Elam (4 page)

“I need you.” She nodded, pulling at the top of his pants. Lifting her breast up to his mouth, he feasted on her, suckling at her as hard as he could until she jerked his head up from her. “I need you.”

“Take me.” He nodded, lifting her up so that her pussy was nearly wrapped around his cock. He rocked into her, watching her face as she held onto his shoulders. “Please. I need to feel you inside of me now. I know not why, but to feel you there will complete me.”

His body stiffened as he held her. Complete her. His making love to this woman would complete them both, and that scared him. Dropping her down from his body, Casdon took two steps back and then two more when she reached for him.

“You’re my mate.” She shook her head, and he nodded. “You are. You’re the one that would...do you think you are to complete us both?”

“Both?” The woman stood there, her hands moving to cover her nakedness, and then she was dressed. The white of her dress did nothing to hide what he now knew was beneath it. “You aren’t my mate, you...you were just there and we had a need.”

“You said I would complete you.” She told him it had been a mistake. “Yes. That’s it. A mistake. We were just...needy, and it occurred to us at the same time.” She cocked a brow at him, and Casdon was reminded of Elam; he did that as well.

“You think so? That at the same time we both were so overcome with need that we sort of came to each other? I do not.” The little brownie landed on the woman’s shoulder and glared at him. “Go away.” But before he could say anything, like he was, the brownie spoke to him.

“You should take what is yours, young dragon. You know as well as her that you are not needy. She is your mate.” Casdon shook his head. “Mates come but once in a lifetime. Pushing her away is not the right thing to do.”

“Hush, Izic. He’s not my mate. You know what I must do today.” Izic looked at her then back at him before the woman spoke again. “I am here to talk to one of the men that reside here. I have a message for him.”

“Who?” She only lifted her chin for an answer, and he had the most incredible urge to kiss her again. “I’m not going to allow you to go onto the land without answers. Who is it you’re here to talk to?”

“You think to stop me?” Casdon nodded at her. “I have been sent here by the king. He and his lady wife, they gave me a task to complete, and you will not keep me from it.”

“Asher sent you here to talk to one of us?” She asked him who that was. “Never mind. All right, I’ll allow you passage if you can cross over the magic.”

He was sure that she’d not be able to. Casdon had a feeling that she was lying, and that nearly giving herself to him had been a trick to make him forget himself. There wasn’t any way she was his mate. No way in hell.

But the moment that she stepped onto their land, Casdon began to have doubts about everything. Not about her being his mate…he was sure that had been something else. And the little brownie with her, he hung to her shoulder as if he might fall at any moment. Then he realized that she was stomping, and Casdon was glad that he was behind her so he could smile. He had a feeling if she could see him right now, he’d be a dead dragon.

What are you doing?
The voice of Elam startled him into nearly missing a step. Casdon hadn’t really been paying attention to his footing anyway. He’d been watching the way her bottom moved under her dress, knowing that her legs were long and strong, her bottom filled his—
Casdon? What the hell are you doing with that woman?

Nothing. We didn’t do anything.
He realized how guilty he sounded and mentally shook himself.
She has a message for one of us. She won’t tell me who it is so I can’t tell you if you ask.

About what?
Casdon said he had no idea about that either, but that she claimed Asher sent her.
Asher is here with me. And he knows of no such message from a woman.

By now they were at the main house. All of them, including his father and grandfather, were there as well. Even Lindsey and Essie, large with their babes, were seated on the porch watching and waiting for them. He looked to the sky when it darkened slightly just before his brothers landed to join the fray.

He didn’t care for the way that Essie was grinning at him. He just knew that she’d been spying on him, and he wanted to deny whatever was in her head. But he kept glancing at the woman, and knew that even the most unobservant person could see his erection.

“Hello.” Lindsey leaned back on her hands and stared up at them. “I spoke with you a few days ago, I think. I didn’t catch your name.”

“No, you didn’t. I have a message for a son by the name of Casdon.” Casdon looked at the men and women in front of him, knowing this was a joke. When the woman continued, Casdon turned and looked at Elam. “I spoke with his parents only days before they were murdered and they asked me, sort of coerced me, into coming here and giving you a message from them, but…”

“You’re saying that you spoke to my parents and that they bullied you into coming here, some three thousand years later, to give me a message?” The woman turned and looked at him. “I don’t believe you. Who are you and what are you trying to pull? Is this about not having sex with you in the woods? You’re bitter because I don’t want to have you as my mate?”

He knew that he’d made a mistake the moment that someone behind him laughed. But when Elam came to stand behind the woman, standing in front of him, he could see his anger and thought for sure it was because he’d nearly made love to this woman without telling him.

