Shared Between Them (15 page)

“What’s this?” she asked, looking at the box and giving it a firm shake.

“Luckily, not something made out of glass,” he replied with a chuckle. “Open it. It’s a gift.”

She hadn’t gotten any gifts for quite a long time—possibly not since her twelfth birthday, and that was only because her brothers had made an extremely impressive robbery that day.

She untied the silk string tying the little black box together and opened it.

It was a necklace—one made of diamonds. Her heart had absolutely stopped beating, she just knew it. Certainly, she’d stopped breathing as she delicately picked it out of the box.

“Oh,
really
!” Taric huffed in complaint, his voice sounding like he and Draevan were playing a game in which the rules had been most certainly broken.

She rose out of the bath water and, ignoring her own nudity, wrapped her arms around Draevan. He didn’t seem to mind that she had made him wet, and he wrapped his brawny arms around her waist and lifted her out of the tub.

“It’s beautiful,” she told him. Never had she owned anything so fine! She hadn’t ever even
stolen
such fineries!

“Not anywhere nearly as beautiful as you are,” Draevan assured her, putting her on the ground and urging her to turn around with gentle pushes of his hand. “But I’m glad you like it.”

Her hair was already pinned up away from her neck so it wouldn’t get wet in the bath, so there was nothing in the way of his lips kissing the nape of her neck as he took the necklace back and fastened it around her throat.

He nipped at her ear, and then brought his hands down across her wet, naked breasts, grabbing them hungrily before turning and grabbing a towel. “And Taric was trying to tell me that
he
was the romantic one,” she tattled, smiling up at him as he wrapped the towel around her.

She meant to tease, but Draevan’s eyes flashed dangerously in Taric’s direction upon the escape of her words. He took a step towards the bathtub, and Taric grabbed the edge as if preparing to pop out of the water and defend himself. Kyra grabbed Draevan’s elbow and tugged him in the other direction. “Come on,” she urged, leading him into the main chamber. “Show me where these supposed clothes are.”

Draevan huffed angrily but allowed her to drag him away from Taric. He poured himself some mead before he sat down in a chair, looking set to watch her try on her clothing. Taric didn’t come out of the back room the entire while, and she was sure that was because he was avoiding Draevan.

Draevan looked a little sullen as he sat there, watching her try on dresses like she would have never imagined ever wearing not a few days ago. She could feel his anger surging through him, and it didn’t make her feel much better that the anger wasn’t directed at her.

He grunted in approval when she donned a white silk robe that highlighted the cleavage at her breasts, and she turned and grinned at him. He didn’t return her smile, looking deep in thought, and didn’t make any eye contact until she stepped up to him.

She grabbed his mug of mead out of his hands and sat on his lap. He seemed surprised by this display of affection, and really—so was she. Although she wished it was intriguing to see her husbands compete for her favor, she could tell that all it was doing was depressing them—especially Draevan who had been working all day only to be told that while he was working, his cousin was working on
her
and then had attempted, however lightly and jestingly, to claim he was better than Draevan in any way.

He wrapped his arms around her waist and accepted her kisses, still with a stunned look on his face. “You can be so sweet,” she told him, rubbing her nose against his affectionately.

“It’s just a bauble,” he said, setting his hands on her hips and petting the soft fabric of her new dress.

“I like it that my husband thought enough about me during the day to get me anything at all,” she told him, then chewed on her bottom lip slightly.

“Thought about you enough?” he said with a wry laugh, tightening his grip on her hips. “Elfling, I can’t get you out of my mind!” He began to kiss her, and she could feel his hard rod even through the layers of clothing, but he didn’t try to undress her or anything else. It was as if he would have been happy to kiss her forever.

When she pulled away from him, he frowned with disappointment, but then she slowly braved dropping to her knees before him and tugged at his belt.

“What are you doing?” he asked, as if he couldn’t guess. He was suddenly sounding out of breath.

“Appreciating the work you did for us today, husband,” she said, knowing that he would love hearing her call him that. Her fingers were clumsy on the leather of his belt. His fingers caught hers.

