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  He settled between her thighs, propping himself up on one arm, and thrust in hard.

  Nim wasn’t sure if his cock was thicker than Trajan’s or if she was tighter because of her recent orgasm, but once more she was rocked by the sweet sensation of sudden fullness. She tried to arch her back, but Trajan’s head, arm, and hand held her pinned down. With her free arm she reached for Harris, managing to grab his hair and drag his head down.

  “Kiss him,” she demanded.

  She saw Harris’s eyes widen with surprise and then narrow in desire. Trajan lifted his head, though he didn’t stop playing with her nipple, and kissed Harris. Nim lay under them, trapped and happy to be trapped, watching them kiss as Harris fucked her.

  She didn’t last long, despite the intensity of her recent orgasm. There was too much stimulation. The sight of Trajan and Harris kissing. The slow, languid twist and pull as Trajan played with her nipples. The hard, firm thrusts of Harris’s cock into her pussy.

  This time she didn’t need the direct clitoral stimulation. The orgasm built like a bowstring being drawn back, until finally the tension was too great and it was a matter of either breaking or releasing.

  Nim screamed as she came. All she could see was blinding white, and she wasn’t sure if it was because she’d lost control and manifested power as she came, or if the light around them actually went blindingly white, like a star was going supernova.

  Her thigh muscles quaked, her toes pointed, her fingers dug into the springy bedding under her, and she sobbed their names. Above her, Harris moaned, “Nim, Trajan, Nim, Trajan.”

  Their names were a litany falling from his lips, and when it was over, when he could have collapsed down on her, Trajan was there, guiding Harris to lay beside her, turning him so his back was to Nim. She was already drifting back to sleep when Trajan’s hands guided her to turn on her side and snuggle against Harris’s back. Then Trajan took up position behind her.

  Once more she was surrounded by them—warm and protected.

  Chapter 17

  Trajan didn’t sleep. He couldn’t. He felt light and, and…happy. He looked back and forth between them, between Nim and Harris.

  In the heat of the moment, kissing the other man had just seemed right. Now, it felt…still right.

  He reached his arm over Nim, resting his hand on Harris’s hip. The other man moved, laying his hand over Trajan’s and lacing their fingers together.

  They slept for an hour while Trajan kept watch over them. The sex had been a revelation. He hadn’t expected Harris to be so sexually aggressive, or for Nim to enjoy the sight of them kissing so much.

  He’d never felt like this before, not even in the one or two past relationships where he’d thought he’d been in love.

  He wasn’t a fool, however. He was well aware, and would not let himself forget, that whatever they were feeling now was a byproduct of whatever magic had transformed the forest.

  He was so caught up in his musing that he didn’t notice when Harris started to shift uneasily in his sleep, his arm twitching. When he rolled away from Nim, Trajan leaned down and kissed her shoulder and neck, waking her slowly.

  “Nim,” he whispered. “Time to get up.”

  Her eyes fluttered opened. She looked at Harris, who was blinking himself awake, then turned to look up at him. Trajan smiled down at her. Nim didn’t smile back. Instead she looked at him with a serious expression.

  Trajan dropped the smile.

  Harris made a pained noise, and Nim turned away from Trajan.

  Trajan lowered himself to lie behind Nim, needing a moment to gather his thoughts and lock down this bubbly, lovey feeling that was making him want to do stupid things like smile.

  * * * *

  “I’ll be right back,” Harris said.

  Nim nodded without looking up, but Trajan regarded him with a cool, assessing gaze. They’d spent the morning together, only venturing out of the safety of this wondrous golden cave to answer nature’s call. Nim had taught him how to make a rock glow, and Trajan had helped him visualize calling up a small breeze, which was hard to do inside the cave.

  Nim and Trajan were exploring the cave beyond their little quartz bedroom, though Trajan called it “threat assessment,” not “exploring.”

