Hidden Depths (34 page)

“No worries,” she said, enjoying his humor. “I’m an equal opportunity ogler.” She was, she realized. When she turned from Ty’s odalisque pose to her husband, what she wanted to ogle most was the warmth in his eyes.

Like her, he was on his knees on the rumpled sheets, his smile broadening as hers did. In a lot of ways, he’d made this adventure possible. Without him to share it, she’d have been too scared and guilty. With him, it became marvelous.

He tucked a lock of red hair behind her ear. “You and me then.”

“You and me,” she agreed.

His hands slid down to cover and stroke her breasts. He was very erect from watching her with Ty and Anso, but his caresses were as patient as the others’ had started out. His gaze slid down her body, which made her girl parts tingle pleasantly. Her thighs were wet from the other men and herself. James’s breath hitched softly at the sight. When his eyes rose to hers again, his pupils were bigger.

“Feels like it’s been a while,” he said huskily.

Olivia slid her palms up his chest, loving the way his heart pounded under them. “It’s been an eternity since we came here.” He smiled and kissed her, and then they renewed the part of their vows that had always helped glue them together. James slid into her like a hot slow dream.

They stayed on their knees - Olivia riding James while he thrust up and held her bottom.

This was how Anso had started off taking her - and how Ty had finished, just backwards. Despite the surface similarities, with each man the act felt different.

James’s hips were narrower between her thighs, his cock thicker at the head. Most importantly, the way he handled her was absolutely sure. He knew her too well to doubt he’d please her.

They traded old favorite treats: a special touch, a certain way of moving.

Though the others weren’t obvious about it, Ty and Anso watched what they did as intensely as scientists studying exotic animal behavior.
Here’s the devoted
married couple, having sex in the wild
. Olivia wondered if they realized they had more than a touch of this familiarity themselves. They too had been lovers for a long time.

Of course, not everything about making love to James was the same. Both of them were changed from before.

She’d known that from his first thrust inside of her.

The sensation of him filling her was a dial spun from ten to twenty - more acute, more pleasurable, even more intense emotionally. She’d had hints that this might happen, but actually experiencing it took her breath away.

By the time they reached the stage where they couldn’t go slow anymore, she was mewling for each penetration, and his grip had turned to iron.

“God,” he swore, jamming up into her harder. “Fuck.” Olivia twined her arms behind his strong neck, her hips moving faster to speed up his. “Finish me. Come in me.”

His thrust went crazy. “Always,” he growled in her ear. “Always you’re the one for me.”

The fit between them got snugger as he swelled for the final drive to orgasm.

He felt so good, so hard and so desperate. Possibly his glans was broader. It spread her walls so well. She reveled in his hunger for her, her pussy creaming extravagantly. She wanted to be wetter; wanted to overflow with his seed
and
that of the other men. The craving might not have been rational, but she couldn’t resist it.

“Not ... just me,” she gasped in response to his last statement. “The ... three of us ... are yours now.”

If it wasn’t entirely true yet, she had faith it would be. The more people got to know James, the better they loved him. He was the best man she’d ever known.

He made a sound, holding her tighter as she spoke the wish he might not have known he had. “Liv -”

He ran out of breath for words. His cock plunged up into her again, triggering reactions beyond her control. Her thighs vised around him, her pussy tightening in refusal to let him withdraw. She needed him where he was, grinding against her womb.

He seemed to need that too. He cried out and ejaculated, sending her crashing over. Both their heads flung back at the sensations. She heard the others panting, fast and choppy. Someone’s come spurted hot on her hip, so Ty and Anso must have started jacking off at some point. The knowledge made her pleasure blaze higher. James squeezed her breast, and ecstasy flared so hot in her it was white.

“God,” cried Anso.

“Shi-it,” gasped Ty.

James just moaned as they spurted on him too.

As she descended, finally, the muscles of her pussy continued to spasm around her husband.

“
James
,” she sighed.

