Eversong (Midnight Playground) (6 page)

How was it he was feeling so much? After the way he’d been these last months. These last years. And he hadn’t ever come upon anyone, mortal or vampire, who touched him the way these two did. There was a purity about them. Even their wantonness in bed was pure, as though they hadn’t been tainted by the world. As though they could wash him clean.

His heart was thundering in his chest. He didn’t understand it.

Mercy’s arms enclosed him. Deo’s joined hers. He was held between them, these two sweet bodies. He wanted to leap up. To leave them. To leave behind this jagged sense of vulnerability. Something he’d never felt before.
Never.
But he couldn’t force himself to move.

“Ever,” Mercy whispered. “Stay with us. Be with us.”

His heart surged once more. It was pleasure and pain, but of an unfamiliar kind.

“Yes, Ever. Be with us,” Deo echoed.

Mercy felt Ever’s body tense, as though he would spring from the bed. Her tears for Deo’s past had dried but new ones sprang to her eyes. So much pain in Ever. So much sadness. She wanted to heal him. The only way she knew was with her body. With hers and Deo’s and the love they shared.

After several long moments, Ever relaxed, bit by bit.

“I will not leave you,” he said. “I find I cannot.”

She smiled, and he turned onto his back. Mercy raised herself onto her arm, leaned in to kiss him softly on the mouth. She drew back to let Deo do the same. And felt lust squeeze deep in her body, cunt and belly and breasts, watching their mouths join.

“Ah, seeing the two of you kiss… I’ve never seen anything like it,” she whispered in awe. “Never seen anything more erotic.”

Ever smiled even as he pressed his mouth harder to Deo’s. He reached for her, his hand finding her breast. He squeezed her nipple hard, making her gasp, making her laugh. Deo growled, pulled his mouth from Ever’s.

“Come here, love.”

She moved in, kissed Deo’s soft mouth, her body going hot all over. And absolutely soaking wet when Ever slipped his hand between her thighs.

“You’re more than ready,” he said.

She pulled away from Deo’s mouth, looking into his ocean eyes as she answered Ever’s question. “Yes.”

“But you need more.” Ever suggested.

Without taking her gaze from Deo’s, she said, “I want to see the two of you. I want to see Deo’s beautiful mouth on your cock.”

Ever laughed. “So do I.”

Deo grinned at her, and she sat up on her knees to watch as he knelt next to Ever’s beautiful body, which was all sleek planes and angles. Deo bent his head, his dark curls falling over his cheeks. He stroked Ever’s long, pale cock with his fingers.

“Suck me, Deo,” Ever commanded.

Deo licked his lips. Her pussy clenched as he leaned in and took just the swollen tip of Ever’s cock between his lips. Ever groaned softly.

“Ah, God,” she murmured.

Deo lifted his head. “Is this what you wanted to see, Mercy? Ever’s cock in my mouth. Down my throat?”

His blue-green eyes were sparkling. His own cock was a thick shaft of rigid flesh between his muscular thighs.

“Oh yes. I want to see you take command of him. To see you render him helpless with desire, as you do to me.”

“Ah, you two will kill me with desire,” Ever moaned. “Come and kiss me while he gives me head, my lovely Mercy.”

Ever reached for her as Deo bent to his task once more. And as her mouth met Ever’s, his lips and breath, that unearthly combination of cool flesh and wet heat, she went loose all over. He tasted like eternity. Sex. Deo’s flesh and her own. It was intoxicating. His tongue was pure silk against hers. His teeth grazed her lower lip for a moment before he bit.

The first drop of blood on his tongue and she felt it like a shock—that connection once more, as strong as it had been when they’d all been fucking. She felt Ever’s pleasure as Deo swallowed his cock. The great pleasure Deo took in Ever’s stony flesh. Ever’s hand working at Deo’s cock in long, hard strokes. Their sensations merged, became her own. She felt it like some sublime heat blossoming between her thighs.

She moaned, opened her thighs, and without her asking for what she needed, Ever’s other hand moved over her wet cleft. His clever fingers found the hard nub of her clit and pressed, rubbed, pinched.

