Sholto brought me until I was a quivering, shaking thing, and only the pull of his body held me upright. He laid me down on my side, on the bed. I lay there shivering with happy aftershocks, my eyelids quivering so hard that I couldn’t open my eyes and was literally blind with pleasure.
I sensed the bed moving like a distant thought, but I couldn’t think what it might mean. I couldn’t do anything but lie there and let the aftershocks of pleasure have their way with me. The light in my eyes and hair had faded enough that I could see the colors of the actual room in bits and pieces, when a hand smoothed my hair back from my face. I blinked and tried to focus, to see; I knew it was Sholto, but in that instant he was a pale blur of movement and colors seen through the fluttering of my eyelids.
He leaned in and kissed me, soft, but there was still magic in him, so that the kiss vibrated and tickled across my lips. It brought a soft moan from me, and then he lifted my head and put a pillow ever so gently underneath. He stroked fingers down my cheek, and I was able to turn toward his touch. Parts of me were beginning to work again, but the languorous edge of orgasm still held most of me delightfully immobile. He ran a fingertip across my lower lip, and I opened my mouth. I wasn’t sure if I meant to kiss him or just to touch more of him, but he took it as invitation, finger sliding between my lips. I closed my mouth around him, and the movement was so much like sucking on other things that it was almost a shock to feel the bone and hardness of finger, when part of me had already started to think about other, bigger things that had no bones, but only round, solid, flesh.
He pulled his finger almost out of my mouth and then slid it back in until his knuckle met my mouth, and then he pulled out again, and began to slide in and out, and then two fingers for me to suck and lick, and then three. He had to be careful with his fingernails not to cut me as he began to plunge his fingers in faster, and then four and he couldn’t go in deep now, because he was too wide and the fingernails were harder to be careful with. I rolled my eyes up to him, and found him nude and eager. The tentacles were like a dream painted across his skin, a tattoo of exquisite detail, but his body was lean and solid, and human looking. I’d asked before, so I knew that the tentacles got in the way of his view when I was in certain positions, and he liked to watch me while we made love.
Now he knelt above me, his body as muscled and sculpted as any sidhe in my bed. He folded his thumb in with his fingers and shoved all of it into my mouth. I opened as wide as I could, and still he could only push in to the second knuckle of his hand; there was just no way to go deeper when he was that wide. He started to back out, but I grabbed his wrist and urged him to push in farther. His eyes widened, but he didn’t argue, just kept pushing his hand into my mouth, pushed, pushed, until my mouth was impossibly wide and it was uncomfortable, but there was something about that discomfort that I enjoyed. He finally shoved his hand as hard and far into my mouth as he’d ever gotten it, and I finally had to tap his arm and let him know that I was done, I could take no more.
He drew his hand carefully out of my mouth, and before I could completely catch my breath, the hand that had been so deep in my mouth was wrapped around that long, solid, quiveringly eager part of him, and the rounded head was against my lips like an invitation.
I opened my mouth for him, because after that much of his fist inside me, I wanted as much of the rest of him inside me as possible. I mounded the pillow up so that my mouth was like an offering to that long, hard piece of him. It felt so much better than just fingers; it seemed to complete something in me to feel him slide between my lips, across my tongue, and then not too deep, before he pulled out, but I grabbed his ass and started pushing him in and out faster and harder than he and I usually preferred, but Sholto had said it earlier—it had been a long time for me. Months of not daring to risk an orgasm throwing me into labor, months of having to be so careful, so safe. I didn’t want to be either today.
He followed my urgings and begin to slide himself deep into my throat, pushing until he buried himself as deep against my mouth as he could, and I had to fight my body, force my throat to relax around all that hard flesh. I urged him on with my hands on his body, with the shining that began in my skin and eyes, that set my hair blazing like spun rubies around the edges of my vision. The tattoo across the moonlit white of his skin glowed with the colors I’d seen on them so that his human shape ran with colors in a pale rainbow play of red, violet, shades of gold that mirrored his eyes that stared down at me as he plunged himself fast and faster into my mouth and down my throat.
