Shared Between Them (18 page)

She smiled slightly and stretched, still knowing that wasn’t even close to true.

* * *

The last month had been strangely pleasurable… In a strange and slightly perverted sense admittedly, but still, traveling back to the Northlands was more fun than traveling from there to the Blue Forest, and Taric had to blame Kyra for that.

She was uncannily clever about the endless stretch of Blue Forest, and now that they were to the base of the Crystal Mountains, she was even more helpful in navigating through the wood rather than on the dangerous roads through the valley. She said she had grown up at the foot of the Crystal Mountains, although she hadn’t made back to her old haunts since her brothers were captured and killed there.

Instead of shedding weight as he and Draevan had on the way there in the middle of summer, they’d actually put on weight, and they were traveling in barren winter. Kyra knew where her kinsmen had hidden secret stores of food as well as the locations of hidden caves in which to rest. Not to mention she knew where all the small forest creatures and fish-swollen parts of the streams were.

Taric and Draevan figured that the Northlanders would nearly view her as a Goddess, especially the more barbaric villages dispersed in the mountains. She hadn’t been educated like he and Draevan had been; she couldn’t even as much as write her own name, but the villagers would highly respect the way she’d learned to harness nature.

And the girl was
insatiable
! It was hard to recall that she was a virgin when they’d married the girl. She didn’t appreciate turn-taking—she wanted who she wanted when she wanted him, and she wouldn’t be told no. Not that either man would say no—in fact, somewhere along the line, love-making had become an unspoken competition of skill between him and Draevan.

Their little elf-wife loved sex and sometimes wouldn’t even let them rise in the mornings until she’d at least taken one of them into her mouth. She had begun to initiate the play now, and if she didn’t come right out and ask for it, she would be as seductive as she could be, either bathing naked in the stream and wiggling her hips at them or bending over in a certain way, even sitting on their laps around the campfire to grind her bottom against their lengths… She could get them to come running, and if they didn’t satisfy her as fast as she wanted it, she would openly and dramatically pout. Hell, if a day went by when she wasn’t filled by one of them, she would stomp around and whine at them until she was bent over something and given a warming spanking or a firm fucking.

Taric didn’t even mind the cold winter, because it made him to have to snuggle his naked body closer to his wife’s…

Who was really muscular this morning…

Both men suddenly shot awake, realizing—seemingly at the same time—that they were not next to who they thought they were. To compensate, both rolled away to the opposite sides, climbing quickly out of the sleep roll. “What the fuck?” Taric accused.

Draevan looked like he was feeling just as violated. “Well, waking up to your ugly ass certainly does the job better than a cup of coffee!” he huffed angrily, immediately finding and tugging on his breeches. He looked around. “Where’s Kyra?”

Taric looked around, then looked in the powder-covered ground around them. It was possible she was simply making water somewhere—but she knew better than to go off without telling one of them at least. They never let her just wander off alone. “Kyra!” he shouted into the quiet air around them.

His voice echoed, and when there was no answer, dread fell upon him like a heavy blanket. “Kyra!” he shouted again, louder. Again, nothing returned but the echo.

“Kyra!” Draevan shouted, tugging on his jacket over his newly-donned tunic. “Answer right now, or else we’re tanning your hide for you!”

They stood still, making sure they didn’t crunch a blade of frozen grass or rattle one leaf, listening for the sound of her voice.

Nothing.

Taric finished dressing quickly as Draevan grabbed his sword out of his saddle. “If she’s alright, she’s not sitting down for a while,” Draevan grumbled angrily. He didn’t fool Taric; Draevan was ripe with panic.

“She knows better than this,” Taric said, finally pulling on his own sword sheath. “She knows that she has to keep in sight. She
knows
!” Despite the cold, he felt his face flush with heat, and that was before he tripped over her boots.

“Fuck!” he said, looking down and picking up one of the small riding boots Draevan hand packed for their journey. Kyra loved them; all except for when she was climbing trees… Which she did like she was a goddamned squirrel, and if she did walk on the ground, she would barely leave tracks. She was too light-boned, like a bird.