She panted into his mouth. He pinched harder. At the same time, Deo’s hand found her breast, tugged hard at her nipple. She came apart all at once, came in a sharp torrent of sensation, gasping into Ever’s open mouth. He kissed her harder, pinched her clit harder, until the pain was nearly unbearable. But unbearably sweet at the same time.

Her head spun as her climax thundered through her. From some distant place she heard Deo cry out, felt the pulsing of his cock as he came in Ever’s hand. And still he sucked on Ever’s cock. As Ever finally came in a hot spurt down Deo’s throat, she tasted the salt and sugar of his vampiric come. And saw into his past.

A woman with golden hair falling in rippling waves around her full hips. She turned, and Mercy saw her face—heart-shaped with high, rounded cheekbones. Flawless. Beautiful. Except there was a strange light in her eyes that were the gray of a storm-tossed sea.

She smelled the salt, then. Looked beyond the woman and saw a ragged line of cliffs that let into the ocean.

“Ever,” the woman said.

He moved to join her.

Vérún

His love for her filled her heart. Her mind, as he joined her at the mouth of the cave. Together they stood as the sun sank and the sky went dark. He held her in his arms, her naked breasts pressed to his chest. He was hard for her. Yearning for her. She lowered her head to his chest, bit into the flesh below his nipple, and he cried out as she drank. He saw her darkness. It filled his head even as his cock swelled.

Need to be inside her. To have her. To keep her safe.

Keep her with me…

Vérún.

She moved against him, and he felt her slick little cunt on his thigh as she straddled him. He lifted her. She wrapped her legs around his waist and he impaled her with a cry.

Vérún!

Together they moved. Pleasure was hot, sharp. His heart hammered as his hips arched, as she took him into her body, over and over. As she bit into his shoulder, his neck, pulling his blood into her hot mouth, tearing his flesh. Still, he could only see a darkness inside her. But he kept fucking her. Kept loving her.

Vérún.

She gasped as she came then screamed. He was coming too, his hips pistoning. And before he was done with the final shivers of his climax, she was crying. Still drinking from the wound in his throat, pulling at his blood, sobbing against his skin.

“Vérún,” he whispered, his body going weak as she drained him. “Do not do this, my love.”

His fingers went into her long, silky hair, trying to pull her head back. She fought him even as she cried.

“Stop, my love. I cannot fight your sadness if I am made too weak.”

She latched on. Cried harder. Drank more deeply. Until he had to dig into her scalp and yank her head back so hard he heard the bones of her neck crack with the force of it.

He was gasping for breath. She had taken too much again. He blinked at her lovely face, which was covered in her tears, his blood.

“Ah…” She made a noise, a strangled sound coming from deep in her throat. She pushed away from him, fell to the ground in a crumpled heap.

“No, Vérún…”

He bent over her, gathered her in his arms, his heart breaking.

If only he could take her sadness from her. The shadows that haunted her mind. That had begun to fill it completely lately.

Vérún. His lover. His love.

“I want to die,” she sobbed.

“No,” he protested. “You cannot leave me.”

“But I will, Ever. You know I must.”

He only rocked her in his arms. And tried to resist the knowledge that the unthinkable would surely happen, just as she said. It was the one thing he was helpless against. Her darkness. Her shadows. The death that hovered always over his love, and that eventually, he would not be able to fight.

“Mercy.”

Deo’s voice came to her from some faraway place.

“Mercy!” It was a roar of sound now. It hurt her ears.

“What is it?”

“You wouldn’t answer, love.” She felt Deo’s hand on her cheek, stroking the tears from her eyes. Had she been crying?

She sat up, held her fingertips to her damp face. Her heart was thundering madly.

“Ah, Ever!”

She turned to him, found his eyes squeezed shut.

“I would not have you see this.” Ever blinked, his black gaze darting from her face to Deo’s and back again. His jaw was clenched tight. “I would not share that part of my past with anyone. I
do not
. I never have. Never.”

“And yet we saw,” Mercy said quietly, “and felt it with you, Ever. My poor Ever.”

She swept her palm over his face, the sharp angles, the lusciously curved lips. She watched as his expression shifted so quickly she could barely keep up with the changes—confusion, tenderness, a little anger, a little fear. And something else that might have simply been love for the vampire who had made him, and whom he had lost in some terrible way. But was perhaps more…

“Ever.” Deo’s voice was as gentle as hers. “We all have our pain. This is yours. We would never judge you for it.”

