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“The fairy cursed us all three with desire,” Gerard said. “All the same curse. Might we all have the same cure?”
“I think we might.”
Alain’s fingers tightened in Gerard’s hair briefly as Gerard’s hand on his wrist pulled him yet closer. It was not often that Gerard was the one looking up, but he did so now. Alain’s gaze held a hotness he recognized. His cock had become thick and pushed the front of his breeches.
Alain gasped aloud when Gerard tugged open the laces of his breeches and drew forth his erect cock, and louder when Gerard slid the hot flesh between his lips, for it was not often Gerard’s pleasure to provide this service. Gerard opened himself to take in Alain’s length, sucking hard. Alain’s hips bumped forward as Gerard’s hands found his ass and gripped. The muscles of Alain’s thighs jumped and twitched as Gerard sucked and licked all the way down to the root and up again, paying special attention to the crown. One hand left Alain’s ass to grip the smooth foreskin and slide it back and forth as his mouth worked.
It might not have been Gerard’s habit to suck Alain’s cock, but he did it well nonetheless, for he knew just what Alain liked. In moments Alain’s guttural growls were becoming the slow, deep moans that signaled his release, and now it was Gerard’s turn to seek his own pleasure.
Without preamble he removed his mouth from Alain’s erection and stood so suddenly Alain had no time to react. With his fist gripping Alain’s prick, Gerard captured Alain’s mouth in a harsh, demanding kiss. It would leave them both bruised, but the small pains were as nothing compared to the damage they’d already caused each other, and Alain’s moan and the throb in his cock told Gerard he didn’t mind.
“You think you deserve to spill?” Gerard growled into Alain’s ear, his own cock as hard and thick as granite at the thought of what was to come. “Do you really think I’d take your seed down the back of my throat?”
Alain had his triggers and Gerard knew them all as well as he knew how to make him come. “No, Gerard.”
Gerard let his hand drift along Alain’s cock before letting go of it. “How long has it been since anyone’s taken a strap to your ass, Alain?”
“Too long.” Alain’s voice pushed from gritted jaws, and Gerard heard the truth in it. “Not since you, Gerard. That last time.”
That had been a long time then, for the dark fairy had cursed them more than three moons before. Until this morning with Mira, it had been just as long since Gerard had beaten anyone, though he’d taken countless women to his bed while seeking to break the curse.
Gerard gripped Alain’s chin in his hand and looked hard into the other man’s eyes. “It’s been too long then.”
He ordered Alain to take his position against the plastered wall, his hands at shoulder height and fingers spread. They had no safe word. They didn’t need one. The position of Alain’s fingers would tell Gerard how much pain he was able to take—today, with his previous injuries, it might be very little. The wider apart his fingers, the more he could take. If he closed them together, Gerard would know to ease off.
Just as using his mouth to service Alain was not his habit, neither was undressing him, but Gerard knew Alain was so close to coming, his cock already so hard, that bending to remove his breeches would only give him additional pleasure. Gerard intended to keep Alain balanced on the knife’s edge for a sufficient time, so he was the one who pulled off Alain’s breeches until Alain stood naked.
Gerard admired the lines of Alain’s back and ass as he pulled the sturdy leather strap from his bag. The leather was supple and oiled and fit his fist exactly. He tugged it between his two hands to snap it, and his cock twitched at the way Alain’s muscles jumped, though he showed no other sign he’d heard.
“By the time I’m done,” Gerard said, “your back and ass are going to be on fire, Alain.”
“Please,” Alain murmured.
Gerard laid the strap in even lines along Alain’s skin. His cock stiffened further at the red stripes and the low, strangled grunts of Alain’s ecstasy.
Alain’s head hung and his entire body quivered with exhaustion and still he did not push his fingers together, but it was Gerard’s duty to know when Alain could take no more even if Alain himself could no longer tell, and he put aside the strap. He ran his hand over the heated flesh of Alain’s back and delighted in his hiss. He slid a hand over Alain’s ass and felt the muscles twitch and jump. He pulled a bottle of soothing oil from his bag and poured a palmful and repeated the motion. Alain’s body tensed at the contact of the smooth oil on his flesh, and his hips pumped forward recklessly as he moaned.
