Page 35 of Gemini Christmas
His suspicious eye darts over me, then measures Mordred’s heavy bulk spooned against my back, one brawny tattooed arm wrapped tight around my waist. Next, Vasili’s gimlet gaze slices over the sleeping warlock puppy pile behind Mordred, their mingled scents a familiar comfort to my wolfish nose.
Then Vasili’s sharp jaw angles toward the door.
Where’s Zephyr?he demands through our mating bond, wary gaze narrowing on my face.
He’s merely stepped out to collect Christmas gifts from the car—to which, it seems, we’ve returned.I offer Vasili a smile for reassurance, to dam the trickle of insecurity rising in his guarded face before it swells to a flood of hurt and rejection that sweeps away the bridge those two rivals—Zephyr and Vasili—built between them last night.
“Never fear, my dear,”I promise in a whisper.“Our Unseelie will soon return to us.”
“He’d better,” Vasili mutters, with a disgruntled sniff. “Or I’ll make him suffer.”
“Awww, don’t do that, babydoll,” Mordred rumbles, thick and sleepy, into the nape of my neck. “Pretty sure my cuz’ll let you fuck him again… if you ask nice. He’s giving ILY vibes… all over the place.”
Normally my brain struggles to disentangle our sex demon’s contemporary slang. But the mating bite I finally gave Mordred last night, which opened the same telepathic bond between us that Mordred already shares with Vasili and our other shifters, seems to have dealt with that minor difficulty quite nicely.
ILY simply meansI love you.
As Zephyr’s distant cousin, Mordred seems familiar with the signs.
“Z plus V,” Mordred affirms in a singsong voice, gradually rising in volume, clearly designed to give our uncaffeinated Vasili a good poke. “Sitting in a tree. K. I. S. S. I. N. G…”
Vasili’s upper lip lifts in a sneer that bares one razor-sharp fang in warning.
Unfortunately, the warning is wasted on Mordred, who continues to chant with growing enthusiasm, “First comes love, then comes marriage—”
“Good morning to you as well, Mordred.” Resigned to the knowledge that we’ll all soon be waking, I roll onto my back and stroke the tangle of dark blue hair gently away from the kraken’s face. My caress reveals more than his drowsy purple eyes and the irrepressible grin sneaking onto his swarthy face and bringing out his dimples.
It also bares the muscled bulge of his shoulder and the fresh double puncture of my mating bite.
“Hiya, Prof.” Mordred leans in for a good morning kiss that still tastes faintly of nutmeg and allspice from the late-night snack of pumpkin pie and eggnog we all shared before sleeping.
Thankfully, our sweetly spicy kiss stops his mouth before his teasing launches Vasili into orbit.
My wolf mutters happily in my chest. A sense of tenderness for him, Mordred, this newest of our mates and lovers, spreads through my chest like a bruise. Truly, I can scarcely explain—even to myself—why I waited so interminably long before claiming him as both of us (indeed all of us) clearly wanted.
Except…
“You wanted me to be sure,” Mordred whispers against my lips, confirming that our fledgling mating bond is indeed fully functional. “Didn’t wanna take advantage of me—the sex demon—by having actual sex with me. Or make me feel pressured, cuz of you being my headmaster.”
That’s rather the essence of the matter,I acknowledge in the privacy of our bond.After all, I’m responsible for you. It was genuine concern for your happiness, Mordred, not—lack of desire—that held me back.
He eases out of our kiss to look deeply into my eyes, his own gaze soft and vulnerable. “No one’s ever worried about me like that before, Lucius. For real.”
“Worrying about you—all of you—is part of my job description as your headmasterandyour alpha,” I say firmly. “Speaking of which, how’s the bite?”
“S’okay.” He shrugs, but winces at the movement. “A little ouchy, but nothin’ I can’t handle, true?”
“Let’s just have a look.” My careful fingers drift over Mordred’s smooth bronze skin to find my punctures. Heat spreads outward from the twin wounds over his cool kraken skin.
“You’re a trifle warm,” I tell him. “I do hope we’re not going to start a mating heat quite so soon, dear one. I’m not at all certain Theo Mercury and his chalet full of glitterati will be ableto withstand a sex demon in full heat. Especially after a few mugs of mulled wine.”
Clearly undaunted by the prospect of a full-blown orgy breaking out at Senator Mercury’s sedate Christmas party, Mordred grins and snuggles into me.
I find this a considerable distraction, since we’re both quite naked under the blankets. His dominant cock, the larger of the two dicks he packs between his muscled thighs, swells and nudges invitingly against my hip.
“Yeah,” he says, low and husky. “My heat’s comin’. You got some potent shifter rizz in that mating bite of yours, for real. Pretty sure we’ll all be fucking before we finish the Christmas turkey.”
Inevitably, my body reacts to this scandalous prospect by sending all the blood rushing straight to my tingling cock.
