He pulled his finger almost out of my mouth and then slid it back in until his knuckle met my mouth, and then he pulled out again, and began to slide in and out, and then two fingers for me to suck and lick, and then three. He had to be careful with his fingernails not to cut me as he began to plunge his fingers in faster, and then four and he couldn’t go in deep now, because he was too wide and the fingernails were harder to be careful with. I rolled my eyes up to him, and found him nude and eager. The tentacles were like a dream painted across his skin, a tattoo of exquisite detail, but his body was lean and solid, and human looking. I’d asked before, so I knew that the tentacles got in the way of his view when I was in certain positions, and he liked to watch me while we made love.

Now he knelt above me, his body as muscled and sculpted as any sidhe in my bed. He folded his thumb in with his fingers and shoved all of it into my mouth. I opened as wide as I could, and still he could only push in to the second knuckle of his hand; there was just no way to go deeper when he was that wide. He started to back out, but I grabbed his wrist and urged him to push in farther. His eyes widened, but he didn’t argue, just kept pushing his hand into my mouth, pushed, pushed, until my mouth was impossibly wide and it was uncomfortable, but there was something about that discomfort that I enjoyed. He finally shoved his hand as hard and far into my mouth as he’d ever gotten it, and I finally had to tap his arm and let him know that I was done, I could take no more.

He drew his hand carefully out of my mouth, and before I could completely catch my breath, the hand that had been so deep in my mouth was wrapped around that long, solid, quiveringly eager part of him, and the rounded head was against my lips like an invitation.

I opened my mouth for him, because after that much of his fist inside me, I wanted as much of the rest of him inside me as possible. I mounded the pillow up so that my mouth was like an offering to that long, hard piece of him. It felt so much better than just fingers; it seemed to complete something in me to feel him slide between my lips, across my tongue, and then not too deep, before he pulled out, but I grabbed his ass and started pushing him in and out faster and harder than he and I usually preferred, but Sholto had said it earlier—it had been a long time for me. Months of not daring to risk an orgasm throwing me into labor, months of having to be so careful, so safe. I didn’t want to be either today.

He followed my urgings and begin to slide himself deep into my throat, pushing until he buried himself as deep against my mouth as he could, and I had to fight my body, force my throat to relax around all that hard flesh. I urged him on with my hands on his body, with the shining that began in my skin and eyes, that set my hair blazing like spun rubies around the edges of my vision. The tattoo across the moonlit white of his skin glowed with the colors I’d seen on them so that his human shape ran with colors in a pale rainbow play of red, violet, shades of gold that mirrored his eyes that stared down at me as he plunged himself fast and faster into my mouth and down my throat.

I began to have to time my breathing for the top of his stroke, grab a quick breath and then he was down, plunging inside me, gagging me almost, and then pushing past even that, cutting off my air. He found a rhythm that was deep and slow, which gave me more time to breathe at the top of his stroke, but also meant he was deeper, longer down my throat, so that I began to have to fight my body not to panic at the lack of air, and even that filled a need, so that I wrapped my hands around the tightness of his ass and held him tight with him plunged so deep inside me that my mouth was sealed against the front of his body and I fought my body not to gag, not to panic, as it asked to breathe, and all the time our bodies shone bright and brighter, painting the room in shadows and light.

He vibrated across my tongue, down my throat so that the deep, plunging thrum of him seemed to calm the panic and just make me want to hold him inside me as long as I could. Then between one downstroke and the next, the orgasm hit me, one made up of the feel of him inside my mouth; all that thick, vibrating flesh brought me almost as if he had been shoved between my legs. It made me set my nails into his body as my body writhed around him; when he drew out enough for me to breathe, I screamed my orgasm around him.

He cried out above me, and then he shoved himself down my throat one last time. I felt the involuntary movement as his body pulsed and he spilled himself down my throat so far back I couldn’t taste him but only felt the sensation of warmth. So far down that I didn’t so much swallow as he poured himself down my throat, while I rode my own orgasm, nails digging into his ass, the rest of my body almost convulsing around him, helpless and eager for him.

When he was done, he drew himself out enough for me to breathe in a gasping rush of air. He collapsed over me on all fours, arms on the other side of my head and the pillow I rested on. His head hung down, his hair spilled around us both like a shining, silken tent. He pulled himself out of my mouth as I let my head roll farther down the pillow.

He found his words first and said in a voice that was still breathless with effort, “Oh, my God and Goddess, that was amazing.”

“Yes,” I said, “yes, it was.”

He moved his head enough so we could look at each other, so he was looking at me almost upside down as he said, “I love you, Meredith.”

I smiled up at him and said the only answer there ever was for such a moment: “I love you, too, Sholto.” Rhys and Galen would argue that I didn’t love them as much as I loved Doyle and Frost, and that was true, but in moments like this I did love the man I was with, maybe not always in the way he would wish, or want, but it was true: still real, still love.

Sholto moved so that he could lie beside me. I curled into the mound of his chest, the curve of his arm, the hollow of his shoulder, and was content.

CHAPTER

THIRTY-SIX

WE SLEPT, AND I dreamed, but I wasn’t alone in this dream. Sholto walked beside me, his bigger hand clasped in mine. We had to hold hands, because the rose vine tattoos on our forearms were real again, alive again, binding us together with the vine that moved like something much more alive than any normal rose. Its thorns bit into our flesh, and bound us with flesh and blood and life. Sholto was crowned once more with a wreath of living herbs and tiny white, pink, and lavender flowers. I felt the crown on my own hair and knew it was mistletoe and white roses. I was dressed in a flowing white dress, and Sholto in white tunic and breeches, tucked into silver-gray boots. I wondered, Why am I still barefoot?, and between one step and the next I felt flat sandals on my feet. Apparently, I’d just needed to ask.

“Meredith,” Sholto said softly, “where are we?”

We stood in the middle of a flat plain with short, scrubby grass and harsh, dry weeds. The ground that showed between the plants was pale and dry tannish brown; there wasn’t much water on this ground, but it wasn’t the barren sand and rock I’d seen before. In fact, when I looked up there was a small house in the distance. It looked old and weather-beaten, but “normal,” or maybe American Midwest was a better phrase.

“There’s a road with power lines behind us,” Sholto said.

I glanced back and found he was correct. It was drier and more desolate, but it felt like Midwestern farmland, and indeed there were distant houses scattered around more cultivated fields. The land around this house was barren and the barn near it was literally falling down around the wrecks of farm equipment peeking out from the vines that seemed to be both destroying the wood and holding it together.