head hung and his entire body quivered with exhaustion and still he did not push his fingers together, but it was Gerard’s duty to know when Alain could take no more even if Alain himself could no longer tell, and he put aside the strap. He ran his hand over the heated flesh of Alain’s back and delighted in his hiss. He slid a hand over Alain’s ass and felt the muscles twitch and jump. He pulled a bottle of soothing oil from his bag and poured a palmful and repeated the motion. Alain’s body tensed at the contact of the smooth oil on his flesh, and his hips pumped forward recklessly as he moaned.
He was so close Gerard knew it would take very little to send him over the edge, and for a moment he thought of allowing his friend that final release, but his own nature made him grin slyly instead. He ran his fingers, slick with oil, down the crease of Alain’s buttocks and teased the hot, tight circle of his anus with one finger. Alain bucked and cried out, but his hands never left their places on the wall.
“Such a good soldier,” Gerard murmured as his finger probed slightly deeper. “So good at following orders.”
Alain’s low, gasping chuckle sounded tortured, but he said nothing. He pushed back a bit against Gerard’s hand. From a true slave Gerard would have not tolerated the insubordination, but Alain was not his slave even though they sometimes played at that game.
“You want this?” Gerard eased his finger into Alain’s hot passage. “Or would you like my cock there, instead? Fucking you? How long has it been since anyone’s been inside you, Alain?”
“As long as it’s been since anyone’s strapped me,” Alain managed to say, though his voice shook with effort. “Please, Gerard, for the sake of our friendship….”
Gerard could be cruel, but this was not about cruelty, and he reached to stroke Alain’s cock with his oil-filled palm. Once, twice, and Alain was crying out and pumping into Gerard’s fist. Once more and his seed spilled, hot and fragrant, into Gerard’s hand.
“Now,” Gerard said when Alain had ceased his jerking and moaning, “use your mouth on me the way you did for her.”
Alain turned and fell at once to his knees. He took Gerard’s prick deep down his throat and sucked. He used his hand in tandem, stroking and caressing Gerard’s balls in the way that made his mind go blank of any thought but the supreme pleasure between his legs.
It took only moments for Gerard to explode into ecstasy, and when he did he shouted Alain’s name. As Alain got up from his knees, Gerard put a hand on his arm to keep him from turning immediately away.
“I have missed you, as well,” Gerard said.
Whatever had happened between the two men, the last to come through the gate for a fortnight, they had somehow repaired their bond. Mira had expected them to leave when both realized they were unable to bring about the end to the dark fairy’s gift, but as the days passed and Gerard and Alain ingratiated themselves into the household, Mira realized they intended to stay. More than that, they were wooing her, each in his own way, and neither was competing with the other for her affections.
In the past, of course, guests of the house had sought to court her in proper fashion as befit her status as the daughter of a very wealthy man. No suitor would have dared do more than walk with her in the garden, much less have been so bold as to kiss her, and anything more intimate than that was strictly forbidden.
The fairy’s curse had changed all that. The first men who’d come seeking her had been satisfied to fuck her and move on when they failed to break the curse, but Alain and Gerard were not like any other men she’d ever met in her life.
Gerard set her to tasks such as polishing his boots and serving him his food, and his hand could be heavy when she didn’t serve to his pleasure. The first time he’d tied her hands and feet to the posts at the foot of his bed and strapped her, she’d wept tears of pain and anger even as her cunt wept with arousal, yet she hadn’t sent him from the house. Her body had grown to crave Gerard’s discipline, as harsh as it could be, and he brought her to climax over and over with the flat of his hand or the leather strap he wielded with such proficiency. He fucked her thoroughly as well, when she pleased him, and denied her that ecstasy when she did not.
With Alain, however, Mira played the mistress without a second thought. He was as eager to serve her as she was to submit to Gerard. Alain took whatever abuse she offered him, whether it be her refusal to allow him to achieve orgasm when he used his mouth to satisfy her, or the performance of countless meaningless tasks meant only to prove she controlled him. He made love to her with worshipful hands, when she allowed it, and Mira found his touch as satisfying as Gerard’s even if it was in a totally different way.
Both men pursued and pleased her over and over, yet no matter how many times her body sang with desire, something was still missing. She waited for one of them to finish her completely, to break the dark fairy’s curse, but no matter how many times she submitted to Gerard or governed Alain, nothing seemed to change.
Her father’s fortune continued to slip away in summonses from the king, extra taxes, small disasters to the house. Her parents sought their comfort in elderberry wine and madness, leaving Mira to run the much-diminished household with no advice.
Summer had passed and turned to autumn, and still a space in her soul remained empty and bleak. She began to despair of ever saving her parents or ridding herself of the fairy’s cursed gift. Her two lovers might fulfill her body, but it wasn’t enough.
“It’s not enough,” she said aloud to the last nodding flowers in their beds.
The flowers didn’t reply, though the wind tossed their heads and ruffled their petals as prettily as if they were the dresses of innocent maidens. Mira hadn’t been innocent for the passing of several moons, and she wept now for that lost innocence and the life she should have had. She sank onto her knees in the browning grass and fragrant earth and buried her face in her hands.
“My lady, what ails you?”
Mira lifted her head at Alain’s low voice. She wiped her face as he crouched beside her to cradle her. He took a fine linen handkerchief from his pocket and dried her tears, and not for the first time, Mira realized Alain was no common soldier. He had wealth of his own, and status. Under other circumstances he might even have been of a high enough class to court her properly.
“If not for the curse,” she bit out through a fresh veil of tears.
Alain didn’t ask her to elaborate. Instead he bent his mouth to hers and kissed her through the salty wetness. His tongue slipped between her lips until she opened her mouth.
As always, that gentle touch set her body aflame with desire, but Mira struggled this time against the pleasure coursing through her. It would be fleeting, that ecstasy, and leave her with naught in the end.
“What can I do to please you?” Alain asked and cupped her face in his hands. “Only tell me and I’ll do it.”
Mira shook her head. “If you could do it, Alain, you’d have done so already.”
All he could do was kiss her, which he did, and touch her, which he did as well. His hands slid up beneath her skirts and found her bare and ready for him, as she always was. Mira muttered a curse under her breath when his fingers stroked her pearl and the first spasms of climax began building inside her. It was so easy to give in to her body’s longings. Nearly impossible, in fact, to refuse them. Alain brought her to the edge of orgasm with only a few practiced strokes, and when he slid a finger inside her to stroke from the inside as well, Mira shuddered and tossed her head back with a sigh.
“Well, well. What a pretty sight.”
Mira bit down on the strangled cry seeking escape from her throat and looked up. Gerard stood watching them, an unreadable expression on his handsome face. His lips tilted, finally, when Alain’s stroking hand tipped Mira into a helpless rush of orgasm that jerked her entire body. She didn’t look away from Gerard’s eyes the entire time.
Though she had made no secret of the fact both men shared her bed and her body, none of them had ever mentioned it