Crown of Thorn and Light

Maren

I arch into Alaric's kiss when his mouth moves over mine, one hand sliding into my hair while Aldric stays close enough behind me that I can feel the heat of him. Somewhere in the part of my brain that apparently still works while two men I don't remember meeting are touching me like my body already understands them, I know none of this should feel this familiar. I don't know this room. I don't know how I got here. I don't know why Alaric's white hair and pale eyes or Aldric's black hair and green eyes feel less like details I'm noticing for the first time and more like things I've somehow always known. None of that changes the way I lean into both of them before either has to ask what I like.

"Oh, God," I breathe when Aldric kisses his way back up my body, the sound coming out loud enough that I should probably care who can hear me through whatever walls surround this room. I don't.

He looks up, green eyes locked on mine, and the pleased look in them makes me want to smack him almost as much as it makes me want to pull him closer. "Fuck, Princess," he growls before adding, "you really do want us."

I manage to tell him, "You say that every time like you're shocked," but then he kisses me again and whatever sarcasm I had planned disappears.

Aldric laughs against me, low and rough, and I hate how much I like the sound. It isn't just the heat between us either, which would at least make sense. Something about him feels familiar in a way that has no business happening with a man I don't remember meeting. That's concerning. A stranger isn't supposed to make my chest hurt too. I reach for Alaric partly because I need something else to focus on, catching the front of his shirt and pulling him closer. A guttural "fuck" leaves him when I kiss him, but even then he watches me too closely, pale eyes tracking every change in my face instead of simply letting himself enjoy it.

"Do you want us, Princess?" Aldric asks, lifting his head again. There isn't anything complicated in his expression. He wants me, believes I want him, and apparently considers that enough information to work with for the moment.

"Yes," I breathe because pretending otherwise would be ridiculous, but the second I answer, Alaric's jaw tightens. It's barely a reaction, just enough that I notice because I've been staring at him, and suddenly I care about it far more than I should. "What's wrong?" I ask, my hand stilling against his chest.

Alaric shakes his head once and murmurs, "Nothing that belongs in this moment," which is such an annoyingly formal answer for a naked man standing this close to me that I actually laugh.

"That's not an answer," I tell him, and he gives me the kind of look people usually reserve for someone who's being difficult on purpose.

"Maren, for once, let the question wait."

Before I can decide whether to be offended by the fact that Alaric apparently thinks I ask too many questions despite the tiny problem of me not knowing how he knows that about me, Aldric mutters, "He questions everything. Ignore him."

Alaric immediately turns his head. "I don't question everything."

Aldric's hand settles possessively over my thigh while he looks at his brother. "You questioned whether we should answer her."

My hand stills against Alaric completely, because that sounds a lot less random than I want it to. "Answer me?" I repeat, but Alaric's expression closes before I can get anything useful from it.

"Not now," Alaric says to his brother, irritation cutting through the control in his voice, but Aldric doesn't look remotely sorry.

He looks at me instead, running both hands up my sides before saying, "Later. I promise. Right now, come here." I should care more about the weird conversation. I really should. Unfortunately, the way his voice drops sends heat straight through me, and apparently my body has priorities even when the rest of me would really like an explanation. I let him pull me closer, glaring at him just long enough to make sure he knows he hasn't gotten out of the question forever.

Aldric grins because, apparently, he likes me irritated too. "Your body was built for sin," he says, moving both hands over my hips with absolutely no shame about staring.

Alaric steps closer in front of me and corrects quietly, "It was built for her."

The difference shouldn't matter, but it does enough that I look up at him. Something unsettled crosses his face before he reaches down and brushes my hair away from my cheek, and for one strange second nobody is touching me anywhere sexual. Aldric's palm is warm against my lower back, Alaric's hand is against my face, and the ache in my chest comes back hard enough that I immediately resent both of them for managing to make perfectly good sex emotional.

Nope. We're not developing feelings for men I don't even remember meeting. Absolutely not.

Then Alaric steps closer and whatever part of my brain is still trying to solve how I got here mercifully loses the argument with the part that knows exactly what I want. I pull Alaric down to kiss me while Aldric stays pressed close behind me, and somewhere between one breath and the next, questions stop being the most important thing in the room.

"Goddess, you feel so fucking good," Aldric mutters, his voice rougher now. "I knew you would."

