Hearts of Ishira (Hearts of Ishira Saga) (54 page)

Arianna stared after her friend as sweet little Bev went in search of a ménage a many, then joined in the shocked giggles and laughter of the others.

Both of her men? At once? It sounded… crowded. But then she imagined the logistics of it and became a bit hot and bothered, herself. Again, she’d thought about it, had imagined it a time or fifty, but she’d never thought to actually try it. She hadn’t even had Jace yet. How could she ask the men for a double? For that matter, how could she ask them for that, ever? She was sure she’d spontaneously combust if she ever managed to get up the nerve. But the mental image was enough to bring down her arousal, leaving her wet and throbbing.

Apparently, that was now a universal condition. The girls were all looking around for their men, as well. One by one they were being led or carried off to various quarters. Finally, only Kim and Ri were left. Kim gave Arianna a sideways, loopy grin, then hopped up and ran off in search of one (or more) of her own men.

Jace found Arianna sitting alone, in the middle of the afternoon, in a deserted courtyard. Her mouth was dry and she was sick and tired of waiting.

“Where did everyone go?” he asked, looking around in confusion. “Why have they stopped working?”

Instead of answering him, Arianna smiled shyly up into his eyes. For a moment, he simply looked at her, expecting an answer. Then he seemed to get it.

“Ri?” he asked softly, his eyes going wide, his mouth curling in an ecstatic smile. She bit her lip at him, then grinned and held out her arms.

He didn’t need further encouragement. He whooped and scooped her into his arms, hurrying to their quarters with her bouncing on his shoulder, her helpless laughter following them through the empty courtyard.

“To what do I owe this incredible delight?” Jace asked huskily as he laid her on his bed and hovered over her. She smiled and shrugged.

“I was... thinking about you. Both of you. And how things will be after… after I’ve made love to you both…And I was just… tired of waiting for you to make a move.” Her face went up in flames, but he seemed to be thoroughly enjoying it, the rat.

“I’ve been waiting for permission,” he told her, grinning ruefully. She stared at him, her mouth open in shock.

“You’ve been… what?” she cried. “Why?”

“It is our way,” he said simply, shrugging. “The woman dictates the order of her mates, so she makes the choice. The men wait for her to give them her sign, then claim her.”

“You mean all this time…”

“Yup,” he said, mimicking her favorite response. She groaned in frustration and watched eagerly as he quickly stripped off his tunic, boots, and trousers, coming to her completely naked and already prepared for her. Hunter enjoyed disrobing them both slowly, allowing them both to worship each little patch of skin as it was uncovered.

But Jace was more forthright than that, apparently. She blinked at his eagerness and laughed up at him. He arched his eyebrows at her, lifted her easily to her feet and stripped her dress from her in one smooth motion. Then he laid her back down, settling with his body half on and half off of her.

“You’re not afraid any longer?” he asked quietly, stroking a curl from her cheek to tuck it behind her ear. She put her palms on his chest, slid them up to his shoulders, and shook her head.

“I just… I started thinking and then all the other girls were disappearing with their men, and all I could think of was you. That I wanted to know what it was like to be your woman.”

“We’ve kissed,” he reminded her, his hand stroking down her neck, his fingers exploring her collarbone, her shoulder, the delicate veins tracing her bosom. “We’ve done a bit more than that.”

“But not… all of it,” she breathed, his touch raising goose bumps all over her body. She watched his face as he looked at her. He traced every freckle, every vein, every line and hollow of her neck, then followed his fingers with his mouth, tasting each one, as though thinking every inch of skin would taste different than the last. She squirmed under him, holding his head and guiding him, urging him to move to the more interesting bits. After a few minutes of the silent tug of war, he leaned back and smiled tenderly down at her.

“Arianna,” he breathed, “Do not rush me. I have waited a very long time for this moment, to be with you and to have the chance to touch you like this, to worship you. I want to memorize every part of you, bathe myself in your scent, your colors, your textures. If you rush me, I will not have that opportunity.”

