Gilt and Midnight (3 page)

But Gerard would not give it to her. “The others made you come, but none of them finished you.” He growled the words and withdrew his hand so swiftly from her body Mira stumbled. “Stand there, still. Don’t move.”

She did, though, taking a step on trembling legs toward him.

“I said,” murmured Gerard in a voice gone low and dangerous, “do not move.”

This time, Mira stayed still.

Gerard removed his belt, laid aside his scabbard, pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it unceremoniously to the floor. His body beneath was indeed that of a warrior, scarred and hard, with tight bronzed nipples and golden fleece around them and in a line disappearing into the waist of his breeches.

Watching her, he eased down his breeches and kicked them aside to stand before her naked. His cock, surrounded by its fluff of amber curls, rose straight and proud. Mira’s pearl beat with the pounding of her heart and her passage tightened in a brief spasm. She moaned, but stayed still as he had ordered.

“The others. Did any bind you? Beat you?”

“No!” Shock sent heat souring into her cheeks.

Gerard stroked his cock even more fully erect. “Turn around and put your hands on the post.”

His gaze flickered to the foot of her bed. Some of the men had taken her on the floor, or across the table. None had told her to hold onto the bedpost. Mira hesitated, but at the flare of heat in Gerard’s eyes, she did.

She waited, trembling. Her hair had fallen from its coils and lay across her breasts. Gerard threaded his fingers through it, twisting the gilt and midnight together. His hand covered her breast.

“Move your legs apart.”

She did, her muscles tense with waiting. Gerard slid his other hand between her legs from behind. His thick fingers probed her slick folds, finding the bead of her clit and rolling it. Mira pushed her hips forward, wanting more pressure, but Gerard withdrew almost at once.

When she stilled, he slid his hand between her legs again. His fingers dipped into her wetness and caressed her heat. His cock probed the softness of her buttocks from behind, and Mira pushed herself back against him. Again, Gerard withdrew.

“Please.” Mira moaned the single word.

“Please, what?”

“Please, touch me.”

“Is that what you asked them?” Gerard bit lightly at her shoulder, and Mira jerked away from him with a gasp.

“I didn’t have to!” Her chin lifting, she pushed at him. It was like pushing at rock, but he stepped back. Her chest heaved with each breath, and the surprising sting of tears burned her eyes. “They all just did it! All of them just did it!”

“Perhaps, then, that’s your problem.” Gerard made no move toward her. His cock rose proud and strong in front of him. It begged for Mira’s touch, the heat of her mouth, but she didn’t move toward him.

“You want me to beg? Is that it?”

Gerard shrugged and moved to the chair in front of the fire, where he sat without regard to his nakedness. Or hers. This, more than anything, moved Mira to anger.

“Please,” she said through gritted jaws. “Please touch me, sir. Please fuck me.”

“No.”

“Then why did you come here?” She demanded, crossing to him. Fury made her want to strike him, but Mira didn’t dare.

Gerard looked her up and down, caressing her so thoroughly with his gaze it weakened her legs and tightened her nipples further. “To make you complete. Isn’t that what the dark fairy said you needed?”

“What did she say
you
needed?” The words came out broken, edged with glass, on the verge of cruel.

Quick as the sunshine from which his hair had been woven, Gerard grabbed her wrist. He pulled her forward and put her across his lap like a recalcitrant child. His big hand came down across her buttocks, the smack not hard enough to bruise, though Mira cried out at the sting. Heat spread across her flesh and her hips pushed forward, pushing her cunt against Gerard’s thigh.

“She told me I needed to complete someone.” His other hand pressed her tight against him so she couldn’t move.

“By beating me?” Mira cried, voice hoarse, even as her hips rocked.

“This is not a beating,” said Gerard. “This is an appreciation.”

Heat covered her buttocks and spread to meet the fire already burning between her thighs. As Gerard’s hand caressed her skin, Mira sagged against him. Her legs parted, inviting him to fill her with his fingers again, but he didn’t, not even when she wriggled and strove to get free of his grip.

Beneath her, his cock pressed. His breathing had grown harsher, his grip tighter as she struggled. Yet he did nothing but rest his hand upon the heat his spank had left on her skin.

