Chapter 48: Stop Pretending
The corridor still smelled of forge smoke when Violet pushed open the parlor door, and the first thing she heard was her husbands arguing.
"The high table seats seven, Cassian. Not six. The Clave delegation expects seven."
"Then put the Gullhaven envoy on a stool at the end. He's a seagull, Evander. He can stand."
"He is an albatross shifter with three hundred years of seniority and he will be seated."
Violet stood in the doorway and looked at them. Both kings were bent over the oak table, maps of the great hall spread between the wax-sealed correspondence, Cassian's finger jabbing at a corner of the chart while Evander's hand pressed flat over a cluster of names like he could hold them in place by force. Sunlight came through the tall arched windows and caught the dust in the air, and the whole room smelled of parchment and pine and the two of them, that deep bond-scent of smoke and sweat she'd come to think of as home.
Dawn's voice was still ringing in her head. She has never seen anyone satisfy two mates before.
Two months. Two weeks married. And these two enormous, ancient wolves had been handling her like spun sugar, taking their turns, holding their appetites on a leash they thought she couldn't see.
She was done with it.
She crossed the room without asking permission. She didn't announce herself. She simply reached between them, swept a stack of sealed letters off the table onto the floor with her forearm, and sat herself down on the clear space she'd made, right on top of the seating chart, in the exact patch of sunlight.
Both kings went silent. Both heads turned.
Violet unhooked the comb from her hair, the steel one with the sun and moon inlay, and set it down beside her hip with a deliberate click. Her curls spilled loose over her shoulders. She looked up at Cassian, then at Evander, and let her legs fall open just enough that the meaning was unmistakable.
"Move the albatross to the stool," she said. "I need this table for something more important."
Cassian's eyes went gold at the edges in a heartbeat. She watched it happen, watched the wolf come up behind his irises, and something low in her stomach clenched with want at the sight. Two months of watching him hold that back.
"Violet." Evander's voice had dropped into that register she felt in her spine. "You've just had a portal call. You should rest."
"Rest." She laughed, and it came out as a purr. "I just spent an hour being interrogated by Dawn about whether my two immortal shifter husbands are being gentlemen to me. Do you know what I had to tell her, Evander? I had to tell her yes. I had to tell her you're both being patient with me." She dragged one finger up the seating chart, through the ink of a name, and looked at them through her lashes. "I'm three hundred and forty-seven years old. I've been married to two kings for two weeks. And I'm telling you, as your Queen, as your wife, and as your mate: stop being patient. I can smell how badly you both want to break. I've smelled it for weeks. Do you think I don't notice you going for runs at midnight to burn it off?"
Cassian made a sound. Not quite a growl, but the edge of one, dragged back behind his teeth.
"There it is," Violet said softly. "Let it out."
"We've been careful," Cassian said, and his voice had gravel in it now, rough and low. "Two months, little witch, and we've been so careful, because the bond is new and the hunger is..." His jaw worked. "It's a lot. For a witch."
"The bond is new for all three of us." She reached up and hooked a finger into the collar of his shirt and pulled, and he came, because he was three hundred and forty-nine years old and a king and he let a witch drag him by the collar. "I'm not made of glass. I never was. You watched me forge this morning. You watched me take both of you against the anvil with the whole corridor listening. So why, at dinner, in the parlor, in our own bed, do you both handle me like I might shatter?"
Evander moved. She felt him behind her before she saw him, the heat of his chest against her back, his beard brushing the curve of her neck where his mark sat. His hand closed over her hip, and it wasn't gentle. It was the hand of a man done pretending.
"Answer her, Cassian," he said. "Tell her why we've been gentle."
"Because it's not just appetite." Cassian's breath was coming faster, golden eyes fixed on hers. "It's the bond. It doesn't ease. It builds. Every time we take you, the wanting comes back bigger. I've been running the border twelve miles a night, Vi. Twelve. And it's not enough." His hand came up and curled around her throat, not squeezing, just resting there, feeling her pulse jump. "I could ruin you. That's what the wolf keeps saying. It says ruin her, and I keep saying no."
"Well," Violet breathed, and her hips shifted against the table, "I'm countermanding the order. Ruin me, husband. Both of you. That's a royal decree."