Her heart melted at that. Jace’s loving would be slow and passionate, a sensual experience that would enchant them both. Every caress was reverent, gentle, as though he were discovering a priceless piece of art and was afraid that too heavy a touch would break it.

Arianna found that, slow or fast, flaring hotly or building with slow intensity, Jace’s loving was just as powerful, as potent as Hunter’s. Jace spent a good deal of time exploring her nipples, her breasts, her stomach and sides. He traced the lines of her arms, noting every little touch that made her shiver and shake, each rake of his fingernails that sent goose bumps racing over her skin. He nuzzled her neck and sucked at the pulse just beneath her ear, his hands working magic at her breasts as his mouth hotly brought her almost to the point of release.

Jace was bent on tasting every inch he could get his mouth on. When she lay naked and glistening beneath him, he sat back on his heels and simply looked at her. Slowly, he skimmed his hands down her sides, to her thighs, and pushed them apart. She relaxed and let him, though she was a little self-conscious about it at first. But when he leaned down and placed a tender kiss on her belly, she threaded her fingers through his long hair. Her breath hitched, remembering other times when he’d cornered her and tasted her down there, spent a good deal of time teasing her into a frenzy, but backed away and left her wanting. It occurred to her that he had no such intentions this time, and that made her blood heat in her veins, sending wonderful little shivers over every inch of her.

When he gently parted her folds and ran his lips over the slick skin he found there, she cried out sweetly. When he parted her and dove his tongue into her core, she arched off the bed, her hips gravitating to his mouth. He sealed his lips over her, lifted her hips in his hands, and feasted on her as though he’d just discovered the food of the gods and he was a starving man. His mouth closed over her clit and sucked, nipping and biting as she wordlessly begged for more. As he tasted her, tortured her, his fingers slid in and out of her center, spreading her juices and preparing her for his possession. She writhed and moaned, gasped and shivered as he worked his magic on her, taking her sanity with every suckling taste, each deep, thrusting caress of his fingers inside her.

“Gods, woman, you taste amazing!” he breathed at one point, then dove back in for more when she cried out at his absence. He brought her to peak easily, then worked her into another frenzy in minutes. She squirmed and moaned, sweated and cried. Her body bucked and spasmed, and she thrashed on the bed, trying to find purchase, her hands searching for anything that would keep her there, with him, when she felt like she would fly out of her skin.

When she could take no more, when she was weeping for him to fill her, he surged up and poised at her entrance. He waited for her to look up at him, wanting her to know who was loving her at this moment, and when her eyes fixed on his, he shot his hips forward, impaling her in one slick glide that seemed to shatter her world. Screaming in raw ecstasy, her legs clamped around his hips, her body spasmed, and she shook and shivered as she clutched him to her.

His body knew the way, though it had been many years since he’d made love to any woman. Reaching Arianna’s depths, Jace groaned deeply, holding still for just a moment, relishing the feel of her soft, hot, wet sheath around him. Though he would have loved to have made this go on forever, he had waited too long for her, anticipated this moment far too much. And Ri was too far gone to be patient with him. She beat at his shoulders, sobbing a bit angrily, when he held her hips still. He looked at her, his lips finding hers.

“Stay with me, little one,” he whispered. She nodded, burying her face against his neck and shivering in his arms.

