Page 26

Second Supper

“Are you upset that I left?”

I turned in my seat to ask Tadhg this question as the Shadow King drove us back to the palace in a black-on-black four-seater golf cart a couple of hours later.

The green dress, which had magically cost no money, sat in a bag at my feet, along with a box of something called buttered brack slices for the palace staff.

Tadhg, who had the entire back bench of the cart to himself and took up about two-thirds of it, leaned forward to take one of my hands in both of his.

“I’m upset you didn’t tell us you were leaving.”

He kissed the back of my hand, then my palm.

“This was different than your whittling after brunch. You scared us unnecessarily when we found out you’d left the premises without making it known to anyone.”

Tadhg looked tired—bordering on weary—and I wondered if he’d been woken up from a Winter Sleepies nap to come find me.

“I’m sorry.”

“Sadie,” he warned.

“We’ve talked about the apology stuff.”

“I know, but I actually am sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. I feel terrible.”

Tadhg sighed.

“Not as terrible as I fail to feel every day about kidnapping you and bringing you here to live in a foreign place you don’t quite understand.”

“Sure, but in all fairness, I wouldn’t have understood anywhere I went,” I answered with a bittersweet smile.

“St. Ailbe kept me pretty hopeless.”

“I don’t know about that, Strawberry. I reckon you’ve made the Shadow King and me more hopeful than we’ve been in… well… ever.”

Hopeful until…

I didn’t let myself finish that thought or that sentence.

And that night after dinner, I stopped them from having “second supper,” as they liked to call me.

(Yes, I was more than caught up on the meaning of eat you in a good way by that point.)

After I’d gotten naked and they stripped down to their undies, I pressed my hands into the Shadow King’s chest and said, “No. You lie back this time.”

I’d figured I’d start with the king who required a whiteboard and a marker to mount his protest.

But the Shadow King just looked over my shoulder at Tadhg, who sat up from his usual watching position at the edge of the bed farthest from the lake-view wall.

“Strawberry, what are we on about?” His tone was half question, half warning.

“It’s already been a day.”

“I know it has, and that’s why I want to give the two of you pleasure tonight, instead of the other way around.”

Not like me…

not like me … but I made myself be bold.

I reached into the band of the Shadow King’s black boxer briefs and took his length in my hand.

“Let me have you for second supper, Shadow King.”

I stroked my hand back and forth over his length, the same way I stroked my core over Tadhg’s when he let me rub myself against him until I found my release.

The Shadow King’s eyes fluttered for a moment, but then his bright-blue gaze went back to Tadhg, obviously conflicted.

“Sadie…” Tadhg started.

“Didn’t you say that I had to be taught to please the High King?”

I continued to stroke the Shadow King, and his chest heaved…

a quicker rise and fall as he balanced on his knees, visibly trying to resist the pleasure of my strokes.

“Jayzus Christ,” Tadhg groused behind me.

“I knew letting you hang out with my sister, even for a little while, would be a colossally bad idea.”

I wanted to tell him Brigid had nothing to do with this, but he continued on before I could.

“The High King will never use your hand or your mouth. At least not until he’s planted a cub in you. That’s not how bears work.”

Tadhg’s voice became coarse again.

“Once we have ye for proper, all we desire is to fill you with our babies, and we’re positively diabolical about it until we get what we want.”

I slowed my strokes.

But maybe he was right about Brigid being a bad influence on me.

“So you’re saying that if I want to have you for supper, it has to be now. Before the end of the year—which is in less than two weeks.”

“Sadie, you don’t have to—” Tadhg started.

“I want to,” I said, holding the Shadow King’s gaze.

“Look at me. Not him. I want to. I want to.”

To his credit, the Shadow King did look me in the eye.

It felt like getting scanned for every version of my consent until he gave in with a nod.

This time without looking to Tadhg for approval.

The Shadow King was not a moon god—I’d asked after a particular mind-shattering session of eating me in a good way.

But the feeling of having been granted a divine audience wouldn’t leave my chest as I pushed his boxer briefs down and bent over to take him in my mouth as enthusiastically as he always did me?—

What is that?

I blinked. Then froze.

The Shadow King’s equally pale moon penis sported four black balls on its head.

One on top, one on the bottom, and one on each side—left and right.

Not god tech. But piercings.

Actual piercings. As if someone had stuck both a horizontal pin and a vertical pin through the head, then attached balls to all the ends.

Four black balls, glinting in the low overhead light.

“Something wrong, Strawberry?” Tadhg’s question had more than a hint of amusement in it.

“Pulled out more than you can eat for second supper?”

He infuriatingly didn’t add anything else.