“You don’t have to do that…”

“Draevan,” she gave him a firm-lipped smile. “I want to taste you.” Based on his raised eyebrow, he looked like he really doubted that. She smirked. “Fine,” she said, about to raise back up. “Maybe
Taric
would like to give me something I desire—”

He stood up quickly and put his hands her shoulders, easing her back down to the ground. As soon as she was back down, he rustled quickly to open his trousers.

His rod, if it was at all possible, was even harder than she remembered it being. It popped excitedly up against his lower belly, large, swollen, and red-headed. “Remember,” he told her in a heated grumble when she reached up to grab his length, “Be
careful
, you devilish little thing.”

She could feel him actually quivering with anticipation, even though she had done it just the night before. She wondered if he would try to aggressively thrust into her mouth, and if he did, how long it would take for him to take over.

“Oh gods, have mercy!” he groaned, and she pulled back, thinking she’d done something wrong when she put his hardened crown into her mouth.

“What?” she fretted.

“Don’t stop, woman!” he demanded firmly, grabbing the back of her head and launching her mouth further down his length. Apparently, she had misread him—he was groaning because he was enjoying himself that much. “That’s a good girl,” he hummed, running his fingers through her hair. “You’re so good at this, baby. Suck my cock for me…”

“That’s a good girl,” he said again, thrusting himself into her mouth with more vigor, his hands on the back of her head. “You know how to drive me crazy. Does my baby love sucking my cock, hmm?”

Draevan did still taste surprisingly good; good enough that she didn’t mind him taking control of his thrusts into her mouth. He wasn’t hurting her, although she came close to gagging by reflex a couple of times, which caused her eyes to tear. She stuck it out, egged on and encouraged by his moans and compliments, as dirty as they were.

“I’m going to come, elfling,” Draevan suddenly warned. “Open wide for Poppa now, because I don’t want it to get on your dress.” He didn’t let her pull her mouth off of the engorged head at the end of his cock; he grabbed her hair and melted her to him.

She felt his bullocks tighten before he even started to grit out a pain-laden moan, followed by his veins pulsing violently against her tongue, all before the creamy heat invaded her mouth. As before, she liked the taste and lapped at him eagerly, swallowing every drop of his seed and then carefully licking her lips clean when he eventually let go of her hair.

He seemed weak in the knees and fell back onto his chair as soon as he tucked his manhood back into his trousers. She used his knees to help herself back to her feet, after which he promptly wrapped his arms around her and pulled her back onto his lap and cradled her tightly to his chest, kissing the top of her ear-point.

She knew she probably should have felt dirty or embarrassed about being so anxious to bring a man to pleasure… But the longer he held her against his body, the more her shame melted away. Draevan was a brute, but he was trying to do good by her. She had a feeling that if something had happened to her, he would be genuinely distraught. She didn’t even
try
to get his affection; he was aching to give it to her freely.

The loving moment only ended when Taric stomped into the room, pulling his tunic over his head and sneering at Draevan in their puzzling language.

Whatever was said lit a fuse, because Draevan pulled her gently off of his legs so he could stand up, growling back at Taric.

They rounded about each other, snarling and growling, looking like two dogs fighting over a bone. In the next moment, they were pointing at each other, as if assigning some sort of blame.

She stood there, stupefied by their behavior. She had followed them around for three days in the forest, mostly unbeknownst to them, and she had seen plenty of bickering but never anything like this, nothing that seemed to constitute fighting!

It wasn’t long before Draevan shoved Taric threateningly backwards, and Taric came back with a harder shove. She scurried promptly over to them—she didn’t want to know how much pain two warriors could deal out to each other. With all the strength in her body, she tried to pry them apart. She barely made them budge , but as they continued to amp up the fight into heavier blows there was suddenly enough space to stand between them. “Stop!” she demanded as loudly as she could.

She was quickly realizing that it didn’t even dawn on them that she was there, or at least they figured she could be avoided while they grabbed each other’s shirts, snapping at each other. She was getting squished by these hard, violently-moving bodies!

