The Devourer: A Reverse Harem Fantasy (Airshan Chronicles Book 3) Read online

  For us... well, I wasn’t Airsha. I wasn’t as loving and lovable as she was. What I felt seemed superficial somehow. Yet, for all that, the very thought of losing one of my men filled me with sick dread. How did you know, though, if your love was enough to save the world?

  And what of them? Aye, they loved me. I knew that. But enough? As much as Calun loved Airsha? I didn’t invite such affection. I didn’t deserve it, if I was totally honest. I had done things I regretted. As I told Zem, if there was a scale of good and bad a person has done in their lives, I would like to think my good was starting to outweigh my bad. But was it enough to deserve the kind of love I needed to save the world?

  Landor had returned to his place beside me and must have picked up on my thoughts as he sat down, because he frowned and said softly, “You mentioned how Shardra thought she had to earn your friendship. And how you wanted to tell her she had it, without her doing anything to earn it. You need to use that insight on yourself. We love you just because of who you are. You don’t have to deserve our love. Although I, for one, think you do deserve it. You deserve far more than any one of us can give you. So stop thinking like Flea and start embracing Flame. Because you are Flame!”

  While I tried to take in Landor’s words, Zem brought the meeting back to order. It seemed it had broken into several smaller discussions—not only Landor’s and mine—in the last few moments.

  “I think the big plans are beyond us at this time. I have come to realise, over the course of this gathering, that to try to formulate them now, in a knee-jerk reaction to the news The Jayger is free and so soon after finding the Goddess’ Key, would be foolhardy. We have plenty to get on with for a while. It has been a very long and eventful day, so I suggest we turn in.”

  He was right, what more could we really plan until we knew what we five were capable of bringing to the fight? And there was only one way for us to find that out.

  I smiled gamely up at Landor. “I used to think sex was the hard part. But that’s the easy, pleasurable part. It’s the rest I’m not sure I can manage.”

  Landor smirked. “It is pleasurable. And addictive. I have struggled this last quarter turn without you. Though we have only shared pleasure twice—three times—it feels like far more. And the absence of our lovemaking has left a hole inside me that gnaws at me every minute of the day.”

  “I’m the one with the hole inside her that needs filling.” I wriggled my eyebrows at him.

  I was never one for sexual innuendo and this was a rather crass example of it. But Landor’s eyes flashed, and I knew my attempt was well received.

  “At your disposal... Always.”

  Chapter Three

  The beach was long enough that the sailors and Redin could remain at one end, we could stay at the other and Shardra and Sky could take the middle. It was a warm night, a touch muggy in fact. There were remarkably few insects to worry about and a smoky fire would keep what there were at bay. So, except for bedding, we required little else for the night.

  “Can we take the grassy verge instead of the sand?” I asked, pointing to the sheltered spot just off the sand where huge rocks surrounded the spot on all sides except directly toward the sea.

  No one said a word, but we all turned in that direction. Was I the only one feeling anxious? Somehow, we were all going to sleep together tonight. I hadn’t planned it that way. I’d hoped to take Laric aside and then... I didn’t quite know.

  But all those vague plans had gone up in smoke the moment the Jayger was released. The moment we realised this was all very real, and so much more important than our petty issues with each other and even ourselves.

  So we were not sleeping separately. But did that mean...?

  “Stop fussing,” Laric said, coming up to walk at my side. “It will be what it will be. I feel happy with that. If I only sleep at your side tonight, it will be enough. The acceptance is what I needed more than the sex. Though I’ll deny I ever said that, if anyone asks.” He gave me a cheeky grin in the moonlight.

  “No. It is time that we committed to each other fully. Will you mind an audience?”

  I was blushing, I could feel the heat in my cheeks, but the moonlight, thankfully, made it impossible to see.

  “I’m a performer. I don’t mind who watches or who joins in.” He threw an arm around my shoulders and hugged me to his side. It felt warm and safe there. Considering how far we’d come in just over a quarter turn, my response amazed me. As recently as a half turn ago, I would have considered Laric more dangerous than safe. Far more dangerous.