He was so close Gerard knew it would take very little to send him over the edge, and for a moment he thought of allowing his friend that final release, but his own nature made him grin slyly instead. He ran his fingers, slick with oil, down the crease of Alain’s buttocks and teased the hot, tight circle of his anus with one finger. Alain bucked and cried out, but his hands never left their places on the wall.
“Such a good soldier,” Gerard murmured as his finger probed slightly deeper. “So good at following orders.”
Alain’s low, gasping chuckle sounded tortured, but he said nothing. He pushed back a bit against Gerard’s hand. From a true slave Gerard would have not tolerated the insubordination, but Alain was not his slave even though they sometimes played at that game.
“You want this?” Gerard eased his finger into Alain’s hot passage. “Or would you like my cock there, instead? Fucking you? How long has it been since anyone’s been inside you, Alain?”
“As long as it’s been since anyone’s strapped me,” Alain managed to say, though his voice shook with effort. “Please, Gerard, for the sake of our friendship….”
Gerard could be cruel, but this was not about cruelty, and he reached to stroke Alain’s cock with his oil-filled palm. Once, twice, and Alain was crying out and pumping into Gerard’s fist. Once more and his seed spilled, hot and fragrant, into Gerard’s hand.
“Now,” Gerard said when Alain had ceased his jerking and moaning, “use your mouth on me the way you did for her.”
Alain turned and fell at once to his knees. He took Gerard’s prick deep down his throat and sucked. He used his hand in tandem, stroking and caressing Gerard’s balls in the way that made his mind go blank of any thought but the supreme pleasure between his legs.
It took only moments for Gerard to explode into ecstasy, and when he did he shouted Alain’s name. As Alain got up from his knees, Gerard put a hand on his arm to keep him from turning immediately away.
“I have missed you, as well,” Gerard said.
Whatever had happened between the two men, the last to come through the gate for a fortnight, they had somehow repaired their bond. Mira had expected them to leave when both realized they were unable to bring about the end to the dark fairy’s gift, but as the days passed and Gerard and Alain ingratiated themselves into the household, Mira realized they intended to stay. More than that, they were wooing her, each in his own way, and neither was competing with the other for her affections.
In the past, of course, guests of the house had sought to court her in proper fashion as befit her status as the daughter of a very wealthy man. No suitor would have dared do more than walk with her in the garden, much less have been so bold as to kiss her, and anything more intimate than that was strictly forbidden.
The fairy’s curse had changed all that. The first men who’d come seeking her had been satisfied to fuck her and move on when they failed to break the curse, but Alain and Gerard were not like any other men she’d ever met in her life.
Gerard set her to tasks such as polishing his boots and serving him his food, and his hand could be heavy when she didn’t serve to his pleasure. The first time he’d tied her hands and feet to the posts at the foot of his bed and strapped her, she’d wept tears of pain and anger even as her cunt wept with arousal, yet she hadn’t sent him from the house. Her body had grown to crave Gerard’s discipline, as harsh as it could be, and he brought her to climax over and over with the flat of his hand or the leather strap he wielded with such proficiency. He fucked her thoroughly as well, when she pleased him, and denied her that ecstasy when she did not.
With Alain, however, Mira played the mistress without a second thought. He was as eager to serve her as she was to submit to Gerard. Alain took whatever abuse she offered him, whether it be her refusal to allow him to achieve orgasm when he used his mouth to satisfy her, or the performance of countless meaningless tasks meant only to prove she controlled him. He made love to her with worshipful hands, when she allowed it, and Mira found his touch as satisfying as Gerard’s even if it was in a totally different way.
Both men pursued and pleased her over and over, yet no matter how many times her body sang with desire, something was still missing. She waited for one of them to finish her completely, to break the dark fairy’s curse, but no matter how many times she submitted to Gerard or governed Alain, nothing seemed to change.
Her father’s fortune continued to slip away in summonses from the king, extra taxes, small disasters to the house. Her parents sought their comfort in elderberry wine and madness, leaving Mira to run the much-diminished household with no advice.
Summer had passed and turned to autumn, and still a space in her soul remained empty and bleak. She began to despair of ever saving her parents or ridding herself of the fairy’s cursed gift. Her two lovers might fulfill her body, but it wasn’t enough.
