CHAPTER 16 #2
I cannot look at him. He is not in the room. I look at the speaker. The screen-light blinks once as he speaks. I am looking at him.
"I am here," I say into Gabriel's mouth, and Gabriel lifts. The line he has earned by holding himself outside me the whole time —
"There you are."
I look. I see Stefan's mouth and Alexei's stomach and the iron rail of the staircase below the mezzanine edge.
I see Gabriel's brown eyes meeting Alexei's smoke-gray ones for one second, witness-charge, then meeting Stefan's hazel ones for one second, witness-charge, then coming back to me.
The witness function is mapped. I have not had a word for it before tonight.
This is what they do — they hold me by holding each other's eyes through me.
I come.
I come into Alexei. I come around his cock.
I come with Stefan's mouth at my nipple and Gabriel's mouth at my mouth and Nikolai's voice in my ear saying there, Elena, stay with me.
I come slick down the inside of my thighs.
I come with my heel against the back of Alexei's calf.
I come saying please once into Gabriel's mouth and yes once after.
Alexei comes a beat behind me. He swears once — suka — into the line of my throat.
He fills me. He stays inside me for a long count, his forehead against my collarbone, breathing my breath back at me.
He does not move until his pulse is steady.
When he pulls out he uses one hand on my hip to keep me where I am.
Gabriel sets his palm flat against my brow. Nikolai through the speaker: "There, Elena."
A silence. Gabriel's thumb leaves my jaw and finds the line of my hair at the temple and stays there.
Stefan's mouth has gone soft at my breast; he is not asking; he is waiting.
Alexei is breathing four counts in and six counts out — Nikolai's breath, the same metronome, the brothers borrowing each other's clock.
Nikolai: "Color."
"Green."
The pause is a clinical pause. He is letting me make the next sentence.
"I want the rotation," I say.
Alexei laughs once, dry. He pulls back slow, kisses the inside of my left thigh with his mouth wet from me, comes up the bed and around to my right side and slides his hand under Stefan's at my breast. Stefan's hand moves out from under, smooth.
Stefan rises onto his knees and goes to the lower brass rail and kneels between my thighs.
Alexei's mouth replaces Stefan's at my nipple.
His ringed thumb is at my sternum, not pressing — laid there, the steel against the angel.
Gabriel has not moved from my mouth.
Stefan at my entrance, slow, palm at the inside of my thigh: "Doll. Find me."
I look down the length of my body at him. The cord at his left wrist is over my belly. His hazel eyes are the warmest light in the room.
"I will tell you when," he says. "There. Now."
He pushes in slow. He is shorter and broader than Alexei and my body reads the difference as it reads two surgeons' two hands on the same incision. He seats himself.
"Find me, doll. You are perfect."
He moves. His left wrist rises and falls in his four-count — one, two, three, four — the cord dragging across my belly with each beat.
Alexei's mouth slow at my breast, his ringed thumb at my sternum.
Gabriel at my mouth has not stopped. Gabriel has entered me with his tongue once and kept his thumb at my jaw; only that, the whole night.
Nikolai through the speaker: "Elena. State the role you hold."
"Here."
"Stay with that."
Stefan angles up. He finds the place. He puts his right palm — the scar — at the place where my hip joins my belly and presses, the heel of his hand, and the pressure breaks me a second time.
I come for Stefan. I come around his cock.
I come slick down both thighs. I come with Alexei's mouth at my breast and Gabriel's mouth at my mouth and Nikolai's voice in my ear and Stefan's hazel eyes on mine the whole long beat.
I come saying his name once — Stefan — into Gabriel's mouth.
Stefan smiles, the slow one, the one I have only seen twice.
He comes a beat after me. He pulls out slow and lays the inside of his right wrist against my hipbone, the cord there, and counts the four-beat on my skin with the back of his knuckles until my breath comes back inside my ribcage.
Gabriel lifts his mouth from mine. His mouth has not been on anyone else's mouth. His cock has not been inside me. He is hard against the side of his trouser leg and I can see him through the cotton and he has not moved his hips toward me once.
Alexei's mouth lifts from my breast. He kisses the medallion once — back of one knuckle to the angel, as he kissed it the first time in Trauma Bay 6 — and sits back on his heels.
Nikolai through the speaker: "Color."
"Green."
"Good. Bath."
Alexei: "I'll start the water."
He goes. The staircase rings under him going down to the main floor and up the spiral to the bath at the rear of the mezzanine. The water starts. The copper tub holds water hot for over an hour; the loft's plumbing fills it in under three minutes.
Stefan to Gabriel, softly, the first cross-lead line of the night and the only one: "Brother, you held her well."
Gabriel: "She held herself."
Nikolai: "Bath."
---
They lift me. Alexei comes back from the bath, slides his arm under my knees; Stefan under my shoulders. They carry me to the copper tub. The silk at my wrists is in Gabriel's pocket already — untied at some point between the rotation and the rising. I did not feel him untie it.
The water is hot. The copper at my back is warm.
Stefan slides in behind me and I sit between his thighs with my head against his chest and his cord at my throat under the medallion.
Alexei sits on the floor of the bath with his hand around my left ankle.
Gabriel kneels at the side and cups water in his right palm and pours it over my nape, again and again, methodical, slow.
"Elena."
"Gabriel."
"How are you."
"Held."
"Good."
Stefan washes my hair with the Castile bar. "If you would, tip your head back. There. That is the line of you I was looking for."
Alexei: "Krasivaya. You did well."
"Thank you, Alexei."
He turns the ring on his right thumb once.
The black-iron staircase rings once, low — Nikolai's shoes.
He has timed his arrival to the minute the bath has filled.
He stands at the bath doorway in navy-suit trousers and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled twice.
His pale gray eyes do the long count across the four of us — Stefan behind me, me at the center, Alexei at my ankle, Gabriel at my neck — and find mine last.
"Elena."
"Nikolai."
"You did well."
"Thank you."
He kneels at the head of the tub and puts his palm flat on my brow. Cool. Steady. The Patek ticks softly above the water line. He does not speak again.
I mark the men. One — Stefan at my back. Two — Alexei at my ankle. Three — Gabriel at my neck. Four — Nikolai at my brow.
I do not count past four.
---
They take me out of the bath together. Stefan towels me.
Alexei holds a fresh towel for my hair. Gabriel hands the small white robe to Stefan, who slides it onto me with his hands going slow at the shoulders.
Gabriel takes the medallion off my sternum for a half-second to dry the chain; Stefan returns it to my throat with the back of his knuckle, because none of them will clasp it for me without permission and I have not given the permission for that.