“Your father told me to come here. He said I was to tell you something after I gave you his gift. A gift that I was to hand you when I saw you.” He took a step toward her and he could feel her magic as it grew. “He said…they both claimed that the people who raised you, Jacob and Sally Benson, would have raised you to be a good son, a better man. But I can see that they were wrong.”

“Now you see here a minute. You can’t be coming here and saying those things about my sons. None of them.”

Jacob stood up and made his way down the stairs just as a sound echoed in the distance. Without thought to what he might be doing, Casdon jerked the woman around behind him and shoved at Jacob to get him down out of the line of the shot. Casdon took the bullet that not only tore through him, but hit the wood of the porch. He felt the moment the iron entered his body. Someone had just killed him.

As he fell to the ground he heard shouts. His body felt heavy, his head was spinning. Looking at his shoulder, he tried to tell himself that he’d be fine, but he could feel the poison as it raced through his body at an alarming rate. Opening his eyes that he’d not even realized he’d closed, he looked into the face of the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. She was shouting at him to stay with her.

“You hurt?” She shook her head and he felt the air in his lungs simply rush out. “Good. Very good. I think...I’m pretty sure I’m going to die.”

“Nay, you are not. Had you been here when I was told to come, then I would have given you this sooner.” He felt weakened by the blow to his system, his own blood turning against him as it filled every part of him with the poison of the iron in the bullet. His heart sounded slow, his blood flow sluggish. “Casdon, look at me.”

“I cannot.” The pain to his face made him look at her again. “Did you hit me? I’m hurt and you hit me?”

“Do you wish to receive the gift of your sire and his mate?” He had a hard time focusing on her. “Casdon, listen to me. You must answer. Do you wish to receive the gift of your sire and his mate?”

His
yes
to her question brought to him the most incredible pain. His head felt as if a bomb had gone off. His body felt powered through by a large machine. And when he bowed up with the feeling of being stung by thousands of bees, he let his body slip over the edge, hoping that he’d simply just die now without lingering in this much pain forever.

Chapter 3

Ariannona wasn’t sure what she was to do. Izic had just delivered some news to her that she was still trying to understand. When Essie had asked her to sit with young Casdon while she went to lie down, the brownie had come to tell her what he’d been able to find out about the slayer. But before she could tell Essie, she’d begged off for some rest.

For some reason, and she’d not mentioned it to the new queen, she thought the woman in good shape and in no more need of a nap than she was. When the door opened, Elam, Casdon’s other half, came into the room and Ariannona started to leave.

“Please don’t go. I’d like...if you don’t mind, I’d like to have a conversation with you.” She told him she knew no more than what she’d told the new king. “Asher. He said if you call him the new king again, he might go insane. Call him Asher.”

“I cannot.” Elam only smiled at her, but she did sit down again. “He will be well now. I’m sorry that he was injured. I had come to give him the magic from his parents’ days ago, but he wasn’t here. By the way, I think you all have the same magic as him. I can feel it on all of you.”

“Thank you for that. And it’s not your fault that he was shot any more than it is mine. But, he did what he did to protect you. Whoever it was shooting here, he was aiming at you. And I’d like to know why you think someone wanted you dead.” Ariannona wanted to know as well, and had Izic out looking for the slayer to see what he’d done. She told Elam that she was looking into it. “You said that you had a message for Casdon. Can you tell me what it was?”

“Nay. It is his message.” Elam nodded and looked at Casdon. “The gift that I gave him, it came with conditions. He will need to abide by them.”

“I can’t answer for him, but the rest of us, we’ll make sure that he does it. Was he to pay you, give you some sort of boon for it?” Ariannona said no, just two rules. “All right. What happens to us now?”

“Us? I don’t understand. If you mean that he thinks me his mate, then I know that to be impossible. I am to die once he has been given the message.” He asked her why she thought this. “The king. He explained to me that I would see the king and queen then. Once he is given his gift, then I could see them.”

Elam sat there for several minutes before he laughed. When she asked him what was going on, he only laughed harder. It wasn’t until he stood up that she felt perhaps it had been a mistake to have sat with him. He was insane, she thought.

“Did they say that you would see them, Anthony and Eve? Or that you’d see the king and queen?” She didn’t understand his question and told him so. “Humor me. What was it precisely? What did they say?”

