Shadowstorm (The Shadow World Book 6) (37 page)

Miranda nodded. “Once I have the power, I can use it to stick me and David in between you and Nico and hold all four of us equidistant so that when you let the barrier down, the surge will hit all of us equally with each of us absorbing a quarter of the impact. The link between Nico and David will help redistribute the energy so nobody gets overwhelmed.”

Deven looked at them both like they were spouting nonsense. “You
think
it will. You don’t actually
know
—in fact neither of you has the slightest idea if any of this will work.”

“Do you have a better idea?”

“Just about any idea,” Deven retorted, but as soon as the words were out, his protest seemed to die. “But you’re right…we have to do something now, before Nico regains consciousness and kills us all. We’ve got one chance before everything slides even further into hell. And we have to use the tools we have…just us. We each have different skills and strengths, and we haven’t had a chance to learn how they fit together.” He shook his head, defeated. “But you do understand that I have just about every reservation in existence, right? None of us has ever done anything like this before, and I mean that on pretty much every level.”

David laughed quietly and leaned down to kiss the hollow of Deven’s throat, eliciting a shiver, and not one of strain or fear. “Speak for yourself,” David said. “Don’t worry…I’ve been choreographing this very event in my imagination for years.” He followed that kiss with another, then still more in a line up to Dev’s ear, where David paused and nipped lightly where, in slightly different circumstances, it would have been pointed.

A gasp. David had mentioned Elves had extremely sensitive ears; apparently that bred true just like the eye color.

Miranda focused on her breathing for a moment — she’d been concentrating so intently on being outwardly relaxed so that Deven wouldn’t bolt that she’d let herself knot up with tension on the inside. The whole thing had seemed like a workable, and hopefully at least enjoyable, idea, but now…
we’re really going to do this. Can I do this?

She started to untie her bathrobe, but to her consternation her hand was shaking. Frustrated, she couldn’t get the knot undone.

A hand covered hers. “Stop right there,” Deven said gently, sitting up and locking eyes with her. “I will have no part in this if you’re not 100% sure it’s what you want — to hell with anything else. If we have to find another way we will.”

“There isn’t one,” she said. “Not powerful enough, and not that we can implement in time.”

“I don’t care. I’m not sacrificing you for the rest of us. Not ever.”

Miranda smiled. “You’re amazing.”

“I’m not. But you’ve lost enough already. Given enough.”

“I wonder,” David said, not seeming worried in the slightest, “If perhaps a different approach is called for. We’re being too clinical, too focused on the magic.” There was a glint of mischief in his eye as he added, “Look at us. We’re in bed together. With
intent.
If we let our overall purpose consume our thoughts there’s no way any of us can let go enough to actually make it work. So…for starters, the two of you need to relax. Tell me, beloved…when you imagine this particular scenario, how do we proceed? Are we all three involved? Is anyone just watching? If we can’t talk about it we sure as hell shouldn’t do it.”

Miranda bit her lip, looking away, then said, “Well…it started out vague, right around the time I turned Thirdborn…you remember that night, right?”

“Probably better than you do,” Deven pointed out.

“Then picture that…the three of us warm under the blankets, everyone safe and protected. In the real world I kissed you, and even though I was basically delirious I remember you kissing back. It seemed…sincere, for lack of a better word. I don’t know if anyone else caught on.”

“Jonathan did, and he wasn’t even there at the time.” Dev’s voice was wry. “He kept bringing it up the whole way home, he claimed out of curiosity, but I wonder now if he’d seen something in a vision and was trying to figure out if it was real or symbolic.”

“Oh, I noticed it too,” David added. “In fact I thought it was one of the hottest things I’d ever seen. Go on, Miranda…if you’d had your way, what would have happened next?”

She could feel her face growing redder. “Instead of going back to sleep, I’d keep kissing you. I had one of you on either side of me, and…I thought about how it would feel to have you both…Dev, you know how he is in bed, when things are really intense. He treats you like the most precious thing in all creation and also like he plans to eat you alive. I imagined both of you doing that…I think that’s part of why I’ll probably never actually sleep with anyone else…I can’t imagine anyone touching me that way, like I’m a living treasure, or letting anyone that close. And I’m not willing to settle for anything less.”

