He smiled down at me, shaking his head.
"Where in faerie are we?" he asked.
"We are safe. You are healed. I am with your child. I want to drown in your body. Let all the questions wait, Doyle, please."
He gazed down the line of his body to where I lay back against the bed, my hands still wrapped around him. My hands were hidden where his much larger one had closed around them, from hand to past my wrists, so that my pale skin was very white against all his darkness.
He glanced to both sides. "I'm not sure the others wish to wait."
I glanced to one side, then the other. Sholto lay on his side of the bed, on his stomach, which meant he'd turned his tentacles back to the tattoo, or he couldn't have lain that flat. He was watching us, with careful, hungry eyes. "I'll wait, for my turn."
"I will leave," Mistral said, and stood beside the bed. The wounds on his body had vanished, as if the arrows had never touched all that muscled beauty. His gray hair covered his body, almost as if he hid from me with it.
Doyle was going a little softer in the nest our hands had made, but I had to concentrate on Mistral's mood for a moment. One of the hardest things about all the men was tending everyone's emotions. I knew Mistral less well than any of the other fathers, so here was my first moment to quiet that hurt look in the way he held his body, as if something had hurt him that had nothing to do with iron arrows.
"I want to celebrate that Doyle is alive and with me, Mistral."
He shook his head, not looking at us, and moved toward the path leading out. "I understand."
It was Doyle who helped. "But once we have," and he smiled at me, "celebrated, then you are one of us, and not to be exiled from the bed."
Mistral looked out through that veil of gray. His eyes had gone the green of a sky before a serious storm hits. I knew just enough of him to know that it showed great anxiety. I wasn't sure why, but our Storm Lord was worried.
"We are safe, Mistral, I swear," I said.
"You would truly let me join you?"
"If Merry wills it, then we share," Sholto said, not like he was entirely happy, but as if it were true.
Mistral moved back toward the bed, sweeping his hair back so more of his face showed, and his body was revealed in all its lovely potential. "I am not to be exiled?"
"You are my Storm Lord, Mistral. We risked much to save you. Why would we cast you out?" I asked.
Doyle squeezed my hands gently, and I released him so he could talk to the other man without being distracted. "You think Meredith is like the queen, but she is not." He held his hand out to the other man. "None of us have to leave. None of us have to watch while others satisfy their lust and know that we will go wanting. Meredith does not play such games."
Sholto spoke from the other side of the bed, on his knees now. "He speaks truly, Mistral. She is not Andais. She is not the other sidhe bitches who tease and torment. She is Merry, and she would not invite you to join her unless she meant it."
I looked at Sholto then, because it was a speech that I wouldn't have thought he knew me well enough to make. He answered the unasked question in my eyes. "You are honorable, Meredith, and just, and beautiful, and a goddess of lust and love." He looked past me to Mistral. "She is a warmer thing than we have had in any court of faerie in a very long time."
"I didn't know I still had hope," Mistral said. "To find it gone was more than I could bear."
I didn't completely understand his mood or his words, but I wanted to chase them all away. I held my hand out to him. "Come to me," I said.
"Come to us," Doyle said. "There is no cruelty here, no hidden tricks, I swear."
He came at last and took my hand, as Doyle touched his shoulder in that very male greeting when you would not dream of hugging. I'd noticed that when nude, the men were less open to hugs from one another.
Mistral looked down at me with eyes that were still anxious green. "Why would you want me now?"
"Why would I not?" I asked.
"I thought you would have no use for me."
I went to my knees and drew him down into a kiss that started soft and ended fierce and nearly bruising. His body was already happier than it had been just moments ago. I caressed him gently, and his face showed a pleasure so intense it was almost pain. He had truly thought I would not let him touch me again. I might have asked why or what, or even who had lied to him, but Doyle's hands came at my back, pulling me a little back from the other man.
"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.