Merry Gentry 03 - Seduced by Moonlight (20 page)

"I don't know."

"I know," Sage said, sliding his body down my hand until he sat straddling my wrist, "but I'm not telling."

He wrapped his legs around my wrist and I was suddenly aware that he wore nothing under his gossamer skirt. He was tiny, but the touch of that bit of sex felt more intimate than it should have, more important than it should ever have been.

I was suddenly aware of the pulse between his legs. The throb and ebb of the blood on either side of his thighs beat against the pulse in my wrist like a second heartbeat, as if the very beat of my blood would answer to the beat of his small body.

"Your hand, gwynfor, now I will take it."

It took Rhys a moment to focus, to understand. One of his hands was still half pinned under my body, and he held his free hand against his stomach, almost as if he was afraid of being hurt.

"A little blood, a little taste, nothing more, gwynfor, nothing more."

"Stop calling me that," Rhys said.

"But you are the white lord," Sage said, "and the white lord, the hand of ecstasy and death, feared nothing and no one."

Rhys reached out toward the tiny fey, slowly, reluctantly, his face already half-lost to the sensual call of the other's magic. The wager was lost before Sage ever touched him.

Sage stayed pressed to my wrist, like one of those old wooden carvings of the tiny fairies riding broomstraw, except my wrist was the whisk of a plant and his power did ride me, rode me like the wingless fey were supposed to ride the small flowering plants. Were the flowers as joyful to be ridden? Did it feel good to them to be torn away from their roots and plunged through the night sky?

Sage wrapped his tiny hands around Rhys's finger. He laid his small red mouth against the tip of his finger, like a tiny swollen rosebud. I felt Rhys's pulse like a distant line of music, a bass rhythm that you heard only through the walls at night, as you lay in your bed, and wondered where it was coming from. Sage opened his mouth, his lips still pressed against Rhys's skin.

Rhys actually said, "No, no."

Sage drew back enough to roll the glittering black of his eyes up to the much larger man. "Will you be forsworn, white lord? Will your courage fail you in the face of a mere demi-fey?"

I could see Rhys's pulse thundering against the skin of his throat, and his voice came rough around it. "I'd forgotten what you were."

"Forgotten what?" Sage asked, his mouth still hovering over Rhys's fingertip.

Rhys had to swallow to speak again. "Once, you were a court of your own, and size mattered not in power."

Sage gave a small laugh. "Do you remember what else we could do?"

"Your glamour could roll us, like a drunk on a Saturday night."

"Yes, white lord, it's what saved us from being destroyed by both courts." His mouth moved slowly back toward Rhys's finger, and the next words were spoken with his lips so close that they shivered along Rhys's skin: "The Nameless has given back a great deal, to all of us." He sank his teeth into Rhys's flesh.

Rhys's spine bowed, his head thrown back, eye closed. I felt that quick pain only lightly, a distant stab of pleasure.

Nicca writhed, climbing my body until his face almost touched Sage's leg. His arm convulsed around my waist, holding on as if he was afraid, or eager. I knew just from the press of his body that he was getting the hints of pleasure and pain, just as I was.

Sage began to suck at the wound, and distantly, I felt the pull. I'd had it often enough for myself to know that it felt as if that tiny mouth had a long, thin line directly from the tip of a finger to the groin. With every suck Sage pulled on things that shouldn't have been touchable from a small wound in a finger.

Sage's pulse between his legs beat against the pulse in my wrist, fast, faster, hard, harder, and I felt a third pulse. It was as if Sage had pulled Rhys's heart into his hand, and Sage was swallowing around the thick, meaty, pulse of Rhys's heartbeat. I felt Rhys's heart beating down Sage's body, as if the smaller man were a tuning fork, a vibrating, trembling path from one throbbing heartbeat to another.

Rhys's body pressed tighter against the side of me. His groin was pressed against the curve of my hip, and almost against his will, it seemed, his body began to move against mine. I could feel him large and hard, rubbing against my hip. A rhythm began between the two of them. I felt Sage suck on Rhys, and with every suck Rhys pressed himself into my hip, buried the hard shaft of himself along my skin as if he were seeking another way inside me.

