Jessamine Less was burned at the stake.
She was twenty.
She wasn't a witch, but she was close enough to count for her captors. They lashed her to the pyre and set the thing ablaze. Her nerves exploded in supernovas of pain. Her skin crackled and peeled away. Her muscles seared and her fat was rendered into oil. Her bones blackened and were turned to ash. Townsfolk gathered all around her as she burned. They watched and chanted prayers for their own protection.
Amber eyes watched as she fractured into shards of incandescence.
Violently ejected from my dream, I sat up in bed, soaked with sweat and drenched beneath the covers. My body heaved and my heart pounded and if not for the hands I clamped over my own mouth, I would have screamed.
"Hey, kiddo," my roommate whispered from the adjacent bed. "You all right? You need a hand?"
Danny eased languidly up onto one elbow, careful not to wake her new girlfriend, Rowan, who had somehow found it comfortable to squeeze into the dormitory bed beside her nearly every night for the past three weeks. They'd been roommates for nearly two years, at that point, so Danny was familiar enough with my night terrors, if you could call them that. But as tempting as that offer was—Danny's special medicine soothed both body and mind—it wouldn't be enough. I needed more than Danny could provide.
"I'm going to get some fresh air," I said, as softly as I could manage with my ragged breath.
"All right," Danny mused. "Happy hunting."
She turned over and wound herself around her girl, ostensibly going back to sleep, though a little half-hushed giggle suggested that they had other activities in mind.
I slipped into the bathroom alone to relieve my bladder. Off went my sodden pajamas, wrung out before I shoved them into the hamper in the corner. I considered a cold shower, but feared that would only stoke my fires all the brighter. Something about the cold always brought Thusia to mind, which was explicitly what I was trying to avoid.
Back in our bedroom, I raided the closet for a thickly-knit sweater that was long enough to wear as a dress. I pulled it on directly over my bare skin, stepped into a pair of well-loved sandals, and was out the door and into the night.
Summer was on its way and the nights were growing warm and damp. I fit right in. Even on a campus as large as this, it was such a late hour of the evening that you might as well call it morning, so no one impeded my progress as I swam through the night. I told myself that I didn't know where I was going, that I was going wherever the breeze took me, but that wasn't true: I knew exactly where I was going and exactly why I was going there.
Still, my thoughts meandered as far and wide as I did, that night. I might have claimed that something in particular brought her closer to mind, but that would have been a lie. I was always thinking about her, in one manner or another—and I would have been even without her damned amber eyes inside my head. The day of the hunt had changed me irrevocably. It wasn't the quest, nor the touch of her lips, nor her grand declaration that I was a child of the light. No, it was the simple fact that I had given everything I had in her service and it hadn't been enough. I had failed her and now she was dead, red blood spilt on the white stag.
It was right that she should haunt me. I envied the me inside my dreams. At least there was an end to that fire.
Fifteen or twenty minutes later, I stood outside a weathered townhouse that just barely qualified as off-campus. I skirted around the side of the building, eschewing the front door in favor of the fire escape. There weren't really any rules about guests coming and going at all hours, but that didn't mean I wanted to be noticed—and besides, I didn't have a key. A few quick steps up three flights of ladders and I found myself knocking on his window.
How many times had I done this? Enough that I only had to knock twice before Will threw the curtains wide and flashed me a sleepy smile.
He'd barely unlatched the window before I pushed through and all but tackled him, mashing my lips against his, invading his mouth with my tongue. He tried to speak—whether in greeting or in protest, I didn't care—but I wouldn't let him catch his breath long enough to form words.
I walked him backwards, step by fumbling step, pushing him towards the bed, but not before I slid my hand down into his sleep shorts and wrapped my fingers around the base of his cock. He responded quickly—how could he not—and was fully hard and throbbing by the time I sat him down on the edge of his bed.
Kissing him all the while, I planted one knee on either side of his hips, hiked up the hem of my sweater, and lowered myself down onto him. He gasped as the head of his cock met no resistance in parting the folds of my quite literally dripping cunt—I was pretty sure I'd left a trail from the window to the bed—and followed through all the way in one firm stroke until my ass clapped against his thighs.
I let his head fall back and rained kisses along the line of his jaw, down his throat, and finally along his collarbone, where I opened wide and sank my teeth into the meat of his shoulder. He gasped and groaned. Had I broken skin? It wouldn't be the first time. Once again, I didn't care either way.