“I am making you appreciate my touch,” Gerard said in a low voice. “Feel the heat of my hand. Focus on that, not my cock. Not your cunt. Focus on the sound of our breathing. On the brush of your hair against your face.”

Mira closed her eyes with a grimace. Her hips rocked again on Gerard’s thigh, but without much result. None of the others had done this. All had taken her, some rougher, some with gentler hands, but all had done it.

Gerard held her until her struggles ceased. Every line of Mira’s body had gone hot, as though he’d drawn a stick from the fire along her skin. She moaned into her fist as his hand shifted, the fingertips brushing the underside of her buttocks. He moved them lower, to tease her bottom lips. He felt how wet she was for him, how his touch had already teased her so close.

“Please, Gerard,” she whispered. “Please touch me.”

When at last he did, once more filling her with a phallus created from his fingers, Mira’s cry of relief rang around the room. His thumb rubbed at her pearl while his fingers moved inside her, and the ache that had built inside her, up and up, reached its peak and crashed.

Mira’s climax washed over her, no, thundered over her, and she jerked with it. She cried out his name, once. Twice. When the throbbing between her legs eased and she caught her breath, Gerard released her from his lap. Mira stood, her hand on his shoulder to keep herself from falling.

She drew in air scented like Gerard and sighed it out again. She wanted to weep. Her body had succumbed to his ministrations, she had reached her pleasure…and still…

“I am empty,” she said in a dull voice. She turned from him. She waited for the door to open and close behind him, for her body to cease its trembling. For her breath to fill again with air that smelled of smoke and stale bed linens.

“Lady,” said Gerard. “Did you think it would take but once?”

Alain listened for the sound of the lady’s cries as Gerard took her to orgasm. He knew too well the taste and touch of the man upstairs, and his cock rose in his trousers at the knowledge of what he would be doing to the woman. Once, they had shared everything, even women.

It had been a woman who drove them apart.

The dark fairy, who had no name any mortal knew, had stalked Alain through the forest and seduced him not once, but twice. She had used his cock for her personal joy, writhing on him and milking him of his seed even as he fought to remember where he was. Who he was. The dark fairy had cared little for Alain’s mind. All she wanted was his penis and mouth. His hands. She’d have continued sucking him dry had Gerard not come looking for him. She’d seduced Gerard, as well, and Alain could still recall the sound of their cries as she’d taunted Gerard into fucking her harder and harder.

Then, for fun or spite, she had caused them to quarrel. Not with swords, for at that they’d have been too well matched. It would have ended in death for the pair of them. No, she’d urged them to battle with their words. Accusations, old hurts, imagined slights and falsehoods had torn them apart.

Alain and Gerard had not known each other as children, though that had ceased to matter a mere three days into their acquaintance. They’d both been assigned places in the King’s Guard, an elite division of the Royal Army.

The first thing Alain had noticed about Gerard was his hands. Big, strong hands, scarred from work and battle. Gerard had been demonstrating his skill with his broadsword, using the flat of the blade to smack at his opponent. The sun had come out from behind a cloud, highlighting Gerard’s hair into shimmering gold and Alain had, quite literally, lost his breath.

“You there,” Gerard had said with a crook of his finger. “Get your ass over here and let me beat it.”

Even now, recalling Gerard’s surprise at not winning that first fight, Alain smiled. Arrogant from never losing, Gerard hadn’t paid enough attention to the newcomer and had ended up on his back with Alain’s blade at his throat.

It was the last time he didn’t pay enough attention to Alain.

They’d forged the deepest of bonds, the pair of them matched so well physically there were none who could stand against them. They fought hard for the king, and they made merry with equal fierceness…for themselves.

Alain had long known his cock rose without hesitation at both the curved softness of women and the hard, muscled planes of men. Physical love between men wasn’t forbidden in the King’s Guard, where it might be weeks before a man could find a woman, but it wasn’t exactly encouraged, either. Alain, who felt no shame at his proclivities, also felt no need to fight to defend them. He’d surely kill anyone who came up against him, and while his blade had tasted the blood of many of the King’s enemies, he had no desire to spill that of his comrades.

Gerard had never shown signs of liking cock, and Alain had never made a move to push their friendship into that place. They fought, they wrestled, they shared a room and a bath. They often visited the brothels together or sampled some of the same tavern wenches. Gerard had a heavier hand with his women than Alain, who had no desire to bind or beat his bedmates. When Alain sought the company of men, he did it discreetly, and without Gerard. It was the one thing they didn’t share.