Now, she smiled, and took one of Deven’s hands, laying it on her neck under the edge of her robe. “But you…with you I wouldn’t be settling. I know that like I know my own name.”

Taking her tiny bit of guidance, he untied her robe with the other hand, and then carefully, very slowly, pushed it off her shoulders, baring her skin a little at a time.

Before he could get too anxious about being presented with an unwrapped naked woman, she curled a hand around his neck and kissed him hard.

She wasn’t sure who made the soft noise of surprise—it could have been David just as easily as either of them. She could feel how it affected her Prime, seeing his two greatest loves touching each other, and that only made her bolder.

Miranda shifted forward, completely out of the robe, and into Deven’s lap, winding her legs around him and pressing her body against his so he could feel what he was getting into while his clothes were still on. She felt his arms move around her, hands gliding up her back; he broke the kiss long enough to bend and taste her throat, lean her back slightly to kiss his way down her sternum.

To her delight, she found it wasn’t going to be as difficult as she’d feared to get his body interested in a woman’s, and she rocked her hips against his just to enjoy the effect.

Grinning impishly, and earning a quiet laugh, she tugged his shirt — hers, actually — off over his head. This was the first time she’d actually seen the full extent of his tattoos, and she could easily have gotten off track trying to pick out every little detail. They were exquisitely rendered, the lines sharp and stark against pale skin, but the one that caught her eye first was the image of a Nighthound like Cora’s — designed to look like it had emerged from an illuminated manuscript, it howled up at a waning Moon from the edge of a darkened forest where a serpent coiled around the branches of a tree. Hound, Moon, forest, and snake were all drawn with a loving hand stretching from his collarbone down over one pectoral muscle, balancing a similar scene on the opposite side.

“May I…” She tapped his arm with one finger.

“Do you really have to ask at this point?”

She smiled, leaned down, and touched her tongue lightly to one of the lines. It was slightly raised, just like David’s raven. She followed the outline along his collarbone and up to where neck joined shoulder.

There was a tug at the back of her mind, and she glanced over at David, who was watching with the kind of intensity that always, always went straight between her thighs. He smiled slightly and she felt him urging her:
Bite him.

She nodded and returned her mouth to Deven’s throat, ghosting her teeth over his skin—her canines took that as a signal to extend, and quick as a snake, she bit down.

The sound that elicited had the same effect as David’s stare—but the effect on Deven was just as immediate, and before she could even take a drop of blood, her back hit the mattress and he was biting her in return with a low, animal growl.

She clamped her lips on the puncture wounds and sucked forcefully. Her hands slid up around his waist, and she tried to pull off the rest of his clothes but found her hands had gone uncooperative—all they wanted to do was claw and clench, not coordinate.

Luckily, as she’d said, they had a ringer; laughing quietly at her sudden clumsiness, David pushed himself up and got Deven undressed with the kind of efficiency that could only come from years of practice. He took the opportunity to add his own teeth to the situation and bit Deven’s neck on the opposite side. Miranda had managed to only use her front pair, but either the angle was weird or David didn’t care about such niceties, as there were four holes on his side, wine-red blood glistening as it rose up and began to trickle down over Dev’s skin.

Miranda and David smiled at each other and flipped things around a bit, planting Deven firmly on his back, each of them bending to lick the wounds.

They went on like that for a while, drinking each other over and over, hands moving languidly in the dark. Miranda could feel Deven’s shields falling open layer by layer—it was working.

David noticed too, and began to carefully draw off tiny sips of energy and let them build within his own aura. It took concentration, but he was obviously quite happy to watch more than participate, periodically unable to resist taking her mouth, or Deven’s, for a moment.

