Pleasure tears through me in waves that arch my back against the tree, and somewhere underneath the white-out my magic answers.
It surges up from the soles of my feet, through my thighs, out through every place his mouth has touched me. The smell hits a half-second later. Pine sap and crushed honey-flower and wet earth, my magic going wide.
The forest answers with it. Vines spiral up the tree trunk. Flowers burst open in clusters of gold and pink. Somewhere nearby a flock of birds takes flight, the wingbeats loud as a small storm, startled by the magic pouring off me in waves.
He doesn’t pull off when I stop shaking, he only slows before he drags his tongue through me one more time, achingly slow, like he’s tasting what he made me do. Then he kisses my thigh—the soft inside, where I can feel the bruise of his bite forming.
“Delicious.”
“I hate you.”
“Your pussy says otherwise.”
I can’t even argue. He’s right.
He taps the tree and it lowers me back down, branches shifting until I’m cradled against his chest. My legs are useless. My brain is static. I’m fairly certain I just traumatized several woodland creatures.
“Can you walk?” He’s already carrying me, one arm under my knees, the other around my back.
“Absolutely not.”
“Good.” He presses a kiss to my forehead. “Didn’t want you to anyway.”
His pulse hammers under my ear all the way home. The pine pitch on his hand has dried to amber on the back of my thigh and I can feel it cracking when I shift.
There’s still a sheen of me on his beard and he hasn’t bothered wiping it. Instead he wears it like a fucking trophy. Every Fae we pass on the path home is going to know exactly what he was doing twenty minutes ago, and I can tell by the set of his jaw he wants them to.
Luckily we don’t pass a single soul.
I feel the other two before the cottage comes into view. Kieran’s silver-blue, curious. Finnian’s gold, already anticipating.
They know we’re coming.
They know what state I’m in.
“Kieran’s going to have opinions about my dress,” I murmur against Orion’s chest.
“Kieran can buy you a new one.”
“You ripped it.”
“I’ll rip the next one, too.” He grins down at me. “And the one after that. Until you learn to stop wearing things that get between me and what’s mine.”
The cottage appears through the trees. Smoke curls from the chimney. Warm light glows in the windows.
Home.
I’m still not used to saying it, but I’m getting closer.
The door is already open. Inside, two sets of eyes turn toward us. Both of them take in my bare legs, my ruined dress, the bite Orion left, the flush still burning down my sternum like he marked me there, too.
“You started without us,” Finnian observes. He’s sprawled in a chair by the fire, a book forgotten in his lap, looking at me like I’m a problem he’s very much looking forward to solving.
“She was feeling horny.” Orion sets me on my feet. My knees wobble. He steadies me with a hand on my hip. “I was being a good mate.”
“A good mate would share.” Kieran rises from the couch, and the temperature drops three degrees with him. Frost feathers across the rim of the glass on the side table. His gaze drags down my body and where it pauses on the bite, I feel the cold settle on it like a second mouth. “Put her on the bed. We’re not done with you yet, troublesome thing.”
The words send heat flooding back through me.
