Chapter 40
Kissing The Rival, Pleasing The Queen
~LUCA~
The warehouse breathes around us like a colossal, living beast—its concrete walls pulsing with the steady throb of bass, every surface slick with the heat and sweat of bodies pressed too close.
Light flickers in jagged pulses, painting the space in hungry, unstable flashes that feel like barbs against the skin. A raw, electric want ripples through the air, growing sharper with every step we take toward its source.
We stumble through a side corridor, Cale’s hand locked around Aurora’s wrist like she’s going to disappear if he lets go.
She’s barely walking—more like stalking, hips moving in a rhythm that’s never going to leave my head—and I’m right behind them, one hand on the small of her back, the other flexing open and closed like I’m trying to remember what it means to have restraint.
Doors. More doors.
The bouncer outside the private lounge sizes us up and down—probably clocking the boots, the glitter, the "fuck with me and find out" in Cale’s glare—and just grunts as he presses the button to let us in.
Inside, the world narrows to pulse and color.
The chill room is nothing like the main floor.
Gone is the retina-shredding strobe, replaced with slow-motion washes of purple, cyan, pink—layers of shadow and soft, almost liquid light pooling in the corners.
The music is still there, a steady throb under the floor and seeping through the furniture, but it’s background now—a pulse to sync our heartbeats, not blast them out of my chest.
Plush circle couch, low to the ground. Pillows scattered everywhere, velvet and metallic, tactile and inviting. It’s a nest, is what it is—a place to fall apart and maybe put yourself back together if you have enough time and enough hands.
We collapse in a tangle. I sit first—because god knows my knees don’t want to work after that marathon on the dance floor.
Aurora immediately climbs into my lap before I can even process basic input.
Cale drops beside us, one leg thrown over the cushion, his jacket half-off, hair a mess from sweat and fists and wanting to be feral.
And then reality hits: the world is moving way too slow except for where it’s moving way too fast.
That’s the weed. Cale’s fucking gummies—creeping up on me, dragging claws through my bloodstream so everything is over-bright, over-sharp, over-intense.
Aurora’s scent is the first thing I notice.
Smoked vanilla, gasoline, underpinned by something sharp and sweet, like burnt sugar licked from hot metal.
It’s everywhere—my skin, my shirt, stuck to Cale’s jaw where he was marking her on the dance floor.
It doesn’t just fill the air. It owns the air, gets into your lungs, rewires every synapse until you’re either on your knees or starting a war for the right to do so.
She’s vibrating. That’s not poetic, she’s literally shaking—thighs spread indecently over my lap, dress riding up, skin sparking with sweat and blue glitter. Her hands are all over my chest, nails scraping in a way that’s not supposed to be gentle.
She turns—those eyes lit from inside out, storm green blown wide and wild. She grabs my face and kisses me.
Not a question. Not a negotiation.
More like a challenge thrown onto the tarmac just to see who’s going to run it over first.
Her mouth is soft but demanding, lips moving against mine with a greed that makes my entire body tense.
Every Alpha instinct I have screams for dominance, for control, but she’s not having it—she bites my lower lip, hard, tongue demanding entrance, and I open for her because fighting is pointless when Aurora Lane wants something.
I’d drown in this.
In her.
In the way she tastes—sweet, a little bitter, a lot dangerous. The kiss is so good it makes my vision go static for a second.
But Cale is not a fucking spectator.
He growls—real, low, warning rumble—and yanks Aurora off me with a force that makes my head snap back. For a heartbeat I think he’s going to throw a punch (wouldn’t be our first time) but he just grabs the back of her neck and devours her.
His kiss is different. All teeth and tongue, no preamble, like he’s trying to erase the taste of me from her mouth and replace it with his own.
Aurora’s hands fist in his shirt, dragging him closer until they’re breathing the same air, and every second they're fused like that raises the temperature in the room by another degree.
I don’t realize I’m touching myself until my fingers dig into my thigh—hard enough to leave marks. I don’t care. I want the marks. I want pain to anchor me because if I let go, I’ll do something reckless and probably get us kicked out of the club for public indecency.
Cale finally breaks the kiss, but he keeps her right there, his forehead pressed to hers, both of them panting like they’ve run a marathon.
“Fucking hell, Trouble,” he mutters, voice so low it barely makes it through the haze. “You’re already dripping and we haven’t even started.”
She gasps—swear to god, the sound can send my cock to rock central—then turns those hungry eyes on me like she’s daring me to disagree.
