Kirill latched onto my neck, his strong teeth closing around my flesh.
“Kirill!” I cried out, my whole body convulsing.
The men grunted through my orgasm and as soon as I went limp, they both came, Kirill pulling out to release against my back. Trevor fell forward, and we collapsed into a happy puppy and kitty pile.
“It's a good thing we soundproofed this room,” Re drawled.
Chapter Three
I woke early the next morning and showered. I had warned the men the night before that I'd be going to Faerie in the morning. So, if they woke and found me gone, they'd know where I was. But I was hoping to be back by the time they woke up. So, I crept past the bed and into the bathroom. I couldn't go to Arach smelling of my other husbands. I mean, I could. He got over his jealousy after spending a night with all of us so my Lion Magic could settle in him. But as a shapeshifter, I knew how sharp his sense of smell was, and I just thought it was rude to arrive and smack him in the face with the scent of the sex I'd had with other men.
So, I showered, wrapped my hair in a towel, and crept across the bedroom to my dressing room. After drying my hair as best I could, I put on some fey clothes. Just a simple velvet dress with gold trim, nothing spectacular like my gowns made of fire or trimmed in jewels. Those, I left in Faerie.
Once I was ready, I asked my ring of remembrance to take me back to a minute after the last time I'd left. That minute was crucial. If I arrived before I left, I could get stuck in a time loop, experiencing leaving all over again and then going through all I'd done here without a way of stopping it to correct my mistake.Groundhog Daybut without the comedy. I used to go back a few seconds later instead of a minute, but I started to worry that was cutting it too close.
With a whole minute to spare, Arach had moved from where he'd been sitting when I'd last left—in a chair near the window. Now, he was pacing before the bed. He stopped when he saw me.
“A Thaisce, there you are!” Arach, my Fey husband and King of the Fire Kingdom, grabbed me and pulled me in against his chest.
Compared to Odin and Trevor, Arach was slender, but he was still muscular, and as a Dragon-Sidhe, he was bigger than many of the Sidhe races. It's all about perspective. And I liked my current perspective. One touch, and I knew I was with Arach. One smell of his musk and embers scent, and I was home. Another home. I breathed in deeply of that primal, smoky male aroma and sighed.
“I've missed you,” Arach said as if he read my mind.
But then, he usually said that.
“I've missed you more,” I said. Then I pulled back, kissed him, and broke away. “But I need to see my babies.”
“Vervain, they're asleep,” he said as he followed me down the corridor to Samara's room.
“I know. I just want to see them.” I carefully opened Samara's door and peeked into the powder pink puffball of a room.
Yeah, I tortured my girls with pink and lace and froufrou that they'd probably hate one day. But I only had two of them, and I wanted to go really girly with them. Lesya was still taking it fairly well, though she'd asked for blue bedding the other day. I was hoping Samara would hold out longer. She'd be growing as fast as Lesya had in her early years, which meant less time to inflict my will on her room. Sam may even mature faster than Lesya. It was hard to tell with different types of shifters and having one didn't give you a baseline either. They could vary from child to child, even if the children were the same type of shapeshifter. It was the animal in them. It depended on how strong it was.
Already, Samara was out of her crib and in a bed. She was only a year old, for fudge's sake. But she looked closer to two, maybe three. I'd never been good at judging the age of children. Sam was at whatever age human children are when they start speaking in short sentences. It boggled my mind sometimes—the way shapeshifters matured. Sebastian and Dominic would be left in the dust by Samara. Figuratively, of course. They had a head start on flying.
Flying. Oh, no. I had forgotten about teaching Samara to fly. Arach would want to toss her out of a window soon. It was part of raising a Dragon-Sidhe baby. You had to teach them to fly by tossing them out of the window of the highest room in your home. In our case, it was very, very high. I knew it would have to be done, but I was hoping Arach would agree to some lessons a little closer to the ground first. I think I deserved that after the debacle of Rian's first flight.
And there she was, my little girl. Curled up on her side, facing me through a swath of lace curtains. Samara looked like the princess she was, with a sprinkling of golden scales at her temples to match mine. My scales only appeared when my dragon was dominant, or if I got upset, and then my eyes would go golden or even fiery. But otherwise, all that revealed my Dragon-Sidhe nature were my slit pupils, and they could be difficult to see against my dark irises.
But Sam always had her scales on display so it didn't matter that her eyes were dark brown like mine. All knew what she was before they looked closer. And I loved that she had my eyes. They even went fiery when she got upset. There was a little of me in the shape of her face too. Or at least, I liked to think so. It's harder to tell when children are young. Their faces are rounder, more fleshy than an adult's.
I breathed in again. I could smell her from the door. Nothing like Arach. Samara smelled like sugared violets.
I smiled and closed the door.
Arach was leaning against the wall, a smug, masculine look on his face. As if it were all due to him that we had such wonderful children.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “I bore her in my body for months, then went through a painful delivery to have her.”
He instantly straightened. “I know, A Thaisce. Why would you remind me of that?”
“Because you had the look of a man who thinks he alone is responsible for his offspring.”
“I would never think that.” Arach chided as he pulled me in close. “I'm grateful you had the magic of our midwives to ease your pain or I wouldn't have been able to endure seeing you like that. It wounds me even now to think of the minutes you suffered.”
I grimaced. “All right, I wasn't in pain for long.” I shoved his chest. “Nice way of pointing it out, though. You get credit for your tact.”
“Thank you.” He grinned. “On to our boys?”