Latched onto him, I thrust my hips up and down, grinding back and forth, giving him no space for a gentle buildup in the face of my overwhelming need, filling the little room with the wet, slapping drumbeat of my overflowing sex. When he tried to speak, tried to warn me, I bit down harder, tasting iron, and he erupted inside of me, unloading several waves of his seed into my deepest place.
In those final moments, as his orgasm boiled over, I leaned back and closed my eyes, giving myself over to fantasy, allowing him to be replaced in my mind's eye. No longer did I ride a simple man, my loving partner, my dearest companion. Now I mounted a goddess, pale of skin with eyes of flame, returned from beyond the veil to quench my carnal thirst.
"Fuck, Jess," Will groaned, shattering the illusion.
When I didn't immediately open my eyes, he flexed his cock inside of me, starting a series of little convulsions from my ass to my ears. I blinked my way back to reality, where I found my lover smiling up at me with a warmth that briefly outshone the white-hot need that still raged inside my body.
"Hi, Will," I said, only slightly sheepishly. "I missed you."
He laughed, but his mirth was quickly overshadowed by concern.
"Another dream?" he asked.
Will already knew the answer, of course. Whenever I got like this, it was always because of a dream. I nodded anyway.
"Tell me about it," he encouraged.
While I spoke, he tenderly lifted me off of his cock and laid me on his bed, pulling my sweater up and over my head before my back touched down on the duvet. Kneeling at my feet, he slid me forward until my ass hung over the edge, hooked my legs behind his shoulders, and began to lick, running little circles around my clit before pushing his tongue inside, heedless of the gooey stream of his own leavings.
Between the mewling growls stirred up by the pleasures of his mouth on my cunt, I tried to put my dreams into words. I only seemed to ever dream about two things: sex and death. My last dream of the night had been death, but all the ones before that had been sex. Those were the ones I preferred to share.
"She was so large," I moaned, "and she was in charge. Not like the last time. The last time she was so needy and so small, she begged me until I gave all I had and it still wasn't enough. But this time, no. She needed nothing from me, but lord, she gave. Perhaps it was a kind of punishment, for failing her the time before."
"It was a dream," Will reminded me, in-between laps.
Will and I agreed on most things, and where we differed, we at least shared doubts. Neither of us was sure whether or not we wanted children, or even whether we wanted to get properly married, someday. But of all our discrepancies, his well-meaning disbelief was most prominent.
He had been there when it all happened, but he was never close enough to really see. He'd been outside the Barrow House when the hounds took Widow Parish. He'd met her, of course, but he wasn't there at the beginning when she pulled down the stars and he wasn't there at the end when she lay dying in my arms. He hadn't watched her transform from a strange and beautiful girl into a little white fox. He'd never asked why I stole the hay wagon.
Perhaps he thought his ignorance was noble.
As far as Will was concerned, my dreams were simply my libido run amok, the lingering inspiration of one crazy night when I met a stranger and fell half in love. I'd never been able to convince him otherwise. He was endlessly patient, boundlessly giving, and a horrible, stubborn skeptic, through and through.
"She bound me in fire," I continued. "She burned away my clothes and made candles of my nipples. Only it didn't hurt. It burned, but there was no pain. Just brightness, inside and out. More than I could comprehend. More than I could bear."
I felt my orgasm build as Will, artfully mechanical, ground his tongue against my clit, first from inside my cunt and then again from outside, alternating firm pushes and soft tugs. His fingers massaged my ass, drawing steadily inward, teasing me with the anticipation of the touch to come.
"She had so many hands," I hissed. "And she put all of them inside of me."
Will took this as his cue and drilled two long fingers between my cunt-lips even as he pressed his thumb into my well-slicked asshole.
"I wanted to fight her," I sobbed. "I wanted to fuck her. I wanted to give her back what she had given me—but she wouldn't allow it. She just kept giving and giving and—"
Sparks of fairy fire burst before my eyes and my hips bucked so fiercely that I feared I might shake myself loose of the bed, but Will held me in place, matching my movements without ceasing his own until my flow began to ebb.
When I shivered and my cunt settled, however briefly it would remain so composed, Will crawled up beside me and took me in his arms. I nuzzled back into him, enjoying this moment of repose, loving the feeling of his naked body against my own, the way his chest cradled my back, the way his cock nestled between my ass cheeks. As so often happened during my tristesse, I considered that maybe I could see settling down with him. Build a house, have some kids, the works.
