Demon's Fire (27 page)

“God,” Charles rasped from beside her ear. “I think I want to know about that spot, too.”

Since he was craning over her shoulder, Beth removed the crest from her mouth and showed him. The area she’d been pressing was duskier than the rest of his glans, along with being slightly raised. Charles looked at her, read her smile, and took Pahndir’s leaping erection out of her hand. Beth watched his lips slide over the fat red bulb with her heart pounding.

Charles seemed to understand the trick of what she’d been doing. Pahndir groaned just as loudly at being sucked and rubbed by him.

“What is it?” Beth asked, unable to wrest her eyes away from Charles’s mouth. “Why does having that spot stimulated feel so good?”

Much of her enjoyment in asking the question lay in knowing Pahndir would try to answer. Yama weren’t supposed to be rendered speechless by sensual bliss.

“It’s—” Pahndir inhaled a desperate gasp for air. “It’s called the princes’ flagellum. The little whip. It…fuck…It’s an extra organ only royals have.” His buttocks contracted, shoving him harder against Charles’s tongue. “After a bonded couple have been together for a while, it…uncoils from inside his penis, and…” His chest heaved violently again. “It hooks onto a receptor the woman has inside her womb. It’s…an aid to conception.”

“And pleasurable,” Beth observed, her sheath contracting in a hard, tight knot around Charles’s slowly gliding cock. Charles’s breath hissed inward as if that felt good to him.

“Very pleasurable,” Pahndir panted. “Maybe too pleasurable right now.”

With his loudest groan yet, he withdrew from Charles’s sucking mouth. Flames seemed to glow behind the glittering black expanse of his eyes. His cock was every bit as big as it had been after she whipped him.

Beth wanted to lick it all over again.

“Lean back,” Pahndir ordered Charles. “Keep her on top of you. I’ve been forgetting this is about us pleasuring her.”

Beth laughed, because everything had been a pleasure for her.

She didn’t laugh for long. Charles leaned cautiously back with her spine pressed to his front. He remained inside her but not as deeply, and the change in position spread her legs wide around his thighs. This left her unusually exposed. Her knees were bent, the throbbing flesh that had concealed her secrets stretched and opened for Pahndir’s eyes. The air cooled the copious wetness outside but not within.

With a throaty growl of appreciation, Pahndir leaned toward her, sliding his palms up the length of her torso. When he crossed her breasts, he gave them an extra squeeze. He caressed her there just long enough to make her squirm.

“I hope you don’t mind my saying this,” he said somewhat breathlessly, “but I’m very glad the ancient Yama preferred voluptuous women.”

Beth couldn’t have objected even if she wanted to. She’d been robbed of speech the way Pahndir hadn’t. Charles’s cock felt so thick and hot inside her it could have been Pahndir’s. The way they were lying, he couldn’t really thrust. The best they could manage was to grind together a few inches. Beth tried to do this as Pahndir began crawling back down her front, his lips and teeth nipping tender flesh as he went.

“I don’t think you need to worry about how the gene chamber changed you,” he murmured against her navel. “From my perspective, all your responses seem quite healthy.”

His eyes rolled up to hers, glinting with mischief. She would have pinched him if Charles hadn’t captured her hands right then. He stretched her arms out to either side, trapping them on top of his on the floor. The sense that she was spread out like a feast, helpless to do anything but wait to be eaten, had her whimpering.

“Almost,” Pahndir whispered, his breath ruffling her pubic hair. “I’m almost where you want me.”

And then he was there, licking up her juicy folds, teasing her with the uncommon strength and agility of his tongue. The pressure he could exert with the action was astonishing. Charles had to grab her hips to keep her from accidentally twitching off his cock. He twitched himself when Pahndir licked the part of his shaft that stretched outside of her. They both felt so good, so absolutely what her body needed, that she could scarcely wait to go over. When Pahndir finally surrounded and sucked her with all his mouth, she shattered with a loud, hoarse cry.

Charles grunted, his shaft jerking in reaction to her contractions. Pahndir tortured them a few heartbeats longer before lifting his head.