Draevan stood still, stunned. “Do you think she…
ran
?” Draevan asked, swallowing. “Or do you think the Dark Lord knows about her and—” Strangely, it nearly seemed that to Draevan, her running from them was more distasteful than if she’d been kidnapped. Taric found he felt the same way—Taric and Draevan loved her. Absolutely
loved
her. They never told her that—there was never a reason to say those words—but it had to have been clear to her. And they’d both thought she was actually beginning to have feelings for them as well.

Taric didn’t want to hear it; once they started thinking up scenarios, they wouldn’t be able to stop. He put up his hand to silence him, snapping, “Shut up, Draevan. Let’s just go find her.”

* * *

“Well hellooo, breakfast!” Kyra chirped merrily to the second pheasant she had ensnared in one of her brothers’ old traps as she climbed down her tree. They had camped less than a mile from one of her family’s old hunting grounds, where some of their old traps were still hidden and ready to be put to use.

She had just finished plucking the other three when she ensnared the fourth. She was becoming quite the huntress! The men had killed a deer the last week, but she was getting sick of deer jerky for breakfast, and she could tell Draevan, at least, was as well. He got grumpy when he was hungry, and even grumpier if he had food and didn’t want to eat it… And damn it all, when he was grumpy, he didn’t have his normal passionate desire to mate with her either. And that just wouldn’t do! Nobody could work her nipples with his tongue like Draevan could. Having him over her was like having a large, comfortable blanket. He worshipped her body, sometimes taking her so slowly she wanted to cry. And when he took her fast, it was as if the Earth was quaking. He’d pump into her so hard that she’d be walking bow-legged the next day.

Taric made love just as well but completely differently. He was more attentive, more watchful, every move was calculated… And he loved her bottom. He wouldn’t take her there often, but he was always penetrating and teasing her with his fingers. She’d had orgasms so big from Taric’s skilled digits that they’d left her ears ringing and her brain scrambling to recall what her name was, or what day of the week it was.

Yes, she liked her men. She liked how attentive they were, how sexy they were, and especially how they held her at night. They were definitely still brutes… But they had a tender side and definitely a funny side. They talked amongst themselves much less now, letting her into their private jokes and thoughts. They actually trusted her more now, and because of it, she was beginning to really trust them as well.

And she trusted them to wake up without her and spank her soundly if she didn’t start wandering back to camp soon.

She cut the neck of the pheasant and grabbed its legs, hanging it upside down like the other one. She was quickly unplucking the bird when she heard the crunch of leaves behind her.

She turned and didn’t see anything, but she didn’t trust her eyes. Never had; she knew better. She was an elf, after all.

Her ear twitched slightly, tingling all the way down to her lobe.

She was being hunted. She could feel it, and if she listened close enough, she could hear breathing from maybe twenty or so paces away.

One… Two… Three… Four, Five…

Fuck
.

They were trying to keep quiet, she knew, so she looked back at her pheasant and moved like she didn’t notice the band of royal guards closing in around her. She’d been in this position not a month ago. She and her husbands had hoped that the guard wouldn’t bother following them past the Blue-Crest River that they traversed two weeks before.

She tucked the pheasant neck on her belt as if she meant to go back to camp. That’s when she heard a bow being rosined.

She waited for the ‘pluck’, and when it came she darted out of her position, scrambled left, and then scaled a tree faster than most could run upon the ground. She heard loud cracks and snaps as arrowheads fell around her, some bouncing clumsily from the tree. She stopped climbing as she felt one go into the bagginess of Taric’s spare trousers she was wearing, which practically flowed around her legs. With a grimace, she tugged mightily and ripped the fabric with a yank of her foot upwards.

She glanced down and saw that that the five elf-men had come out of invisibility, their hard-lined faces squinting with disdain as they put a second set of arrows into their bows.

She went invisible and crouched down the long branch of a tree. She tugged off one of her pheasants and tossed it, hoping that it would make them think she hopped to another tree branch and dropped it.

The elves fell for it, their eyes going to where the naked pheasant fell and then lining the nearby tree rather than the one she was quietly crouched upon, holding onto the branch and taking quiet, small breaths.