Alaric's attention snaps toward him again, and there it is, that same resistance I keep catching without understanding. Aldric has none of it. Whatever this is, he seems to have accepted the entire thing before I even knew there was something to accept. He looks at me with the kind of certainty that should be terrifying from a stranger, except nothing in me wants to back away from him. Alaric feels the same pull, I know he does because I can see what happens to his face every time I touch him, but instead of relaxing into it, he looks angry at the entire idea. I would ask why if they weren't currently making useful questions almost impossible.

After that, the details blur into heat, breath, hands, and the strange certainty that both men somehow know when to push and when to stop. By the time we finally slow down, I'm shaking and breathless, with Alaric steadying me and Aldric's hand warm against my stomach. For several seconds nobody says anything, and the quiet somehow feels more intimate than everything that came before it.

Aldric turns me carefully onto my back and cups my face with both hands, his black hair falling around us before he kisses me. There is nothing hesitant in the kiss or in the way he keeps me close after, and when he finally pulls back, he studies me with that same impossible certainty. "You're perfect," he says, which is ridiculous enough that common sense finally shows up late to the party.

"You don't know me," I whisper.

His mouth curves into a small smile. "I will."

Alaric looks away, and that hurts far more than it has any right to. I push onto one elbow and stare at him until he looks back. "And what about you?"

His pale eyes meet mine, and for one second the careful expression disappears. I see the want. I see something deeper than the wanting that we both feel, something that matches the strange pull in my own chest, but instead of looking relieved by it, he looks pissed. Then the control comes back down over his face and he says, "I don't know what I think yet."

I snort because if a man I barely know is going to hurt my feelings, I at least get to be rude about it. "Well, that's romantic."

Aldric laughs outright, while Alaric's mouth twitches despite himself. The humor disappears a second later when he glances past me at something I can't see. "Maren, listen to me." The words land wrong enough that my stomach tightens.

"What?" I ask, looking between them.

"We have to go," Alaric answers, and the ache in my chest gets worse so fast I actually press a hand over it. I barely know these men. Technically, I don't know them at all, so there is absolutely no sane reason for the thought of them leaving to make panic push beneath my ribs.

I don't understand any of this, but panicking isn't going to help.

Aldric reaches for my hand and threads his fingers through mine, holding on with the same certainty he has had all night. "We'll find you," he says.

"You don't even know where I am."

His expression shifts into something I can't read. "You found us first." I open my mouth to ask what the hell that means, but Piper's voice cuts through the room before I get the chance.

"Maren, get up."

I blink and the room is gone. My bedroom ceiling replaces dark stone so completely that for several seconds I don't understand what changed. Morning light pushes around the curtains, and Piper's standing in my doorway looking irritated enough to prove at least this part of my morning is familiar. My heart is still racing, my skin still feels too warm, and there is enough lingering heat under my skin that the difference between what I was just feeling and what is actually around me takes a second to settle.

"Maren, seriously. We are going to be late."

I stare at her, then at the ceiling, then toward the empty space beside my bed like two enormous pointed-eared men might somehow still be there if I look fast enough. "I'm awake," I finally manage, although even saying it feels less certain than it should.

"Your definition of awake is generous," Piper says from the doorway, and I pull the blanket down far enough to glare at her.

"My definition of friendship doesn't usually involve being screamed at before coffee either, but here we are." She laughs, throws a clean sock at my head, and tells me I have ten minutes before disappearing into the hall. I wait until I hear her moving around in the kitchen before sitting up, mostly because I need one minute to get my face under control before I see her again.

The room's completely normal. There are no men with pointed ears, no weird stone walls, no sign that anything happened besides the fact that I woke up ridiculously turned on and remember every second with a clarity that makes my stomach flip.

I glance down at myself because the question arrives before common sense can stop it. Did that actually happen? I'm still in the same ratty shirt and cutoff sweats, and still in the same bedroom that I went to sleep in. There's absolutely no evidence of what happened, except for the images inside my head, which should be reassuring but mostly it just makes the last ten minutes harder to explain.

It had to be a dream.

I sit with that for another few seconds, waiting for it to feel obvious. It doesn't. Dreams aren't usually that vivid. I don't normally wake up knowing exactly how someone's voice sounds when he says my name or remembering the weight of a hand threaded through mine. Still, the alternative is that I somehow went somewhere I can't name, had sex with two men I don't remember meeting, and returned to my own bed wearing the same clothes without a single physical sign that I left.

It had to be a dream. A very erotic, very vivid dream, even if my brain isn't fully convinced. I get up, grab clothes, and head for the shower, trying not to think about the fact that I remember both of their names or that I can still hear Aldric telling me I found them first.

By the time I get out of the shower, I've almost convinced myself I won't think about either of them again.

Almost.