Crown of Thorn and Light

Maren

I arch into Alaric's mouth when his tongue circles my nipple, his left hand cupping the other breast while his thumb and forefinger pinch just hard enough to make me moan. Aldric is between my thighs at the same time, his black hair brushing my stomach every time he shifts, and somewhere in the part of my brain that apparently still works while two men I don't remember meeting are doing things to me my body seems to understand perfectly, I know none of this should feel this familiar. I don't know this room. I don't know how I got here. I don't know why Alaric's white hair and pale eyes or Aldric's black hair and green eyes feel less like details I'm noticing for the first time and more like things I've somehow always known. None of that changes the exact pressure of Aldric's fingers inside me or the scrape of Alaric's teeth over my skin. I can feel everything, including the embarrassing fact that my body reacts to both men before either of them has to ask what I like.

"Oh, God," I cry out when Aldric curls two thick fingers inside me and closes his mouth over my clit, the sound coming out loud enough that I should probably care who can hear me through whatever walls surround this room. I don't.

He looks up without stopping, green eyes locked on mine, and the pleased look in them makes me want to smack him almost as much as it makes me want to pull him closer. "Gods, Princess," he growls when he finally lifts his mouth, licking me from his bottom lip before adding, "You are dripping for us."

I manage to tell him, "You say that every time like you're shocked," but then he curls his fingers again and whatever sarcasm I had planned turns into a broken moan.

Aldric laughs against me, low and rough, and I hate how much I like the sound. It isn't just what he's doing between my legs either, which would at least make sense. Something about him feels familiar in a way that has no business happening with a man I don't remember meeting. That's concerning. A stranger isn't supposed to make my chest hurt too. I reach for Alaric partly because I need something else to focus on, sliding my palm down his stomach until my fingers wrap around his hard cock, and his control slips immediately. A guttural "Gods" leaves him while his hips move into my hand, but even then he watches me too closely, pale eyes tracking every change in my face instead of simply letting himself enjoy it.

"Do you want us, Princess?" Aldric asks, lifting his head again. There isn't anything complicated in his expression. He wants me, believes I want him, and apparently considers that enough information to work with for the moment.

"Yes. I want both of you, even if I still don't understand why this feels so familiar," I tell him, because pretending otherwise would be ridiculous, but the second I answer, Alaric's jaw tightens. It's barely a reaction, just enough that I notice because I've been staring at him, and suddenly I care about it far more than I should. "What's wrong?" I ask, slowing my hand around him.

Alaric shakes his head once and murmurs, "Nothing that belongs in this moment," which is such an annoyingly formal answer for a naked man with my hand around his cock that I actually laugh.

"That's not an answer," I tell him, and he gives me the kind of look people usually reserve for someone who's being difficult on purpose.

"Maren, for once, let the question wait."

Before I can decide whether to be offended by the fact that Alaric apparently thinks I ask too many questions despite the tiny problem of me not knowing how he knows that about me, Aldric mutters, "He questions everything. Ignore him." Alaric immediately turns his head. "I do not question everything." Aldric's hand settles possessively over my thigh while he looks at his brother. "You questioned whether we should answer her."

My hand stops around Alaric completely, because that sounds a lot less random than I want it to. "Answer me?" I repeat, but Alaric's expression closes before I can get anything useful from it.

"Not now. She deserves an answer when we can give her the whole truth instead of throwing pieces of it at her in the middle of this," Alaric says to his brother, irritation cutting through the control in his voice, but Aldric doesn't look remotely sorry.

He looks at me instead, running both hands up my thighs before saying, "Later. I promise. Right now, roll over." I should care more about the weird conversation. I really should. Unfortunately, the way his voice drops sends heat straight through me, and apparently my body has priorities even when the rest of me would really like an explanation. I roll onto my hands and knees, glaring over my shoulder just long enough to make sure he knows he hasn't gotten out of the question forever.

Aldric grins because, apparently, he likes me irritated too. "Your body was built for sin," he says, moving both hands over my hips and ass with absolutely no shame about staring. Alaric steps closer in front of me and corrects quietly, "It was built for her."

The difference shouldn't matter, but it does enough that I look up at him. Something unsettled crosses his face before he reaches down and brushes my hair away from my cheek, and for one strange second nobody is touching me anywhere sexual. Aldric's palm is warm against my lower back, Alaric's hand is against my face, and the ache in my chest comes back hard enough that I immediately resent both of them for managing to make perfectly good sex emotional. Nope. We're not developing feelings for men I don't even remember meeting. Absolutely not.

Then Alaric steps closer, the head of his cock grazing my lips while Aldric spreads my thighs farther behind me, and the part of my brain still trying to solve how I got here mercifully loses the argument with the part that knows exactly what I want. I open my mouth for Alaric at the same time Aldric pushes inside me, and the moan that leaves me is embarrassingly loud even by my standards. Aldric moves slowly at first, letting my body stretch around him before his hips begin moving harder, while Alaric keeps one hand in my hair without pulling.

"Goddess, you feel so damned good," Aldric mutters, his voice rougher now. "I knew you would."