  They’d found water behind an outcropping of what looked like washing-machine-sized pieces of jade. A thin ribbon of water poured out of a hole in the wall into a small, clear pool. They’d all stared at it, wary but desperately thirsty, until finally Nim leaned forward, put her mouth under the stream and drank. Trajan and Harris had pulled her back, but not before she’d consumed enough to kill her if it was diseased or poisoned.

  They waited five minutes, watching her carefully, but there’d been no apparent reaction. Harris had gone next, gulping down mouthful after mouthful, before Trajan took his turn.

  That had been nearly an hour ago, and so far there had been no adverse effects.

  Harris smiled at Trajan, and the other man’s expression softened. The kiss they’d shared played through Harris’s mind. It had been a good kiss. A very good kiss. What was that line from Princess Bride? “Since the invention of the kiss, there have only been five kisses that were rated the most passionate, the most pure. This one left them all behind.”

  That was perhaps a tad dramatic, but that kiss certainly topped Harris’s list of best kisses he’d ever had. Followed closely by the first time he’d kissed Nim.

  Thinking of the best-to-date-kiss made him think about the dream that had woken him from his post-sex nap. He’d been back in that river, Nim darting in to save him. But it couldn’t have been Nim—Trajan was right about that. Her arms and legs had been nearly totally coal-black last night.

  Harris gestured that he was going out, and Trajan nodded once, turning back to listen to whatever Nim was saying. Harris jumped to grab the lip of the entrance, then pulled himself up into the narrow cave that guarded their magical secret.

  He didn’t look back. He didn’t want something in his expression to give away that he was not just going to the bathroom.

  It was early afternoon and the forest was beautiful and alive with color—vivid maroon bark and green needles of the redwoods, kelly green and neon pink, yellow, and orange from the plots of cannabis downslope from where he now stood. The light didn’t have that overwhelmingly white quality it had yesterday, but maybe that was because it was later in the day. From where he stood, he could see the top of the albino redwood that dominated the bank of the far side of the stream.

  The forest felt more like a coral reef, alive with both color and a multitude of plants and animals. As he watched, a quail hurried by, the plume on its head bright pink and glowing instead of dark blue or green. A massive dragonfly, maybe even the same one they’d seen before, whipped by.

  He cast one last glance at the boulder that hid the cave, then started down the slope, sunlight warming his shoulders when he passed through the beams of light that pierced through to the forest floor.

  Going out on your own is stupid. So stupid.

  Undoubtedly it was, but Harris needed to know who or what he’d seen in the water. It would have been easy to dismiss it as a figment of his post-possession-almost-drowning-mind, as he had yesterday, if they’d been anywhere else. But here, in this magical, dangerous place, he felt compelled to know who he’d seen in the river.

  If Trajan figured out he was headed down to that river, on his own, the Scamall witch would be pissed. Though he’d known Trajan for a relatively short amount of time, enough had happened in that time to forge a tight bond and make Harris wince a little imagining what Trajan would say.

  Still, of any of them he was safest in the forest—he could feel the life of the trees, sense a sort of afternoon laziness. The forest was like a great reptile, sleeping in the sun, too content to pay any notice to a single man walking through. He felt all this without having to exert any power the way he would have in the outside world.

  But he wasn’t stupid. If he saw
anything like the Huntsman, he was booking it back to the cave like a scared rabbit.

  Harris was tense and watchful for the first five minutes, but when nothing happened, confirming his feeling that the forest was, if not safe, at least less dangerous now than it had been last night, he relaxed. His steps slowed and he let himself marvel in the wondrous things around him. This forest was like nothing he’d ever seen or heard about. What they’d done here was magnificent. That feeling was tempered by the destruction he knew they’d unleashed on the world beyond, but for now he let himself focus on what was immediately around him.

  Harris stopped to examine a sapling no taller than his knee. It wasn’t a redwood. It looked almost like a fruit tree.