In one powerful, rolling motion, he reversed their positions, lying with her on top of him. She gasped, then instinctively sat up, staring down at him, her eyes deeply green and nearly glowing with her passion. He grunted and drove himself upward, pressing her hips down at the same time. Ri threw her head back and cried out, weeping his name with the wonderful, deep penetration. He held her there, grinding himself into her, rubbing against that little nub that seemed to control her being at the moment, until she was sobbing and her body was bowing with the spasms that rocked her. Clamping his arms around her, he sat up, gathered her legs around his waist, and pumped into her fiercely several times, until his balls seemed to explode through the top of his head, and he shouted his triumph to the skies.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Hunter’s head snapped up when he heard his brother’s shout echo through the courtyard, and for a moment he was alarmed, until he felt the ecstasy of Arianna’s release. His heart pounding, he sank against the wall of the armory, where he and several other men were preparing their gear for the coming hunting expedition. He tried not to feel jealous, but he found that he was. He had hoped that only he would give their little one such bliss. It was unreasonable, unfair, and irrational, but he still felt that way.

After a moment of anger, at himself and his brother, he sighed and remembered that this is what they had decided on, that it was expected and not uncommon in his society. It still pissed him off a little, though. Grunting in annoyance, he threw the oiled rag he held toward the barrel where they kept such things, then glared at it when it missed the target and fell to the stone floor.

“Another man is making your woman happy?” one of the men jested. Hunter turned a glower on his cousin. Trey just grinned, as did the others. Realizing that he wasn’t hiding his feelings very well at all, Hunter ran a hand through his hair.

“I know that I should not be jealous,” he said after a time, “But I am. I cannot seem to help myself. I have had her to myself for these last weeks, but now she has welcomed my brother.”

Trey nodded, chuckling.

“You will get used to it,” the younger man assured him, clapping a hand on his leader’s shoulder. “My Bev lights up like a small sun for me, but she very much enjoys Erik and Rom, as well. When we began fighting over time with her, though, she came up with a very clever and simple solution.”

“What was that?” Hunter asked, truly curious. Trey grinned a bit wickedly.

“We shared her.”

Hunter was stunned at the thought. In all his memories of his parents, he had never seen them all go into the bedroom at once. As far as he knew, his mother had taken turns with Kess, Kale, and later, Geoff. So when he and his brothers and cousins had gone carousing, back in their much wilder youth, they had shared women, but only in that they would court the same girl at the same time. He hadn’t thought about any other way. He blinked in surprise at his cousin.

“Shared her?”

“Yes. We all worshiped her body at once, then we took her, when she begged, one after the other, until she could no longer ask for more. Or move, for that matter.” Trey laughed rather smugly at the memory. “She was so weak from climaxing so many times, we had to bathe her and put her chemise back on her ourselves, before she fell asleep. She hid her face from us the next day, mostly because she enjoyed it so much but didn’t think she was supposed to. But knowing that we could all have her when we wanted to, and that she would accept us all at once if she chose, has banished the tension from our household.”

A look of consternation crossed Trey’s face then, and he rolled his eyes.

“Damn it,” he muttered. “Now I must go find her and remind her who her favorite is!”

The other warriors teased and joked with Trey as he put away his tools and hurried from the armory.

Hunter returned to his work, lost in thought. He had never really thought about what he would do if he and Jace had to share a woman. He had thought he would simply accept it and they would take turns. But he found that he didn’t wish to do that. He’d seen the covers of the books she enjoyed. And he had felt her speculative glances on him and Jace a number of times. It had made him hard each time, thinking about it. He slammed a fist down on the long work table, frustrated with the fact that he was hard now.

She was his, by damn, and he wanted her. He started to go to his quarters, but then stopped himself. He had had her to himself, mostly, for the past two weeks, and Jace had hung back, giving them time to bond. Could he not do the same thing for his brother? For Arianna? Did she not deserve the same chance to find love with the other man who would be her mate?

Of course she did. Whether Hunter liked it or not.

And he loved his brother enough to want Jace to enjoy the wonder that was Ri, as well. Hunter would learn to accept it. After all, if something happened to him, Jace would step into his role as lover, protector, and if they were all very lucky, father. And really, if they had a household, their children would call both of the men Dad, not just one or the other. It was how their society worked, how it must work, so that children knew that if one father was killed in battle or in the hunt, they would still have another, or several others, to care for them, teach them, and raise them.