11. The Offering Pt. I #3
There he goes twisting my words again. I make one decision and he turns it into scripture before the sentence has finished leaving my mouth.
“The claim is witnessed,” the room answers.
Rafe hears the theft too.
I see it in the way his jaw tightens, but his eyes stay on mine.
“Still want me?”
“Ask me one more time and I’m choosing the little person with the open robe and drool on his lips.”
That gets a real laugh out of him, low and brief and completely inappropriate for the room.
Good.
I need one thing in here to be wrong because I chose it.
His hand slides behind my neck.
“Come here.”
I do, and his mouth meets mine with nothing ceremonial about it. I hold on because I want to, because I chose him, and because for the first time since Helena fastened me into that white dress, nobody else gets to decide what the next movement means.
Cassian’s fingers slide lower along my body, teasing without quite giving me what I need, and I whimper against Rafe’s mouth.
Rafe pulls back just enough to ask, “Will you beg?”
I shake my head, not because I don’t want to but because I do, and that frightens me more than it should.
“You can ask for what you want,” Cassian murmurs against my ear.
His fingers press harder, deeper, and my breath catches.
Rafe’s hand settles around my throat and tightens just enough to make my pulse jump beneath his palm.
“Do it.”
The room around us has dissolved into movement now, bodies tangled together, skin shining with oil, the air thick with heat, sex, and the last remnants of chanting turning into moans.
It is beautiful.
That doesn’t make it less wrong.
Cassian finally gives me what I’ve been aching for, two fingers sliding inside me, and my head falls back against Rafe’s shoulder as a broken sound escapes me.
“Please.”
Rafe’s mouth curves against my skin.
“Please what?”
“Fuck me.”
Cassian stills.
Rafe’s grip around my throat tightens once before easing, and his free hand slides down to replace Cassian’s. His fingers curl inside me, stretching me until I gasp.
“You heard her.”
Cassian’s breath is hot against my neck.
“This isn’t how it’s done.”
“It is now.”
The challenge sits between them for a beat before Cassian exhales sharply and lets his hands fall away.
Rafe moves before anybody can decide differently.
His fingers leave me, and before I can protest the loss, his hands are under my thighs and he’s lifting me onto the low altar behind us.
I know what it is once the edge presses into the backs of my legs.
I don’t care.
He spreads my thighs wider, and cool air moves over skin already slick with oil and want.
The room watches.
The room waits.
Rafe looks at me.
“Mine.”
Then his cock is inside me.
The stretch tears a cry out of me, my nails digging into his shoulders as he fills me. He doesn’t move slowly, and I don’t ask him to. His hips drive into mine hard enough that the altar edge presses into my back with every thrust, my skin sliding against stone and oil while I hold on to him.
Cassian comes close again.
His hands close over my breasts, kneading before his fingers pinch my nipples hard enough to make me gasp into Rafe’s mouth. Then Cassian kisses me too, bruising and desperate, as though Rafe being inside me has made whatever control he thought he had left impossible to maintain.
Around us, the last of the chanting has disappeared completely. Moans, breath, bodies moving against bodies, the slick sounds of sex filling the circular room until worship and fucking become impossible to separate.
Rafe’s rhythm stutters.
“Fuck, Lo.”
His hand slides between us, thumb finding my clit.
The pressure knocks another sound out of me.
I’m already too sensitive from Cassian’s fingers, the flower, the oil, Rafe filling me over and over, and now every sensation seems to arrive twice.
“Come on, Little Birdy,” he says against my ear. “Come for me.”
I do.
The orgasm tears through me hard enough to arch my back from the altar, every muscle locking around him while my voice breaks somewhere between his name and a cry.
Rafe groans, hips losing their rhythm.
Then he comes inside me.
Cheers erupt around us.
For a second I can’t tell whether I’m shaking from the orgasm or the fact that people are applauding it.
Probably both.
Rafe pulls out slowly, breathing hard, and before I can decide whether I need a minute, Cassian’s hands are already on me.
He rolls me onto my stomach and draws my hips upward.
“My turn.”
I should be spent. Maybe under any normal circumstances I would be.
Nothing about this is normal.
The coke is still racing beneath my skin.
The flower has turned every touch into something delayed and doubled.
Fear keeps sharpening sensations that should already be fading, and somewhere inside all of it my body still wants more even while another part of me is trying to understand where the wanting ends and everything else begins.
Cassian’s hand slides over my hip.
And through all of it, one thought keeps returning, bright and bitter enough that even the drugs can’t soften it.
Ash isn’t here.