Swallowing Darkness - Laurell K. Hamilton [66]
“I would finish what we started.”
“You are our Captain,” Mistral said. “It is your right.”
“It’s not because of rank,” I said. “It’s because I thought I lost him, and I want the taste of him in my mouth to remind me that I have not lost everything I love.”
Mistral kissed me more gently, then let Doyle pull me away. “To be third in your bed is more than I had hoped for, Princess. I am content.”
“Meredith. I am simply Meredith here and like this,” I said.
He smiled. “Meredith in the bedroom, then.”
Doyle pulled me back to the center of the bed, and into his arms and his body. Sholto went back to lying on his side of the bed. Mistral climbed on it, but stayed sitting in one corner, his legs drawn up. Neither of them turned away, but I didn’t mind an audience of my choosing, and neither did Doyle.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
DOYLE LAY BACK ON THE BLANKET OF PETALS, ALL THAT RICH, black skin against the soft pastel of it. I admitted to myself that he looked like the devil slipped into some springtime heaven, but he was my devil, and all I wanted in that moment. There had been nights with Frost when I had had them both touching me at the same time, but tonight I wanted to concentrate just on Doyle. I didn’t mind the audience, but I didn’t want to be distracted either.
He let me crawl over his body until I could put my hands and mouth back where I wanted them. He’d accepted my logic, and I could finally taste him in my mouth. I played with that loose skin one more time, then teased it back, until he lay long and hard, exposed to my hands, my lips, my mouth, and, ever so gently, my teeth. I was using less pressure than a bite, but you have to be careful not to scrape, or what is an added pleasure becomes pain. I wanted no pain tonight for my Darkness. I wanted only pleasure for him and for me.
He protested, “But it will not be enjoyable for you.”
“I can fix that,” Sholto said.
We all looked at him. He smiled, and motioned at the tattoo on his body. “If you will allow, I can return the favor you are doing our captain so that you are equally pleasured.”
It seemed like another lifetime ago when Sholto and I had managed to have our first encounter in Los Angeles. He had proven to me that the extra bits had more uses than the obvious. “You mean the little tentacles with the suction on them.”
“Yes,” he said, and there was a weight to his gaze. It wasn’t an idle offer. He wanted to know how I truly felt about his extra bits, and he was wasting no time finding out. We’d had sex, but he had been terribly wounded, and no extra bits had been used.
I studied his face, then looked down at Doyle. He watched me patiently, almost passive in his waiting. He would abide by whatever I said, in that moment. Centuries of service to the queen had taken men who might have been more dominant and accustomed them to taking orders both in bed and out of it. Doyle could be a very dominant lover, but when it came to choices and preferences, he was like most of the queen’s guard; he waited for my lead. It was up to me to make this moment what it was to be: good, ill, hurt feelings, or simply pleasure.
I said the only thing I could think of when a man offers me oral sex. I held my hand out toward him and said “Yes.”
He gave me that smile that I had only recently known was possible for him, a smile that made all that handsomeness a little more human, a little more vulnerable. I valued that smile, and it made the yes worth it. I shoved my small doubts down, and watched his body go from an exotic tattoo to the reality of the image. I didn’t know if it had been the magic of the wild hunt, or the times he had used the extra bits to comfort me this past night, but I could no longer see him in all his glory as anything but beautiful.
The tentacles were the same moonlight white