Callam could imagine what she couldn’t put into words; he couldn’t find the right words to answer, either. He gave her hand another squeeze. “Let’s try,” he said. “Let’s not waste time worrying about it, let’s try right now. If it doesn’t work out the first time, we can always try again, right?”
“Yes,” agreed Rohan, looking at them with still a little confused concern, but also eager interest. At last he noticed their joined hands, and the unclaimed one Edit had extended in his direction. He took it up, finally, as he leaned closer and asked “How do we begin?”
Edit jolted at the touch, struck breathless, speechless. An instant later Callam understood why - he too felt the curious sensation, as if it were transferred through her to reach him. It was a shock. Like cold and heat a once, like being punched in the solar plexus or falling from a height to land with his breath knocked out and his head spinning, half-elated with the sudden rush of adrenaline. So this is what it feels like to touch a dragon. Wow.
It was intense, even secondhand. Even with Rohan in his human form, which, he had implied, had less effect than his native shape. But it could be nothing else; it was what they’d been warned about, tested and prepared for. Remembering that eased the shock somewhat. And mercifully, the more unpleasant sharp edges of the sensation were already fading, leaving only a sort of feverish lightheadedness that reminded Callam of that festival when he was fifteen and newly a man, when he’d stayed awake for two days straight, getting drunk on wine spirits and herb smoke and dancing for hours.
After no more than an instant, he opened his eyes—he hadn’t realized he’d closed them—and released Edit’s hand. The queer sensation ebbed suddenly. Before he could second-guess himself, Callam leaned around Edit to catch Rohan’s other hand, pull him closer, kiss him.
The feverish sensation returned with contact, a little more strongly, but not as unpleasantly sharp as in the first shocked instant. Then the warm suppleness of Rohan’s lips took Callam’s attention. They kissed softly at first, Callam exploratory, Rohan responsive, awkward at first but a quick learner. Callam brushed Rohan’s lips with his tongue and Rohan opened for him, drew it in, tasted its texture with his own, sucked lightly.
Rohan didn’t seem to need to breathe. He explored Callam’s mouth as if he could go on for hours, making a soft low rumble of enjoyment not unlike a cat’s purr. Callam breathed through his nose, needing more air as his desire rose, but reluctant to break the intoxicating kiss.
A hand stroked up his arm and came to rest on his shoulder, sending a shiver in its wake. Who knew the shoulder could be an erogenous zone? Another hand cupped his jaw, steadying him in the kiss, mirroring his own hand at the side of Rohan’s face. Other hands stroked down his chest and up his thigh, sparking arousal between the points of contact. Body warmth seemed all around him and that glorious kiss went on and on.
For long moments Callam floated in sensation, before he remembered that this affair was not his alone. Four hands to pleasure him were rather many even for a very ardent shapeshifting dragon. Edit. Can she be enjoying this as I am? She should feel this, she should have this pleasure too. He was suddenly self-conscious.
With some reluctance, he broke the kiss and dragged his eyes away from Rohan’s dreamily intent gaze. He looked to his human partner instead. Edit had shifted to accommodate the two men’s kiss; she was no longer between them but a little to the side. She was smiling a little, looking mildly pleased. Hers were the hands on Callam’s shoulder and thigh. When their eyes met she moved as if to withdraw—he was not the only one self-conscious—but when his look indicated they should stay, she smiled a little more and let them.
Rohan did not seem to share their uncertainty. Copying Callam’s gesture toward him moments before, he brought a hand up to cradle the side of Edit’s head and draw her gently toward him for a kiss of their own.
She went willingly enough. Turning toward Rohan meant moving her hands, too, for balance. Callam was surprised to fell a tiny pang of loss, though the distance between them was not any greater. In fact, facing Rohan put the whole side of her hip and thigh close against Callam’s. He let his hand that had held Rohan’s face come to rest there. Not stroking or grasping, just keeping the connection.
Hip to hip, he felt her subtle tension. It didn’t melt away as his own had done on meeting Rohan’s lips. He watched them, watched his own reaction with almost equal interest. He didn’t feel turned off or left out by their kissing. He felt honored, mostly, to be involved in what would in other circumstances have been a private moment between two alone. Rohan gentle, almost hesitant, raptly fascinated, caressing as he kissed. Edit… She did all that could be expected of a new lover, willingly enough… Callam felt her twitch, an aborted flinch, as Rohan deepened the kiss, but she did not pull back until Callam touched her shoulder a moment later to ask another turn for himself.
He’d meant to go back to kissing Rohan – he’d wanted to, anyway, and he hadn’t thought Edit would mind. But Rohan leaned back a bit with a delighted smile and suggested, “Now you together, so I may observe?” And Edit leaned in gamely, and so they were kissing.
