Page 30 of Triadic

I kissed Peter with renewed vigor, our tongues dancing and pressing against each other. Then Peter tapped my knee, and I pulled off.

"I—Corbi, I'm going to come," he warned. "You don't want to…"

"That's exactly what he wants, Peter," I answered for my partner. "He wants you to come down his throat so he can swallow everything. Give it to him."

Corbi hummed again, and it suffused Peter with shivers. I kissed down Peter's neck, wanting to hear his heady gasps and cries. Corbi had to hold Peter's hips down to keep Peter from bucking into his face. I pinched his nipples, relishing the slurping sounds bouncing around the room, and Peter gave the most beautiful cry as he came. He tightened everywhere, spilling into Corbi's mouth from the molten hot and hungry look in my lover's eyes. Peter seemed to stop breathing, then in a whoosh, he relaxed and melted into me, spasms wracking his frame every few seconds.

Corbi pulled off with a satisfied smirk, dragging the back of his hand across his mouth and swallowing the rest of Peter's pleasure. I cocked a brow at him, and Corbi knew what I meant. He got off his knees and came over and kissed me. Though he'd drunk everything already, I could still taste Peter's essence on Corbi's lips, sweet as nectar.

Peter shivered from the cold, and Corbi and I maneuvered him under the covers quickly so he could sleep off his orgasm if he wanted. "That was so good—danke."

"You're welcome," Corbi answered. "With more to come later tonight, or whenever you're next interested."

I'd be begging for a blow job tonight if Peter was too tired out.

"I love you," said Peter, so hesitantly it almost sounded like a question.

Corbi and I squeezed him between us and traded off kissing his cheeks.

"I love you, Peter," said Corbi.

"Ich auch," I echoed.

ThenPeter's eyes pooled with tears, and Corbi and I moved to either side of him for warmth and a cuddle. "Are you okay?" I asked.

"I've been missing out," he said with a watery smile. "I wish I'd found you sooner, but I guess you'd've been with Wren."

"You could have still joined us," I promised, seeing Corbi's nod and knowing he would concur. "Four men in one relationship sounds like a crowd, but we would have taken you in if you wanted to be with us."

"Wren would have adopted you immediately," Corbi said with a smile.

Peter giggled at that, and as we held him, he gently drifted away to dreamland.

As he slept, Corbi and I carefully withdrew from the bed, making sure Peter stayed warm under the covers. Then as Corbi silently began his prayers, I raised my arms over my head in a bid for power and started my morning calisthenics.

Chapter Fourteen: Peter

Marit teased me, when I woke later, that I'd napped till lunchtime and slept even later than he did. Corbi had long since left for the clinic, and Marit confided he was going to go poking at some of the older instructors to see whether he could get special permission to leave the monastery temporarily and still be allowed back. The bribe included him bringing back texts the monastery library didn't have, and the punishment would be they'd lose a doctor because Corbi wouldn't return if Marit wasn't allowed to.

Left to myself, I walked the long halls and built a mental map of the larger complex. Outside each of the windows, the same snowy wonderland greeted me. Corbi said he'd swing by the market stall and ask Fritz if I could return to work, for which I was grateful. I was definitely never following anyone to the edge of town again.

Agroup of students passed by, not giving me a second look. I leaned against the wall, deliberately watching them and daring them to touch eyes with me and admit they'd been told to ignore me. It seemed strangely petty, though if the higher ups at the monastery felt their stodgy rules weren't being respected, maybe petty was a better reaction than chucking me out into the cold.

Pulling out the latest pamphlet Marit had given me to meditate on, I unfolded it and got to reading about the planes of existence while walking the long stretch across the front length of the monastery.

"The planes are discreet and not continuous," I muttered to myself. "They are like different types of radiation that can intersect without intercepting one another."

I glanced out the window to think about that, but what stood at the tree line of the snowy landscape made me jump and gasp.

A large man on horseback stared down at the monastery. He wore a cloak, and as he turned his horse to head back into the forest, I saw a dragon stitched across it. Yet when the horse stepped back into the trees, they did not fade from view. Instead, they disappeared into shadowy tendrils, like the fiery breath of such a dragon.

My pamphlet scraping against the floor jolted me out of the vision—or had it just been a daydream?—and by the time I stooped to pick it up and straightened, there was no sign that the horseman had ever been there. I dusted off the pamphlet, even though it was fine, but I needed to focus on the physical side of life and ground myself.

I was warm and safe inside. My body was healing more and more by the day. Other than my achy stomach, still recovering from the ulcer, I was nearly back to my regular health. I had friends now—Ceridor the bard, Fritz, and Marit and Corbi by now surely considered me more than a friend considering we'd said we loved each other. I may have been through an extraordinary event by getting trapped in the forest for apparently years, but that didn't mean I couldn't live out the rest of my life in relative peace.

I didn't need to follow every whim that seemed to lead me back into the forest. No matter what, I swore to myself that today I was not going to go charging into the snow. I didn't want to prove the instructors right, that I was some half-insane mystic that wasn't worth training. And I didn't want to scare Corbi, or force Marit to step through the planes in a magical feat that was heretofore impossible for him, just to drag me back inside.

"I am calm," I recited, affirming my safety and grounding myself. "I'm here and safe. Maybe I'll just go down a couple floors so I'm in plain view of others, have eyes on me."