I would be happy with him. But could I be happy with just him?
A low purr rumbled from somewhere deep in my chest. He chuckled, utterly unsurprised.
I turned over. He wove his fingers through my hair, guiding my head to his cock. I gobbled him greedily, taking him all the way inside my mouth, feeling him begin to tickle the back of my throat as he gained his second wind.
"Who do you need, tonight?" he asked.
I thought it over as I sucked along his stiffening cock, tongue squelching and lips smacking. There were too many options: how could I pick just one, let alone the right one? Apparently sensing my indecision, he pulled my hair by the roots, hard enough to make me cough out a moan.
"Domingo," I blurted.
He smirked like he'd known all along. Cocky bastard. I clamped my lips tightly around the base of his cock and tugged hard, making him choke out a grunt of his own, but he just kept on smiling, picked up his phone from the bedside, and dialed Domingo. From what I could see of the clock from this vantage, the sun wouldn't be up for at least another hour, but our friends were, to a one, a special kind of wild—just like me.
I didn't wait for Domingo to answer the phone before I chirped: "And Shuhui."
Will's eyebrows perked up, but he just nodded.
"Hey, Domi," he said into the phone, "sorry to wake you." A pause. "Yeah, you guessed it." Another pause. "We love you, too, bud. See you in a few."
Will hung up the phone and grinned, but he didn't bother to reveal the bits that I'd missed. I could infer well enough and I didn't feel like taking his cock out of my mouth to inquire further. He dialed again, but waited long enough this time to speak that it seemed he'd reached an answering service rather than the person in question.
"Hey, Shuhui, it's Will," he said, confirming my suspicion. "Jess needs some help tonight, and she asked for you by name. Hope you can make it over. We'll be at mine until classes start—"
I shot him an imperious look.
"—or maybe later," he concluded. "Oh, and Domingo will be here, so maybe bring your crop? You know he likes that. Kisses. Bye."
He hung up and only then finally allowed himself a contented sigh. I'd worked him over pretty well, but if I knew Will—and I did—he'd be ready for more.
Without further hesitation, he pushed me over onto my back, pulling his cock free with an audible slurp, and parted my thighs with both hands before pinning my knees to the bed. He didn't ask for permission, he just pushed himself inside, filling me up even more than he had before. After two quick and hard thrusts, however, he stopped dead, only the tip of him perched at my entrance.
"I'm going to fuck you until Domingo gets here," he announced. "Let's see how many times we can you get off before he does."
I grinned, parting my folds with my fingers and coaxing my clit out of its hood even as Will drove back inside. He knew I loved a challenge.
////
The answer, as it happened, was three.
But then, Domingo was unusually quick to arrive. He came in like he always did: nearly silently, without knocking—not that there was any expectation for him to knock. It was always a wonder that a man so large could be so stealthy, but Domingo was a wonder in so many ways that this particular detail hardly made the list.
He came over to the side of the bed, approaching just as my third orgasm of the set was beginning to subside, and he must have been able to tell that Will was struggling to hold on, because he grabbed him by the base of his cock, pulled him out of my cunt, and jerked him off. Will's semen sprayed out over my stomach in several thick strands and Domingo didn't let him fall back onto the bed until he'd completed his deposit.
There were two reasons why this was exactly the kind of thing that I might have expected from Domingo. The first was that he liked to keep us all off balance, the kind of delightful destabilization that somehow only ever left everyone laughing, never crying. True enough, Will was giggling like a schoolboy, now that he'd regained enough composure to make coherent sound, like he had just become the punchline of a great joke.
The second reason played out before my eyes as Domingo leaned over me, stuck out his long, pierced tongue, and began to lap up every drop of semen that clung to my skin. I wriggled under his attention, simultaneously hot and cold, wet and dry, rough and smooth, but I made no protest—how could I ever—and I wiggled and spread myself to present every angle he needed to leave me wholly cleaned of Will's mess.
To call Domingo a gentle giant would have seemed cliche, but one could hardly come up with a more apt description. He towered over both of us, possessing the kind of height that forced him to duck through doorways—and that was when he wasn't already going through them sideways due to his excessive breadth. I had known grown adults who were shorter than the span of his shoulders, or so it seemed in dim light of pre-dawn.