“If you want to spill, Charles,” he said, his voice strained to the breaking point, “I suggest you do it soon. I need to get inside her pussy, and once I do, I very much doubt I’ll be able to pull out for a long, long time.”

Beth groaned at this implicit promise, but Charles had enough brain left for other concerns.

“I can’t spill inside her. She might—”

“She’s not fertile now,” Pahndir interrupted. “Believe me, I’d be able to read that in her energy.”

“Oh, God,” Charles said and then cut loose.

He’d been able to thrust, after all. He’d simply been teasing her. His hips heaved off the floor and into her—hard, long jabs that, with every penetration, pushed his cock’s sleek swollen head over the sweetest cushion of sensitivity at the front of her sheath. She could tell he was doing it on purpose; he was gripping her hips to keep the angle firm. Pahndir’s mouth returned to her clitoris, his hands to her shaking breasts.

Taken all together, it was too much. She clutched his head, and sensation exploded through her body, intense enough to frighten her. This orgasm was life itself, as necessary as breathing. Charles shouted and drove in hard. She came as he did, her wetness pouring out of her with his.

To her shock, she couldn’t stop it from spurting. Neither of the men would stop moving in and on her. Every exhalation became a sigh as they drew her uncontrolled climax out. Pahndir especially drank in the repeated bursts of energy.

Moved by his old fixation for feeding demons, Charles shuddered—against her, inside her—when he heard how loudly Pahndir was panting, when he saw how swiftly lust was darkening his face. Their combined etheric force couldn’t help but affect the Yama. Unable to come yet himself, he shook with need by the time he moved over them. He kissed Beth, then Charles, then pulled her carefully off Charles’s spent body.

His strength made lifting her onto him effortless.

They were standing, or Pahndir was, and she was hooking her ankles together behind his hard, narrow hips. His long, dextrous hands were beneath her bottom, his shining eyes locked on hers. Those eyes weren’t hiding. They were speaking to her. They were telling her what she meant to him without holding back.

“I’ve fallen in love with you,” he said.

His saying the words stole her breath. “You have?” she asked when she recovered.

He nodded seriously. “I think it started the first time I saw you. You were so alive, laughing with Charles in the marketplace. Every chance I had to be with you, I fell deeper. By the time you rescued me, I was lost.”

“That could have been gratitude.”

His hands caressed her bottom. He appeared to be considering how to counter her argument. Amazingly, she wanted him to start thrusting. Despite the flooding climax she’d had with Charles (which embarrassed her a little now) her need was rising again.

“I was grateful,” he admitted. “But my feelings aren’t confused. It was having
you
rescue me that meant so much, having you and Charles care enough to find out if I needed you.” His lips softened in a barely visible smile. “Getting to know you better might add to the reasons I love you, but it won’t change the fact.”

They’d spoken so softly Beth wasn’t certain Charles had heard. Whether he had or not, he sat up on the floor with a groan. She’d never seen him look more like a fallen angel, though at the moment he was not a miserable one. When he rubbed one hand up and down his chest, the gesture caught both her and Pahndir’s gaze. Even sated, even wet with both their emissions, Charles’s penis appeared heavy.

“Better carry her to the bed,” Charles said. “Even you’ll get tired of taking her standing up.”

“Will you join us?” Pahndir asked, the question slightly hesitant. “Will you help me pleasure her some more?”

Charles flashed a grin Beth didn’t often see. “I will,” he said. “Just don’t count on me not pleasuring you, too.”

Pahndir looked at him, the men’s gazes locking just as Pahndir’s had with Beth’s. The prince’s lungs went in and out faster. “I trust that’s not an empty threat.”

Charles’s eyes slanted and gleamed. “You sound a trifle hoarse, Your Highness. Are you sure you don’t like threats?”

Pahndir’s hot, steely flesh thumped inside of her.

“The bed,” Beth reminded. “I think I need you again.”

Pahndir’s gaze returned to her, his grip tightening on her cheeks. She wasn’t lying about needing him. Clearly, he hadn’t exaggerated how much sex mates liked to have during heat. She ached for him to move inside her, for him to spill and spill again. Even more, though, she ached for him to throw off the last of his self-control. After everything they’d been through to reach this moment, she saw no reason why all their desires shouldn’t have a chance to be met.

