Helena had made him so hot, it was all he could do to concentrate on giving her pleasure. Which was saying something from a man who’d learned to perform oral sex while being beaten with a barbed whip. The taste of her was maddening as the suction of her mouth on his cock forced him to use disciplines he hadn’t had to employ in years. Helena might not be as practiced as Siobhan, but what she lacked in centuries she made up for in enthusiasm and a sincere desire to please.
As Conal played in her deliciously responsive pussy, he toyed with one sweetly taut nipple. Tugged until he could feel Helena vibrating with arousal against him. And then with no warning at all, she was gone.
Conal grabbed for her instinctively, but she’d jumped up from the couch, whirled, and pounced on him again, bracing one knee on the couch beside his hip. Her eyes glowing bright gold with need, she bit her lip as she reached down to angle his cock upward.
“Condom!” he managed, barely able to get the word out of his mouth. She looked up at him, her eyes glowing like moons, her lips lifting off dainty fangs. The lights are on, but nobody’s home, he realized.
Reaching a hand down, he groped for her gun belt, which -- please, God -- should be lying on the floor by the couch. His fingers touched a familiar grip and hauled the pistol out of the holster. “Liam, we really need a condom!” he gasped, hoping the damn gun was listening.
He thought he heard a deep male laugh. To his vast relief, an unwrapped rubber swirled into his free hand on a tingling wave of heat and magic. He fumbled the gun back into its holster, keenly aware of Helena watching him with glowing, avid eyes. She didn’t look inclined to patience. “Let me put it on, unless you want somebody to start calling you Mommy…”
She blinked and rose off his deliciously trapped cock. Started to reach for the rubber…
“Not with those claws,” he told her, and managed to slide it over his cock, then angle his erection up for her. Breath held, she sank down on him. Conal arched his spine and gasped as the slick tight heat engulfed him. The scent that rolled from her almost made him come all by itself.
Bracing her hands on his belly, Helena began to ride, pumping up and down. He threw his head back, eyes widening as pleasure pulsed and gathered in his balls. There was no way in hell he was going to be able to hold off, not in her slick, tight grip.
His pretty werewolf rode him hard, long, fast strokes. Conal could feel the feral Direkind magic gathering. Her eyes glittered as she lifted and fell, until suddenly she threw her head back in that sexy primal wail that blended wolf, warrior and woman.
Slick inner muscles pulsed and gripped his shaft and shot him into climax. He did some howling himself. Fire boiled from his balls straight into his skull, and for a moment he saw nothing whatsoever except the dance of magic.
Helena sank down on top of him at last, panting, and he wrapped his arms around her, cradling her hot weight against him. Neither said anything as they lay breathing hard in the silence. The feel of her in his arms was so soothing, so incredibly sweet, that Conal kissed the top of her head and let himself drift. He didn’t even feel his eyes slide shut.
* * *
The chain bit into his throat, half choking him as he buried his face against pale pink pussy. Blood rolled cold from the fiery wounds slicing across his back. Olwydd laughed and jerked the collar tight, half-pulling him off Siobhan. He gagged, darkness gathering at the edges of his vision.
“You can do better than that, slut,” Siobhan purred, her body rolling under him as she swung the barbed whip almost lazily. Fire ignited against his shoulders. He’d have screamed if he’d had the breath…
* * *
“Conal!” Helena said, her voice sharp with alarm. “Conal, you’re dreaming!”
His eyes snapped open, and he saw her. She stood a couple of feet from the couch, wearing an expression of alarm. Not again! He sat up with a jerk, scanning her for injuries. “Oh shit, did I hurt you?”
She shook her head. “Nothing like that. You just cried out.”
But Conal could feel the burn of Darkbane’s tattoo on his cheek. It was a good thing she’d been alert enough to wake him before things got out of hand the way they had last night. He fell back against the couch with a groan. “Sorry about that. I guess I drifted off.”
She frowned. “You were shouting Siobhan’s name.”
Conal winced. There was nothing a woman enjoyed more than hearing her lover call another woman’s name. “Fuck, I’m sorry.” He scrubbed both hands over his face.
She caught one wrist and pulled it down so she could meet his gaze. “Conal, it wasn’t exactly the kind of shout that makes a woman jealous. Want to talk about it?”
No. But Helena deserved to know what she was getting into -- and exactly why Siobhan wanted a piece of him. “I guess I’d better.”
Helena studied him thoughtfully. “You don’t have to.”
“Yeah, I do. You deserve to know how I ended up in this mess.” He sighed and rose to gather his discarded clothing and get dressed. He felt naked enough as it was.
She watched him a moment, then stood and began pulling on her own clothes. After a few moments of heavy silence broken only by the rustle of fabric, she said, “I have wondered about that. I know it got ugly, but… I never understood how you got involved with her to begin with.”
Conal sighed and stopped, staring broodingly at one of his stepmother’s colorful abstracts -- a bright red spiral against a square of vibrant green. Helena moved over beside him and rested her chin on his shoulder. After a moment, he asked, “What do you know about the Morven Sidhe King, Ansgar?”
“He was King Llyr Galatyn’s brother. And everybody who knew him hated his guts.”
“That’s putting it mildly. My father was a Sidhe lord, Taran of Elidor. He led an assassination plot by a cabal of Morven Sidhe nobles who’d gotten sick of being methodically terrorized.”
“Based on everything I’ve heard about Ansgar, can’t say I blame them. I gather they failed.” She caught his hand and led him back to the couch. Sighing, he sat down beside her, fingers curling around her long, tapered ones.
“Yes, most of them were caught and executed with Ansgar’s trademark viciousness. I think a dragon was involved. But my father, his best friend Lord Ferrel, and a dozen of his co-conspirators escaped. They gated to Mortal Earth, planning to lay low and try again later. Later never came, because Ansgar spent the next 345 years sending his Royal Assassin after them. Gorin whittled down the band little by little. By the time I was born in 1898, there were only five left.”
Helena’s brows lifted. “1898?”
Conal shrugged. “I may be half human, but I got the family immortality.”
“How old are your sisters?”
“Thirty-five. Different mother, obviously. Mine was one of Dad’s mistresses, a prima ballerina named Mireille Benoit, who basically handed me over to him and lost interest. He’d been a pretty rich man by that point.”
“Not hard to get rich when you can conjure all the gold or gemstones you want,” Helena observed.
“Wasn’t that easy. They couldn’t use magic because Ansgar was watching for it. That’s how the king tracked down the rest of the band. They’d get careless with a spell, and Gorin and a dozen killers would be all over them. Eventually none of us used magic at all if we could avoid it, and when we did, we shielded it heavily.”