  He touched the delicate little thing, which swayed toward his hand, wrapping small, glossy leaves around his bi-colored fingers. Power poured from Harris into the plant as he urged it to grow. The trunk shot up, the branches growing with near-violent speed. His hand, caught in the leaves, was jerked up, and Harris hissed as a thorn pierced his palm, and jumped to his feet, hand extended above his head to keep the now-mature tree from ripping a hole in his hand.

  The thorn, glossy green leaves, and small white flowers confirmed what his magic had told him. It was an orange tree. That made no sense—this wasn’t the right climate for oranges.

  After carefully extracting his hand from the branches, Harris crouched and reached for the base of the trunk. This time he closed his eyes as he sent his magic into the roots, trying to understand how this tree had come to be here.

  A seed. This tree had grown from a single orange seed, probably dropped by an animal that had stolen the fruit from someone’s picnic. The seed should have died, as the soil here wasn’t right to trigger it to sprout, but there must have been some life left in it when they transformed the forest—it grew, against all odds and the laws of nature.

  Harris pumped more power into the tree, twisting to watch as the white blossoms turned to small green balls that grew and turned orange, until the tree was filled with dozens of fat, succulent fruits.

  Harris’s stomach rumbled. One thing they hadn’t discussed was food. The cave had water, but they didn’t have food.

  His stomach rumbled and he grabbed an orange, twisting as he pulled the heavy thing, larger than a softball, popping it free. Harris held up the fruit, balancing it on three fingers. He narrowed his eyes, and the peel and pith at the top lifted. It had been years since he’d used his power to peel a piece of fruit. It took far too much power to make it practical. Not in the enchanted forest.

  The orange turned like the doll in a music box, and as it did the thin skin and pith fell away, dangling from the fruit like a ribbon, until finally it fell to the forest floor in one single long piece, leaving Harris holding the fat, succulent wedges of a perfectly ripe orange.

  He split it in half, examining it. It looked like an orange, smelled like an orange, and his magic said it was an orange.

  Harris separated a wedge and popped it in his mouth.

  It was the best orange he’d ever eaten. He moaned in pleasure, chewing happily, and in the space of a few minutes had devoured the whole thing, sticky juice coating his hands and chin.

  Assuming this didn’t kill him, they now had at least something to eat. Harris looked around, wondering what else he could grow in this magical place. Given how much magic there was, it wouldn’t take much for him to get a sustainable fruit and vegetable supply up and running.

  Sustainable? Where had that thought come from? They were going to get out of here, if not today, then tomorrow for sure.

  Odd then that they’d spend the day exploring the cave instead of trying to get out. Or maybe it wasn’t odd at all, because they knew once they left here they would have to confront the consequences of what they’d done. And they’d do it alone. Once they were out of this forest, they wouldn’t be able to be within a mile of one another, let alone touch each other like they’d done that morning.

  That thought occupied his mind for the rest of his walk, so much so that he was surprised to find himself on the bank of the stream.

  Sunlight sparkled on the water, which was moving swiftly. He’d been thinking of it as a stream, but it was more of a river. It took him nearly fifteen minutes to find the stop on the bank where Trajan had hauled him out last night. He stood on the rock, looking into the water. He couldn’t see much, and though he could now light up a rock, he doubted that would help. The dim illumination he could call was no match for the bright sunlight.

  He sat on the rock, waiting for something. Nothing happened. Harris pursed his lips. He’d been gone too long. By now they might be wondering where he was, and maybe even come looking for him. They weren’t as safe in the forest as he was.

  Harris slid off the rock, toes in the cold water, and dipped his hands into the stream, washing the sticky juice from his fingers, then raised a cupped hand full of water to wash his face.

  Dark clouds suddenly filled the sky, blotting out the sun. Harris looked up slowly, dread pooling in his stomach.

  This isn’t good.

  Harris’s head whipped up. His eyes widened with understanding, and he started to back out of the shallows. Something pale streaked through the water, and in the next second Harris fell flat onto his back as it grabbed his ankles and yanked his feet out from under him.

