everyone else has received the same gift.”
Mira looked at them, from one to the other. “And you have?”
“Lady,” answered Gerard. “We both have.”
Most of the other men had arrived intent on seducing her at once. Some had been kind, a few considerate, but none of them had wasted their time with conversation. Alain and Gerard, however, followed Mira into the large dining hall where they set about laying a fire in the long-neglected hearth.
“Wine, lady?” Gerard’s question seemed more command than request, and Mira found herself scurrying to the sideboard in search of a bottle.
Alain watched her, his gaze like sapphires. “Where are your servants, lady?”
“Gone,” Mira said as she poured three glasses of almost sour wine. “My father can’t afford to pay them any longer, and they fear the dark fairy’s taint. My good mother has taken to her bed. And my father has gone mad.”
She expected the blunt statement to take the men aback, but neither looked surprised. She offered glasses, one to Alain and one to Gerard, and both took them. Gerard drank his at once with a grimace, but Alain waited for Mira to sip before he drank.
Gerard gave a low grunt and put his cup on the long wooden dining table that had hosted so many guests over the years. “Come here.”
Mira did at once, though she stopped far enough away from him that he would have to reach to grab her, if that was his intent. Gerard didn’t reach for her. He studied her.
“You are beautiful,” he said. “The fairy didn’t give you that.”
Mira shook her head. “No, sir, I don’t believe so.”
She looked at him. His pale hair fell to his shoulders, loose. He had the sharp features of a hawk and the body of a warrior beneath his simple, solid clothes. She shivered, thinking of his muscular arms around her, of his thick legs pushing hers apart. He would not be gentle, she saw this already, and her pulse beat faster between her legs.
“Would you have me?” he asked her, his voice low and rough.
Mira’s mouth parted, and she looked toward Alain, who had not yet put down his glass. “What of your companion, sir?”
Gerard laughed. “What of him?”
“You both arrived at the same time. You both want the same thing. How am I to know which of you can provide me with what I need if I don’t sample you both?”
From another woman these words would have made her a doxy, but Mira had long ceased caring. The dark fairy had gifted her with desire, and it built and built inside her every day without cease. Her mother was trying to sleep away her life and her father had gone insane because of it. She would fuck a thousand men if it meant she’d find the one to complete her.
Gerard gave Alain a challenging look. “Would that you had traveled a mile faster, brother of my heart. You might have been the one to fill this lady’s bucket.”
Alain put a hand over his heart and bowed his head to Gerard. “Would that you had traveled but a mile slower, oh my brother. For then, indeed, I might have been the first to reach her.”
Mira looked at them. They had history, of that there was no question. “You are brothers?”
Without looking away from Alain, Gerard said, “We have different parents.”
Without looking away from Gerard, Alain replied, “We have fought at each other’s side and won. We’ve shared much, Gerard and I.”
They both looked at her, but it was Gerard this time who held out his hand. “Lady, take me to your room, and I will give you what the dark fairy promised would save you and your family.”
Mira, having no reason to decline, took his hand and led him to the stairs. Halfway up, she looked back. Alain stared after them, but only she saw him press his lips to the tips of his fingers.
Gerard wasted no time with pretty words. He took Mira in his arms the moment the bedchamber door closed behind them. His breath smelled of wine, a heady aroma more tantalizing than the taste of it had been. His mouth took hers without preamble, nudging open her lips to allow his tongue to slide inside. Mira gasped into his kiss, and his arms tightened around her.
“She truly did gift you with desire,” Gerard murmured, tracing the line of her jaw with his mouth. Into her ear, he whispered, “You create it and feel it, both. Do you not?”
“Yes.” Mira shivered as his large hands roamed her body and cupped her buttocks through the simple linen dress she wore. Without maidservants to wash her clothes and help her dress, she’d gone without a shift or girdle beneath, and it was almost as if she wore nothing at all. “Yes, sir, I feel it.”
“You want me to touch you, as the other men have touched you?”
Mira sighed as his hands squeezed and one began tugging up her dress, inch by inch. “Oh, yes.”
“Tell me, lady,” Gerard said and bit into her soft flesh with a fierceness that urged a cry from Mira’s throat. “Tell me how they fucked you.”
She told him of men with hard, hot cocks who had used her mouth, her cunt, the tunnel of her breasts, the sweet back passage of her ass. How they had made her feel like she was meant to burst, how she had exploded with pleasure over and over, only to be left aching for more at once. Aching and empty.
Incomplete.
“And why should you be different,” she half sobbed as his roaming hands found her slick crevice and parted her folds to allow one of his thick fingers to slide inside.
“Because I have to be.” Gerard, one hand still moving inside her, used the other to tear her gown from throat to hips.
Mira’s breasts thrust forward as she arched her back. She rode Gerard’s hand harder and harder as he thrust another finger inside her. His mouth found her sweetly aching nipples. When he suckled one, she cried out. Her fingers dug into his shoulder. She rocked her hips, seeking release.
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