Rhys began to glow with that white light he held inside. His tricolored eye glowed like blue neon as he gazed down at me. His lips were half parted and he bent down to lay his mouth across mine, and the moment he kissed me, my power spilled upward, so that as he pulled back from my lips, magic trailed between us like the glow of stars. My body pulsed white as if I'd swallowed the moon, and it was spilling out through my skin.

Sage sat between us like a small golden doll, the veins in his wings shining like stained glass in a fall of sunlight. He wasn't sidhe, but power is power. For a moment I saw his red mouth pulse, as if he truly did hold Rhys's heartbeat in his mouth.

Nicca had begun to glow softly, the wing tattoo on his back pulsing faint traces of pink and blue and cream, and black. It was only the beginnings of his power, the first promise.

Rhys's hand under my shoulders convulsed, his fingers digging into my skin, and I felt him fight to close his other fist on Sage's fragile body. Rhys's breathing came fast, faster, until he threw his head back, his body arching against me. Something luminous and nearly liquid moved underneath his skin, like watching glowing clouds across the sky break apart, spilling like burning phosphorus. His white curls swirled around his face in the wind of his own power, and his hair ran shining with power, as if someone had traced a glowing wand in streaks through his curls. He opened his eye, and I had a moment to see its neon blue circles begin to swirl like a storm about to break over me, over all of us. Then he ground himself into my flesh, so hard that it hurt, and that brought me back to his body and chased back the power, just enough. He screamed, a second before he spilled over me in a scalding wave that flowed and dripped down my hip.

The feel of it bowed my back, flung my free hand skyward, writhed me over the bed, but I couldn't move, I was trapped between the thrust of Rhys's body and Nicca still wound around my waist and legs.

Rhys's heart beat inside my veins, faded, then was gone so abruptly that it scared me. I had to open my eyes and see that he was still there, still alive. It was strange because I could still feel him pressed along the length of my body, but it had been the taste of his pulse in my body that I had ridden. He lay collapsed beside me, hair scattered across his face, his neck bare and smooth, and his pulse thudded against the thin skin of his neck like something trapped. His power faded like the moon lost behind clouds.

I started to ask if he was all right, but the pulse of Sage's body froze the words in my mouth, and I turned to meet that tiny, glittering black gaze. His golden luminescence hadn't faded; if anything, he glowed brighter than ever, his wings like colored fire framing the central flame of his body. There was more of fierceness, of triumph, of power, than lust on his face. "Whatever my lady wishes, so shall it be," he whispered.

Nicca held a shaking hand up and Sage laughed. "So eager, I like that."

"No gloating, Sage," I said, my voice still uncertain, as if I wasn't quite sure it was my voice.

"Oh, but Merry, I must. The donnan has paid me a high compliment."

"Donnan?" Nicca made it a question, then shook his head. "I was no one's chief, little, brown, or otherwise, Sage." His voice was shaky, but through the haze of glamour with Rhys and I beginning to fade like the moon sinking behind the trees, Nicca seemed determined not to be called what he had never been.

"As you will, then, Nicca," Sage said. He grabbed Nicca's fingers and pulled his hand across mine, so that Nicca's hand was cradled between Sage's body and my fingers. The back of his hand was hot—gliding across my fingers and palm. That one simple touch brought the fading light in my skin back to a glow as if the moon had decided to rise twice that night.

Sage dragged Nicca's hand across his own lap until he bent his tiny, swollen mouth over the wrist. He laid that red kiss against Nicca's wrist, where the blue vein pulsed just under the skin, so close to the surface it was like an eager lover waiting to be taken.

Nicca crawled up my body so that he lay half upon me, using his free arm to support his weight; for a moment I looked down the length of his body to see him long and firm and full of a golden light that began to spread through his pale brown skin, as if the sun were rising inside his body. I felt his magic vibrate just above me like a trembling sheet of heat in the air. Sage's magic had caught Rhys unawares, but Nicca had learned from the other man's mistake, if it was a mistake, and he was using his own magic, trying to work through the glamour.

Sage bit into Nicca's wrist, and the pain distracted him, closed his eyes, shuddered his breath, but he held his body above mine in a sort of one-armed push-up. I couldn't taste Nicca's pulse as I had Rhys's. Nicca was fighting the glamour.

He managed to maneuver himself over my body, between my legs, and he began to lower himself down, pushing through the vibrating heat of his own magic, shoving it into me and over Sage. It made Sage hesitate and shiver himself.