Edit lacked Rohan’s intriguing combination of self-assured innocence and shameless curiosity, but she had some practiced skill. Turned out making out with a woman did not cool his desire either. At least not this woman, this situation. Callam’s attention was somewhat divided by thinking—pleasurably—about Rohan watching them, but he did not mistake whose hand it was when Edit palmed down the hollow of his flank, her thumb coming to rest suggestively close to his groin. His arousal rose a little higher. Could this mean she was beginning to want more, as he did?
He hardly had a chance to wonder. Rohan’s hands joined Edit’s in caressing Callam—he felt the flare of disorientation at the dragon’s touch without distress this time, as it blended with the heady rush of rising desire. They kissed for long moments more, by turns, Rohan turning Callam to him (and clearly he had learned from his observation, so confidently did he now claim his tribute’s willing mouth), then leaving Callam reeling to turn to Edit, softly and carefully, as if he would cosset her from any harm if he could not ensure her pleasure. And she was meeting him halfway and more, but... Her heart wasn’t in it.
No, Callam thought to himself, it’s not her heart that isn’t in it. Dear, hopeful, determined, stubborn Edit. If it were possible to will oneself to pleasure, she would do it if anyone could. But that’s not how it works.
“Stop,” Callam interrupted his partners. “I think we’re going about this the wrong way.” He felt the glimmering of an idea beginning to take shape, beneath the distracting thrum of his arousal and Rohan’s touch. Reluctantly he eased back enough to allow his head to clear a little; the other two separated likewise. He would so much rather have gotten closer. Body to body, skin to skin.
“This is really working for me,” he admitted a little sheepish over his easy arousal. “And Rohan, I think.” The dragon man’s purring rumble agreed. “But it’s not for you, Edit, is it?”
She hesitated. Looked at him, then away. “Not the way it is for you,” she finally allowed. Seemed about to say more, then reconsidered. One hand found her other shoulder, unconsciously. Not a defensive cross of the arms; she rubbed it absently as if it ached.
r /> “I want do something that you enjoy,” Callam told her, hoping that understanding that seemed to exist between them would work for him now. “Not a – It doesn’t need to be a sexual thing, maybe it’s better if it’s not. Just something that feels good to your body. Will you let me? Will you tell me how... What can I do?”
“I… don’t know, “ she answered. On her other side Rohan leaned closer and gave her a particularly dragonish look. “Okay, yes, I do know, I just—” she looked down, mouth twisted in a little grimace of frustration.
“You are not accustomed to having your wants considered,” Rohan guessed. “We have so much to learn of one another. Edit, I feel as Callam. I would like to give you pleasure, whether it leads to our bonding or not. Will you allow us?”
“I am sore,” said Edit. From another it might have sounded snappish or complaining; Edit just sounded resigned. “I am tired. I’m seldom warm enough. Before the last week do you know the last time I was so well fed, and rested? It is plain truth I am not used to having my wants considered. Who was there to do so? I care for myself. I have more comfort now than I have had in years, more… kindness.
“I can just accept this. Only because it is not in my nature to refuse what I want just because I hardly know what to do with it. I can’t ask for more. I can’t ask, do you see?” She looked at Callam, willing him to understand her now. He had known, of course, that her life before had been less comfortable than his, but now he began to feel it, how it was for her. It took him back a little.
So it was Rohan who answered first. “I think I see. My chosen, you need ask for nothing. You are cold; let us warm you.” He took Callam’s nearest hand in his, and the contact this time carried not only the queer feeling that Callam was beginning to think of as ‘the dragon effect’ but a strong, spreading warmth. It flowed from Rohan to Callam, then as Rohan placed their joined hands on Edit’s shoulder, continued flowing from Callam to Edit, even as Rohan moved his hand away.
Callam recalled the evening of one of the later trials, when the hours of cold had compounded the ache of the previous day’s exertion, so his body felt like one giant knot of shivering pain. And Edit had shown him how to chafe warmth into his numb hands and massage where the muscles clenched tightest, until he could move again like a live creature and not a rusted clockwork shape of a man. He began to massage Edit now in a similar way, not flirtatiously, but firmly. Rohan watched, then copied him on Edit’s other side.
It took a moment for Edit to accept the sensation. Callam remembered: that firm pressure hurt at first. And perhaps her tunic insulated her from the strange melting heat Rohan had given. He slid his hand up to the edge of the neckline, to press bare skin where the triangle of muscle sloped from neck to shoulder.
“Oh,” Edit sighed. “Oh, that’s… nice.” She let her head fall forward. Callam moved closer to allow her to rest against him, feeling a different sort of warmth rise within himself for how his self-possessed friend leaned so trustingly on him. He continued the massage up her neck despite the more awkward angle.
“This would be so much more effective if we could warm more of you at once,” Rohan remarked. “May we remove your garment? I will see that you do not become chilled.”