“Please,” she says, voice like sandpaper and sex and every dream I’ve ever had about surrender. “I can’t—fuck, I want—”
Cale cuts her off. “Tell us what you want, Trouble.” His grip on her neck tightens, not enough to hurt but enough to hold her steady. “You want us to fuck you here? Want to make a scene, get those pretty thighs all sticky so everyone knows who you belong to?”
Aurora’s tongue flicks out over her bottom lip.
She’s definitely enjoying this—being pinned between two Alphas, the attention, the animal focus that’s making both of us burn patience as fast as gasoline. But she’s not going to make it easy.
She smirks. The kind of smirk that starts race riots.
“You’d do anything for your princess, right Cale?”
Cale’s restraint cracks for a split-second—eyes flash gold, jaw flexes, hands twitch like he’s considering just throwing her down and having done with it.
“Princess is gonna dare me to do something I probably don’t want,” he growls, and it’s not even a question. He knows her—knows this is a bait-and-switch — knows she wants to see what lines we’ll cross for her.
Aurora leans into him, hips rolling, barely holding back a moan.
“But you’ll do it anyway, because you want to make me happy, yes?”
Cale groans—sound desperate, not even pretending to hide it—and crushes her lips in another kiss, less controlled this time, more needy. His hands roam down her side, over blue-glittered skin, stopping at the edge of her dress where it barely covers anything at all.
Finally he breaks away, breathing hard.
“I’d do anything for my Queen,” he says, voice rough and thick. “If it means she’s satisfied and content with her Alphas.”
Aurora’s grin is pure evil—sharp, triumphant, hungry. She turns her head so she’s looking at me dead-on, eyes narrowed in challenge.
“Then I want to see you two kiss.”
Silence drops like a bomb.
Cale goes very still. I go even stiller. My body is locked up in a way that has nothing to do with hesitation and everything to do with the fact that if you’d asked me an hour ago, I would have said—out loud, for the record—‘not gonna happen, not my thing, not even if you paid me.’
But Aurora Lane is not the type to take ‘no’ for an answer.
She licks her lips, eyes darting between our faces, clearly savoring the tension like it’s the world’s best dessert.
Cale recovers first.
“Really?” he says, a laugh barely disguised as a threat. “You want us to kiss? That what’s gonna get you off, princess? Seeing your Alphas go at it just for you?”
She nods—small, sure, totally in control of the situation despite being bracketed on both sides by much bigger, much meaner men.
I open my mouth to object, but all that comes out is a huff of air and maybe a little whimper if you’re being cruel about it.
Cale shrugs—turns to her, not me, like he needs permission.
“If this is what you want, Trouble, you better watch real nice and close, ‘cause you’re not seeing this again.”
She grins.
Wicked. Triumphant.
“I’ll watch,” she promises, voice so low I can feel it in my bones.
And that’s where this night is headed.
To the fucking edge of the edge—past the guardrails, past the point of no return. All because Aurora Lane wants to see what happens when two Alphas collide in the dark, with her as the spark that sets us both off.
My heart’s pounding, beats tripping and stuttering like an engine on the absolute limit.
I don’t back down.
I never back down.
But I have no idea what happens next.
“Wait, wait—just—”
I raise both hands like I can physically deflect the dare back at Aurora, but my cheeks burn and I know I’m fucked before the words even finish leaving my mouth.
“I don’t do that,” I snap, and it sounds way more defensive than I mean it to. It’s also a fucking lie because the thought makes me harder than I dare wish to acknowledge, feeling a tad embarrassed to be so turned on like this over a concept of kissing…another Alpha.
Or more….Cale.
Cale clocks it instantly—the blush, the stutter in my voice, the way I can’t meet either of their eyes for a heartbeat. He grins like a maniac who just watched his rival’s engine detonate in the first lap of a Grand Prix.
Aurora’s grin widens, savoring the chaos.
“C’mon, Luca,” she purrs, rolling her hips in my lap. “You going to be the only one in this room afraid to take a risk? Or are you worried you’re not going to measure up?”
She throws the gauntlet and Cale picks it up—hell, he runs with it.
“Really?” he drawls, voice thick with challenge. “Not going to please our Omega, Thorne? Points deduction if you flinch, just saying.”
Every ounce of pride I have is screaming for a fight, but every cell below the neck is screaming for something else entirely.
I glare at him, then at Aurora—desperate for an out, anything, but she’s looking at me like I’m the only prize she’s ever wanted.