The Devil's Wolf

Elior's please held more than a plea not to put herself in danger by taking the winged man's proffered hand, it was a plea for her to acknowledge what was between them, what he was to her.

Her heart ached and she reached up to touch the vampire's cheek. He leaned down and kissed her, his lips lingering on hers, and his arms closing around her.

"Ashlynn," he breathed against her cheek. "Please."

She sighed and rested her forehead against his chest. A triad, she thought. She had heard of them before, mostly when people spoke of gargoyles, and much more rarely amongst werewolves. She had never, ever considered that she might be part of one. "This should not happen, my vampire, my mate," she whispered the words to him.

The tension released from his muscles, and he buried his face into her hair, stroking his hands up her back. "It is a first for me, too."

"Oh, for f-k sake," Cael snarled. "Not again."

Elior released her as she turned and took Cael's hand.

The winged man looked astonished as he lifted her up onto the bonnet. "That was foolish," he purred, nuzzling under her chin, his lips against her throat. "I could kill you in a dozen ways before your vampire mate could even react." "But you are not going to, are you?" She replied, her instincts and her hopes warring.

He drew her up against him and pressed his face into the curve of her neck, stealing her breath and sending her heartbeat soaring. "You stink of vampire."

She sniffed him back. "And you smell of hay and car oil. You need a shower and a change of clothes. And shoes," she added, looking down at his feet.

He arched an eyebrow. "I don't know what you think this is," he bared his teeth at her. "But you don't get to criticize me."

She thrust her hand into his golden hair and dragged his lips down to hers. He inhaled in surprise, and then crushed her up against him, his grip painful, one hand against her lower back, whilst the other tangled into her hair, his lips on hers demanding.

She felt him cast a spell and pushed it aside.

He tried again and growled when she shoved it away. "Stop interfering."

"Stop using your magic to do what your body should do," she replied, annoyed.

His eyes widened, surprised. She dug her fingers into his hair and dragged his mouth to hers. He groaned, his eyelids falling heavy over his blue eyes, his hips pushing against hers betraying his desire for her.

She was not sure if her body was up for another round, after Elior's earlier ravishment, and yet it seemed to have another opinion, flaring to life, and she ground back against him.

"F-k," his lips were against her jawbone.

"If you are man enough," she replied in challenge and realised she had said the wrong thing as she saw the sneer cross his face. He threw her from him suddenly, and Elior snatched her from the air, bringing her, breathless but safe, against him. "I have you, my mate," her vampire murmured cradling her against him protectively.

The golden-haired man snarled. "Siren. Succubus." He turned and lifted into the mezzanine. He spat at them from the mezzanine level before retreating into the shadows.

Ashlynn sighed wearily and pressed her face into Elior, breathing him in. Her mate, she thought. Two mates. It was incredible. "We need more blankets," she decided.

"More blankets?" Elior repeated and then groaned. He heaved a sigh at the end of it. "I will send my children to the house for more."

Jacinta's expression as she delivered told Ashlynn exactly what she thought of her making Elior sleep in the garage rather than the house.

"I cannot believe that we are sleeping on the concrete floor of a shed, when there is a perfectly good bed inside," Elior complained, echoing the expression on the blond vampire's face as he arranged the extra blankets and pillows that she had retrieved for them.

"I need to connect with him somehow," she replied under her breath, listening to the mezzanine floor creak overhead as the winged man moved around and wondering what he did up there. She could hear the sweep of his feathers against the floorboards, and occasionally a puff of dust would sift down at them, as if he were sweeping with his wings. The white feathers would be black with filth, she thought, like the hem of a bride's wedding dress at the end of the day. "You will be cold. I do not generate enough body heat to keep you warm, "Elior replied.

"I will survive. But if I get too cold,"she grinned wickedly. "I will wake you up and get you to warm me another way."

"Very well then," he smiled as he arranged himself on the blankets and held the covers open for her. "I look forward to be awoken. In the meantime, let's get some sleep." He pulled her against him and put his arm over her snuggling in so close that she could feel the press of his body from knee to shoulder and his breath stirred her hair. Her vampire, she thought with a smile, was a cuddler. Her vampire, she repeated to herself. He was hers.

"This is actually," he murmured. "Quite comfortable."