“I want him to take you,” she said, “while you take me. I want him to push his cock inside you with my cream on his skin.”

That was enough to do it. Pahndir growled, took two long strides, and tumbled with her onto his big white bed. Already shafting her before they landed, he groaned when Charles climbed up behind him and grabbed his hips.

“Slow down,” Charles said. “Give me a chance to get in.”

“Hurry,” Pahndir pleaded, his head flung back.

Charles parted him and pushed, and Pahndir’s body abruptly twisted like an eel, his spine as flexible as a cat’s. Apparently, Charles had no trouble finding the gland that wanted to be rubbed. Pahndir was making noises, loud ones, but they didn’t seem to be words.

“Like that?” Charles panted as he thrust. “Do you like feeling her on me?”

“Yes,” Pahndir gasped, though he hardly had to. Beth and Charles had trouble hanging on while he bucked and writhed. “It burns so good. Oh, please, go faster.”

Charles went faster, increasing the force with which Pahndir bumped into her. It was exactly what she needed, and maybe more. Her breath whined from her, one hand clutching either of the men’s arms. She came so hard that Pahndir shuddered in the backwash.

“Again,” he said, his hips rolling into her like lightning.

Again it was, and this time he convulsed with her. Luckily, Charles had the foresight to hold his own peak off.

“More?” he suggested once the prince settled.

“Oh, yes,” Pahndir sighed, his pace already picking up again. “Oh, thank you. That’s
soo
lovely. Infinity help me, I don’t think I’ve ever felt anything as good as the two of you!”

Beth didn’t think she had, either. She lost count of how many wrenching climaxes the men gave her. When her body finally needed a rest, the only break she wanted was to crawl over both her sweethearts and kiss and lick every inch of them.

They were animals, the pair of them, and Charles loved every minute of rolling around the bed and just about everywhere else in Pahndir’s rooms with them. It felt like a privilege to watch them fuck, though admittedly he spent more of the next three days sleeping than they did. To rest with their arms and legs flung around him, to wake to the grunts and groans of them making love, to watch the last scraps of Beth’s shyness or Pahndir’s reserve unravel, was an undeniable delight.

Everything Charles offered was a welcome contribution to the expiation of their lust. Nothing forbidden. Nothing too much. Driven beyond any limits he thought he had, he took them both more times than he could count, in every way he could think of—and still he didn’t wear out their desire for him. More than once, they dragged him from slumber with the sweet, hot greed of their mouths and hands.

The first time Pahndir took him with his immense cock, Beth had held Charles’s face and stared into his eyes. He’d felt more naked than he ever had—his excitement bared to her, his secret thoughts—and yet he wouldn’t have drawn away to save his life. The shame he used to feel for his own desires seemed less substantial than gossamer. When Pahndir took
Beth
that way, Charles couldn’t resist sliding into her pussy. She’d moaned for both of them then, her body trapped between their mutual labors, until tears of pleasure bathed her cheeks.

That memory he would have bottled, but there were plenty more where that came from.

Beth’s and Pahndir’s heat aroused him when any other human would have been worn out. Midway through the second day, Pahndir had to call for a balm to soothe the stinging skin of Charles’s shaft. Of course, how inspiring they all found the process of applying the ointment rather undercut its purpose.

Somewhere in the middle of all that coupling, Charles became aware that they were building something far deeper, far stronger, than a sexual friendship. For lack of a better term, they were having a romance.

They fed each other food like sweethearts, and soaped each other in the shower bath. When they couldn’t keep their eyelids open a second longer, they took turns being the one to get snuggled in the middle for their naps. The others both told him they loved him, with almost identical shyness, as if they feared they wouldn’t be believed. Perhaps they were right. Charles certainly found the assurances sweet to hear.

“One more,” Pahndir finally said on the evening of the fourth day. “One more climax and I’ll be done.”

Charles had just finished taking Beth. She was still bent forward at the waist over the back of a small sofa, trying to catch her breath. Charles had filled her so well and fucked her so hard that when he pulled out, the imprint of his erection seemed to remain. Her insides hummed with satisfaction as she rested her cheek on her folded arms.