“The queen said that I would be rewarded when I completed this task, and that I would someday see the king and queen for my efforts.” She looked around the beautiful room and then back at the man on the bed. Everything they had said to her, the way that she’d been confused by the wording of the statement, now seemed to come clear. “She said that I would gain a great reward when I gave him the gift from his parents. That men would bow before me, worship me in ways that none had before or would after.”

“I think she knew that you were our mate.” Ariannona shook her head as Elam stood still. “You’re our mate. Or at least you’re Casdon’s. I have no idea if you’re both of ours, but it would stand to reason since the other women have become as such to our counterparts.”

“I want no mates. I was to get...I thought I was to be given death. After all these years, I have prepared for it. Looked forward to it.” He said nothing as she moved to the window of the room and looked out. “I’ve no use for a mate. I have no desire to have someone that I cannot rule in my life.”

“Well, that at least we have in common.” She looked at Casdon when he sat up on the bed. He was weak and still slightly pale, but she could see that he was gaining strength and that he would be well soon enough. “Have you touched her, Elam? To see if she belongs to you as well?”

“No. I don’t think I want to know.” It was both painfully honest and felt good to her that he no more wanted her than she did either of them. “I don’t suppose you can just leave us alone and we get on with our lives as we had been before?”

“I have a message.” Casdon asked her what it was. When the implications of what the message might mean hit her now, she shook her head. “It’s a trick. It’s always been a trick.”

“More than likely.” When Casdon stood up and moved toward her, speaking things that made her heart ache and her body burn, she backed up. “They knew that you’d bring me the message and that I would more than likely get hurt. They also knew, somehow, that you’re our mate and that bringing you here would bring us together. Tell me the message and your name. I wish to say it.”

“I don’t...they said the love of Sally would bring forth the love of a mother.” He nodded and touched his fingers to her throat. When she took another step back, to keep him from touching her more, she felt hands, strong and callused, touch her body from behind, and she knew it was Elam. “You said that you did not wish for a mate. If you touch me now, with the intent of what is in your mind and heart, we will not be able to go our separate ways.”

Fingers touched her breasts, and her dress was lifted when Casdon went to his knees before her. His hands pulled at her body, massaging her in a way that made her tense, not relaxed. When she was naked, her dress and underclothing just gone, she felt Elam milk her breasts in his hands as her legs were parted.

“He’s going to eat you. Then I will.” She shook her head, but Elam only laughed in her ear. “I can smell you. The heat of your pussy. The way your body is ready for his mouth.”

“I do not...no, you cannot.” Ariannona looked down at Casdon when he touched her intimately. His body was nude, his hands at her hips. She could see his cock, ready and hard between his thighs, and wanted to feel it. Touch him. But the cock at her backside had her rocking into him as Elam continued to make love to her his way, with his hands and fingers.

The first swipe of Casdon’s tongue at her pussy had her crying out. No man had ever touched her this way. Men had tried to take more than she was willing to give, but this, she had a feeling that this was going to be overwhelming and fulfilling at the same time. When she felt Elam turn her slightly, she thought him to be pulling her away from Casdon and sobbed in the back of her throat. But he took her nipple in his mouth and suckled hard on just the tip, enough that she had to hang onto him or fall.

The mouth at her pussy was indeed eating her. Each time Casdon brought her, taking her over the edge only to bring her back there to do it again. Elam was touching her breast, her neck, and even her navel as he made his way over her. Each touch of their fingers, each bite of their teeth on her flesh, was bringing her closer and closer to something that she knew in her heart was going to be the end of all that she knew.

“Please, you must let me breathe. I’m going to fall.” The small laugh from one of them had her grabbing hair. When she looked into the eyes of Elam, his face hard with a need that she felt herself, her knees grew weaker, and she knew that she was going to indeed fall.

“Casdon, to the bed.”

Yes, she thought bed. That’s where she needed to be to think, to cover up from their hands. But as soon as she was prone, her body seemingly stretched out for them, she knew that whatever they’d done to her standing, they had doubled their efforts to...she wasn’t sure what, but she thought them to claim her. It was all she could think of.

Elam slid down her body, Casdon now at her breasts. They were different in their making her body come alive. Casdon was hungry, his mouth and hands digging into her with a profound hope of devouring her. Elam, at her pussy, explored her, discovered new ways to bring her over, his fingers inside of her touching off newly explored sensations. When Casdon sat on her chest, his cock at her breasts, she cried out when he squeezed them together and fucked them hard. As she came, her body bowing up off the bed yet again, she felt a thick hardness at her entrance that scared her.

“Don’t, love.” She tried to calm, Elam’s words like a balm to her frightened body. “I wish to enter you.”