The growl that came out of Cassian then was nothing a man's throat should make. It filled the parlor, rattled the inkwells, and she felt Evander answer it against her back, a lower vibration through his chest into her spine, the two wolves speaking over her head in that language of sound and scent.
Then they moved at the same instant, and the careful kings were gone.
Cassian's mouth came down on hers and it wasn't a kiss, it was a taking, wet and deep and filthy, his tongue pushing past her lips while his hand slid from her throat to the front of her dress and hauled the neckline down. Fabric tore. She heard it rip and felt the cool air on her bare tits and moaned straight into his mouth, because he'd just torn her gown like it was parchment and she'd wanted exactly that for sixty days.
Evander's hands were at her hips, hauling her back against him, and she felt the length of him hard and huge through his trousers, grinding against the crease of her ass with no apology. His teeth closed on the mark at her neck. Not a kiss. A bite, sharp enough to sting, and the bond lit up like a struck flint, heat flooding through the tether from both of them at once.
"There it is," she gasped, breaking off Cassian's mouth. "There it fucking is. Gods, I've been starving for you, both of you, I lie awake between you at night and I can smell it, the wanting, and you just lie there like monks."
"You noticed that too," Evander said against her ear, and there was dark amusement in it, and shame, and hunger. "We took turns walking the east wall. Every night. Like boys."
"Idiots," she said. "Beautiful, ancient idiots."
Cassian dropped to his knees between her legs. He wrenched the rest of her dress open down the front, buttons pinging off across the table, and buried his face against her stomach, breathing her in like he'd been drowning. Then he looked up at her from the floor, golden-eyed, and dragged her thighs apart wide.
"Say it again," he said.
"Ruin me."
His mouth was on her before the second word finished. No teasing, no slow build, none of the reverent, patient worship she'd gotten used to. He licked into her like a wolf at a kill, broad flat tongue and then the pointed tip, fucking it into her cunt, and his hands gripped her thighs hard enough to bruise and held them open when she tried to buck. The sound he made against her was obscene, a rumbling growl that she felt in her own flesh, and it vibrated through her clit until she was clutching the table edge and swearing.
Evander held her from behind, one thick forearm across her collarbones, pinning her back against his chest while his other hand came up and closed over her bare breast, rolling her nipple rough between his fingers. Not rough enough to hurt. Rough enough to say I'm done being careful.
"Dawn asked about our appetites," he murmured, and she felt him smile against her neck. "What did you tell her?"
"That you were being patient," she panted, hips stuttering up against Cassian's mouth. "Gods, Cassian, yes, just like that."
"And what would you like to tell her tomorrow?"
"That my husbands broke the table."
Evander's laugh was a low rumble she felt through her whole back. Then he reached down, yanked his belt open with one hand, and she heard the buckle hit the floor. He dragged her ass to the table edge, lifted her hips off the wood one-handed like she weighed nothing, and pressed the blunt head of his cock against her soaked entrance right above where Cassian's mouth was working.
Cassian growled and pulled back just enough to watch. His lips and chin were shining with her.
"She's dripping," he said. "Look at her. Two months she's been this wet and we've been tucking her in like a cub."
"Put it in," Violet demanded, and her voice cracked on it, and she didn't care. "Evander, I swear on the forge, if you ask me if I'm ready I will hex your..."
He pushed in.
She felt every inch. Slowly, but not gently, one long relentless stroke splitting her open around the girth of him, his hand still lifting her hips to meet it, until she was full to the root and shaking. The stretch burned so good her eyes rolled back, and the sound she made wasn't quiet. It echoed off the arched windows and down the corridor behind them, and she heard it and didn't care, because she was done being careful too.
"That's it," Evander growled into her hair, and his composure was gone now, his voice wrecked and rough. "Let the whole palace hear. Let Harn report that."
He set a pace that had nothing patient in it. Deep, driving strokes, the table shaking under her, papers sliding off in drifts, wax seals cracking under her shoulder blades. Cassian stayed between her legs with his mouth on her clit while her husband fucked her, licking her through every thrust, and the double sensation was so much, so fast, that her orgasm hit her in under a minute. She arched off Evander's chest, screaming, one hand fisted in Cassian's dark hair and the other clutching Evander's forearm across her chest, and she came so hard her vision whited out at the edges.