I ran my free hand down Nicca's chest, stomach, and wrapped my hand around the long hardness of him. My touch bowed his back, lost him his concentration. Sage's glamour flooded over us both, and the blood that raced through my body spilled in white light out of my skin, danced my hair around my face. Nicca's skin was the color of deep golden amber, like dark honey if it could burn. For burn he did, with a golden light that I'd never seen from him before. It was as if Sage's glamour had stripped his skin away to reveal nothing but power.

I held him in my hand, firm and real, but he glowed so bright that I could not look upon him and had to close my eyes. It was like holding onto some vibrating, pulsing, piece of magic made solid. He was hot velvet against my palm, a gliding smoothness that throbbed down my hand to dance inside my veins, to spill heat through my body, like a searching hand that touched and glided over and through me, searching, searching, searching until his power found me, found my center, found that part that nothing should touch, and the power filled me from the inside out. His golden power raced with my magic, my body, my pleasure, so that his glow ran before mine, coaxed mine to shine bright and brighter, until the room was full of shadows from the shining of us, full of shadows that had no place in this room, as if our lights showed us hints of what lay around us, and it had nothing to do with this room, this bed, these bodies. The magic spilled out of us raw and wild, and Sage burned in the middle of it.

I fell back into my body screaming, bucking, fighting the bed, the men, everything, anything I could touch. I felt my nails slicing into flesh, and it wasn't enough. Three things brought me back to myself: blood in a hot rain across my face, Nicca shrieking, over and over again, and the feel of wings under my hands. Somewhere in all of it, I didn't want to tear Sage's wings, as he'd grown large under my hands.

Someone grabbed my wrists, held them over my head, pinned them to the pillows, and I didn't struggle. I couldn't see. Blood had landed across my closed lids, and the lashes were too thick with it. There was too much blood for a little rough sex. I blinked frantically, and I thought I was seeing double. Two pairs of wings rose above me like neon glass. One pair belonged to Sage—now nearly as tall as I was, his weight pinning me underneath him. But the others were larger, almost larger than I was, brown and cream, edges of pink, whirls of blue and red like huge eyes dotting the wings. They were only half unfurled, like a butterfly fresh from its chrysalis.

I stared up into Nicca's face. A face that was half pain, and half ecstasy, and all confusion. Blood glittered across us, glowing like liquid rubies, pulsing with the magic that still rode the air. The blood was Nicca's, from where his wings had burst from his skin.

It was Rhys who held my wrists, though he was as close to being off the bed as he could get. He was spattered with blood, but even as I watched, it was absorbed, as if his skin were drinking it. "I thought you were going to tear their wings," he said, and his voice held an edge of fear. I wondered how many of us had been screaming at the end. The blood seemed to like Rhys. He was drinking the power of this strange blood, this strange wound.

I was pinned under Sage and Nicca, though Sage was closer to center, and Nicca had spilled slightly off my body. I stared up at the wings, like stained glass with its own light. Nicca's wings were unfurling even as I watched, pumping larger with each beat of his heart.

Sage's mouth was smeared with liquid rubies. I'd never seen blood glow like that. He leaned down toward me, and I felt the power, not just of his glamour, or of Nicca, but of the blood itself. He kissed my lips, and the power burned against my skin, raised my face to his mouth, and we fed. He fed at my mouth like it was a flower, and I fed at his like it was a cup. We drank, sipped, and licked the power from each other's mouths.

When we raised back from the kiss, most of the blood was gone, as if it had been something else altogether. Rhys looked as if he were carved of white light, and his eye burned like some blue sun. He slid off the bed, shaking his head. "I've had enough, thanks. I'll just watch the rest of the show."

I don't know what I would have said, or if I had any words left, but one of the men still in the bed made some small movement and I turned back to them.

I lowered my hands to touch Sage's hair. In his small form it was soft, but here like this, the softness was almost overwhelming; just running my fingers through the silken brush of it caused me to writhe underneath them both.

Nicca cried out, and I gazed up at him, watched the fear leave his eyes, consumed with something darker and brighter. His eyes glowed as he lowered his mouth to mine. Sage moved just enough to let Nicca taste me. He licked the inside of my mouth as if it were a bowl, and he was trying to get the last drops from it.