She didn’t know how, it all happened so quickly, but an elbow collided with her cheek. She immediately hit the floor, grabbing her face, thinking that something had been broken.

The men stood still, still with each other’s shirts grasped in their fists, all anger from them quickly dissolving into horrified worry. At once, suddenly gaining movement, they released each other in the same moment and rushed to her side on the ground. “Gods, Kyra!” Draevan fretted. “I’m so sorry, baby! I didn’t mean to! It just slipped…”

Taric was already gently trying to pull her hands from her face. “Come on, let me see, honey…” he urged her softly. Hesitantly, not wanting to release her hand with some unexplainable and unreasonable fear that it would get worse if she didn’t protect it, she lowered her hands a little and Taric immediately took her face as if it was made of thin glass and turned it so that he could see her face better.

“Nothing’s broken,” he assured Draevan. “Let’s get her something cold to put on this until supper.”

She heard Draevan swear, mostly to himself, as he got up to move around.

Taric’s thumb stroked across her better cheek. “Poor thing. I’m sorry about this… This was my fault, too. I shouldn’t have said anything…”

“Why were you even fighting?” she snipped.

Taric sighed, picked her up from the floor, and guided her carefully to a seat. “I was jealous because you went to him so willingly, while I felt that I had to try so hard to get your attention. I accused him of trying to buy your affection… He accused me of trying to get you to think of him as some cold, bumbling lout, and one thing led to another…”

She snorted. As she suspected, the cause of the argument seemed so childish. “Me doing things with him doesn’t have anything to do with you, Taric,” she said, meaning it in the nicest way.

He frowned, a grimace forming on his face. She had never seen someone look so struck and heart-broken. It was simply unfair that he wanted her to actually like him after he’d made it so clear that she was only good for two things: pleasuring him and eventually having babies, only half of which she believed she could ever really do.

She didn’t want to tell them and allowed them to have the fantasy, but she still didn’t honestly think she
could
have their children. Humans were too different than elves, and there certainly hadn’t been a cross-breed before that she’d ever heard about. Chances were that she could have their children as much as a dog could ever have a kitten.

She simply didn’t say anything because there were those moments of tenderness she didn’t want to miss. She knew human men treated the mother of their children far differently than they’d treat a whore they only wanted for sex… And that’s what she’d become. She was so close to being seen that way, already…

Taric grumbled, and Draevan passed him a kerchief full of ice he had just chipped right out of the window—it must have frozen over during the night. Taric carefully pressed the lumpy coldness against her cheek. She took over for his hand, pressing it to herself. He brushed back a loose strand of hair behind her ear, stood up quietly, and walked away, leaving her with Draevan.

“Oh, Kyra…” Draevan breathed, kneeling on the floor to be more level with her. “I’m really—”

“Nah,” she grumbled, feeling preoccupied. “I’m fine. At least I got you to stop fighting.”

He snorted. “We’re used to bruises,” he assured her. “It would have meant nothing to us. We’ve fought wars, Kyra. We could probably lose a leg and not notice.”

She raised her eyebrow at his exaggeration, and he smirked at himself. “We’ll be more careful next time,” he promised. “We’re not used to anyone getting between us.”

“I really wish I didn’t have to,” she said with a sigh.

* * *

“Stop touching it!” Kyra snapped at Draevan when he reached over and petted her long, thick braid once again. He didn’t know why he liked doing it; it was just as soft as rabbit fur, and the hair felt good against his fingers. “It’s not easy to style now that it’s all clean,” she pouted, as if being clean was such a troublesome thing. She pulled her hair away protectively, letting it fall over the shoulder farthest from them as they walked.

Draevan grinned mischievously to himself and reached over to offer his arm as they walked.

She smirked, bit her lip, and curled her arm around his bicep, letting him play with her fingers when she did.

He took a breath. Everything was finally right with the world—he and Taric were rich, they killed the giant, wed their elf-wife, and if they were lucky she might be already with child. And there she was—a pretty little petite thing that just sparkled whenever he was the slightest bit nice to her.