the enormous spread.

Cáel found himself on one side of Nia, Ryan on the other. By mutual, silent consent they both began to lick and kiss their way from her ear to her thigh, taking their time. Long before they reached their goal, Nia was thrashing on the bed, her hands kneading their shoulders, as she moaned her need.

Her broken, husky voice asking them to fuck her, using raw words and descriptions and her body writhing beneath his mouth and fingers, was enough to keep Cáel’s climax simmering.

He kissed the top of her cleft, letting his tongue edge into the delicate valley, making her gasp sharply.

“Cáel, please, please. Fuck me,” Nia begged.

Ryan moved away. “You heard the lady,” he said.

Cáel wanted to hesitate, but he knew there had been far too much worrying, hesitating and second guessing. Centuries of it. And his body was driving him now. His need. He let out a deep exhalation. “Whatever the lady wants,” he told them both.

He settled over Nia, his pulse zooming impossibly higher as her thigh curled over the back of his hip. Her eyes seemed greener, depthless, as she stared into his, her lips parted as her breath escaped in little pants.

Cáel tried to ease his cock into her, to enjoy the moment of taking. But he’d barely began when he felt Ryan’s hands on his ass, probing gently between the cheeks and the surprise—and the thrill of pleasure—made him both gasp and drive his hips forward at the same time. He thrust into Nia hard and deep.

She gasped. Then she smiled. “mmm...” she murmured. “Good.”

Cáel held still. “You two...planned this,” he said, trying to speak evenly and failing. He needed two breathes just to get it out.

Nia’s smile broadened. “Keep still for a moment. I want to watch.”

Cáel tried to fight off closing his eyes as Ryan prepared him. His long fingers pressing inside him felt unbelievably good, with Nia watching. It added an element of eroticism that Cáel had not anticipated.

Ryan gripped his hips and Cáel let himself breathe as Ryan worked his cock inside. The sensation was at once familiar and dear, but oddly novel now that Cáel was buried inside Nia at the same time. He curled his fingers into tight fists as he leaned over Nia, trying to control the silvery surge of pleasure. He was far to close to coming.

Nia was tightening up around his cock, in a series of squeezes and releases. She was aroused by this, too.

That made it infinitely better.

Cáel swallowed hard, working to stay on top of the climax. Control it. Extend it. He shifted, but even the tiny movement of his cock inside Nia was almost overwhelming and he stifled the movement.

Ryan’s lips pressed against the back of Cáel’s shoulder. “Heaven,” he murmured.

Cáel closed his eyes. He couldn’t agree more. “Someone should invent media clips that capture sensations and emotions. I want to preserve this moment. This one right now and here.”