Until the night Alain came home from an encounter with one of his favorite male partners to find Gerard waiting for him.

“Where do you go?” Gerard had asked in a deceptively gentle voice that didn’t fool Alain.

“I didn’t know I owed you an accounting of my time,” Alain had replied mildly.

Gerard had drawn his brows. “You stink of fucking.”

“I’ll wash.”

Gerard’s hand had flown out to grab Alain’s wrist as he’d passed. “I don’t smell a woman’s sweetness on you, Alain.”

Alain had looked down at Gerard’s fingers gripping his wrist but made no move to pull away. “No.”

They had trained together so often Gerard’s move shouldn’t have surprised him, but then perhaps Alain had chosen to be surprised. Gerard had turned him and pressed him forward, both hands tight on his wrists, in the time it took to draw a breath. Alain hadn’t struggled. Against his back, he’d felt the familiar breadth and width of Gerard’s body.

Gerard had pushed Alain toward the room’s rough-hewn table and pinned his hands to the splintered wood. He’d kicked his legs apart and pressed harder against his back. Alain had closed his eyes, breathing hard, making no offer.

“You like it this way?” Gerard had breathed in Alain’s ear. The touch of Gerard’s hot breath had sent a shudder down Alain’s spine and still he said nothing, made no move to get away, though he easily could have.

Gerard’s hand had let go of one of Alain’s and moved around to cup Alain’s hardening cock. “Your prick is hard, my friend.”

Gerard hadn’t fumbled with the ties of Alain’s trousers, nor had his touch hesitated when he took Alain’s hard length into his palm. He’d stroked, hard, in the way only men knew how to do, until at last Alain had pumped his hips forward with a cry.

“Yes,” he’d said. “Yes, Gerard, I like that.”

He’d groaned when the bluntness of Gerard’s thick cock nudged at the passage of his ass, and cried aloud when Gerard had eased his way inside. Gerard had fucked him fast and hard, jerking Alain’s prick at the same time, until they’d both exploded into pleasure.

“You can share everything with me,” Gerard had said then, and until the dark fairy came along, they had.

Alain’s cock had risen at the memories and now pressed uncomfortably against the front of his breeches. He turned at the soft noise behind him to see Mira, her lovely skin flushed and that marvelous hair hanging in tangled curls around her face.

“He sent me to fetch him some ale.” Her voice was scratchy, hoarse.

“My lady,” Alain said kindly, for he knew well enough how Gerard’s touch could leave one shaken. “Would you sit?”

He pulled out a chair for her, and she sank into it as though her legs had been about to collapse. He brought her mulled wine and a hunk of bread from the sideboard, but she neither drank nor ate.

“My lady,” said Alain gently and waited until she looked at his face. “What do you need?”

“I don’t need wine and bread,” she snapped suddenly, her intriguingly mismatched eyes flashing. “I need fulfillment!”

He’d been certain she’d find it with Gerard, and yet the moment she said the words Alain knew she spoke the truth. A smile tugged at his lips. Now it was his turn to try.

Mira’s buttocks still held the heat left behind by Gerard’s hand, but she refused to squirm on the hard seat of her chair. The humiliation of what he’d done—and without lifting the curse!—brought heat to her face equal to that in her bottom. She scowled at the dark-haired man in front of her.

“Bring me a dipper of cold water from the well,” she demanded and pointed out the window to the garden. “That’s what I want.”

She felt certain he’d balk at her imperious tone, perhaps even take her in hand the way Gerard had, but Alain only ducked his head and strode to the doorway on his long, long legs. The well of which she spoke hadn’t been used for a long time because the winch used to lift the bucket from its depths had rusted. Even so, the water drawn from it was the sweetest she’d ever tasted, and she wanted it now.

More than that, she thought as she watched him disappear through the door, she wanted to make someone suffer, even the tiniest bit, to make up for the way she had suffered upstairs.

But she hadn’t suffered, really, had she? Even now, thinking of the way Gerard had ordered her to hold tight to the bedpost while he plundered her body from behind caused Mira’s nipples to tighten and her pulse to throb harder between her legs.