15. Eva

15

EVA

E va had known this moment was inevitable.

She would have to reveal her shame to them at some point, and Margo's words of truth and trust rang in her head.

"I will make them pay," Bruno growled, following Margo's outraged exclamation, and Eva wanted to weep a little at their anger and protectiveness.

Then Margo's fingers were at her shoulder, tracing down the hateful, raw scars. "Who did this?" she repeated. Eva couldn't understand how her fingers could be so gentle when her voice was so hard.

Bruno's hand was on her opposite shoulder, though he didn't offer to touch the wounds.

"Tell me," he commanded. "Us," he corrected himself immediately. "Tell us."

Had she ruined their moment, spoiled the blooming joy? But she knew the expectations of their retreat to Bruno's apartment, and she knew that she wouldn't be able to satisfy their bond without exposing her back and all of the questions it would raise .

"I did this," she said, so quietly that she feared they wouldn't hear her. "To escape the Queen of Faery."

She needn't have worried. Shifters had keen hearing, and so, apparently, did half-trolls.

"The Queen of Faery?" Margo asked. "You were her prisoner?"

"Let me kill her for you," Bruno suggested.

"Let me kill her for you," Margo countered.

Eva hadn't expected their first fight to be over who got to kill someone for her, but it surprised a wry chuckle from her lips before she turned to look bravely up at both of them. "It isn't a pretty story," she cautioned them, "and I am not the hero of the tale."

"Nothing you reveal could change how I feel for you," Margo said swiftly. "Your past is in the past."

Bruno growled in agreement.

Eva drew a deep breath, taking courage from the strength and the warmth of her mates beside her. "I was the Queen of Faery's courtesan. Her favorite, for a while. I was her dressmaker, and her lover. But she was…very jealous."

"You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to," Margo growled. "But we won't love you any less, no matter what happened."

"You're safe here," Bruno added.

Eva looked from one of them to the other. She trusted them, and she wanted them to know the truth.

"I was flattered by her attention, and proud of my talent with fashion. I was happy for her advances, and went willingly to her bed. But sh-she was not satisfied with my affection and my obedience. She wanted all of me, and she enspelled me. I didn't realize at first, because it was slow and insidious, but she forced me to love her, to adore only her, to see only her. I couldn't think without thinking of her, couldn't breathe without wanting her air. I don't think she meant to hurt me, but it crushed me, crushed the life and soul out of me. I couldn't create; there was no room for beauty that wasn't hers, and I made dresses that were uglier and uglier without meaning to."

Eva spread her fingers and looked at them. "I thought it was a flaw in my magic, that I was not worthy, and in a fit of failure when she was away and I could not bear it, I tore my wings from my back and lost the part of me that was Faery. Destroying my own magic broke her spell. I s-saw for the first time what she'd done to me, and I fled Faery."

Eva could still feel the fiery pain of it, wrenching at her wings, scratching and clawing as if there were stitches holding them to her shoulders that she could cut away with her nails.

She still felt the clarity that flooded in after: the awful, suffocating way she'd been treated, the terrible one-sidedness of their relationship, and the artful manipulation of a woman she'd admired…and trusted. Worst of all was the emptiness that remained.

"I had nowhere to go. I had no contacts in the human world, and was slow to learn how it worked. I was in terrible debt by the time that Harriet found me."

Bruno made an understanding noise. "That's why you broke into Wilson Kinetics."

"A man named Antonio contacted me and said that he would clear my ledger if I got him the information about Frank's next sculpture. He gave me the access information and told me when to go."

"Harriet would have paid off your debt," Margo reminded her.

Eva shook her head. "She'd already done so much for me. I…even thought about stealing it. But I couldn't. This se emed like a simpler option. One job, and I'd be done. I'd be…free. I didn't want to hurt anyone. I'm so stupid…so weak…"

Her mates surrounded her, murmuring reassurance into her ear that she wasn't stupid or weak or wrong, that they forgave everything and blamed her for no part of her torment.

She wasn't sure how Margo and Bruno had gotten so close on the couch, or how she had come to be perched halfway across each of their laps, drinking in the warmth and closeness of them. Bruno's big, bare arms seemed made for stroking, and Margo's soft breasts, spilling over her rigid support garment, were begging for Eva's attention. She wouldn't have to move more than the tiniest amount to coax kisses from either of them and there was a hand resting on each of her knees.

"You aren't…worried?" she murmured. "The Faery Queen might still be looking for me."

Kisses were her answer, in her hair and on her neck, each of their hands tugging at her knees. She spread her legs and felt their fingers tighten in an unconscious reaction. She wanted them to be wild and rough with her, and she wanted their gentleness and affection, all at once. How could they be so many things at the same time?

Margo's hand was slipping up the inside of her thigh, Bruno's hand was caressing a bare breast. "The Queen of Faery couldn't keep me from you," he growled near her ear.

"She'd be welcome to try," Margo breathed on her other side. "Trolls have no allegiance to royalty and no fear of the Fae."

Eva wanted to warn them against too much confidence, to keep them from being foolishly proud of their considerable strength, but she wanted their kisses much more than their caution. She had won her freedom from the Queen of Faery, and she was with her mates in Bruno's den.

The biggest problem now was clothing, and too much of it. Eva was still wearing her pants, and Margo was still wearing her incredible tailored brassiere. Eva slipped a hand around Margo to tease out the clasps, pausing to appreciate the craftsmanship of the garment. "Who made this?" she asked breathlessly, blindly releasing the restraints.

"There's a guy off Jackson Street that does custom work. Trolls—even half-trolls—have rather particular clothing requirements. It's hellishly expensive, but worth every soul I've sold for it."

"Have you really sold souls?" Eva asked in astonishment.

"No, not really," Margo said swiftly. "It's a figure of speech." But then Eva finally worked out the last hook and the garment fell away.

Bruno gave a growl and reached across Eva for a freed breast like he couldn't help it.

Maybe he couldn't. Certainly Eva was as enraptured, and for a moment, they quarreled good-naturedly over who would caress what.

"We're all…wearing a bit…too much…still…" Margo gasped.

"I'm not sure how I'm even fitting in these pants," Bruno agreed.

That led to stripping his pants off, and Margo and Eva took gleeful turns teasing and tormenting him. Margo took his cock into her mouth, deeper with each stroke and Eva watched Bruno's hands claw into the couch cushions on either side of him.

Then they both turned their attention to Eva and were stripping off first her pants and then, slowly, as she stood on the couch, her panties, touching her and worshiping her as they slipped them off of her.

Margo's pants went considerably faster, and somehow Eva was unsurprised to find that she was fastidiously trimmed and shaped around the warm mouth of her pussy. Bruno pushed her back onto the couch and Eva wormed her way between them to kiss Margo's glorious breasts and take each of her hard nipples in her mouth, one after another.

She felt rather than saw Bruno mount behind them, and felt his cock brush her thighs, teasing her own mound mercilessly. She made soft noises of need and ground down against Margo. Someone was kissing her ear, both of them, maybe, but all the touches seemed to blur together into one tantalizing haze of pleasure.

Margo was tight and wet around her fingers, and she tensed beneath Eva and gave a growl of release and desire just as Bruno drove into Eva and Eva had a moment of sheer joy, giving and taking delight in equal measure.