She wasn’t sure what was more of a turn-on; Deven’s strong, clever hands on her body, gingerly learning unfamiliar terrain, or watching the two Primes kiss, hoping that eventually—if not tonight, then eventually—she’d get to watch a lot more than that.

Deven’s mouth and hands followed each other over her skin, leaving fire in their wake, and he was clearly pleased at the effect. She felt like every inch of her body was burning—there were so many sensations hitting her at once, not just him, but her Prime, whose desire for them both was a force of nature too strong to deny. He was still holding back, though, enough to pay attention to his task, and she could sense the reservoir of energy building just as they’d planned…if a little more slowly than she’d hoped. As much as she wanted this to last, the longer they took, the more dangerous the situation became.

Fortunately she knew a few ways to move things along.

She wrapped one leg around Deven and rolled them both to the side so he was beneath her, blinking in momentary surprise at the abrupt reversal. She grinned and moved back until her hips reached his.

Miranda slid one hand down between them, closing around him gently—she reminded herself next time she wanted to see Stella turn bright red to tell her she’d been absolutely right about the fury of this particular army—and glanced over at David, who took her wordless hint and reached up to pin Deven’s arms up over his head. Deven’s eyes were closed, his breath coming in gasps, and the golden light from the fireplace emphasized every movement of his muscles, tiny tremors and a slight straining against David’s grasp.

She kept stroking with her hand for a moment before tilting her hips and guiding him into her body, one scant, teasing inch at a time. The Queen moaned softly at the slow collision; she could barely breathe, she was so focused on that single point of convergence and the almost painfully delicious feeling of rocking her hips forward and back, barely even moving at first, tightening and relaxing her muscles in time.

She caught her husband’s eye. The way he was staring, lips slightly parted, pupils blown wide and shining black in the firelight, almost seeming astonished by what he was seeing, made it even better.

David lost his focus for a second and almost lost hold of the energy reservoir, but he was no amateur—he clamped down on it quickly and brought himself back to attention, returning to his work. He was careful not to take too much power at once, lest he drain the arousal right out of them, but it had already doubled in volume, growing more with every second.

She leaned forward onto her hands, then lowered herself until she was resting mostly on top of Deven, whose nails were clawing little half-moons of blood in David’s forearms. He, too, rocked his hips to meet hers, the two pushing harder and harder against each other until it felt like her pelvis was going to shatter.

It was incredible.

David’s free hand snaked between the two of them to stroke her with his fingertips, each touch sending waves of electricity through her. The power reservoir was practically overswelling its banks.

He leaned in close to Deven and murmured to him—she couldn’t hear much of it, but she could guess the subject matter. David was, among his many skills, the Zen master of dirty talk.

David’s eyes flicked to Miranda and back as he asked, softly, “How does that feel, my darling? You both look so beautiful…” His voice lowered again, but whatever he said next drew a ragged, desperate noise from Deven, muffled as David covered his mouth with the kind of kiss that could shake the foundations of the earth.

That was enough for Miranda. She barely had time to send David a warning before her entire body felt like it was exploding, the pleasure that burned everywhere they were touching her turning incandescent, into bliss.

She wasn’t the only one, and though he was completely silent except for breath, she could feel it—and she could feel David catching hold and pulling an astonishing amount of energy out of them, into the pool he had built.

Miranda’s muscles all went liquid, and she collapsed with a grunt.

Deven was panting. She couldn’t remember ever having seen him actually sweaty. “Holy…Jesus…woman…”

She was so wildly giddy she nearly went into a giggle fit—she’d managed to switch on his accent. “Not bad, then?” she asked.

The kiss, while not terribly eloquent, was a definite affirmative.

“All right,” David said quietly. He was tense; the amount of power he was controlling right then would have scared the hell out of Miranda if she’d let herself think about it. “I think it’s ready…are you two, or do you need another minute?”

“I could use about five hours, a shower, and some Taco Bell,” Miranda managed, “But here…hang on…” She reluctantly pushed herself off of Deven and onto her side facing the boys. His fingers wound through hers and held on for dear life.