“It’s not enough,” she said aloud to the last nodding flowers in their beds.
The flowers didn’t reply, though the wind tossed their heads and ruffled their petals as prettily as if they were the dresses of innocent maidens. Mira hadn’t been innocent for the passing of several moons, and she wept now for that lost innocence and the life she should have had. She sank onto her knees in the browning grass and fragrant earth and buried her face in her hands.
“My lady, what ails you?”
Mira lifted her head at Alain’s low voice. She wiped her face as he crouched beside her to cradle her. He took a fine linen handkerchief from his pocket and dried her tears, and not for the first time, Mira realized Alain was no common soldier. He had wealth of his own, and status. Under other circumstances he might even have been of a high enough class to court her properly.
“If not for the curse,” she bit out through a fresh veil of tears.
Alain didn’t ask her to elaborate. Instead he bent his mouth to hers and kissed her through the salty wetness. His tongue slipped between her lips until she opened her mouth.
As always, that gentle touch set her body aflame with desire, but Mira struggled this time against the pleasure coursing through her. It would be fleeting, that ecstasy, and leave her with naught in the end.
“What can I do to please you?” Alain asked and cupped her face in his hands. “Only tell me and I’ll do it.”
Mira shook her head. “If you could do it, Alain, you’d have done so already.”
All he could do was kiss her, which he did, and touch her, which he did as well. His hands slid up beneath her skirts and found her bare and ready for him, as she always was. Mira muttered a curse under her breath when his fingers stroked her pearl and the first spasms of climax began building inside her. It was so easy to give in to her body’s longings. Nearly impossible, in fact, to refuse them. Alain brought her to the edge of orgasm with only a few practiced strokes, and when he slid a finger inside her to stroke from the inside as well, Mira shuddered and tossed her head back with a sigh.
“Well, well. What a pretty sight.”
Mira bit down on the strangled cry seeking escape from her throat and looked up. Gerard stood watching them, an unreadable expression on his handsome face. His lips tilted, finally, when Alain’s stroking hand tipped Mira into a helpless rush of orgasm that jerked her entire body. She didn’t look away from Gerard’s eyes the entire time.
Though she had made no secret of the fact both men shared her bed and her body, none of them had ever mentioned it aloud. She’d wondered privately if Gerard and Alain had worked out some sort of system so each could have their turn with her, for they’d never overlapped or intruded upon the other until now.
“Alain,” Gerard said in the voice that made Mira shudder anew with fresh longing. “Have you pleased our lady?”
Alain withdrew his fingers from Mira’s center and slid them along his lips. “I think so, Gerard. But only just once, so far.”
Gerard’s lips skinned back from his teeth in a grin so feral and frightening Mira let out a startled squeak. “We’ll have to remedy that, won’t we?”
They meant to take her at the same time, she saw, and her heart threatened to fly entirely out of her chest, so fiercely did it pound. She’d experienced every intimacy a woman and man could share with both men in front of her, but the thought of them both taking her, both touching her…both fucking her! She shook at the thought.
“What do you suggest?” Alain asked and pinned her with his gaze.
Gerard came up behind him and cupped the back of Alain’s neck in a gesture so intimate Mira’s breath lodged in her throat. She’d known the men were close, and had oft wondered at their friendship, but the way Gerard touched Alain gave proof to what had only been a thought. They were lovers, too.
She’d heard of men who preferred the company of their own sex, yet she knew both of these men to be fervent and skilled lovers. Gerard’s smile grew broader at what must have been a puzzled look upon her face. Alain reached to stroke her cheek, perhaps in reassurance.
“We only want to please you,” Alain said.
Gerard nodded and crooked his finger to her. So accustomed to obeying him had she become, Mira stepped at once toward him. Gerard kissed her as skillfully but with less tenderness than Alain. When he probed without warning between her thighs, she cried out. Her knees sagged a little, but Alain caught her.
“We will take care of you, my lady,” he said. “Don’t fear.”
“I’m not afraid.” Mira wet her lips. Something kindled deep within her. “I’ve been waiting for this.”
“Take off your gown,” Gerard ordered.