Size alone would have made him fearsome, but then there was the cacophony of tattoos covering just about every open patch of skin below his neck, the heavy piercings in his ears, brows, lip, and tongue, and his strange insistence on wearing camouflage, but never in patterns that made any sense. Where could you be hiding that cyan-on-magenta splotches would make you blend in with the background? Where, for that matter, did he even get them?
But beneath all that rough aesthetic was one of the sweetest, kindest individuals I'd ever had the fortune to know. He was studying to be a veterinarian, for fuck's sake. I didn't think I'd ever heard him curse except in ardor, let alone utter a cruel word against any but those who would cause harm for harm's sake. It also didn't hurt that he seemed to like to fuck as much as I did.
Did I regret taking so many lovers? Not for a second. I was happiest in a crowd and I loved them all. Maybe I never thought about having kids with Domingo, but I already knew he'd make the world's coolest uncle. I hadn't thought about moving in with Shuhui, but there was no one I'd rather have living next door.
I closed my eyes, trying to focus my racing thoughts.
Amber eyes stared back at me.
As suddenly and as violently as ever, I was reminded of her need. Could Will and Domingo could see my cunt all-but-instantly swell and shimmer? Maybe they could, because Will helped me up onto all fours as Domingo discarded his muscle shirt and purple-black fatigue pants. He'd already left his boots at the door.
Domingo's cock was built like he was: broad and thick as a tank, if perhaps not so long as a tank gun. I didn't know how, but it seemed like he was always hard, too, at least whenever he had his pants off. When you needed him, he was there and ready, even if he'd just gotten off a moment before, even if you'd just said: "Hi, wanna fuck?"
Will reached around to fondle my clit, making sure I was wet and ready to receive my next challenger, not that I needed it. I took the opportunity to fish for his cock as it dangled in front of my face, catching it and appraising its soft length, tasting the remnants of his last orgasm still clinging to the tip.
Domingo retrieved a condom from Will's dresser and rolled it over himself, followed by a heavy dollop of lube. He was nothing if not conscientious. Then, he sauntered around to the foot of the bed, clapping one big hand on either side of my ass and spreading me even wider than I'd spread myself.
"May I?" he requested, voice reverberating through me even though it was soft as a whisper.
"Please!" I squealed.
He pressed his cock against my vulva, running it back and forth with a few quick strokes, mixing my natural wetness with the artificial lube, and then pushed.
I loosed a low and strangled yowl, thankfully muffled by Will's cock. It didn't matter how many times Domingo fucked me, it was always a bit of a shock—a delightful destabilization. It was also a study in contrasts: he didn't penetrate nearly so deeply as Will, but he was practically twice as big around. It was like getting fisted but with a gentler shape.
Domingo bottomed out, his thick trunk slamming and jiggling against my ass, then withdrew, only to thrust in and bottom out again, causing an even louder reaction to emit from my half-plugged throat. He repeated this process a mere four more times and then pulled out completely, leaving me cold and empty.
It occurred to me what he had in mind only a moment too late to prepare myself. Will was quicker on the draw and grabbed me again by the back of the head, pulling my mouth fully onto him. He left me no space to breathe, let alone scream as Domingo pushed his cock into my ass, spreading that hole as wide as it had ever been spread with the sheer unrelenting force of him. I couldn't tell you how long it took for him to fully enter me—I couldn't remember what numbers were, let alone count them—but once he started he didn't stop until he'd gone as far as he could go.
Then, he started moving again.
I clamped my eyes shut to keep from crying—not from pain, for there was no pain at all. I'd trained for this, I'd done it many times before, but that didn't make it any less than completely overwhelming. And, in the darkness behind my eyelids, Thusia was waiting.
In that place that was real but not real, that place where I was myself but not myself, that place where I could be everything I wanted but could never really be, I wasn't skewered between my lovers, but spit-roasted by twinned fox goddesses, one large, one less so, both too strange and beautiful to be believed. They were the ocean and I was the tide. They passed me between them on the curl of their buffeting waves, leaving me ripped apart and put back together again with every alternating thrust.
Will pulled out of my mouth when I cried out Thusia's name.
I looked at him in panic, the illusion dispelled. Domingo seemed not to have noticed and kept on rhythmically pumping himself into my ass, an act whose ramifications were only heightened by my newfound clarity. My grip on my senses wavered as the cascade of sensations overwhelmed me, but when I finally found the resolve to meet Will's gaze, I almost cried again. There was a kind of sadness spelled across his face, yes, but it held neither anger nor disapproval, only resolute determination.