  The men gathered firewood, which was plentiful nearby, and Prior got a blaze started immediately in our little nook beside the rocky headland that pointed out into the sea. Our pallets of sweet grass were arranged in a row in front of the fire and on the side away from the beach.

  I sat down on mine—in the middle, where it had somehow found itself—and stared into the fire.

  “I’m scared,” I admitted, as the others seated themselves around me. Not touching, but close. “Not about the sex. About The Jayger. I seem to go from confident to... not... like a soaring and diving airling. Right now I’m diving. It’s all too real. It’s all too big. You’re all amazing,” I looked from one troubled face to the next. “I love you. That isn’t just me saying a word. It’s what I feel. But I... I haven’t loved many people in my life, and I’m not good at it. I’m worried it might not be enough.

  “Then, putting that issue aside, I keep thinking that we’re only five people, up against something as powerful as the Goddess herself. Something that can turn whole towns into driftwood. So, aye, I’m scared.”

  “We all are,” Prior finally said, his deep voice more a growl than a human voice. “But I’m also... optimistic. I never thought I would be able to share pleasure with a woman. But now I can. I have. So if that impossibility has happened, I am optimistic about the other seemingly impossible task ahead of us.

  “I feel like... that moment before I took off on an airling for the first time. I was shite-scared and yet so excited. I knew something amazing was coming, and it did. I feel like that about us. We haven’t even started to discover what we’re capable of together. We can already read each other’s minds. That feels like only the start...”

  “I thought you could only read my mind,” I interrupted, nonplussed.

  “Ever since that night we shared stories before the storm we’ve each been getting whiffs of each other’s thoughts. We’ve talked about it when we were in our hammocks. I thought someone would have mentioned it to you.”

  “No, no one has thought to share that valuable information with me. But then, I am the outsider, aren’t I? The lass in the lad’s club. That has never happened before!” I was now snippy and sarcastic, which was better than scared.

  They started to laugh. At me! I was so furious I jumped to my feet and stomped off toward the water.

  Of all the insufferable, arrogant, male behaviour! Excluding me from such an important new development. Forgetting to tell me! Not even allowing me to read the information from one of their minds. They were largely closed to me these days, unless they chose to let me in for short stints. I’d started doing the same to them. It was a lot quieter in my head that way. But still. This final act of exclusion was not to be borne.

  I reached the water’s edge and felt the scrunch of hard sand under my bare feet. The surf was lazy and low, not much more than a gentle lap against the shore. And cool. It was pleasurably cool. Not deep either, which was why our ship had had to drop anchor so far offshore.

  Before I had time to think about it, I tore off my clothes and began wading into the cool water. I could swim. Every fisherman’s daughter worth her salt could swim. But I wouldn’t have to, as the water got no deeper than my chin after about twenty strides.

  Laying backwards into the arms of the sea, I floated contentedly, staring up at the star-filled sky. The moon had just sunk below the horizon, and now there were only bright stars to light the night. And th
ere was so many of those I could have counted them for a lifetime and still not reached the end.

  I heard splashing. More than one of my husbands was joining me. Maybe they thought I’d drown myself out here alone. Serves them right! Or maybe they had become tired of their all-male club and wanted me to join again. I did have one purpose none of them could fulfil, after all.

  How dare they share a secret and leave me out! I fumed.

  I felt strong arms pulling me under. The world suddenly became all dark water. I wanted to breathe but I couldn’t. Which way was up? This wasn’t funny! Did they care so little about me that they’d drown me for fun!

  Before I had a chance to panic, the arms released me, and I pushed upwards. Breaking the surface, I coughed and spluttered. I was spitting mad. Who the hell tried to drown me?!

  I spun to see who came up beside me. I expected it to be Laric. But it was Zem!

