Chapter 7 #2
"And if they change the language?" I ask. "If Maceo fixes the clauses and Dorian smiles and Victor stops looking at you every time governance comes up? What then?"
"Then we decide as a pack."
My laugh comes out thin and tired. "That sounds so simple when you say it."
"It's not simple." Luther bends closer, his hand sliding from my throat to the back of my neck. "But it's also not yours to solve alone."
I close my eyes, and that's a mistake, because the moment I can't see the room, I feel them both too clearly.
Grayson beside me, his thigh pressed to mine, his fingers drawing slow lines through the hair at my nape.
Luther in front of me, steady and warm, his scent deepening in a way that tells my body to stop bracing even while my mind keeps reaching for the laptop.
"I'm not trying to carry it alone," I lie.
Grayson's mouth touches my temple. Not quite a kiss at first, more like a point of contact, a place for my attention to land.
Then his lips press there with deliberate tenderness.
"You're sitting in the dark with a headache, an untouched dinner, and a merger deck that makes you feel like a decorative part of the company you built. "
I breathe out through my nose. "When you say it like that, it sounds unhealthy."
"It is unhealthy," Luther says.
I open my eyes to glare at him, but the glare doesn't survive the way he's looking at me. Not angry. Not disappointed. Focused in that careful, devastating way that always finds the fracture before I can hide it.
"You're not useful to us because you build things," Luther says.
"You're not central because Keller Industries needs you.
You're central because you're ours. Before the company.
Before the game. Before Ember House. Before every problem you keep trying to turn into proof that you deserve to stay loved. "
The room goes painfully still.
Grayson's hand slides from my shoulder to my chest, resting there over the tight, uneven rhythm beneath my shirt.
He doesn't say anything. He doesn't need to.
His warmth's at my side, Luther's hand is at my neck, and the closed laptop sits on the desk like a thing that's finally lost the power to speak over them.
My throat works around words that don't come.
Luther sees it. He always sees when my body fails before my pride's ready to admit it. His thumb moves once at the back of my neck, slow and grounding.
"Look at me, Blake."
I do.
His eyes are dark, steady, and too full of what I've spent all evening trying not to need.
"You're done working tonight," he says. "No more deck. No more clauses. No more trying to earn safety by bleeding yourself into a document."
I should argue. I should remind him that Starlight Falls III doesn't care about my headache, that Ember House funding doesn't wait for me to feel emotionally sturdy, that Victor Hale won't become less dangerous because I ate a sandwich and let my Alphas touch me until my body stopped shaking.
Instead, I lean into the hand at my neck.
Grayson exhales softly beside me, relief moving through his scent. His fingers return to my curls, stroking once, twice, careful enough that my eyes almost close again.
Luther bends, his mouth brushing my forehead.
"Come with us." When I don’t answer, he repeats himself, changing his words slightly. "Bedroom. Now," Luther says, his voice dropping an octave. He doesn’t wait for an answer. He hooks his arms under my knees and back, lifting me out of the chair as if I weigh nothing. I let out a small, indignant huff, but my arms go around his neck anyway. The fight’s already leaking out of me. I’m too tired to keep pretending I don’t want to be carried.
Grayson follows with the plate and water.
The walk down the hall to my office bedroom is short.
The nest is already turned down the way Luca left it when he stays here, weighted blankets and the silk sheets he fussed over for an hour yesterday.
Just another one of our small, private worlds inside the bigger one.
Luther sets me down in the center of the bed but doesn’t step back.
He stays close, one hand braced beside my hip, the other coming up to my face.
His thumb brushes the hinge of my jaw, checking the tension there like he’s reading something only he can see.
His eyes stay steady on mine. Not angry. Just present.
“You’re still holding it,” he says quietly.
“I’m not—”
“You are.” His thumb moves again, slowly. “In your jaw. In your shoulders. In the way you’re breathing like you’re about to negotiate with me.”
Grayson climbs onto the bed behind me, the mattress dipping under his weight.