He broke our stare to make a silent exchange with Domingo and I found myself in motion. Domingo lifted me by the waist and clutched me beneath my thighs, holding me wholly off the bed and in the open air, all the while keeping my ass jammed down on his cock. He took three steps back away from the bed—enough to give Will room to stand. I wrapped one arm around his thick neck to help support my weight, not that he needed it.
In all our bouts and configurations, we'd never actually done this before. It was enough to make me wonder if the two of them had been practicing without me. So much the better for me, if so.
Will stepped lightly towards me, careful not to lose his balance while moving across the bed, and onto the floor. I could practically feel the heat of this bold, new energy coming off of him in waves. He stroked himself idly, less in preparation than as an aperitif for what was to come. And then, when he'd drawn close enough that the head of his cock brushed against my clit, close enough that I really could feel the heat coming off his skin, the door to his little room opened and Shuhui stepped inside.
"Sorry I'm late!" she bubbled. "And—whoa, hello, boys."
Will wheeled around with an appreciative grin—Shuhui's entrance was never a thing you wanted to miss—and my soft sigh of disappointment was so out of character that it immediately sent Domingo into peals of soft laughter. That, as a consequence, nearly stirred up another orgasm as the bouncing of his chest also bounced his cock and me astride it.
"Oh, fuck, ngh," I gasped. "Domingo, you're gonna break me."
"I don't think so, amiga," he chuckled, giving me a peck on the cheek.
As if to make a point, Domingo smoothed his motion, but he didn't stop, and I was forced to take in Shuhui's appearance while being dragged up and down along his cock in my ass. However difficult, it was well worth the trouble on both counts.
She wore a long jacket, thin enough to be in season but thick enough to hide what was held beneath, and had a tube on a strap slung over one arm. Normally, that would contain blueprints—Shuhui was on track for a Master's in architecture—but I could pretty much guess what it contained tonight. A proper reveal would have to wait, however, as she tossed it onto the bed with little regard for its sturdy contents.
Shuhui stepped out of her coat in one fluid motion as she drew closer to us, unveiling a filigreed slip dress, decorated with the outlines of lacy flowers that did absolutely nothing to hide absolutely anything, cut from shoulder to navel in a deep v, such that her bosom was entirely exposed. She must not have felt like dealing with heels this early in the morning, because she'd worn the same easy-on, easy-off sandals that I had. Somehow, that just made me love her so much more.
She was the smallest of us by every measure, but that never seemed to matter: every curve, every angle, every piece of her was sculpted as if from marble, like she'd walked straight out of a grecian colonnade and simply said: "Yah, I'm real."
Her tits were appreciably smaller than my own, but they had an almost-unnatural, gravity-defying roundness to them that just made you want to stare. And squeeze. And then stare some more. And then maybe have a taste.
The fact that Shuhui could be so impossibly graceful while missing her left leg from below the hip was—well, she would scream at me if she said it out loud, but I just didn't see how I could have pulled it off, were our roles reversed. It hadn't been by birth, either. An accident, she'd say, but they all knew better than that. It was collateral damage, the price of growing up in a war-torn nation and getting out a little too late in her life to stay entirely intact.
Will's fingers curled inside of my cunt and the intrusion snapped me out of maudlin thoughts. Had he realized that my mind was wandering? He probably had, though he didn't even look my way. Bastard.
Shuhui drew close enough that I could smell her perfume, some flower that I couldn't place mixed with labdanum and vanilla, enough to cut through the heady stench of sex that already permeated the room. She kept coming closer until she could take my chin in her hand—gently extracting Will's fingers and replacing them with her own—and lean me down for a deep kiss. Our tongues entwined and danced and even Domingo fell still inside of her, if only long enough to let us have our moment.
"Thusia?" Shuhui whispered, when we finally parted.
"Mmhmm," I sighed.
Of the lot of them, Shuhui was the only one who really believed my stories, believed them in her soul. Will would stand by me, come what may, but Shuhui could have been a child of the light herself—whatever that really meant.
She drew close, letting her tits press into mine, running her body down my body, replacing her fingers with her lips and tongue and giving me a second, even deeper greeting. Domingo took this as a stage direction and once again began to drag my ass along the length of his cock, his short movements causing Shuhui to rock her head back and forth, chasing my cunt until she could match his rhythm.