No explanations. No instructions.

Just a quiet snerking sound.

I was pretty sure it was him snickering at me.

I didn’t dare look back over my shoulder at him.

Or up at the Shadow King, who was probably regarding me with pity.

Waiting for me to give up.

That left only one choice, as far as I was concerned.

I think I surprised all of us when I closed my eyes and took the Shadow King in my mouth—swallowing him down, strange balls and cross piercings and all.

After that, I only had my instincts to guide me.

I concentrated on taking him as deep as I could without choking.

The Shadow King wasn’t as thick as Tadhg, but he was long, with a slight curve that made the balls on his piercings rub against the top of my throat.

The sensation wasn’t unpleasant, and my core heated with a new, curious question: What would it be like to have him inside me?

To have this pierced length go the same places his tongue had when he beared it out inside me?

That question made me moan.

That moan made me take him even deeper.

Tadhg remained silent as a piece of disapproving stone.

But I sensed I was doing a good job when the Shadow King sank from his knees to his bottom, bringing me with him and guiding my bobbing head as he lay back on the bed.

I hadn’t taken my hair out of the two braids I’d put it in before brunch.

He lodged his fingers underneath them, encouraging me to bob faster and faster.

Pulling me farther down so I had no choice but to choke or open my throat.

I happily opened my throat, welcoming the metallic feel of his strange jewelry.

I stretched an arm up his body, settling one palm over his pec.

His heart was racing, and his chest was rising and falling at a pace that probably would have made a sound—if he was into that.

No, I didn’t have to.

But I’d never wanted to please someone so much in my life.

Not Reuben. Not my mother.

Not even myself.

I relished the opportunity to attend to him like this, and when his hips began to jerk, I kept on sucking to the best of my ability.

Swallowing every drop before letting him out of my mouth, spent and fully deflated.

My core was achy and throbbing.

But the blissed-out look on my moon god’s face…

for a moment, I completely understood how he and Tadhg felt.

My pleasure was a distant priority at the moment—an unnecessary thing in comparison to that of my two kings.

I turned to Tadhg, who was now sitting upright on the bed with an expression that bordered on horrified.

Worse than when we were watching the people on his complicated money show make increasingly bad choices.

“Don’t, Sadie…” he warned.

So it was Sadie now?

Not Strawberry ?

Something about the switch made me smile inwardly…

and begin crawling over to him anyway.

“Sadie… Sadie…” he warned over and over again until I was crawling on top of him, using my lips and breasts to softly knock him onto his back and take his thick, straining cock in my hand.

“Don’t do this.”

“Don’t do this good , or don’t do this bad ?” I asked, stroking my hand up and down.

“Feck, don’t do this good!”

Tadhg knocked the back of his head against the bed, frustration etched into his face along with hunger.

“Have mercy on me, though, Strawberry. Only your hand. I’m not the Shadow King. Don’t think I can go on with the memory of your sweet mouth on my cock if this doesn’t go the way we want.”

I understood.

And I wished I didn’t.

As someone who’d been bound by rules all her life, I knew how hard they were to break.

But I had to ask.

“It’s not ancient times anymore. And this doesn’t feel reasonable. What would happen if the three of us went against the High King’s ruling?”

I looked over to the Shadow King, who was now sitting back up on the bed, his jeweled penis retucked away behind his briefs.

But my moon god just shook his ethereal head.

And Tadhg seemed to speak for both of them when he said, “Do ye think we haven’t thought of that?” Tadhg regarded me with a pained look.

“But it’s not just the two of us who’ll be affected if we go against his ruling.”

Tadhg shook his head.

“The High King’s is the original line—the one that always gets the final say. The continuation of both our lines is at his discretion. If we go against him, the Irish Bears will have only one king. Our castles will be collapsed. Our entire line will be banished from the Secret Kingdom. That includes Brigid and her husbands and the cubs she’ll be dropping any day.”

Brigid, who was on the brink of having two babies, and whose husbands had given up so much to fulfill her dream of living in the Secret Kingdom—the hometown she loved—for the rest of her life.

Now, I truly understood.

And that understanding made me recapture Tadhg’s lips, stroking him faster and harder until he grunted into my mouth and spurted onto his belly?—

Calling out my real name in a way that sounded like a curse.

But felt like a triumph.

I wasn’t given long to gloat, though.

The Shadow King grabbed hold of me.

Before Tadhg even had the chance to come down, Cian put me on my back and dove between my legs, his shoulders lodging into my under-knee erogenous zones as he ate me in a very, very good—I mean, incredible —way.

Retilting scales I feared would never balance out.