Her tone was slightly astonished. Sex had always been good for them, but that was phenomenal. Laughing, he lifted her gently off him. Ty and Anso were sprawled on the bed, one to either side of the now completed show. Their muscular arms rested in matching bent positions along their sides, their relaxed hands draping but not quite covering their groins. Olivia was surprised either of their seed had hit her from that distance. Maybe wereseal ejaculations had superior propulsive qualities. And maybe James’s did as well. She’d seemed to register every burst from him.

“Now we sleep,” Anso said, patting the mattress in front of him.

She and James lay down together, for the moment completely biddable. Olivia found herself face to face with Ty, who tapped her nose playfully. “Satisfied?”

“Very,” she said and closed her eyes.

They were only shut for a second when an odd sensation enveloped her. Her skin tingled all over, goose bumps prickling as the little hairs on her arms stood up. Was she floating? She couldn’t feel the covers under her. Maybe she was falling asleep. If she was, children were giggling in her dream. Three children, she was sure.

Olivia’s eyes snapped open.
Oh my God
, she thought.
I’m pregnant. With

triplets
. She’d known something like this might happen. In truth, she’d wanted it, and nonetheless it came as a shock.
No
, she thought.
I must be imagining it
.

Anso had sworn he’d sense the instant she conceived, and he wasn’t saying a word.

Definitely imagining it
, she told herself.

“Hm,” Ty said, seemingly in his sleep. Except he wasn’t sleeping. His eyelids fluttered up so he could consider her with drowsy yellow eyes. “Hm,” he said again, a smile beginning to stretch his seducer’s mouth. His gaze dropped down her naked body to where she’d unthinkingly pressed her hand over her belly.

“I’m not,” she said, barely breathing it.

“You are,” he countered and held up three fingers. He appeared to find her amazement funny, laughing softly as he closed his eyes again. “Boy are we in for it.”

“In for what?” Anso mumbled from the other side of James.

“Nothing,” Ty said. “Olivia can tell you when we wake up.” Anso must have been too tired to press. They
had
been up all day and all night.

“C’mere,” Ty said and pulled her half over him.

Her miraculous - and life-changing - revelation should have kept her awake for hours. Instead, as James rolled closer and Anso rolled after him, a warm and very sweet peace filled her. She was surrounded by men who cared for her, men she felt proud to call her own. Maybe - probably - she was going to have their children, a dream she’d nearly given up on. Surely no woman ever was luckier.

She wondered if Ty’s baby radar matched hers in all respects. She’d had the definite impression these children weren’t just Anso’s. It couldn’t be a coincidence that she’d sensed three of them.

I’m a cat
, she joked to herself.
With a different daddy for each kitten
.

The possibility made her smile. Ty’s heart beat slow and steady beneath her cheek, the same as James’s beat behind her. Ty pressed a kiss to her hair.

“’Night,” Anso slurred.

’Night
, she thought to the three gigglers.

To her own amusement, she dropped into sleep as easily as an exhausted four-year-old.

* * *

Olivia and Ty were fast asleep, snuggling together like each other’s favorite toy. James smiled at that. Them caring for each other made James caring for Ty less fraught. Besides that, it warmed his heart. Everyone ought to love his Olivia ... and maybe everyone ought to love his Ty.

We’re bloodmates
, he thought, trying out the words.
Me and Olivia. Me and
Ty. In body and spirit
.

He didn’t remember Ty from another life, but the connection felt as fated as his and Olivia’s. He padded to the bathroom naked, his body invigorated but also calm. As he peed without having to work around a monster hard-on, he concluded their four-way heat must be done.

He didn’t mind. Taking their time making love, without everything seeming so damn urgent would be nice ... at least until the next time their hormones went crazy.

Happy about that too, he shaved in the shower, whistling softly to himself through the spray. When his face was smooth, he stepped out, dried off, and pulled on one of Anso’s seemingly endless supply of blue and silver robes.

This reminded him he was the king’s mate as well.

He doubted Olivia needed reminding. She seemed to have accepted the bond once and for all last night.

Unexplored territory
, he thought, resettling his robe’s lapels before going in search of his own New World. He was glad Olivia was sleeping. These were waters he needed to navigate personally.