Alaric's attention snaps toward him again, and there it is, that same resistance I keep catching without understanding. Aldric has none of it. Whatever this is, he seems to have accepted the entire thing before I even knew there was something to accept. He looks at me with the kind of certainty that should be terrifying from a stranger, except nothing in me wants to back away from him. Alaric feels the same pull; I know he does because I can see what happens to his face every time I touch him, but instead of relaxing into it, he looks angry at the entire idea. I would ask why, if they weren't currently making useful questions almost impossible.

They find a rhythm together that destroys the last of my ability to think, Aldric filling me from behind while Alaric's hand tightens slightly in my hair every time my mouth takes him deeper. By the time the orgasm hits, I'm shaking hard enough that Alaric has to steady me while Aldric reaches around and rubs my clit through it. Both men follow close behind, Aldric's hand spreading over my stomach when he comes and Alaric's breath breaking against my cheek before he pulls away. For several seconds nobody says anything, and the quiet somehow feels more intimate than everything we just did.

Aldric turns me carefully onto my back and cups my face with both hands, his black hair falling around us before he kisses me. There is nothing hesitant in the kiss or in the way he keeps me close after, and when he finally pulls back, he studies me with that same impossible certainty. "You are perfect," he says, which is ridiculous enough that common sense finally shows up late to the party.

"You don't know me well enough to be that certain about me," I whisper, because the certainty in his face is almost harder to understand than the attraction.

His mouth curves into a small smile. "Then let me learn you. I am not asking you to trust certainty you do not understand yet."

Alaric looks away, and that hurts far more than it has any right to. I push onto one elbow and stare at him until he looks back. "And what about you?"

His pale eyes meet mine, and for one second the careful expression disappears. I see the want. I see something deeper than the wanting that we both feel, something that matches the strange pull in my own chest, but instead of looking relieved by it, he looks pissed. Then the control comes back down over his face, and he says, "I do not know what I think yet."

I snort because if a man I barely know is going to hurt my feelings, I at least get to be rude about it. "Well, that's romantic."

Aldric laughs outright, while Alaric's mouth twitches despite himself. The humor disappears a second later when he glances past me at something I can't see. "Maren, listen to me." The words land wrong enough that my stomach tightens.

"What is happening? You both look like you know something I do not, and I am getting very tired of being the only person in the room without the explanation," I say, looking between them.

"We have to go, and I know that is not the answer you want after everything that just happened," Alaric answers, and the ache in my chest gets worse so fast I actually press a hand over it. I barely know these men. Technically, I don't know them at all, so there is absolutely no sane reason for the thought of them leaving to make panic push beneath my ribs.

I don't understand any of this, but panicking isn't going to help.

Aldric reaches for my hand and threads his fingers through mine, holding on with the same certainty he has had all night. "We will find you," he says.

"You do not even know where I am when I wake up, so how exactly are you supposed to find me?"

His expression shifts into something I can't read. "You found us first." I open my mouth to ask what the hell that means, but Piper's voice cuts through the room before I get the chance.

"Maren, get up. If you make us late again, I am blaming you when we have to sprint across campus."

I blink, and the room is gone. My bedroom ceiling is replaced by dark stone so completely that for several seconds I don't understand what changed. Morning light pushes around the curtains, and Piper's standing in my doorway, looking irritated enough to prove at least this part of my morning is familiar. My heart is still racing, my skin still feels too warm, and there's enough lingering arousal between my thighs that the difference between what I was just feeling and what is actually around me takes a second to settle.

"Maren, seriously, we are going to be late, and I refuse to let your alarm clock ruin both of our mornings."

I stare at her, then at the ceiling, then toward the empty space beside my bed like two enormous pointed-eared men might somehow still be there if I look fast enough. "I'm awake," I finally manage, although even saying it feels less certain than it should.

"Your definition of awake is generous," Piper says from the doorway, and I pull the blanket down far enough to glare at her.

"My definition of friendship doesn't usually involve being screamed at before coffee either, but here we are." She laughs, throws a clean sock at my head, and tells me I have ten minutes before disappearing into the hall. I wait until I hear her moving around in the kitchen before sitting up, mostly because I need one minute to get my face under control before I see her again.

The room's completely normal. There are no men with pointed ears, no weird stone walls, no sign that anything happened besides the fact that I woke up ridiculously turned on and remember every second with a clarity that makes my stomach flip.

I glance down at myself because the question arrives before common sense can stop it. Did that actually happen? I'm still in the same ratty shirt and cutoff sweats, and still in the same bedroom that I went to sleep in. There's absolutely no evidence of what happened, except for the images inside my head, which should be reassuring but mostly it just makes the last ten minutes harder to explain. It had to be a dream.

I sit with that for another few seconds, waiting for it to feel obvious. It doesn't. Dreams aren't usually that vivid. I don't normally wake up knowing exactly how someone's voice sounds when he says my name or remembering the weight of a hand threaded through mine. Still, the alternative is that I somehow went somewhere I can't name, had sex with two men I don't remember meeting, and returned to my own bed wearing the same clothes without a single physical sign that I left.

It had to be a dream. A very erotic, very vivid dream, even if my brain isn't fully convinced. I get up, grab clothes, and head for the shower, trying not to think about the fact that I remember both of their names or that I can still hear Aldric telling me I found them first. By the time I get out of the shower, I've almost convinced myself I won't think about either of them again. Almost.