  *

  Trajan was twenty feet from the river, composing the lecture he was going to give Harris, when the sky went dark. He saw the thing grab the other man’s ankles, knocking him flat on his back.

  Trajan leapt into the air, and called a hard gust of wind that knocked into his back, throwing him fifteen feet. He was able to use his magic to mute his landing, and dropped into a practiced roll, coming up on his knees.

  The soft undergrowth on the bank was growing at a fantastical rate, wrapping around Harris’s arms and chest. Harris’s eyes were glowing gold as he used his power. His efforts were enough to slow the thing trying to pull him into the water, but not enough to stop it. Trajan scrambled forward and reached down, grabbing Harris’s wrist. Harris’s left hand wrapped around Trajan’s right forearm, a replica of the hold they’d had on one another for the transformation. Turquoise light flared from the places where their marks touched.

  With his free hand Trajan grabbed a stone and called light into it, banishing some of the sudden gloom. He called power into a second one and chucked it into the water.

  Trajan’s vision dimmed, pale blue light flaring from his eyes as he cast his power into the sky, calling up high altitude winds to try and push aside the clouds. All he managed to do was cause the clouds to swirl, like shades of silver and gray paint being stirred together. He sensed the start of a circular air current and yanked his power out. The last thing they needed was a tornado.

  A head rose from the water, so slowly that Trajan had time to think what fresh hell is this?

  When her chin broke the surface of the water the woman, because it was unmistakably a woman—Trajan could see her naked body in the brightly lit water—pushed the curtain of her wet hair back from her face.

  “This is mine,” she cooed, fingers stroking Harris’s ankles. “I saved him, and now he is mine.”

  Her face wasn’t human, though it took him a minute to realize why he thought that. She had all the right features, in generally the right places, but her eyes were far too large for her face, and slightly bulbous, like those of a fish.

  “No, this is mine,” Trajan countered, tightening his grip on Harris.

  “This is my river,” she cooed.

  “This is my, uh, man,” he improvised.

  Large eyes blinked, the lids semi-opaque. “He is your true love?”

  Fuck.

  Trajan knew, with a certainty born of having read a fairytale or two, that saying “no” would mean the not-Nim fish woman would drag Harris into the water.

  He could fight her, maybe kill her, but he’d have to do it without touching the water. No way he was getting wet
when that was “her” river.

  “Yes,” Trajan said, and there was a ring of truth to the words.

  Okay then.

  “True love’s kiss is the proof I need.”

  Trajan bowed his head over Harris’s, meeting the other man’s gaze upside down. “Of course it is,” Trajan muttered.

  Harris started to laugh. It was a tad hysterical.

  “Hold it together, Barclay,” Trajan snapped. He was about to say something about Nim in order to get him to focus, when inspiration struck.

  “I cannot give him true love’s kiss,” Trajan told the river woman, “because we love a third.”

  “A third?” Her hairless eyebrows drew together.

  “Yes. We’re in love, all three of us. So I can’t just kiss him. Let us go get Nimue and we’ll bring her back and then we’ll kiss.”

  The woman recoiled. “You belong to Nimue?” She released one of Harris’s ankles and sank in the water up to her eyes.

  “She knows Nim?” Trajan asked in a whisper.

  “Wait, I know what’s going on.” Harris sat up. Trajan moved with him, dropping to one knee and keeping their hands linked, in case her actions were a ruse to get him to loosen his grip to Harris.

  “Yes, Nimue is our love,” Harris said. “We must go to her. She is waiting for us.”

  The water woman popped up. “Where?”

  Instead of answering, Harris said, “This is her forest.”

  “Mine,” the woman hissed.

  “No,” Harris told her. “It belongs to Nimue. You were not in this river before.”

  “Before?”

  “Two days ago, where were you?”

  “Darkness.”

  Harris paused for apparent dramatic effect and said, “You must return there, or follow the river out of her forest.”

  She hissed. “I will have my tribute. True love’s kiss.”