Mira didn’t hesitate, though the garden was bright with sunshine and would provide no shadow to hide her nakedness from the eyes of anyone passing. Gerard had commanded it, and so she did it, her nipples already peaked and throbbing and her sex dewed. She tugged open the laces of her gown and dropped the material to the ground, then stepped out of it.
“She is so beautiful, Gerard.”
“She is, indeed, brother of my heart. She is indeed. I want you to get on your knees for her and pleasure her with your tongue.”
Alain ducked his head in acquiescence and Mira parted her legs to allow him access. His tongue, hot and sleek, dove straight to her center and licked and swirled on her until her hips began to rock. She kept her balance with one hand on Alain’s shoulder, but the other drifted from breast to breast, pinching her nipples as Gerard watched, his eyes gleaming.
The front of his breeches tented and he pulled the laces free to push them down over his strong, muscled thighs. His shirt came off over his head until he stood as naked as she. The sun was kind to him, casting him in glittering rays of gold, as if he’d been covered in gilt.
Alain still knelt between her legs, his midnight-black hair streaming over his shoulders. Mira climaxed under his tongue as Gerard watched. Alain kissed her and drew back as Gerard came forward to claim her mouth. When he pulled away, Alain had stripped as well.
Side by side, their differences only proved how well-matched they were. Dark and light.
“Key and lock,” Mira said aloud. “Both of you.”
“And you the door that makes us worth our function,” Alain said as though teasing, but the instant he spoke the words Mira knew them as truth.
“Get on that bench,” Gerard told her. “Alain is going to make love to you now.”
“Oh, yes,” she breathed and settled herself at once onto the carved wooden bench overlooking her favorite flowerbed. Far from being too hard or uncomfortable against her bare skin, the smooth, sun-warmed wood caressed her as she lay back and opened her legs for Alain.
He slid inside her with ease, both of them groaning when he sank to the hilt. He paused before thrusting, but when he began his motions were slow and steady. The bench was high enough off the ground that he could stand, knees slightly bent, to press into her. His hands gripped her hips as he thrust, and when Mira cried out one of them left her curves to stroke her clitoris in time to his thrusts.
The pleasure swept over her in waves so strong they brought tears to her eyes. Alain moved inside her as Mira blinked away the blur and murmured words of encouragement…and love.
It was love, she realized with a wonder even the mind-fuzzing pleasure couldn’t conceal. She loved Alain for his tenderness and gallantry, and her orgasm swept over her as she cried the words over and over.
Alain shouted out his reply as his hips rocked inside her and slowed. They stared into each other’s eyes, smiling, and Mira only looked away when she saw Gerard appear over Alain’s shoulder.
“I love you, too, Gerard,” she said and gave a low cry as Alain’s thrust began another surge of climax building inside her. She loved Gerard for his command and discipline of her.
Each of them gave her something different, something she’d craved without knowing it. She loved them both, and at last understood how to break the curse.
Gerard and Alain seemed to have come to the same realization as Mira, for Gerard again cupped the back of Alain’s neck with one large hand. Watching the men kiss sent a thrill through Mira unlike any other she’d experienced. It would have been easy to fear their fondness for each other, to worry she’d have no place with them, but Alain had said she was the door and now, more than ever, Mira felt it.
Gerard kissed Alain but briefly, for Alain still thrust ever so slowly in and out of Mira. Gerard moved behind Alain. His hands gripped Alain’s hips, and in a moment Mira felt the added pressure of Gerard’s thrust inside Alain. The two men moved in perfect tandem, in and out. Alain cried out, his fingers on Mira’s clit pausing their circling, and it was the hesitation in the stimulation that sent her over the edge once more.
Together, the three of them fucked. Together, they made love. And when Gerard cried out first her name and then Alain’s, and Alain shuddered and grunted with his climax, Mira tipped once again into a spiral of ecstasy so great all she could do was let it sweep her away nearly to oblivion.
When they had untangled themselves from her and from each other, Mira kissed and embraced the two men who’d come through her garden gate and changed her life forever. One fair, the other dark. Gilt and midnight, her own dual nature split into two lovers, each providing the final piece of what she needed to love.
More than that.