I began to have to time my breathing for the top of his stroke, grab a quick breath and then he was down, plunging inside me, gagging me almost, and then pushing past even that, cutting off my air. He found a rhythm that was deep and slow, which gave me more time to breathe at the top of his stroke, but also meant he was deeper, longer down my throat, so that I began to have to fight my body not to panic at the lack of air, and even that filled a need, so that I wrapped my hands around the tightness of his ass and held him tight with him plunged so deep inside me that my mouth was sealed against the front of his body and I fought my body not to gag, not to panic, as it asked to breathe, and all the time our bodies shone bright and brighter, painting the room in shadows and light.
He vibrated across my tongue, down my throat so that the deep, plunging thrum of him seemed to calm the panic and just make me want to hold him inside me as long as I could. Then between one downstroke and the next, the orgasm hit me, one made up of the feel of him inside my mouth; all that thick, vibrating flesh brought me almost as if he had been shoved between my legs. It made me set my nails into his body as my body writhed around him; when he drew out enough for me to breathe, I screamed my orgasm around him.
He cried out above me, and then he shoved himself down my throat one last time. I felt the involuntary movement as his body pulsed and he spilled himself down my throat so far back I couldn’t taste him but only felt the sensation of warmth. So far down that I didn’t so much swallow as he poured himself down my throat, while I rode my own orgasm, nails digging into his ass, the rest of my body almost convulsing around him, helpless and eager for him.
When he was done, he drew himself out enough for me to breathe in a gasping rush of air. He collapsed over me on all fours, arms on the other side of my head and the pillow I rested on. His head hung down, his hair spilled around us both like a shining, silken tent. He pulled himself out of my mouth as I let my head roll farther down the pillow.
He found his words first and said in a voice that was still breathless with effort, “Oh, my God and Goddess, that was amazing.”
“Yes,” I said, “yes, it was.”
He moved his head enough so we could look at each other, so he was looking at me almost upside down as he said, “I love you, Meredith.”
I smiled up at him and said the only answer there ever was for such a moment: “I love you, too, Sholto.” Rhys and Galen would argue that I didn’t love them as much as I loved Doyle and Frost, and that was true, but in moments like this I did love the man I was with, maybe not always in the way he would wish, or want, but it was true: still real, still love.
Sholto moved so that he could lie beside me. I curled into the mound of his chest, the curve of his arm, the hollow of his shoulder, and was content.
WE SLEPT, AND
I dreamed, but I wasn’t alone in this dream. Sholto walked beside me, his bigger hand clasped in mine. We had to hold hands, because the rose vine tattoos on our forearms were real again, alive again, binding us together with the vine that moved like something much more alive than any normal rose. Its thorns bit into our flesh, and bound us with flesh and blood and life. Sholto was crowned once more with a wreath of living herbs and tiny white, pink, and lavender flowers. I felt the crown on my own hair and knew it was mistletoe and white roses. I was dressed in a flowing white dress, and Sholto in white tunic and breeches, tucked into silver-gray boots. I wondered,
Why am I still barefoot?
, and between one step and the next I felt flat sandals on my feet. Apparently, I’d just needed to ask.
“Meredith,” Sholto said softly, “where are we?”
We stood in the middle of a flat plain with short, scrubby grass and harsh, dry weeds. The ground that showed between the plants was pale and dry tannish brown; there wasn’t much water on this ground, but it wasn’t the barren sand and rock I’d seen before. In fact, when I looked up there was a small house in the distance. It looked old and weather-beaten, but “normal,” or maybe
American Midwest
was a better phrase.
“There’s a road with power lines behind us,” Sholto said.
I glanced back and found he was correct. It was drier and more desolate, but it felt like Midwestern farmland, and indeed there were distant houses scattered around more cultivated fields. The land around this house was barren and the barn near it was literally falling down around the wrecks of farm equipment peeking out from the vines that seemed to be both destroying the wood and holding it together.
“I think we’re somewhere in the United States, maybe the Midwest, but it’s drier than Missouri or Illinois, different vegetation, too.”
