It was very pleasant, Verity thought, to lie out in the sunshine, on the grass, with the cabbage butterflies dipping and dancing around them.
Blaise’s lips were against the pressure point of her throat, alternating kisses with inhalations and sighs of satisfaction. His hand cupped her breast, the warm heat of his palm against her skin was soothing. There was no demand to his touch, he simply liked to touch, and there was something very nice about being touched for the sake of being close to another person and feeling their skin.
Etienne rolled to face her. “Mon chou,” he nudged the half-sleeping goat gargoyle to the side and lifted his body in a slow, sensual slide of skin against hers. She moaned, her body surging from the edge of lazy sleep into lust, and she lifted her mouth to his, stroking her hand up over his arse, up the muscles of his back.
He brushed his lips over hers, unhurried in his seduction, sharing his breath along with the glide of his smooth lips. He had a mouth made for kissing, she thought, the bottom lip full and plush, the top carved with just the edge of sharp cruelty that made his smiles hover on the edge of pure wickedness and beauty.
He touched his tongue to hers, teasing and tasting, and at the same time, pressed his hips against hers so that she could feel his hard on trapped between them, using it to rub against her in a way calculated way, precisely measured to make her moan and push back against him seeking more. He kissed his way across to her ear and caught the lobe between his teeth, running his tongue across the tip.
“J’ai envie de t’embrasser,” he whispered into her ear. “I want to kiss you, mon chou.”
“You just were kissing me,” she giggled, her heart fluttering and a flush rising on her skin.
He lifted onto his arms and his smile was slow, his eyelids heavy. “I was just kissing your mouth,” he replied, and slid down her body.
“Oh,” she said breathless as he lifted her knees over his shoulders. One of his hands stroked up her stomach and closed over a breast as his mouth closed lower. “Oh, f-k,” she exclaimed.
“Etienne has a clever tongue,” Dior purred. He had rolled onto his side, and Charon leaned over him his hand wrapped around the lion gargoyle’s c-k, stroking, whilst the winged man watched Etienne. “Hmm,” the lion’s eyes closed, relishing Charon’s hands on him, his hips rocking in time.
Blaise stood and nudged Etienne with his toe. “Roll onto your back.”
The griffin did not ask questions, stopping what he was doing in order to comply.
“Oh but…” Verity protested. The goat laughed as he picked her up, positioning her so that she straddled Etienne’s face. “Oh my god,” Verity gasped as Etienne returned to work.
“And now, you can…” The goat positioned himself before her, and she realized that he wanted her to suck him off. She took him into her mouth, gripping his hips as he rocked into her. Etienne wrapped his arms around her thighs, holding her stationery.
“Now that,” Dior’s smile was cat-satisfied. “Is f-king sexy.” He shifted, moving to his knees, and Verity felt Etienne moan, the vibration shaking through her divinely, as the lion took the griffin’s c-k into his mouth. “Mphm,” the lion groaned as Charon took advantage of his position, as he had hoped he would, and stroked into him.
“Where is my phone when I need it?” Blaise complained. “This would make an amazing screen saver, all my mates, f-king in a chain in the grass.”
Verity released him in order to cry out as she came, Etienne’s tongue driving her unmercifully over the edge, until she sagged forward on her hands and knees.
“Dior,” Etienne said, and the lion released him so that he could reposition behind Verity, curling over her back and stroking into her, pulling her back into his lap. “Blaise,” he moaned it out, and the goat stepped in so that Verity could take him back into her mouth.
Charon curled his arm around Dior’s stomach, stroking the lion as he stroked into him, and Dior moaned. “And here I thought you would be shy,” he said from between his teeth.
Charon laughed and the lion groaned, his fingers clenching in the grass as the laugh shook through him. “I will not last long like this,” Dior predicted.
“Neither will I,” Charon replied breathlessly. “Watching them take Verity whilst I take you…”
Blaise’s fingers clenched in Verity’s hair, and he cried out, throwing back his head and causing her to gag as he drove deep in orgasm. Etienne grunted as he followed. Dior felt Charon’s fingers on his hip clench as he came, and his own release struck the grass hard. He groaned out the last throes as Charon withdrew, and then sagged to the side so as not to land in the sticky patch he had just left, the spill of it slickening the grass and catching the sunlight.
“F-k me,” Charon slung his arm over Dior’s waist and sighed the words out.
“Soon,” Etienne promised casting a wicked look over his shoulder.
Dior chuckled. “He likes to be on top, Etienne,” he told him. “Rather like yourself.”
“Good,” Etienne purred it. “We can take turns.”
“Before you, I had no idea,” Verity was held on Etienne’s lap, the griffin still inside of her. “How many different ways a person could make love.”
“We are only beginning,” the griffin purred into her ear. “So many ways, mon chou, that we will take you.”
“We should go inside,” Blaise stretched lazily and offered his hand to Verity, lifted her from and off the griffin, so that Etienne moaned at his release from her flesh. “I am starting to burn. We can show Verity another way in the shade.”
“Make love to Charon,” Etienne suggested although he stood and began to find his clothing. “He will shade your delicate skin with his wings.”
“Blaise is right,” Dior sat up with a sigh. “We should go inside. We need to bathe and eat, and Charon has to tell us his plans to retrieve his family.”
Charon grimaced as he retracted his wings and stood, holding his hand to Dior. The lion accepted the offer and slung his arm around the winged man’s shoulders as he did so, pressing a kiss against his cheek.
“I am not sure I have a plan,” Charon admitted, keeping his voice low as they trailed Verity, Blaise and Etienne towards the porch. He paused and inhaled. Dior followed suit. He could detect death, several weeks old, some distance away, fairly faint. “You smell that?”