Each what she needed to be complete.
CHAPTER ONE
HE WAS STARING AT HER. THOUGH SHE DIDN’T look—why ruin the game so soon—she felt the heat of his dark chocolate gaze cruising down her neck to her partially bare breasts and beyond, taking in every detail of her new dress and the body that lay beneath it. She’d thought of him when she’d chosen the red silk. Imagined his expression the first time he saw her in it and the unbelievable pleasure she would feel as he slowly peeled her out of it.
He shifted in his seat and a shiver of pure liquid lust shot through her at the simple movement, though she caught it only out of the corner of her eye. She shouldn’t be this attuned to him—it just wasn’t normal, no matter what wicked, wonderful things she’d let him do to her body for the last three months. And, she admitted, she’d let him do a lot. She’d given him everything he asked for and more; so much more that it disturbed her sometimes.
She didn’t know how to deal with this…obsession. Annalise cringed at the word, but could think of nothing else to describe the craving she had for Gabe every moment of every day. No one else could satisfy it, no matter how hard she’d tried to find someone who could. And God, how she tried—every chance she got. Nearly every night he wasn’t with her she made sure she was flat on her back beneath someone else. A momentary diversion, a last-ditch effort to stop the need he built so explosively, and effortlessly, within her.
She refused to turn out like her mother—her beautiful, youthful, completely insane mother. Living with one man while chasing after another, changing marriages like underwear—until her life was nothing but one long nervous breakdown. No thank you. Been there, seen that.
Yet her feelings for Gabe remained more powerful than she liked. Obsession. Need. The words whispered through her until all she could think about, all she could feel, was Gabe.
The distance between their tables was negligible in the sleepy little restaurant. He sat halfway across the room, immersed in a business discussion of stocks and commodities and so many other things she couldn’t care less about, but Annalise felt each of his glances like a caress.
Though she refused to look up from the menu she was oh so carelessly perusing, his pull battered her defenses. Enveloped her until she was wet and aching and ready to let him fuck her right there in the middle of Emilio’s exclusive dining room. Yet, when she’d risked a glance at him earlier, he’d looked completely unruffled. How could he turn her into a raving, sexcrazed lunatic and still manage to stay so untouched?
Fuck it. She reached for her wine, took a healthy sip. Two could play his game. After all, she’d been doing it for more years and with more men than she could count. She had to remember that Gabe was just one more.
Deliberately she uncrossed her silk-clad legs, one slow inch at a time. Leaning back in her chair slightly, she let her knees fall open—nothing too graphic in dear Emilio’s little restaurant—just enough to reveal a smooth expanse of leg and a hint of the shadow near the apex of her thighs.
She used one slender finger to toy with her water glass—a careless slide around the rim, a little dip into the cool water, an absentminded skim across red lips. She studied her menu—though she knew it by heart and he knew she did.
But it gave her an excuse to ignore him as his eyes forged a blazing path up the long legs he loved to kiss. Legs made even longer by the Jimmy Choos with the five-inch heels she had just spent way too much of her last paycheck on. But the second she’d seen them it had been love at first sight.
Annalise couldn’t help grinning. What did it say about her that she had a more emotional and lasting relationship with her shoes than she did with any man? Even Gabe.
Smart, she decided as she glanced down at the sparkly crimson miracles, admiring the sheer beauty and craftsmanship that had gone into her most recent purchase. Investing in her shoes instead of a man definitely made her smarter than so many of the women she competed with on the dating scene.
She glanced up as her waiter approached. “Can I get you another chardonnay, Annalise?” Angelo asked, laying a familiar hand on her shoulder and leaning down to speak quietly in her ear.
Taking the last sip, she handed him her glass with a flourish. “You bet, sugar. But just one more—I’m driving.”
He glanced across the restaurant. “Gabe’s busy tonight, huh?” “Oh yeah. You know Gabe and his one-track mind.” Though she was doing her best to distract him. Leaning into Angelo, she gave a breathy laugh and laid a well-manicured hand on his forearm.
He nodded, his blue eyes darkening as she stroked him through the thin fabric of his suit. “If he’s busy for the rest of the night, I get off at ten-thirty.” His hand slid from her shoulder to the small of her back.