“Stay there,” Pahndir said, his palm curving gently around her bottom. “I want to take you just like he did.”

The gruffness of his voice told her this idea did something for him. Beth was agreeable. Her very well-pleasured body liked the position: the pressure of it, the way the men bent their broad, hard chests around her. She liked it even better when Charles flopped onto the couch beneath her and offered her a hand to hold. Over these last few days, she’d discovered she enjoyed having a grip on something when she came. Pahndir and Charles could make her peak so hard that holding on was a necessity.

“One more enough for you?” Charles asked her.

“Ye-es,” she said, the answer unexpectedly broken by Pahndir kneeing her legs wider. She always felt more vulnerable when he did that.

“I’ll make it enough,” Pahndir growled as he delivered one eye-opening smack to her right buttock.

“Oh, God,” she gasped, because the sting had gone through her in an oddly erotic way. Maybe there would be more to explore during their next heat. When Pahndir began to push his thickness inside her, her muscles twitched with unexpected energy.

“Oh,
God
,” Pahndir echoed an octave deeper. “He got you so fucking wet. Charles, your seed is all over me.”

This must have been a good thing, because she felt the already formidable stiffness of his cock increase, pushing deliciously against every one of her extremely sensitized interior nerves. Though the pleasure this brought her was intense, Pahndir also slid his hand around so he could finger her clitoris.

Sensation streaked through her like demon’s fire.

“His semen
is
silky,” she agreed breathily, working her hips the way she’d learned Pahndir liked, making sure every inch of his erection knew how much she loved it. “I expect it makes it easier to move, you being so big.”

Pahndir groaned, his lips against the back of her neck. “It isn’t just that I’m big. His seed is mixed with your essence. It makes me…” His teeth pressed into her skin as he thrust harder. “His seed makes me want to soak up every drop. It makes me want to flood you with my own.”

Charles kneeled up on the couch at this, his eyes wider.

A moment later, Beth was past speaking, despite how much she’d discovered the men liked her to comment on whatever they were doing. Pahndir was going faster and faster, and her body actually needed it. Her climax tightened, heated,
reached
for culmination like sparks building higher to jump a wire. Pahndir bit her shoulder and her head flung back. She smelled the coppery scent of her own blood, her hands gripping Charles’s until the pressure must have hurt.

“Go ahead,” she heard him pant. “Go ahead and scream.”

She did scream, coming in great, hot rockets of feeling as Pahndir slammed into her so hard her feet left the floor.

He was coming, too, crying hoarsely as his climax propelled the last of his ejaculate into her. There was more than she expected, as if he’d been saving up this last packet of desire. Like fireworks. Like the final overwhelming burst of thunder.

The seed inside her overflowed and rolled down her thighs.

“Beth,” Pahndir sighed, a song in her name, and then, “Charles.” One hand left her hip to weakly stroke the face of her dearest friend. Peace rolled through her as sweet as the orgasm.

Charles began to laugh, for once in better shape than them. “You’re going to fall over, Pahndir. Let me help you both to the bed.”

He helped them, and they curled up together with Beth in the middle, which she had to admit was her favorite place. She felt deliciously safe, just a girl again, being protected by her men. Then again, defending her men with a frying pan hadn’t been bad, either.

“I need to wash up,” she said drowsily.

Charles and Pahndir hitched their legs over hers simultaneously. Evidently, neither wanted her to rise. “Later,” Charles said, “after you’ve rested.”

“I stink.”

Charles sniggered. “You both smell like fruit salad.”

Pahndir lifted his head from the pillow at least an inch. “You can smell our essences?”

His surprise turned Beth to him. “Isn’t he supposed to?”

“I wouldn’t think so,” Pahndir mused. “Another Yama wouldn’t be able to, not unless the scent belonged to his mate, though I admit I don’t know everything there is to know about the human nose.”

“Maybe mine is special.”

Pahndir snorted at Charles’s smugness. “Maybe it is.”

The prince’s eyelids were at half-mast, his lashes black over his silver eyes. He almost seemed a different person. His face was utterly relaxed, younger and at ease. To Beth, he looked no more than a blink from sleep.

