“What you are feeling,” he clung to reason. “What we are feeling, it is a-” She slid her hands up his chest and he leaned down to taste her lips again, the sweetness of her like water to a man stranded in the desert.
He peeled the singlet top from her and went to his knees in order to taste the flesh that the fabric had hidden. She stroked her fingers through his hair, like a benevolent saint. Her skin still held a hint of the metallic tasting water she had been using to wash the clothes in.
Her skirt slid with very little encouragement off her hips, and the thin underwear with it.
He stood and turned on the shower.
“Aren’t we…?” She was confused, her eyes dilated and her voice breathy.
He undressed slowly, testing her reaction. She stepped forward and placed her hand on his skin, trailing her fingers along the centre line of his stomach. He watched her face as she explored the landscape of his body. She was not shy in doing so, he noted, for all the inexperience of her touch.
“I am not taking you on the bathroom floor,” he answered, stepping back into the shower spray. She followed as if drawn by string. He turned her so that her back was against his chest, the touch of skin to skin making her gasp. He leaned over her, stroking soap over her body, exploring every inch of skin, until she sagged back against him, her head lolling, exposing the line of jaw and throat.
He tasted the water that ran down the smooth column of skin, and then turned her to face him, framing her face between his large hands, smoothing the water that ran down her cheeks with his thumb.
“Gargoyles,” he said, fighting through the haze of his desire. “Instinctively identify potential mates by chemical signals released by the body. Pheromones.”
“I know this,” she stroked her hands up his arms. “It is something most Others do.”
“Yes. I believe that you are also sensitive to the same signals,” he held her eyes. “What you are feeling is in response to that.”
“I know that too,” she trailed her hand over his chest and down his stomach muscles to close around him.
“F-k,” his eyes lost focus and reached out to turn off the water. She moved closer and caught a bead of water that clung to his skin on the tip of her tongue. “I am trying,” he said ruefully. “To do the right thing.”
“I don’t want to do the right thing,” she replied.
He wrapped a towel around her. “I want to f-k you very much,” he admitted. “But I do not take advantage of my sexual partners.”
“In the weeks since this war began,” she said. “I have been chased from my home by my brother’s coven, I have been raped by a winged man whose life I had just saved, taken prisoner by vampires, and forced to suck off Nate – which was disgusting, by the way.
“I have seen injuries so horrific that they haunt my dreams, healed people so injured that I thought they would take me into their deaths with them, and I have become so familiar with hunger and discomfort that I barely notice it anymore.
“Now I am in an apartment with three very beautiful men, the very gargoyles that have fascinated me my entire life. It seems to me to be totally reasonable that for once I do something that I want to do. And I want you to touch me.” She tugged the towel tighter around herself defensively. “I have the feeling that you, at least, would make the experience enjoyable.”
He picked her up and carried her into the bedroom, depositing her into the nest’s cushions, before stepping in behind her and lowering his body over hers, his hands releasing the towel she had wrapped around her in her anger.
“Very enjoyable,” he promised, his voice barely more than a growl.
“Oh, f-k,” she whispered, and lifted her mouth to his, her hands sliding over his shoulders as he deepened the kiss until she arched her body against his, seeking his skin against hers.
He kissed his way down her body, leisurely discovering the taste and textures of her, the points that made her sigh, and the ones that made her clutch him in place for more.
She wrapped her thighs around his neck and her fingers into his hair, her hips rising from the cushions of the nest, and her mouth open on cries un-vocalized as she lost herself in the pleasure of her body.
“So beautiful,” he murmured against the skin of her stomach. How had he thought she was a daisy amongst roses, he wondered, when she was the delicate bloom of jasmine putting all the roses to shame with her fragile beauty and exotic fragrance?
He rolled onto his back and lifted her over him. She braced her hands against his chest and looked down at him in surprise.
“You are in control,” he told her.
Her lips curled. “Am I?” She wondered, and reached between them, positioning him against her.
He moaned under the touch, his eyelids falling heavily over his eyes so that he watched her through his eyelashes as she lowered over him, adjusting, and lifting, then lowering again, the slide of the warm, wet heat of her enveloping him inch by glorious inch.
He resisted the urge to thrust his hips, and let her take him at her own pace, watching the stretch of her around him, biting on his back teeth in an effort to control himself.
“Oh, god,” she breathed it out. “You are, ah, very big.”
“Mhm,” he could feel the prickle of sweat building on his skin, the pleasure almost torturous, the need to drive himself into her almost more than he could withstand.
“F-k,” he closed his eyes as she took him fully.
She leaned her weight forward and began to rock along his length, and he was sure that his toes curled, fighting his body’s reaction. Instead, he lifted his hips, a restrained movement compared to what he wanted to do.
“Oh,” she murmured, and the little exclamation came close to breaking him.
“I am going to roll you beneath me,” he said, his voice sounding harsher than he wanted it to. He cleared his throat. “If you like.”
“Yes,” she barely got the word out before he clasped her to him and shifted, his muscles bunching as he released his control and let his body do what it craved, pushing deeply into her, and then withdrawing to his tip before driving hard against her. Having found his position, he lifted her hip and thrusted.
“Oh, god,” she repeated, her fingers clutching his hips. “Oh, f-k, that is…”
He moaned, his mind emptying of everything but the animalistic need to bring her pleasure and spill his seed within her. Their lips grazed, clinging breathless kisses, and he held her eyes, watching her pupils expand until the sea-green was a border for their darkness.