“Yes,” Dior breathed in deeply. “We will explore that later.”
“Don’t mention it to Verity,” Charon said quietly.
“No,” Dior leaned over and brushed his lips across Charon’s.
He could hear the others clattering around in the house, throwing open curtains and exploring the kitchen, from Blaise’s exclamations.
He deepened the kiss, drawing Charon up against him, and smoothing his hands down the other man’s back until they rested on the small of his back, aligning their hips. Charon’s hands closed on his shoulders, tightening their grip as he moaned and pressed himself against Dior, his breath becoming heavy.
Dior eased the kiss. “I am glad that you chose us,” he said, the simple truth.
Charon’s golden-brown eyes met his, and the intensity in them stole Dior’s breath. “So am I.” He released his breath on a laugh. “I thought it impossible,” he admitted. “When it was Verity and I – neither of us are well equipped for survival. But now it is the five of us… I feel more protected. As if survival is more possible than it was.”
Dior stroked the darkness of Charon’s hair back from his face. “You were doing well by Verity when I found you. Your escape from the vampires was very clever.”
“Thank you. We are trained to fight,” Charon said. “But I was always more interested in art.”
“What type of art?” Dior was intrigued. Blaise had accumulated an art collection over the course of their time as a triad, but he suspected the goat’s choices were more because he was attracted to certain colours than from an actual artistic talent. The goat gargoyle was partial to orange, and indifferent to blue.
“I paint portraits,” the winged man lit up. “I would like, very much, to paint my mates.”
“We would like that too,” Dior touched Charon’s cheek with tenderness. “Let us go see if Blaise or Etienne have let Verity shower or if they have seduced her now that they have her out of the sun.”
They walked into a house that had been in transition between generations when the war had begun, Dior thought. The décor in the process of being updated, walls repainted, and carpets being pulled up to expose the floorboards below. Family portraits of a laughing man and woman and two young children beamed down at him from within simple, generic frames on the wall.
Where were they now? He wondered. And very much hoped that the scent of decay that he and Charon had detected was not related to the happy people.
Their mates were in the awkwardly placed and too-small kitchen, filling all the available space so that he and Charon had no option but to stand in the oversized by comparison dining room.
“A balanced diet, it is not,” Etienne declared over his shoulder. “I do not know half of these foods.”
“He is baffled by rice noodles,” Verity was amused. “Have you never ordered in takeaway?”
“No,” Dior replied. “We prepare our own food.”
“Well, that would explain it,” she replied. “I cannot do justice to it without fresh ingredients, but it will be edible.”
“She gets bossy in the kitchen,” Blaise, a floral apron tied around his middle, and not a stitch worn otherwise, grinned over his shoulder. “It is nice to have another mate who shares my affinity for cooking.”
“I wouldn’t say affinity, exactly,” Verity corrected. “I just know up from down, really.”
“There is running water, heated,” Etienne told Dior. “If you want to shower whilst we finish preparing food?”
“Yes,” Dior decided, and took Charon’s hand, drawing the other man behind him, opening doors until he found the bathroom. “Ah,” he edged into the small room. “Not a generous bathroom.”
“No,” Charon’s pupils were dilated, and his scent aroused. Dior smothered his smirk. His mate was imagining what they would do together in the small room, if he wasn’t mistaken, and he wasn’t about to let those fantasies down, especially as they were both as bare as the day they were born, and Charon’s arousal was so evident.
He adjusted the water temperature, and stepped into the water, leaning back into its strike, so that it wet his hair and flowed over his body. He turned his head slightly and looked at his mate through heavy eyes. “Are you going to bathe with me or just watch?”
Charon drew in a sharp breath. “The first time I met Verity’s eyes,” he said. “I thought I would not desire another person so much as I did her. Until I saw you.”
Dior’s grin was lazy. “Etienne will be jealous.”
Charon’s returned smile was brilliant. “Etienne has his own appeal. The man is walking sex appeal.”
“Yes,” Dior agreed, finding soap in the shower, and pouring some into his palm. He sniffed at it and shrugged. The scent was sweeter than his preference, but it was acceptable. He rubbed it over his chest, under his arms and across his stomach before cupping himself, washing the slime of his earlier releases from his skin. “From the moment I saw him, I had to have him.”
“And Blaise is like the god of desire and lust,” Charon continued, his eyes tracking Dior’s hands.
“Blaise is a lazy, randy goat,” Dior purred. “But, yes, I could f-k him until the end of days and never have enough.”
“Yes, exactly,” Charon agreed. “And Verity…”
“Verity,” Dior reached out of the shower space and pulled the winged man in with him.
“Verity is like sugar,” he said against Charon’s cheek, the other man’s back pressed against his chest and his hands stroking down his stomach. “Sweet, innocent, and utterly without guile, melts on your tongue and has you craving more, and more, and more…”
“Yes,” Charon moaned, his head hanging forward as Dior stroked him, water clinging to the overlong locks of his hair, dripping off its ends. “Yes, Verity is… an innocent in every way.”
“Not for long,” Dior was smug about that.
“No,” Charon laughed. “No, you guys are certainly effective in seduction. She will not be innocent for long.”
“Hmm,” Dior released the winged man and shampooed his hair.
Charon’s caught his breath, bewildered by the shift in attention. “Aren’t you going to…?”
“F-k you?” Dior asked as he stroked his hands through the other man’s hair to free the shampoo from it.
“Yes,” Charon’s reply was a moan.
Dior pressed his lips to the other man’s skin. “Yes, mon cheri,” he murmured. “Soon enough.”
Charon dragged in an unsteady breath. “I never knew that I could be as turned on by another man as I was by a woman.”
“Turned on?” Dior smirked. “We have not even scraped the surface of that, yet.”