"Mmm," her eyes were heavy. He was quite right, she thought, there was something perversely comfortable about the pile of blankets over the cement floor, as if the rough setting made the bedding more luxurious in comparison. She heard the groan of metal as Cael stepped onto one of the 4WDs' roof from the mezzanine, from roof to bonnet, and then from the bonnet onto the ground. She did not open her eyes, fearing that doing so would scare him away. "Fine," Cael muttered as he slid into the blankets next to her. "I will still probably kill you."

He turned his back to her but lay in such a way that she was pressed against him much as Elior was pressed against her, and that, she thought, was absolutely deliberately done as there was room enough for him to have maintained space between their bodies.

She slid her fingers beneath the tears of his shirt which his wings had caused. The fabric of the shirt was fragile, the edges of the tears fringed as if they had been torn like that for some time. She wondered where he got his clothing from, and where he laundered it. The pale blue of the fabric was faded, stained, and creased, but it was clean, the stains worn away by washing.

She slipped her hand into the tears, to lay her palm against the heat of his skin. Through the holes in the fabric she could see that like her mother, he had faint silver scars where the wings pierced his skin when open. It hurt, she knew from her mother, to open and close them. He must have wanted to lie with her and Elior sufficiently enough to endure the pain of the wing retraction.

She put her arm around his waist and felt him sigh a moment before he adjusted her hold, holding her palm to his chest with his hand.

She was, she decided as she slipped into sleep, ridiculously comfortable between the two men, and very warm despite Elior's reduced body heat.

She surfaced from a dream of flying through the night sky to their hushed voices.

"They hunt me," Cael said.

"Well, that is unfortunate," Elior drawled. "We don't need another complication. We have a few of our own at the moment."

"It is my problem," Cael sneered back. "I will deal with it."

"Deal with what?" She wondered.

"Cael's people," Elior replied. "Apparently our friend is somewhat of a fugitive from his people."

"This is a forbidden realm. Your ancestor was betrothed to my ancestor, creating a tie between our families, which went unsatisfied when she betrayed that agreement for her human lover," Cael regarded Ashlynn with narrowed blue eyes as if he held her responsible for that initial betrayal. "That tie pulled me to rescue your mother, and for my interference in this realm, my people slaughtered my family."

"I am sorry." Her parents had spoken of Cael, but it was one thing, she thought, to understand that his family had been killed because of her mother, and quite another to hear him speak of it, the pain of his loss still so raw in his voice as if it had happened yesterday and not over twenty years before.

Which brought to mind the question of how old was the winged man? He did not look much older than her, but from the way her parents described him, and the actions attributed to him, he had to have been an adult over two decades before, too. Did Cael's people age slower that werewolves or were they frozen in time like vampires?

It should disturb her, she thought with amusement, that one of her lovers was old enough to be her father, but then, she thought, the other was old enough to be her father multiple times over. Human rules regarding age gaps simply did not apply in the Other world.

"I am the only survivor," Cael held her eyes, and his expression left her in no doubt that he thought her partially to blame for his misery. "And my people hunt me whenever I transition between realms. This is the only realm where I am free from pursuit. If they pursued me here, they would be committing the same crime that they would punish me for.

"So I am a prisoner of your realm, separated from my people. I have no home and no family," he growled it, working himself up, and his fingers closed around her throat, tightening to the edge of discomfort. "I should break your neck," he leaned forward until his forehead rested against hers, the tender gesture at odds with the violence implied by his fingers on her neck. "It would end this tie, end this torment."

He was not going to hurt her, she decided, for all his talk of doing so. She angled her head, brushing her lips over his as she held his eyes. He did not pull away and his fingers did not tighten. She stroked her tongue over his bottom lip experimentally. The expression in his eyes had changed, heating, and his breath was heavy.

He had been alone for over twenty years, she thought, with his grief twisting and curdling within him. As much anger as he harbored towards her family, he craved physical and emotional contact, was lonely for it. It was that need that had brought him to the bed, and that held him still now. The sadness of that loneliness, as much as it's cause, made her heart ache for him.

She placed her hand on his chest as she deepened the kiss, his lips parting for hers. He let her stroke her tongue against his, his eyes still fixed on hers, the pupils pinned. She moved her hand down slowly, watching him for reaction, until she closed her fingers around him. He drew in the ragged breath of a man who had not been touched in such a way in a long time.

She explored him through the fabric and felt his hips rock into her touch, seeking it. His fingers around her neck stroked the skin, the slightest caress.