"Fuck me," Shuhui sighed, pulling away. "I could do that all day. Maybe I will. But first, I'm sorry—not sorry—that I interrupted. I believe Will was just getting to something, wasn't he?"
She stood and gave Will a playful smack on the ass. He responded transversely, leaning in to give her a quick, fierce kiss square on the lips. I giggled with the joy of watching Will kiss my other lovers.
It happened so quickly then that I thought I'd slipped back into a dream. Will shifted into position directly in front of me and put his cock inside my cunt. He didn't thrust it to the hilt, this time. Instead, he took a page from Domingo's relentless approach, slipping in and up and slowly but surely never stopping until his belly touched mine. Just like that, I was sandwiched between the two of them.
I had been double-penetrated—and then some—many times before, but never quite like this. I'd never flown before. As if to prove the concept, Domingo let go of my thighs, just for a moment, and let the pressure of gravity alone spear me on their two cocks. I thought I might topple and break them all in one foolish act of chaos, but they held beneath me. Then, each of them took a leg in hand and they began to fuck me in earnest.
Over Will's shoulder, I noted that Shuhui had posted herself at the foot of Will's bed as an anything-but-innocent bystander. With one hand, she fondled herself, pinching first one nipple and then the other, squeezing herself in a way that made me so, so jealous. She pushed aside the barely-there fabric of her bodysuit and fingered herself with her other hand, splaying her lips wide enough that I could see the pink of her inner cunt.
It was a race, then. She didn't say it, but we both knew it. Under her present circumstances, I thought that I might have the advantage, but I was five or six or seven orgasms in, while she was fresh and hot. Plus, I got to feel, but she got to watch.
I felt my breath quicken, felt the fire swirling in my veins, felt my throat grow numb with screaming. I didn't even realize that I'd been screaming until just then. But she was right there with me, fingers diving, chest heaving, tongue clawing at the air. I couldn't have said which of us came first, in the end, but we sure as fuck both did. Shuhui's ass thumped against the bed as her insides tried to become her outsides, even as I vibrated between the two men and their jabbing, driving, gouging cocks.
Perhaps it was just something in the air, but that put them both over the edge, too. I felt Domingo's cock grow somehow even larger inside my ass, and then the hot swelling of his semen filling up the condom. Will was not so subtle, groaning as he thrust up into me with increasing force, filling me with liquid fire.
Domingo pulled out first, exiting my gaping ass with a soft sucking sound. He lifted me off Will's cock—he didn't have much more strength left than I did—and laid me down in Shuhui's waiting arms.
For the first time all night, I didn't know if I could keep going. I told Shuhui as much. Or, at least, I tried to. I don't think the words came out right.
She seemed to get the idea, one way or another, and cooed at me, laying her down in the bed. At some point in the aftermath of our orgasms, she'd stripped out of her bodysuit and turned down the duvet, which she now pulled up over the two of us, wrapping our naked bodies together in a soft cotton package.
"Rest, my little harlot," Shuhui whispered.
"I'm bigger than you," I mumbled.
"My big harlot, then," she corrected.
I tried to say something clever in response, but couldn't think of anything sufficiently amusing before I drifted into a deep and dreamless sleep.
////
I woke again to the sound of a crop.
It was warm, still, but I was alone beneath the covers, which had been pulled lightly over my head to shield her from the morning sun. Judging by the shadows on Will's headboard, it must have been after eleven already. I sat up slowly, feeling my pleasant aches, the evidence of my lovers' passage, and sought the source of the noise.
Domingo knelt on hands and knees beside the bed. He was still fully naked and his cock, rigid as ever, pointed itself at the floor, drooling with his arousal. Shuhui stood behind him, similarly unclad, the riding crop held lightly in her hand as she rained lazy blows—although I knew from experience that Shuhui's discipline was never anything but surgical and sharp—across the broad half-moons of his ass.
"Where's Will?" I murmured.
"Gone to class," said Shuhui, looking over at me with an easy smile. "He should be back this afternoon, but asked us to stay with you, just in case you woke before then."
I couldn't fault Will for his absence: it was harder to play hooky when you were the T.A.
"Have to pee," I grumbled and I excused myself to the bathroom.
