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