She watched them, staying still and silent for over fifteen minutes as they tried to speculate over where she’d gone, saying that she had left because they would have ‘heard her by now’.

Eventually, they left, heading towards the river, thank goodness, and not toward the camp, and she waited, listening carefully for about ten more minutes to make sure they were truly gone.

She climbed gingerly down the tree, her muscles aching and her legs cramped from crouching on the branch for so long. She picked up the pheasant that she had thrown earlier from the ground and dusted it off before walking tenderly back to camp.

It was three miles over terrain filled by old roots that came so far out of the ground that one had to climb around and through them. The terrain kept out larger animals, like deer, wolves, and bear, but it was a haven for smaller creatures and birds. She climbed up a root drawing against the side of a cliff near her camp where the ground was more clear and open for the sake of the horses, and as soon as her feet hit the ground, she scrambled up a tree after hearing a sound stomping through the forest.

She went invisible and scurried up the nearest tree, wondering if there was a bear or something—surely it couldn’t have been her husbands, because they’d still be sleeping at this early hour…

Yet it was her husbands indeed! She exhaled a breath of relaxation, and her husbands saw her sitting on that branch in that moment, marked by Draevan non-too-happily announcing, “There she is!”

They hustled over to her, and she jumped down, eager to fill the space. All she wanted was their strong embraces around her, their protection, and to tell them everything that had happened that morning.

She collided with Taric, who had stepped out in front of Draevan, and he wrapped his hardened arms around her, tucking her close against his warm chest and then putting his hand to her hair as he kissed her forehead. Draevan came to the side of them and wrapped his arms around her as well. She was being squeezed tight for a long moment. “Gods, Kyra,” Draevan sighed, kissing her temple and continuing to press his lips against her as he relaxed. “We thought something happened to you…”

He parted from her and looked very unhappily at the plucked quail, whose legs were tied to her belt strap. “You went
hunting
?” he accused, like she had done a great crime.

“My family had a hunting ground about three miles down in the valley,” she said, her voice breathy as she pointed down the cliff. “There’s game there year-round if you don’t overuse it.” She swallowed. Her throat was dry, and she didn’t like the cold look in Draevan’s eyes. He turned his back on her and walked to a nearby line of trees.

She looked up at Taric, who didn’t look any more pleased with her. “We thought you’d run away. We were going to scour this forest for you, Kyra,” he said, even though her mouth was open to begin talking about the Royal Guard on their heels. “Not to mention there are dangers in the woods, and there are people out to kill us!” He gave her a shake.

The shake rattled her whole body down to her toes, nearly giving her whiplash. “Think!”

“I know,” she said, thinking he was talking about the Royal Guards. “And I saw—”

Taric reached down and unlashed her belt, his eyes intent and livid. “No!” In the next move, the quail, her dagger, and his pants fell down to the ground at her bare feet. There was nothing but that belt that hooked anything to her waist.

Even though he’d seen it all before, she covered her womanhood away from him as the cold air greeted areas she did not expect. “Taric, listen to me!” she cried, realizing that she was in hot water. “Down in the hunting grounds, I saw—”

Draevan grabbed her upper arm, and with a firm jerk, she skipped away from the clothing on the cold ground, feeling propelled to scramble forward.

Swiiish-swack! An ominous whistling rushed through the air.

Her eyes widened. “Ouch!” she screamed, high pitched and miserable, her brain struggling to process what was going on before another hot stripe of pain fell across her bottom once again.

“I
never
,” Draevan gritted through his teeth as he brought a switch unpityingly down on her in a fury with hard, crisp stokes, “want you—to think—of disappearing— again! — You’re too important—you’re too smart for that—and I will bring your world—to—an—end if you defy us even
once more
on that!” She was busy trying to get out of his grip, trying to scream out for him to stop, but the words only coming out as unintelligible squeaks and shrieks. He didn’t hold her firm enough to hurt her arm, and letting her run around him in a circle while he striped her bottom, her thighs, and even a few on her calves, seemed to suit him just fine.