Kurik stroked a hand down his back as the larger man leaned into him from behind, his erection a pointed reminder that there were other things that needed attention. Rashon crawled back from the edge of passion claw by claw, his body loathe to part from hers. Still, he couldn’t resist curving his fingers over her breast, her nipple stabbing into his palm. They’d been talking about something before he’d kissed her. What? Oh, yeah. “The important thing to remember is that I’m alive and so are you. What happened?”
Her heavy-lidded gaze and passion-plumped lips made him ache to cover her again and not stop until they both came shouting. She traced her lips with her fingers. “We got a miracle,” she said, her voice dreamy. “Do you remember?”
“It’s still fuzzy. There was a priestess?”
She nodded, running her tongue over her lips. A bolt of pure lust grabbed him by the balls. He almost reached for her again but she spoke. “Her name’s Tia, and she’s the great-granddaughter of Aya, the high priestess of the Daughters of Isis.”
“A Daughter of Isis? Here?” He shook his head, dumbfounded. “I thought I dreamed that, that Isis had joined with Lord Anubis to bring me back from Duat. It was real?”
“Yeah. She’s got a lot of power. Tia and Markus joined together to heal you and brought Alonso back, too. The magic they made felt incredible.” She shivered in memory. “There’s more to the Lost Ones than we thought. All this time we believed the Lost Ones we’ve been fighting have just been poor undead souls that lost their way on the journey to the underworld, led by some who refused to go to their eternal rest. Instead, we found out that a renegade Isis witch is working with the Lost Ones, and she’s behind the curse—and the cause of the witches breaking with the jackals centuries ago. There was a big fight at the witches’ circle yesterday, but we won. We now have an alliance with the Daughters of Isis, tentative as it is, and Markus has claimed Tia as his mate.”
“Wow. An Isis witch mated to a jackal?” He gave a low whistle. “I missed a bunch.”
“Not as much as we missed you.” Kurik’s voice rumbled over his shoulder.
Rashon rolled onto his back as his lover loomed over him, yellow eyes fierce. Kurik cupped his cheek and with a whispered, “Welcome back,” claimed his mouth in a possessive kiss.
Dimly Rashon heard Amarie gasp before need pushed aside rational thought. He kept her hand in a vise grip as he returned the kiss, anchoring her as his free hand cupped the back of Kurik’s head. Kurik pressed against him, large hand slipping down Rashon’s chest and abdomen to wrap around his cock. He moaned in appreciation, lifting his hips to push himself through the other man’s fingers.
Amarie swallowed loudly as she pulled her hand free. “I, uh, I’d better go,” she stammered, rising and heading for the door.
Rashon grinned at her. “Sure you don’t want to stay?”
She jerked to a stop. He could hear her heart pounding in her chest as she swallowed again. And was that a whimper? Then she stepped through the doorway. “You guys keep on with the celebration sex. I’ll see about breakfast.”
Kurik eased back as the door slammed shut. “For a moment there, I thought you’d forgotten I was here.”
“As if I could.” Rashon pulled his lover back on top, enjoying the sensation of their cocks rubbing together. “As if I want to.”
“Right.” Kurik squeezed him again. “Is this for me or for her?”
“Both,” he admitted, because he couldn’t, wouldn’t, lie to Kurik. Not about this. “I want it to be for both. Right now, it’s for you. Fuck, don’t stop.”
Kurik stroked him as he continued his teasing. “It would serve you right if I did. I know what kissing her did to you. Kissing her instead of me. You got hard for her instead of me.”
“Not instead of.” Rashon lifted his hips, needing more. Kurik had a way of making him forget how to speak in complete sentences. “Never instead of.”
“Huh. This is what you want from her, right?” Kurik asked, yellow eyes alight with teasing, need and concern. “You want her kisses, to taste her tongue.”
Kurik kissed him then, hot and wet and open, tongues sliding alongside each other in a dance mimicked by their erections. This kiss was so different from the one with Amarie, carnal and feral compared to gentle and almost innocent. Rashon moaned, deep and guttural, as his lover kissed and nipped a path from lips to chin to throat, biting hard enough to leave teeth marks. He hissed as Kurik bit a trail to his left nipple, the pleasure knocking on the edge of pain just the way he liked it.
“Is this what you want Amarie to do to you?” Kurik demanded, softening the sting of his bite with a long sucking pressure that had Rashon digging his fingers deep into the other man’s shoulders. “You want her to do this while I watch?”
“Yes. Gods, yes,” Rashon confessed. The vision Kurik painted with his words had him panting, his balls drawn up and tight with the need to come.
Kurik stopped, putting space between them, his eyes darkening with concern. “Maybe we should wait for the priestess to give you a clean bill of health.”
“No.” Rashon lifted his hips. “I think you know how to make sure I’ve recovered. I want you. I want her. I want you together.”
“You think you’re ready?” Kurik nodded toward the bedroom door. “You think she’s ready?”
“I don’t know.” Rashon sighed, worry pushing desire away for the moment. “I hope so. But we probably scared her off.”
“She might be scared, but she’s also aroused.” Kurik paused, staring down at him. “I know I was dragging my ass on this, but after what happened, I don’t think we should wait anymore.”
Rashon held his breath. “So you really want to do this? You want to ask her to be our third?”
“Yeah. What if she doesn’t want to breed? She’s rejected every attempt by the other males to get with her.”
“Or maybe it’s because you growl at every male but me and Markus who come near her. Besides, just because she hasn’t bred yet doesn’t mean she doesn’t want to. Maybe she’s waiting for us to make our move.”
“Then we should make it. It feels good when we’re all together.” Doubt colored Kurik’s features. “I don’t know if it’s going to work, though.”
“Why not? She’s been with our clan long enough to know female jackals can have any number of mates for however long they want to be mated. Quite a few of the women live with two men, raising the children together.”
“But they don’t share her at the same time as far as I know. The men don’t share each other.” Kurik fisted his hands. “She kissed you, not me. She chose you, not me. I won’t be kicked out of our bed.”
Rashon turned to the other man, belatedly seeing the hurt and worry, the deep love beneath. It amazed him again that they were together. With so few female jackals in their clan, the men had adopted other sexual outlets as a matter of necessity. Markus didn’t want discord between his warriors or the females, so he allowed everyone freedom of choice. Rashon had had his time with a couple of the women. He knew Kurik had, too. Neither of them had found a long-term mate until they found each other. They’d been lovers exclusively for the past hundred years, and Rashon couldn’t imagine not having Kurik in his life.
“We’re a package deal, and our bed is still our bed,” Rashon told him. “I still want you. I still need you.”
“Yeah? Prove it.”
Rashon wrapped a hand around the back of the other man’s neck, pulling him forward in a bruising kiss, a clash of lips, tongue and teeth. An edge of desperation made them both rough, almost clumsy, but Rashon didn’t mind.