In other circumstances, I might have put that fact to better use, but I wasn't in the mood to make a mess out of anything but myself, today. I pondered as I pissed, thinking back on my few hours of quiet repose. It wasn't so much that I could fuck the specter of Thusia away, but sometimes it did go like this. A few hours of effort for a few minutes of peace.
I closed my eyes as I washed my hands. Seeing those amber eyes stare back at me was like looking in a mirror. I saw Thusia—not as she was, but as she would have been—as if she were my own reflection. That familiar, inescapable fire stirred in my delta, and I was relieved again that the both of them had stayed. Some days, I could simply live with the feeling, coexist with the conflagration, and carry on as if I were any other person.
Today was not one of those days.
I returned to the bedroom, certain that they would be able to tell that I was already hot and bothered, ready to offer myself to them, but they had changed positions while I was away. Domingo sat in a chair in the corner, his cock pointing at the ceiling and drooling on the vinyl. His face was pleased but placid, a sign that he was present but making neither offer nor demand. Shuhui had moved back to the bed and was sitting up against the headboard. She patted the space beside herself as I drew nearer, inviting me to come sit.
"Shuhui, please," I mewled. "It started back up again. I need you."
She patted the bed again, serenely insistent.
I nearly fell into her arms, desperately seeking physical attention, but she held me tight against her bosom in nothing more erotic than a hug. At some point, I finally let myself cry. She held me, letting my tears roll over her tits, smearing her skin with salt.
It hadn't always been like this. My visions of Thusia—those omnipresent amber eyes—had started up immediately after her death, but they hadn't always been so potent. They hadn't always made me into an animal, blind with need. I'd managed on my own, for a while, and then I'd found my way back to Will just in time for my weakness to become untenable. When he couldn't be enough, anymore, we'd found others.
Now, though, even all of them combined had started to feel insufficient. I could be as flippant as I wanted about going to class, but my unchecked sexual appetite was starting to get in the way of my degree. What would I do with her life if it all fell apart? How did a child of the light make a living?
"What does it mean that it's getting worse?" I sobbed. "Does it mean she's coming back? Or does it mean that she's gone forever?"
"I don't know, sweetie," said Shuhui, softly. "I wish I did. But we're here for you, no matter what. We'll figure it out, together. We'll find you what you need."
To punctuate this notion, she slid her hand along my inner thigh and parted my already-slick vulva with one slender finger, twirling it inside me in just such a way that it set my hips instantly squirming.
She pulled me into another kiss, sparring and colliding with my lips before neatly mimicking the movements of her finger in my cunt with her tongue in my mouth. Maybe it would drive my ghosts away if she kissed me like this every morning, I thought, but when my eyes fluttered closed as I sank into her luscious touches, there was Thusia, waiting, yearning, and ready.
I grabbed Shuhui by her hips and lifted her up, directing her to plant her knees—one warm and soft, one cold and hard—on either side of my head and bringing her vulva into my tongue's reach. There could be no better breakfast.
Between the shroud of her thighs around my ears and the loud, wet sounds I so happily and sloppily produced—plus the fact that the man made no fucking sound at all when he moved—it was little wonder that I missed that Domingo had moved across the room until his hands wrapped around my feet. He lifted my heels, holding my legs as rigidly pointed at the ceiling as his own cock had been, not long before. I felt a rush of cool air on my exposed cunt but it was quickly covered over by the warm pressure of his lubed and latex-sheathed cock.
I snarled and shuddered at this welcome invasion, nearly toppling Shuhui from her previously-stable perch, but she was not so easily unsaddled. She dug her fingers into the headboard for balance and took control, grinding her cunt against my face in little whorls, bringing herself even faster towards her finish line—which, for us, was always more of a starting line.
Domingo, however, was in no mood to play. He thrust into my cunt, not fast but hard, one pounding stroke after another, exhibiting himself at his very most relentless. He could keep going for hours like this if I needed him to—and I was very much tempted to let him, to hell with my ability to walk back to my dorm—but we'd all have more fun if I let Shuhui get involved, so I focused on my task at hand, redoubling my efforts. My reward was twofold: first, the mellifluous trill of her orgasmic moans as she arched her back in full strain; second, a sudden wet rush, splashing and running down my face, washing away all traces of my tears.
When her shaking stopped, I pushed Shuhui backwards and drew her against me, bringing our cunts lip-to-lip. Correctly gauging my intentions without breaking his stride, Domingo pulled out of me and thrust into her, making her writhe and leaving her wanting when he pulled back out of her and thrust back into me. This became his new pattern: three or four plunges into me, three or four plunges into her.