"Again," Cassian said, pulling his mouth off her, and his voice wasn't a voice anymore, it was mostly wolf. "She's got more in her. I can smell it."
"Get up here," she gasped at him. "Both of you. I want..."
"What do you want?" Evander had stopped moving, buried to the hilt, and she felt his heart hammering against her back. "Say it plainly, wife. We're done guessing."
"I want you both. At once. I want to know what the bond has been holding back for two months."
They went still. She felt it pass between them over her head again, wolf to wolf, and this time the sound they made together was low and deciding.
"We've never taken her that way," Evander said quietly. "It's a lot. Even for a mate."
"I forged a haircomb from raw steel this morning with my hands shaking," Violet said. "I banished the man who made me small. I am not afraid of a lot." She reached back and dug her nails into Evander's thigh, and reached forward and hooked her hand around the back of Cassian's neck. "I'm asking. As your wife. Both of you, in me, at once, right here on this ridiculous seating chart."
Cassian was already shucking his trousers. "Evander. Table's sturdy?"
"It's Thornhold oak. Four hundred years old."
"Good." Cassian climbed up onto the table, papers crumpling under his knees, and knelt over her, his cock heavy and flushed and level with her mouth. "Then hold on, little witch."
Evander shifted them, lifted her and turned her in one motion while still buried inside her, so that she ended up on her hands and knees on the ruined chart, Cassian kneeling at her head, Evander on his knees behind her with his hands locked on her hips. The position put Cassian's cock right at her lips and his golden eyes burning into hers.
"Tap my thigh if it's too much," Cassian said, and even wrecked, even half wolf, he said it.
"It won't be," she said, and opened her mouth, and took him in.
He groaned from the bottom of his chest as she swallowed him down, her jaw stretching around his thickness, and behind her Evander began to move again, faster now, feral, his hips slapping against her ass so hard the sound filled the parlor. Between the two of them she was pinned, stuffed, used, and she'd never felt more powerful in her life, because both of these ancient kings were falling apart because of her, making sounds no one at court had ever heard them make.
Cassian's fingers tangled in her curls, careful even now, guiding her, and then he began to thrust into her mouth in time with Evander's strokes, so that every drive of Evander's cock into her cunt pushed her forward onto Cassian's, the rhythm shared through her body through the bond. The tether between the three of them was blazing now, pure heat, and she could feel their pleasure in it as if it were her own, doubled, trebled.
"Gods, look at her," Evander ground out. "Look at our Queen."
"Best thing that ever happened to this palace," Cassian panted. "Best thing that ever happened to me. Vi, I'm close, I..."
She moaned around him and sucked harder and that finished him. He came with a snarl, spilling hot down her throat, and she swallowed everything, and the taste of it and the feeling of him losing control sent her over the edge again, clamping down around Evander so hard he roared. He drove in twice more, brutal and deep, and then he was coming inside her, a flood of heat, his teeth sinking into the mark on her neck as he spent himself, his whole huge body shuddering against her back.
They collapsed in a tangle on the table. The seating chart stuck to Cassian's sweat-damp chest. An inkwell had rolled off and shattered somewhere, and nobody moved to check. Violet lay across both of them, dress torn open, hair a wreck, her thighs trembling, thoroughly and magnificently ruined.
For a long minute there was only breathing.
Then Evander started to laugh. Low, quiet, into her hair, but real.
"What?" she mumbled.
"The albatross is sitting in the ink," Cassian said, peering down at the chart. "Gullhaven's envoy is face down in an inkwell and there's a bootprint on the High Clave delegation."
Violet lifted her head, looked at the wreckage of two months of careful correspondence, and grinned. "The Queen presiding," she said, "votes for stools at the end of the table."
Evander's arm tightened around her, and his mouth found her temple. "No more midnight runs," he said. "No more taking turns. You'll tell us when it's too much, and we'll believe you."
"You'll know when it's too much," she said, still catching her breath. "Believe me. The corridor will know before I do."