  I splashed water at him as I continued to splutter. He laughed and splashed me back. In the next instant, Laric joined my side and began splashing Zem. Landor joined in on Zem’s side. It was an all-out water-fight, which had my fury dissolving.

  I realised someone was missing. Where was Prior? Why hadn’t he joined a side?

  I looked toward the beach and saw him sitting on the sand watching us.

  After my initial concern that he felt left out, a new, more tantalizing thought crossed my mind. What would happen to Prior’s fire in water? Could we come together here without worrying about getting burned?

  My loss of interest in the water-fight must have registered, because the others stopped larking around and watched me with interest.

  “It might just work,” I said to them, all anger gone.

  I swam back for the shore and stood naked in the shallows in front of my black husband. And he was black in the moonless night. Little more than a shadow sitting there in the sand.

  “Come into the water with us,” I said, holding out my hand to him.

  I was cold. Out of the water and with the slight breeze chilling the droplets on my body, my skin pimpled with the cold and my nipples became hard pinched peaks on their small mounds of flesh. My soggy mess of hair falling down my back only added to the chill. I needed to get back under the water fast! But not until Prior joined us.

  “I cannot swim.” He had his hands buried in the sand. Were there flames blasting the sand there as he looked at my naked form? I hoped so.

  “It’s not deep. And I think we might be able to... you know... in water. Come and try,” I coaxed.

  He rose to his feet and quickly shucked off his clothes. Even in the dark, I could see his very impressive cock was rampant.

  “This better work,” he said tersely as he passed me to wade into the deeper water. I followed along behind him, scared and excited all at the same time.

  I couldn’t use my lightning in the water. I’d electrocute myself and anyone nearby me. But it might not be needed. Why hadn’t we thought of this before? Why hadn’t Prior? He’d had baths in his life. Hopefully, many of them. Surely he’d thought to pleasure himself when he was submerged in bathwater?

  “Have you ever tried pleasuring yourself in water before?” I asked, as I caught up to him when he reached the others.

  The water was at his nipples here. I was now comfortably warm submerged to my chin.

  “No. I bathe and get out. I don’t like water. I’m not afraid of it, as much as uncomfortable in it. I always felt that it would somehow overwhelm who I am. My fire,” he admitted grumpily.

  Coming in here was clearly not something he was happy doing. I needed to change his mind on that one.

  I moved over to him and wrapped my arms around his black, gleaming shoulders. Pressed against me, his body was very hot compared with the cool water around us. I felt him stiffen and then relax at the feel of my skin against his. My curves pressed into his hard lines.

  “Shouldn’t you be firing up about now?” I asked in a sultry voice, nibbling at his thick neck.

  His arms wrapped around me and claimed my mouth in a hungry kiss. When we broke apart, panting, he was grinning like an idiot.

  “Seems I’ve found something else water is good for, other than getting clean,” he said, his white teeth starkly visible in the dark night.

  “Excellent. I think the rest of you can stand down. You don’t have to rescue me from burns tonight,” I told the other three, who were so tense the air seemed to crackle with their concern. I wasn’t the only one who realised I was defenceless out here as I quite literally played with fire.

  Prior pushed me away from him, reluctantly. “I think you need to complete our circle. And while I watch I will enjoy the pleasure of my hand for the first time in my life.”

  I couldn’t work out whether to be insulted that he preferred his hand to me, or impressed with his selflessness for offering me up to Laric. I went for the latter because I’d had my quota of hurt feelings and sulks for the day.

  Turning from him with a disappointed pout, I drifted over to Laric.

  “I’m second prize?” he said a little too heatedly for the joke he meant it to be.

  “No competition here. No rungs on a ladder. Just whoever has the most pressing need gets my attention first. And Prior no longer has either if he can meet his own need himself,” I said, a little of my annoyance still tainting my tone.

  Wrapping my arms around the broad, fair shoulders of my blue-eyed, soon-to-be husband, I smiled up at him. Droplets of water clung to his impossibly long lashes and I had the absurd desire to lick them off.