He felt the flood of heat, the clench of her, the bite of her nails into his skin, and surrendered to his body as her orgasm dragged his own from him, his roar loud enough that it’s echo still hung in the air as he sank over her, his body still twitching the last of his seed into her.
Her fingers trailed a lazy path up his back. He closed his eyes burying his face into the curve of her neck, breathing in her scent, and enjoying the feel of her beneath him, the idle caress over his skin.
There was every possibility, he thought grimly, that he was going to kill Nate.
“I have to go back,” she said quietly her hand did not still in its motion across his skin.
“Back?” His mind went to Nate’s cage and stumbled over why she would go back there.
“To the hospital and food co-op. To heal.”
“We will take you back tomorrow,” he could work with her compulsion to heal, he decided. As long as one of the triad was with her. “For a visit.”
She sighed. “Because the vampires want my blood.”
“No,” he lifted on his elbow so he could look down at her. “Because you are our mate.”
“Oh, Dior,” she moved restlessly and wouldn’t meet his eyes. “We are in the middle of a war, people are starving and dying…”
“And yet, here we are.”
“Dior,” she stroked her fingers through his hair, sifting the russet and gold strands between her fingers. There was an agony of indecision that crossed her face and he waited, watching the emotions that drew her brows together and planning his next course of action.
The door opened.
“Dinner is ready,” Blaise announced and slid over the lip of the nest until his body came up against them both. “Or we could eat in the nest,” his eyes were wicked, and he leaned between them and sealed his mouth over Verity’s.
Dior found himself very smoothly side-lined as the goat gargoyle seduced his way onto the healer, and the lion gargoyle propped himself up on his elbow, content to watch his mate excel at what he did best.
“Oh my god,” Verity’s astonishment fought with desire as the goat stroked into her not leaving her room for assent or dissent, but immediately driving her body into breathless pleasure with his pace, her eyes losing focus in between laughter.
Blaise sent Dior a leer over his shoulder, the goat gargoyle gloating that, although Etienne had manipulated it so that he was not the first to f-k her, he had claimed second position.
Dior smothered his laughter, rolling back onto the cushions of the nest, speculating on the fierce competition between the griffin and the goat that would result.
Etienne sulked his way into the nest, less than happy with the goat taking advantage. In compromise, Blaise rocked to the side, drawing Verity’s hips with him and Etienne slid into the space, sandwiching her between them, pressing his lips to the back of her shoulder and sliding his hand up to cup her breast.
Verity’s voice broke on her cry, and she arched back as the griffin worked his way into her, lifting her breasts to Blaise’s mouth as she lifted her mouth to Etienne’s.
Dior closed his hand around himself as he watched his partners ravage their mate between them, the press of bodies visually as erotic as knowing that when the opportunity arose, he would take whatever position was vacated, or, if that were not soon enough, he would take advantage of either griffin or goat.
The goat’s buttocks clenched, and he bared his teeth as he rutted his way towards release, his body a sculpture of clenched muscle as he came, grunting and grinding out his last throes, his throat working as he threw his head back.
Dior could hear his phone ringing, and knew it was the vampires, but there was no way that he was leaving the nest for battle. He snarled at the goat as he pushed him to the side and groaned as he sank into Verity’s heat.
Etienne had the healer’s attention, murmuring into her ear as he thrusted, her eyes unfocused, her face turned towards him, and her fingers clenching on the griffin’s hip.
Dior groaned feeling the other male’s movement through the fragile barrier between them.
“Mouth,” Blaise moved around the nest until he commanded the healer’s attention. “Yes,” he grinned as she complied, and then moaned as he braced his hands on the other gargoyles hips so that he could work his hips. “Oh, f-k,” the goat exclaimed, his voice raw, the tone drawing both griffin and lion’s attention.
Realizing that all three were taking their mate at the same time, Dior snarled and increased his pace, his primal nature triggered by the visual stimulation, until he could feel his claws pressing through his nail beds. He saw the green flash of Other in Etienne’s eyes, beyond the glaze of near-orgasm.
“Hold it,” he growled at his mate. “Wait.”
“Easy for you both,” Etienne groaned his protest. “You have both come.”
“Etienne.”
Verity’s gasp hit a note near shriek that touched the base of Dior’s spine and drew his balls up tight. “F-k.”
She gagged on Blaise as the goat thrusted deep, and he sobbed in air. “Oh, f-k.”
Dior felt the clench of her around him. “Again Blaise,” he commanded, and moaned as the goat pushed the healer’s tolerances again and she came, her nails scoring red tracks across Etienne’s skin that had the griffin arching, his eyes rolling back, as he spilled his seed.
Dior followed on a groan, managing to keep his claws from her skin, and saw her throat work as she swallowed what Blaise had to give, the goat sagging forward onto his arms.
“I did promise dinner,” the goat sneered his grin as he slipped free of her mouth, the last of his seed spilling over her cheek as she sucked in air.
Dior snorted his laughter. “I think she needs more to eat than your seed.”
“Oh, god,” Verity whispered. Etienne pressed kisses along her arm to just below her neck, whispering into her ear as he coaxed her arm up until it curved around his head, and he could stroke his hand over her breast. “Oh my god,” her eyes closed.
“Our mate,” Dior told her firmly.
“Our mate,” Blaise agreed.
“Notre amour,” Etienne purred. “Notre amour.”