Gilt and Midnight Read online

  Then, for fun or spite, she had caused them to quarrel. Not with swords, for at that they’d have been too well matched. It would have ended in death for the pair of them. No, she’d urged them to battle with their words. Accusations, old hurts, imagined slights and falsehoods had torn them apart.

  Alain and Gerard had not known each other as children, though that had ceased to matter a mere three days into their acquaintance. They’d both been assigned places in the King’s Guard, an elite division of the Royal Army.

  The first thing Alain had noticed about Gerard was his hands. Big, strong hands, scarred from work and battle. Gerard had been demonstrating his skill with his broadsword, using the flat of the blade to smack at his opponent. The sun had come out from behind a cloud, highlighting Gerard’s hair into shimmering gold and Alain had, quite literally, lost his breath.

  “You there,” Gerard had said with a crook of his finger. “Get your ass over here and let me beat it.”

  Even now, recalling Gerard’s surprise at not winning that first fight, Alain smiled. Arrogant from never losing, Gerard hadn’t paid enough attention to the newcomer and had ended up on his back with Alain’s blade at his throat.

  It was the last time he didn’t pay enough attention to Alain.

  They’d forged the deepest of bonds, the pair of them matched so well physically there were none who could stand against them. They fought hard for the king, and they made merry with equal fierceness…for themselves.

  Alain had long known his cock rose without hesitation at both the curved softness of women and the hard, muscled planes of men. Physical love between men wasn’t forbidden in the King’s Guard, where it might be weeks before a man could find a woman, but it wasn’t exactly encouraged, either. Alain, who felt no shame at his proclivities, also felt no need to fight to defend them. He’d surely kill anyone who came up against him, and while his blade had tasted the blood of many of the King’s enemies, he had no desire to spill that of his comrades.

  Gerard had never shown signs of liking cock, and Alain had never made a move to push their friendship into that place. They fought, they wrestled, they shared a room and a bath. They often visited the brothels together or sampled some of the same tavern wenches. Gerard had a heavier hand with his women than Alain, who had no desire to bind or beat his bedmates. When Alain sought the company of men, he did it discreetly, and without Gerard. It was the one thing they didn’t share.

  Until the night Alain came home from an encounter with one of his favorite male partners to find Gerard waiting for him.

  “Where do you go?” Gerard had asked in a deceptively gentle voice that didn’t fool Alain.

  “I didn’t know I owed you an accounting of my time,” Alain had replied mildly.

  Gerard had drawn his brows. “You stink of fucking.”

  “I’ll wash.”

  Gerard’s hand had flown out to grab Alain’s wrist as he’d passed. “I don’t smell a woman’s sweetness on you, Alain.”

  Alain had looked down at Gerard’s fingers gripping his wrist but made no move to pull away. “No.”

  They had trained together so often Gerard’s move shouldn’t have surprised him, but then perhaps Alain had chosen to be surprised. Gerard had turned him and pressed him forward, both hands tight on his wrists, in the time it took to draw a breath. Alain hadn’t struggled. Against his back, he’d felt the familiar breadth and width of Gerard’s body.

  Gerard had pushed Alain toward the room’s rough-hewn table and pinned his hands to the splintered wood. He’d kicked his legs apart and pressed harder against his back. Alain had closed his eyes, breathing hard, making no offer.

  “You like it this way?” Gerard had breathed in Alain’s ear. The touch of Gerard’s hot breath had sent a shudder down Alain’s spine and still he said nothing, made no move to get away, though he easily could have.

  Gerard’s hand had let go of one of Alain’s and moved around to cup Alain’s hardening cock. “Your prick is hard, my friend.”

  Gerard hadn’t fumbled with the ties of Alain’s trousers, nor had his touch hesitated when he took Alain’s hard length into his palm. He’d stroked, hard, in the way only men knew how to do, until at last Alain had pumped his hips forward with a cry.

  “Yes,” he’d said. “Yes, Gerard, I like that.”

  He’d groaned when the bluntness of Gerard’s thick cock nudged at the passage of his ass, and cried aloud when Gerard had eased his way inside. Gerard had fucked him fast and hard, jerking Alain’s prick at the same time, until they’d both exploded into pleasure.

  “You can share everything with me,” Gerard had said then, and until the dark fairy came along, they had.

  Alain’s cock had risen at the memories and now pressed uncomfortably against the front of his breeches. He turned at the soft noise behind him to see Mira, her lovely skin flushed and that marvelous hair hanging in tangled curls around her face.

  “He sent me to fetch him some ale.” Her voice was scratchy, hoarse.

  “My lady,” Alain said kindly, for he knew well enough how Gerard’s touch could leave one shaken. “Would you sit?”

  He pulled out a chair for her, and she sank into it as though her legs had been about to collapse. He brought her mulled wine and a hunk of bread from the sideboard, but she neither drank nor ate.

  “My lady,” said Alain gently and waited until she looked at his face. “What do you need?”

  “I don’t need wine and bread,” she snapped suddenly, her intriguingly mismatched eyes flashing. “I need fulfillment!”

  He’d been certain she’d find it with Gerard, and yet the moment she said the words Alain knew she spoke the truth. A smile tugged at his lips. Now it was his turn to try.

  Mira’s buttocks still held the heat left behind by Gerard’s hand, but she refused to squirm on the hard seat of her chair. The humiliation of what he’d done—and without lifting the curse!—brought heat to her face equal to that in her bottom. She scowled at the dark-haired man in front of her.

  “Bring me a dipper of cold water from the well,” she demanded and pointed out the window to the garden. “That’s what I want.”

  She felt certain he’d balk at her imperious tone, perhaps even take her in hand the way Gerard had, but Alain only ducked his head and strode to the doorway on his long, long legs. The well of which she spoke hadn’t been used for a long time because the winch used to lift the bucket from its depths had rusted. Even so, the water drawn from it was the sweetest she’d ever tasted, and she wanted it now.

  More than that, she thought as she watched him disappear through the door, she wanted to make someone suffer, even the tiniest bit, to make up for the way she had suffered upstairs.

  But she hadn’t suffered, really, had she? Even now, thinking of the way Gerard had ordered her to hold tight to the bedpost while he plundered her body from behind caused Mira’s nipples to tighten and her pulse to throb harder between her legs.

  As the beloved only child of doting parents, Mira had never been spanked in her life. No one had ever even raised their voice to her. Yet, she mused, her thighs slipping apart enough to dimplet the fabric of her gown between them, there had been nothing parental about Gerard’s treatment of her.

  The other men had fucked her in all manner of ways, but none had commanded her so. Thinking of it now sent a shiver through her. Her sex, still wet with her own slickness, clenched hard enough to force a small moan from her lips.

  “My lady.”

  At the sound of Alain’s reverent voice, Mira’s eyes flew open. She’d arched back in the chair, her hips lifting at the memory of Gerard’s touch, but having Alain witness her reaction to those thoughts didn’t quench her arousal. She studied him, the pail from the well brimming with water.

  “I brought your water.”

  She didn’t know what made her do it, except that all at once she lost all grasp of the difference between memory and reality. Gerard had commanded her but now she would command Alain; all o