  “Do it,” Laric croaked, his hard cock jumping between us.

  He lowered his head so I could reach his eyes with my lips. I had to stand on tiptoe to manage it comfortably. Pressing into his eye with my lower lip, I tasted the salt with my tongue. It was a strangely erotic thing to do.

  Laric seemed to agree because his breathing became more laboured and his arms wrapped tighter around my body, moulding me against him so not even water droplets remained between us.

  I finished removing seawater from his eye lashes to look over at Zem and Landor. They had formed a triangle with Prior less than a stride distant from Laric and I in the centre.

  “Don’t worry about us. Like Prior, we can enjoy watching. Make Laric one of us,” Zem said just as croakily as Laric.

  Were they touching themselves at that moment beneath the water? I decided I rather liked the idea of them doing that while they watched me making love.

  I smirked at Laric. “I get the honours of bringing you on board. I’m good for one thing, it seems.”

  He lost his grin. “You weren’t excluded. And we don’t see you as someone we can use when we have an itch in need of scratching. You aren’t one of us because you meet our sexual needs. You are the reason we’re together. And sex is only one irreplaceable ingredient you bring to the team. Don’t demean yourself by seeing yourself that way. Don’t demean us by seeing us that way.”

  I had started to think I was only good for one thing, even though they’d all said they loved me. I hadn’t realised how easy it was to start to measure myself in the way most men measured a woman’s worth: by her sexual appeal; her ability to give pleasure; and her capacity for providing sons. In the world I knew, a woman’s whole existence tended to revolve around her man or men, while a man’s didn’t revolve around his woman.

  Unless you were the Airluds, of course.

  Unless you were my men?

  I looked from one to the other in the triangle, trying to see if they agreed with Laric. He wasn’t usually the spokesman for the group.

  “We didn’t intentionally exclude you,” Zem said on a heavy sigh, moving in to press a kiss to my shoulder as I remained wrapped in Laric’s arms. “We just assumed someone else told you. Because we all tell you everything. Or let you read everything in our heads. There’s no lads’ club; there’s only The Five. No rungs on a ladder here. But if there were, you’d be at the very top.”

  I read in his mind that he kn
ew now that I’d heard the conversation he and Rama had had before the ball. It was when they’d discussed the issue of occupying the bottom rung of the ladder in a relationship.

  He kissed my shoulder again, long and tenderly, before stepping back into the triangle.

  With tears pricking my eyelids, I leaned up and kissed Laric’s cold, salty lips. “Laric, will you become my husband? Will you commit to me to the exclusion of all others?”

  He smirked. “I will. Will you commit to me to the inclusion of all others?”

  Typical Laric, he couldn’t even take our commitment vows seriously!

  He lost the smirk. “Sorry. It was too hard to resist. The exclusion part just begged to be played up.”

  Looking around the other men, he noted they were not any more pleased than I was by his mockery. “Sorry. I don’t do well with serious moments. They make me uncomfortable.”

  He turned back to me, took my face in his cold hands, and met my gaze with all the vulnerability he tried so hard to disguise. “I commit to you. I love you more than I thought I was capable of loving anyone. I will give my life for yours. I will stay faithful to you. You are my wife from this moment on. My only wife.”

  I swallowed down the lump in my throat. What he’d said was so much more than I had included. I’d been too busy making sure he knew he had to stay faithful to mention anything about love. I’d invited his crack!

  With a big sigh, I drew his head down to mine and sealed our bond with a kiss. I wasn’t sure my body was ready, but suddenly I wanted him inside me. Would his cock be cold or hot in the water? I wanted to find out.

  Something in my kiss must have told him, or my thoughts were broadcasting loud and clear, because he lifted me up so I could wrap my legs around his hips. I frantically felt between us until I could take his straining member in my hand and lead it home. Lifting up, I felt his head breech me and begin the slow, pleasurable stretch that was required for me to be fully impaled on him.