“Mistral!” I said.

“I’m trying!” His eyes were full of wind and storm.

CHAPTER

TWENTY

THE MEN WERE yelling at him, Doyle was ordering him. Mistral stood there, big hands clenched into fists; the effort of controlling his magic showed in the muscles in his arms as if stopping the storm had weight that he needed to lift with his body and not just his mind.

I went to him and touched his arm. It made him startle and look down at me with wide eyes. I could see the storm in his irises like tiny movie screens so that I saw the funnel cloud begin to reach for the earth below.

Someone said, “Let him concentrate, Merry.”

“We need fair weather,” I said, and went up on tiptoe, touching the side of Mistral’s neck, and he bent toward me, hands still in tight fists; as he bent lower I was able to slide my hands around his neck, touch his face, and stare into the wonder of Mistral’s eyes.

The terrible tension in his shoulders loosened, and then he raised his arms to hold me. We kissed and his lips were as gentle as any man in my bed for an instant, and then his arms enfolded me, lifted me off my feet, the kiss growing into an eagerness that was almost like feeding, as if his mouth had been hungry for mine. His arms tightened into a near-crushing weight, and he kissed me as if he meant to climb inside me through my mouth, forcing me to open wide for him. One arm held me in that so-tight grip and the other found the back of my hair and tightened until it was nearly painful. He let me know with his hands, his arms, his mouth, how much he wanted me, how much he’d missed me these long weeks, and how great his need was for the way we made love.

I gave myself over to the thrill and strength of that kiss, those arms, this man. He drew back enough to look into my face, his eyes almost wild with need. His eyes were a rich dark blue like the sky at dusk after a storm has blown everything clean.

He pressed his mouth against mine again in that passionate, almost painful kissing, turning with me in his arms to kneel on the bed, and begin to crawl us farther onto it. I managed to turn my lower body to the side, so that when he pinned me to the bed it was only part of me pressed under the solid weight of his upper body.

I fought free of his kisses and managed to say, “I cannot have intercourse yet, Mistral. The Gods know I want to, but the doctor says no, not yet.” My voice was breathless, my heart loud in my ears, my body thick with the rush and beat of my own pulse.

He laid his head on the bed and made an inarticulate sound, half groan and half yell. He spoke with his face still pressed to the covers, hair pooling over him so I could see nothing but the gray fall of hair. “I shall go mad soon.”

I touched his hair, smoothing it back until I could see the side of his face. “It’s only five to six more weeks, and then I can make love again.”

He rolled an eye up and the color was his more typical gray now. “Perhaps you should start with someone gentler than I, our Merry.”

I smiled and smoothed more of his hair back so I could see that handsome profile. “Perhaps, but believe this, my Storm King, I want you as badly as you want me.”

He studied my face and then smiled. “That is good to know.”

“Rhys said the sky is clear, and it’s a beautiful California night,” Usna said.

I leaned and laid a much more gentle kiss on Mistral’s lips. “We just needed his mood to lighten; fair mood, fair weather,” I said.

“That was good and quick thinking, Merry,” Doyle said. “I would not have thought of it in time.”

“I don’t think you kissing Mistral would have had the same effect,” Usna said.

Doyle frowned at him, but Frost collapsing to the carpet made us all move toward him. He said, “I am all right, I just need to lie down,” which meant he didn’t feel well at all.

Hafwyn came through the door, and I realized that until she appeared I hadn’t known if Usna had called a doctor or called someone who could heal with magic. Healer could mean either in this house.

Doyle knelt with Frost’s head in his lap, smoothing the other man’s hair and saying, “I am so sorry, Frost.”

I held Frost’s hand and felt it tighten as Hafwyn began to explore the wounds.

“You were not in your right mind, Darkness; I know you would never hurt me.”

“Not deliberately,” Doyle said, touching Frost’s face gently.

“This is two attacks in our dreams in almost as many nights; what can we do to protect ourselves?” I asked.

Frost’s hand tightened enough that I could feel that crushing strength, and I said, “Easy, my Killing Frost, easy.” I touched his face as I said it.

He loosened his grip. “I am sorry, Merry.”

“It’s all right, it must hurt a great deal for you to react so.”

“Nay, it does not.” I realized that despite the strength in his hands in my and Doyle’s grip his face was stoic, and only the cording in his arms showed the muscles he was using to hold on and not react to the pain. I cursed myself for revealing his pain when he was covering it so well, my brave man.

I leaned down and kissed him. He gave me startled eyes as I leaned back. I couldn’t explain why I’d kissed him without compounding the mistake, so I just smiled at him and let him see how much I loved him. That made him smile even as Hafwyn’s slender fingers finished exploring the claw marks.

His body reacted to the kiss, and nude he could not hide it. He was not one of my men who enjoyed pain. Everyone’s need had grown over the months of enforced celibacy. I’d even been forbidden oral, or really any sexual contact, once the doctors told me that any orgasm might bring on premature labor. It hadn’t been worth the risk, but now that the babies were on the outside, we wouldn’t endanger them.

“I can’t have intercourse for weeks yet, but I could do oral and hand on some of you,” I said. If I’d been human it would have been too bold in the situation, but no one in that room was human.

“That is very generous of you, Princess,” Hafwyn said, “but it is not our way to offer sex without hope of pleasure in return.” She wasn’t chiding me, just stating cultural norms, as people do.

“I can orgasm from touching a man, especially oral.”

Hafwyn looked at me, head to one side like a curious bird. Both her graceful eyebrows arched at me in surprise. “Truly?”

I smiled. “Truly.”

“I’d forgotten what it meant to be a goddess of fertility.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Sex is a much broader pleasure for certain goddesses.”

“I am no goddess,” I said.

She made a small gesture with her head, almost a shrug. “As my princess wills, so shall it be, but there are some humans who live because a bit of metal that once pierced your flesh touched them, and now they use those objects to heal others.”

“It is magic, yes, but it is not deity,” I said.

She averted her eyes, laying out fresh bandages. “If you say so, then of course it is true.”

“Hafwyn, seriously, there can be no talk of gods and goddesses for any of us.”

“I know that if we are worshipped in this country it is grounds for our exile as a people,” she said, still not looking at me, “but to not speak of a thing does not make it less true.”