He found the object of his search when he entered the dining room - or rather, he found the other side of Anso. The windows were large here, and there was a long line of them. He had no trouble spotting Anso’s seal form swimming sleekly among the coral.

Oddly enough, even before seeing his deep blue eyes, James knew it was the king.

The rosy bars of light declared the hour near sunset. Anso’s seal form flickered between the spokes, almost as purely silver as the eels on James’s robes.

He moved at a clip James didn’t think he could match, despite his recent physical improvements. Anso’s muscles and streamlining were designed for cutting through water. Swiftness aside, he didn’t seem agitated as he undulated around the garden. James suspected this was his version of a relaxing stroll. He was stretching out and enjoying his alternate body.

He shot upward suddenly, joining a school of bright blue fish in rising toward the light above. James lost sight of him for a minute before he torpedoed down again.

Boy
, he thought.
Liv and I sure got ourselves into something different
.

Anso might have been aware of him all along, but only after his velocity slowed did he approach the dining room windows. Hanging there in the crystal water, he stared at James with strange-familiar eyes. Shivers coursed down James’s spine, the sense of wonder that gripped him like nothing else he’d experienced.

This is magic
, he thought.
This, right in front of me
.

He wondered if Anso felt this way when he looked at Olivia.

Anso’s seal form blinked at him.

“Hey,” James said, flattening one hand on the cool window. “Hello again.” He wasn’t sure Anso could hear through the glass, but he could see his lips.

Anso bobbed his graceful silver head, then jerked it to the left.

“Meet you in your office?” James asked.

Anso nodded again and disappeared in that direction.

Anso was wet, naked, and on two legs when he emerged from the silver-gold changing hatch. Prepared for this, James handed him a pair of towels.

“Thank you,” Anso said, wrapping one around his waist and using the other to dry his hair. “Did you sleep well?”

James broke into a laugh. “You’re very polite,” he said when Anso lifted his brows at him.

“It’s how I was raised.”

Momentarily abashed, James reminded himself this man had had his mouth on his cock.
Polite
was hardly the sum of his character. “I believe in good manners,” he conceded. “When they don’t get in my way too much.”

“Are they in your way now?”

Anso asked this politely too. James put one hand on the still damp stretch of muscle between Anso’s neck and shoulder, squeezing just a bit to coax him to relax.

“No,” he said, smiling to ease the sting, “but perhaps yours are.” Anso didn’t shake off his hold, though as royalty, people wouldn’t have touched him like this often. “I’m not certain I understand you.”

“You’re a little jealous of me. Because Olivia and I have a history. That evens out, though, because I’m a little jealous of you, for all the nice discoveries you and she have ahead of you.”

“There’s also Ty,” Anso said.

“There is, and I do envy your closeness. But that will even out in time as well.

I’m used to taking a long view of life.”

The tension in the king’s shoulder eased, and James was glad for it. Then his drowning blue eyes narrowed. “There’s something else. You want to bargain with me. Does it involve you and Olivia traveling?”

“We can hash that out when Olivia is around. I’d like to discuss this triad thing I’ve overheard a couple people talking about. I know it’s probably an honor, and you might not actually plan to make me your third, but the truth is I don’t want the position.”

“You don’t.” Fortunately, Anso sounded more curious than insulted.

“Well, I’m sure you’re a decent boss, but I’m older than you, and I’ve got more experience. Plus, I hate politics.”

“What sane person doesn’t?” Anso asked dryly.

“Exactly,” James said. “So I don’t envy you that. The thing is, I’d really rather start a new business here. Ground up. No special royal favors. Just me and whatever interesting idea I come up with. And Olivia, now and then, if you can spare her from queening. She’s a great accountant.” Anso was smiling as he folded his arms. His pecs really were impressive. And his biceps. And the rippling abs that dove underneath his towel. “You’ve thought this through.”

“Yes,” James said, yanking back his focus. His nerves were fluttering more than he expected. He might be older than Anso, but the man did have gravitas.