“Pahndir?” she said, not quite ready for this wonderful experience to be over.

“Mm?”

“Earlier, at Herrington’s when we were arguing, you spoke as if you expected Charles and me to get married.”

Pahndir rubbed his face deeper into the pillow. “It’s what I want. Why should Charles settle for less?”

Beth abruptly came more awake. “It’s what you want?”

“Mmph,” Pahndir grunted, lazily draping his upper arm over her stomach. “You could marry both of us, if you liked. Polygamy is legal in Bhamjran, though only for women. Not fair, I suppose, but there’s probably some city somewhere where it’s only allowed for men.”

Beth wriggled up on her elbows. The time it took her to do this was all the time it took Pahndir to succumb to unconsciousness. She gritted her teeth in frustration. Should she shake his shoulder to discover if he’d meant what she thought by this?

“Don’t look at me,” Charles said, his eyes alight with humor. “I can’t tell if that was a proposal or just Pahndir keeping you informed.”

“But he might have proposed to you, as well!”

Charles closed his eyes and grinned. “My first,” he sighed, ignoring the punch she drove into his arm. “I believe I’ll have to sleep on it.”

They all slept, but Pahndir was the first to wake. His head, or maybe his heart, was too full to remain at rest.

He was standing on the tiny stone balcony in his bedroom, gazing out over the night-dark city, when Beth came to him. There was just room enough for her beside him, her left arm warming his right as she braced her hands on the balustrade. She’d wrapped one of his robes around her nakedness. It smelled of all of them—of Pahndir and Beth and Charles. He liked that more than he could explain, his very bones filling with comfort.

“I thought I’d sleep for days,” she said. “Charles is out like a stone.”

He stroked her hair down her back, loving its silky length, loving the abandon its looseness lent to her looks. When she gave a little shiver of pleasure, he turned so that his spine was pressed to the railing, so that he could look into her wonderful human face. “I was out here thinking I can’t be sorry for anything I went through if it brought me here. This place,
you
, feel more like home than The Forbidden City ever did.”

She leaned her head against his shoulder as if she’d always had a spot to rest there. Her emotion touched his awareness like a faint perfume. The hope she felt was a tuning fork to his own.
Marry me,
he thought.
Marry me and Charles.

“Can we really do this?” she asked. “Can this truly work?”

“I think it can, but I think we’ll have to be careful.”

“I’m afraid for Charles,” she confessed.

“I think we both know—” He faltered, then found the courage to be frank with her. “We love him enough, Beth, enough to be patient while the knowledge of what we feel becomes real for him. That’s all that’s lacking: for him to know, for sure, that we don’t love him less.”

“And physically? We exhausted him, Pahndir. I know he didn’t complain, but what if we—”

“We won’t. I’ll take him to my private doctor tomorrow. I’ll have to bribe the hell out of him, but whatever Yamish science can do to support his human constitution, Charles will have the benefit of. Fortune willing, someday he’ll exhaust us.”

“He’d like that,” Beth said with a soft, rough laugh. “And Lord knows what he’d come up with.”

He pulled her into his arms, her slight weight settling peacefully against his chest. He loved the way her head fit perfectly beneath his chin.

“I have to ask you one more thing,” she said. “About Xishi. I want to know if you’re still in love with her.”

The question was inevitable, he supposed. He let her push back far enough to meet his eyes. “You seem to think I’m rather profligate with my affections.”

“I’m serious.”

“Very well. I’ll answer as best I can. Xishi was, and is, a dear friend to me. There were times when I feared I loved her, but looking back, I don’t think I ever was more than fond. My body made choices for me, but so did my heart. You fit all of me, Beth, and in a certain way, so does Charles. Even if Xishi had been free to be my mate, I doubt I could have experienced the depth of regard and rightness I feel for the two of you.”

She gazed at him a moment longer and then nodded. “Good.”

“Good? I bare my cold demon heart to you, and all you can say is ‘good’?”

She laughed, her arms squeezing tighter around his waist. “You fit all of me, too. Oh, and please don’t ask me to share you with anyone but Charles.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he said, his heart lifting giddily at her possessiveness. “My queen should be able to keep all her men to herself.”