It was wonderful, but it seemed he wouldn't last nearly as endlessly with this polyrhythmic approach. His strokes became increasingly ragged and uneven. His unerring aim began to drift. I could feel him pulse a little harder with every return. Finally, delightfully, I'd made him the implement of his own destabilization.
Shuhui, her body propped up by the mass of my tits, calmly held my gaze. She was a total mess on the inside, no doubt, based on how much she struggled to keep from making atrociously lewd mouth sounds with every one of Domingo's thrusts, but she was trying to keep it together. This meant everything to her—and that meant everything to me.
"I mean it," she gushed in-between her turns. "I'm never going to leave you, Jess. I don't know whether the spirits have already done their worst to you or if their worst is yet to come, but I do know that I will be a part of your life, for now and for always. This I promise. This I swear."
It was this affirmation, more than anything else, that pushed me over the edge. Visions of an easy, happy future blossomed in my mind, bright enough to drown out even the amber eyes. I saw a house, a family, a community, even children. Will was there, as he'd always been, but so was Shuhui, clear and lovely. The others were there, but they stood at the periphery, all hazy and indistinct, all except those two.
Domingo flipped Shuhui onto her back, dropping her beside me on the bed. He stepped back, ripping himself free of his condom. His climax arrived with a few practiced tugs, like he'd done with Will, and while he might not be as long as a tank gun, he certainly came like one. He sprayed our still-writhing bodies with six or seven gouts of hot, wet, and sticky and then kept on going after I lost count. Only when his floodgates closed did he allow himself to collapse, falling crosswise at the foot of the bed, near enough for him to run an idly soothing hand across our tangled ankles, but far enough to remove him from my sight.
I tried to muster the words to thank him, but my ragged throat refused to comply. He grunted happily from his spot on the floor, just the same. He knew I was grateful.
Shuhui stirred and rolled even closer, planting a kiss on my cheek, then another on my throat, then another on each of my nipples, then another, softer than all the rest, on my lips.
"Nothing has to change," she whispered, for my ears alone. "I love a crowd, too."
My fingers found the place between her thighs, but my eyes were full of questions, searching hers. She smiled at me, calm amidst the un-calm. Her fingers found my own place and we winced and squirmed as we thumbed each other's center. It was an easy orgasm to coax forth and it hit us each like a disaster. We were toppled by the hurricane. We were sundered by the earthquake. We were together and we were spent.
Or, rather, she was. As corporeally exhausted as I was, I felt energized rather than enervated. I was giddy at the little tremors that ran between our coupled bodies. I was elated by the barrage of seed that slowly dried on my skin. I was overcome by the promise of things to come.
I felt proud. I felt glad.
Was this what it meant to be a child of the light?
I closed my eyes, ready to meet Thusia. She was there, as she always was, a figure of skin and light, a creature of fur and fire, an apparition from beyond my world yet so much at home in it. I felt the tongues of her secret flame. They lashed me and bound me to her insatiable desire. Nothing had to change, but some things could, if I tried. I was a little less afraid than I'd been the day before, and maybe a little wiser. I might be happiest in a crowd, but happiness alone couldn't save my life. I needed the rock of my port. I needed the wind in my sails.
Yes, I was happiest in a crowd, but happiness alone couldn't save my life. At the rate I was going, I wouldn't survive long enough to build a house or have children or to do any of the rest of it, no matter who I did it with.
Yes, I loved them all, but a plurality of lovers wouldn't stem the tide. It wasn't enough to just keep feeding my desire—I had to find a way through its storm. I needed the rock of my port. I needed the wind in my sails.
I don't know whether I fell asleep or if I just lost myself in watching Shuhui's breath rise and fall, but when the door to the little room opened and Will stepped through, Domingo was already gone, his egress as silent as it always was. Will sat next to me on the bed, smelling of chalk and textbooks and the professor's cheap cologne. I wiggled my nose and he rose again, undressing with a theatrically put-upon sigh. The gentle disturbance of his coming and going was enough to stir Shuhui from her nap and she looked up at him, newly naked, and then at me, naked as before, and grinned like a wolf.
Maybe I could mix persistence with pleasure. Maybe I could find a refuge without sacrificing the crowd. Maybe I could have both.
For now, I'd settle for having the both of them, as many times as they would allow.