“I thought you only appeared in the desert where your soldiers were fighting.”
“I did, until now,” I said. The sun was bright overhead. If a car came down the road we’d be exposed to view. Up to this point only the soldiers and those fighting with them had been able to see me, as far as I knew, but someone getting pictures with their phone of us standing here like this would be on the Internet in minutes. I pushed the thought away and tried to “feel” who had called me, us, and why? Always before, people’s lives had been in danger. What was dangerous here, and who was in danger?
“I thought only you traveled in dream at the Goddess’s bidding?” Sholto said.
“That was true, until now.” I stared at the house with its ramshackle barn. I thought that was our goal, but I wasn’t sure. Appearing here and not in some faraway country had thrown me, and having Sholto with me like this puzzled me more.
“I am the first of your men that the Goddess has drawn with you?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
He smiled then, and said, “I am honored.” The scent of herbs and roses grew stronger as if we walked in a garden surrounded by a bank of wild roses, instead of the barren yard that smelled of sunbaked grass and some bitter weed baking in the heat. It wasn’t as hot as some of the deserts I’d been in, but it was still much hotter than Los Angeles.
I smiled at the fact that he was happy to be with me even here, not knowing why, or where. I squeezed his hand a little tighter, which made the vines squeeze a little tighter as if they were happy with us. It should have hurt, but it didn’t; as before when we were handfasted by Goddess, it was more pressure than anything, though the blood dripped a little more. The dry ground soaked up the blood eagerly; moisture was moisture to the earth and plants.
“Why are we joined as a couple?”
“I don’t know,” I said, softly; we weren’t whispering, but our voices were hushed the way you did in human churches sometimes, as if you knew God was near.
“Does your crown always manifest in dream and vision?”
“No, almost never.”
“Is your soldier in the house?”
“I think so,” I said, but I was … distracted and puzzled that Sholto had come with me. I’d been asleep and touching a lot of the other men, but they’d never been transported with me. Why Sholto? Why now? Why in our “wedding” finery? I tried to let the questions go so I could hear Goddess’s message. If you let your thoughts get too loud, then you can’t hear God, or Goddess.
I took in a deep breath, closed my eyes, and stilled my thoughts, but the warmth and solidity of Sholto’s hand in mine was a part of that stillness. The wind touched my face, and I raised my head, eyes still closed, and knew that the house was where we needed to go. I couldn’t have explained it in words, but “knew” in the same way that the flower knows which way the sun is rising; it is just that simple, and that complicated. I started walking toward the house, leading Sholto by the hand. He didn’t question, just came with me, and that was a kind of faith. I wasn’t sure if it was faith in the Goddess, or faith in me, or both, but I walked forward believing, and he came beside me the same way. Our blood decorated the ground as we walked, and began to decorate our white clothes as the dry, hot wind whipped my dress around us. It spattered our blood across the white like a Jackson Pollock painting.
Most of the paint had peeled off the house, leaving it shades of weathered gray, the wood pitted and marked as if it had been beaten by small, sharp objects, but I knew that it was just the elements of wind, rain, heat, and time. Houses need love and care just like animals and people; without it, our dwellings begin to fade and die just like we do. No one had loved this house in a long time.
We stepped up on the warped, uneven boards of the porch and I reached out to the screen door. It had been torn long enough that the edges had begun to discolor, the screen going almost brittle with heat and neglect.
The inner wood door was peeling and had warped so badly that I couldn’t push it open easily. Sholto put his hand on it and together we opened it. It should have made a horrible racket of breaking wood and scraping metal, but it didn’t. The door opened as soundlessly as if it had been recently oiled and opened only moments before, though I knew it had to have been weeks since the door was used. With the silence of the door came a more profound quiet, as if the world were holding its breath. I saw the living room under a layer of gray dust, the floor littered with mail as if months’ worth had just been thrown on the floor. There was a couch sagging under a pile of knitted afghans, and a pillow. A small gray cat was curled up on the pillow, blinking huge yellow eyes at us. I wondered if it could see us.