Casdon leaned over her, his cock now at her mouth, and she opened for him, just as the cock at her pussy slid deeper. It wasn’t painful, but it was thick and something that was new to her. As soon as she felt Casdon enter her mouth completely, the cock at her pussy slammed forward and she screamed.

Neither of them moved. She could feel the tension in the room and realized that they were waiting on her. Ariannona looked up at Casdon and saw the pain on his face, and listened to his softly spoken words.

“Please, love. Don’t bite down more.”

She felt her mouth relax as the pain in her jaws begin to let up. As he sat there, his cock in her mouth and his hands gripping the headboard, all she could think about was that he was the most beautiful sight she’d ever seen. Then Elam moved, his cock stretching her more as he moved deeper, then back out slowly, gently, his body taking hers to new levels.

Casdon fucked her mouth, Elam her pussy. She was hard with the need to come. Her body was so close that she was afraid that when she released, she’d hurt them again. But when Elam touched his finger to her clit, pinched her, she screamed around the cock in her mouth that she was coming again, then a third time before she felt the first splash of Casdon’s cock filling her mouth.

~~~

He wanted to taste her but knew that she’d be sore. Elam watched her as she slept, her body now curled around his and Casdon at her back. He had no idea why they’d taken her. They’d only just discussed how they didn’t want a female in their lives, and now they’d not just taken one but taken her to their bed as well. He looked as Casdon when he whispered his name.

“She’s beautiful.” Elam nodded, his body rocking into hers even though he’d tried his best to tell himself she needed rest. “I want her again, to feel her wrapped around me.”

“She’s never had sex before us. We’ll have to take it easy on her.” Casdon nodded but his body, like Elam’s, was having a difficult time waiting when she was naked between them. Reaching down to his cock, Elam stroked it trying to ease, even only for a bit, some of his overwhelming need to bury his cock deep inside of her again.

When her hand joined his, wrapping around his cock, he moaned and felt himself slide to his back when she moved his hand. Looking at her face, he saw that she was staring into his eyes even as she came up on one elbow. When her leg lifted, he knew that Casdon was entering her even as she leaned over and took Elam into her mouth. Christ, he nearly came when she swallowed his cock past her tight throat.

The bed moved in motion to the love making that Casdon was doing to her. Up and down her head bobbed on him, her hands at his balls, her breasts pressed tightly against his leg. When she shifted again, this time to be between his legs, he nearly came when Casdon lifted her ass up to his cock and took her from behind.

Now they were fucking each other. Her mouth was doing wondrous things to his cock. Her breasts swayed back and forth to the motion of Casdon’s strokes. And when he held her head to his cock, Elam knew that when she came, she was going to bring him with her. As soon as Casdon cried out, he felt his own cock empty deeply into her throat as she fucked the last of his cum into her, the hum of her own release nearly taking his head off when he came again.

When she moved over his body, sliding up so that her head was now on his chest, Casdon moved to lay beside them and closed his eyes. Elam held her to him, hearing her heart beating slower and slower until, like his, it was at a normal pace again. However, he was under no illusions that anything was going to be normal again.

“My name is Ariannona.” He looked at her when she sat up, her chin on her fist. “I thought perhaps it would serve no purpose to keep it from you now.”

“No, not really. Not since I have tasted every part of you.” Her face reddened and he told her he was sorry. “I never meant…we never meant to hurt you that way.”

“I know that. But this does not lessen the fact that we are bonded and truly mates now. I never wanted it, and am still not sure that this was a good idea.” He didn’t want to lie to her and told her that he thought not as well. “But here we are. The three of us.”

“You will stay then?” He knew that he sounded somewhat desperate, and he supposed in a way that he was. She was his now, his and Casdon’s, and he didn’t want to be without her now that he’d been with her. She looked over at Casdon, who snored softly. “He and I will care for you. Make sure that you have everything that you need. Anything that you might ever want too. We’re family now, the three of us.”

“I have what I need. I can care for myself.” He didn’t say anything because really, he knew that she was right. “The king and queen, Casdon’s parents, they tricked me—and you—into this. Are you not angry with them? I am. Very much so. They might have been a little clearer in their statements. Instead of letting me believe that I’d die once I came to see him.”

“No, I’m not mad at them, but I can see how you would be.” And he really wasn’t. “I might have been had you appeared in my life before today, or even before this decade, when there were no wives to my brothers. Then we were not where we are now in our lives. It’s not to say that I’m not afraid…I am. Nor am I sure what sort of reasoning that they had for this. But I’m sure, like the other things that we’ve been told and have found out, that there was a good reason for this, and I’m sure that it will work out.”