He pulls me back against his chest without asking, one arm sliding around my waist while his other hand finds my hair the way he always does when he wants me to stay in my body instead of my head.
His fingers work through the curls at the nape of my neck, slow and deliberate.
He knows that spot. He’s known it for years.
I try to sit up anyway. Old habit. “I can—”
“No,” Luther says, and the word is gentle but final. He presses me back down with nothing but the weight of his palm on my chest. “You don’t have to manage this part.”
Grayson’s mouth brushes my temple. “You’re still trying to solve it, love. Let it go for tonight.”
The old nickname slips out of him without thought, the way it does when he’s not performing. Just here. I feel something in my chest give a little at the sound of it.
Luther starts with my shirt buttons. He doesn’t rush.
Each one is deliberate, his knuckles brushing skin as he works his way down.
When the fabric falls open, he pauses, eyes moving over the line of my collarbones and the faint tremor still running through me.
His hand settles over my heart for a moment, feeling the rhythm, counting it, making sure.
Grayson helps ease the shirt off my shoulders, then his palms smooth down my arms like he’s reminding my body it belongs here. I shiver, not from cold. From being known this well.
Luther undoes my belt next. The sound of the leather sliding through the loops is loud in the quiet room.
He doesn’t comment on how hard I already am.
He just notices. His eyes flick up to mine, and there’s no triumph in them.
Only recognition. He’s seen me like this before — wired and exhausted and trying to outrun my own nervous system. He knows what works.
When I’m bare, Luther moves up the bed and settles between my thighs.
He doesn’t push them apart. He waits until I let them fall open on their own.
Then he leans in and presses his forehead to mine, breathing with me for a few seconds as his scent wraps around us.
The kind of scent that used to make me feel small in the best way, back when the company was just a laptop on a kitchen table and the only thing we were building was each other.
“You don’t have to be anything right now,” he says against my mouth. “Not CEO. Not the one who fixes it. Not the one who carries it. Just you. Here. With us.”
My throat tightens. I reach for him because I need something to hold onto, and he lets me.
My fingers find the ink on his chest, tracing the lines I’ve traced a thousand times.
He kisses me then, slow, deep, unhurried.
It’s not a claim. It’s a reminder. This is what we were before the rest of it got so loud.
Grayson’s hand slides down my stomach, warm and steady.
He wraps his fingers around my cock and strokes once, slow, like he’s got all night.
Luther shifts lower and takes his time with me, patient enough that I cannot turn it into something rushed or strategic.
My scent changes before I can hide it, pear-sweet and warm in the quiet between us, proof that my body knows what my head keeps resisting.
Grayson makes a low sound against my shoulder but does not say anything clever.
He just keeps touching me, slow and steady, while Luther works me open with the same unhurried patience he has used on me for years.
The room fills with the familiar shape of us, their scents layered over mine until the office feels far away.
When Luther finally pushes into me, it is one long, steady slide, slow enough that I feel every inch of the stretch and every second of his restraint. My body gives for him before my pride can catch up, scent turning warm and unmistakable between all three of us.
Luther stays there for a moment, forehead pressed to mine, letting me feel the weight of him, the heat, the way my ass is already clenching around him in little pulses I can’t control.
He doesn’t move yet. He just breathes with me, one hand braced beside my head, the other resting over my heart again like he’s making sure I’m still here.
Grayson’s hand never stops moving on my cock.
Slow. Knowing. He presses kisses into my hair, my temple, the corner of my jaw.
Every time my mind tries to drift back to the deck, to the titles, to the careful language that made me feel like an accessory, one of them touches me somewhere that pulls me back.
Luther’s thumb strokes the inside of my wrist. Grayson’s fingers tighten just slightly in my hair.
Little anchors. Little reminders that I am not alone in this bed with my own head.
Luther starts to move and every time he pulls back, more slick coats his cock and the inside of my thighs. The wet sound of it is loud in the quiet room. I can smell myself, warm and unmistakably theirs, and it makes something in my chest ache in a way that has nothing to do with the merger.