“No, of course not. I understood that instantly. I know it even more now.” Ever sat up, wrapped a hand behind Deo’s neck and pulled him upright. With his other hand he pulled Mercy in, slipping it around her waist. “There is something about the two of you… I am still trying to figure out what it means. I find that I am…vulnerable with you two in a way I am not with anyone else. I find that I
feel
more. More than I have for a very long time. I don’t want to. And yet I cannot help myself. I want you both in a way that completely overwhelms me. And I want to
be
with you.”

Mercy smiled, her chest filling with a lovely, bubbling joy. “Yes, Ever. We want the same.”

“Is this usual for a vampire?” Deo asked. “To feel so much so quickly, so completely? It seems as if I have known you, as if Mercy and I together have known you, for months. Years.”

Ever nodded. “Time passes differently for immortals. It is too infinite for us to have the same sort of comprehension we once had of it as humans. And it is perhaps also part of the same connection we feel during sex, and when we drink from one another.”

“Yes. There is more to it than the images. They’re like a movie,” Deo said. “A movie with all of the senses intact. The emotions. As though it’s happening to me. It is the same for Mercy.”

“Ever…” Mercy took his hand in hers, held it to her breast. Even now she could sense the shadows in his mind, the doubt. The pain of his past. The weight of his many centuries. She understood in some strange way how one could drown beneath that weight, become buried under the years, and all one must witness and experience. She didn’t want that for Ever. Not for anyone she loved. “We will not let you lose yourself in this darkness.”

She felt the words like fire in her veins, a flame that burned as hot as her desire for him. She could not imagine her world without him. She realized she had felt that way almost since the first moment she’d seen him. As if she were
meant
for him. Or he was meant for them, herself and Deo, the three of them together. As if they were only truly complete as a triad.

“I have carried my darkness, as you call it, for a very long time. It draws me in, more lately than ever before. There are times when I’m uncertain if I will be able to resist it forever. I no longer know if eternity will be mine. If I can stand it.”

Tears stung her eyes. “Don’t say that. Please, Ever. Let us try to help you.”

Deo pulled Ever’s face to his, laid a kiss on the old vampire’s beautiful mouth. Mercy’s body stung as though shot with a dozen needles of pleasure. But more than that was the rapid beating of her heart. The emotion she was feeling. The love for them both.

Deo released Ever, and he feathered a quick kiss over Mercy’s lips before she leaned in to kiss Ever. She felt him sink into her kiss. Knew he was allowing this, giving some sort of silent consent to their adoration of him, to the connection between them.

Deo’s arm slipped around her waist, bringing them all together in a tight embrace, and desire seeped through her veins. Ever sighed into her mouth, his hot and wet, his tongue going from soft and sweet to demanding, clever. She was torn with need, with love for her two lovely men. Her two vampires. Her body burning for them both, she sighed as they all came together.

Chapter Five

Ever’s fingertips tapped an impatient rhythm on the edge of his desk. It had been a week since the Council met, and still no word about the rogue vampire Gaius. He was growing impatient. He would have taken somebody’s head off by now had it not been for Mercy and Deo.

They had been a lovely distraction. But no, he was fooling himself to credit them with nothing more than that. He knew their quiet, tender new strength. Understood how it held him up. Held him together. He still thought of his lovely Vérún, but not with as much despair.

Strange, how much could change in only a week’s time. But as he’d said to Deo, time was different for the vampires.

Time had shifted for him. Had come to weigh a bit less heavily on his mind. While he’d spent the last number of months doubting his ability to remain rational for another twelve centuries—and certainly not happy—the happiness Mercy and Deo brought him made it seem possible again.

Possible.

Perhaps even happy. He’d never really thought of himself as happy. Satisfied, yes. Basking in this luxurious life, certainly. But happy?

His human life hadn’t been happy. The life of a Viking was rough, with death, loss, hunger, pain, a part of everyday existence. He’d loved his brothers fiercely. Had done everything,
felt
everything fiercely. But in that era, in that part of the world, so cold and bleak and hard, there had never been time for happiness. He wasn’t sure how he recognized it now. But he did. And he wanted it.