Chapter 52 Chris
Chris
We migrate to the living room after the late lunch.
The fireplace is still going—a wide strip of flame rising out of a bed of black glass pebbles, no pretense of logs or anything rustic.
I settle onto the floor beside it, a pile of cushions at my back.
Nina stretches out on the rug with her head in my lap, her eyes fixed on the flames.
Wyatt sits near Nina’s feet, forearms resting on his bent knees, staring out the window at the rain. The light from the fire catches the angles of his face, the strong jaw, the stubble coming in darker than usual because neither of us have had time to think about shaving.
The room settles into quiet. Only the faint whoosh of the gas flames and the steady rainfall fill the silence.
Wyatt picks up his phone and starts scrolling, the screen casting blue light across his face. “Shit.”
“What?” Nina lifts her head slightly.
“Mudslides on Malibu Canyon Road. Multiple road closures.” He looks up. “Isn’t that where the other safe house is? The one where they moved Vicente and Arturo?”
I nod. “If the roads are out, they’re stuck there for a while.”
“Or they’ll have to relocate,” Wyatt says, frowning at his screen before setting it down on the end table a few feet away. “Lucia will figure it out. Not our problem tonight.”
He’s right. But my brain files it anyway—another variable, another thing that could shift the board.
Nina’s breathing goes slow and even against my thigh.
I should be thinking about Rafael, about the murdered guards at the Flores compound, about the threat that’s still out there hunting Vicente and Arturo and everyone connected to them. I should be running tactical assessments, mapping contingencies, doing something useful with my brain.
Instead, I’m watching them.
Nina’s face is soft in the firelight, her features relaxed for the first time all day. She’s not asleep—I can tell from the way her breathing hasn’t quite evened out—but she’s close. Trusting. Safe.
Wyatt’s profile is sharper, more guarded. But he’s here even though he has every reason to avoid me.
I have this. Both of them. Right now, in this moment, I have everything I’ve spent years convincing myself I didn’t deserve.
What happens when I fuck it up again?
The thought rises unbidden, and I shove it down. Not helpful. Not now.
My hands start moving without my permission. Fingers finding the hem of Nina’s sweater, slipping underneath to trace the warm skin of her stomach. She sighs, arches into the touch like a cat seeking warmth.
No bra. The observation lands somewhere in my hindbrain and refuses to leave.
I let my hand drift higher. Cup the soft weight of her breast, feel her nipple harden against my palm. She makes a sound, quiet and involuntary, and presses into my hand.
Wyatt’s watching.
His eyes have left the window, fixed now on the shape of my hand moving under Nina’s sweater. I can’t read his expression in the half-light, but I can read his body: the tension in his shoulders, the way his chest has gone still like he’s holding his breath.
“I want to see you,” I say. My voice comes out rougher than I expect. “I want you naked, touching yourself, while I touch her.”
Wyatt swallows. Doesn’t move.
“Please,” I add. The word costs me, but it’s so worth it.
He stands. Pulls his shirt over his head in one fluid motion, revealing the lean planes of his chest, the muscle definition that comes from discipline rather than vanity.
His hands go to the waistband of his sweats, borrowed from the house, same generic brand I’m wearing, and he pushes them down without ceremony.
He’s already half-hard.
My hand slides lower on Nina, under the waistband of her leggings, and she gasps when my fingers find her. Wet. Ready. Like she’s been thinking about this too.
“Touch yourself,” I tell Wyatt. “I want to watch.”
He does. One hand wrapping around his cock, stroking slow. His eyes stay on us. On my hand moving under Nina’s clothes, on her face going slack with pleasure.
This could be enough. This could be everything. But there’s something else I want, and I don’t know if I’m brave enough to ask for it.
“I want to be inside you.” The words come out raw. Honest. “But I’m not there yet.”
Wyatt doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t look disappointed or relieved. He just crosses the space between us, cups my jaw, and kisses me in a way that feels like absolution. I curl an arm around his shoulders and pull him tighter and it’s not about what we want from each other, but who we are to each other.
“So let me,” he says when we finally pull apart. “Like that first night. Like Denver. Let me be the one who takes care of you.”
My chest goes tight. Because that’s the harder thing, isn’t it? Not proving I can be in control—but proving I can let go of it.
Nina’s watching us, her gaze soft and steady. She squeezes my hand and kisses my knuckles.
“Bedroom. My bag. Front pocket,” she says to Wyatt with a small smile.
I stare at her, knowing she means lube and condoms. “Seriously?”
“I’m a woman who believes in being prepared for all contingencies.” She grins up at me, her eyes dark with want.
Wyatt goes to get it. While he’s gone, Nina pulls me down to the rug and I kiss her—slow, thorough, enjoying the unbridled heat of this new Nina who has zero fears surrounding sex.
My hands find the hem of her sweater and I peel it up over her head.
She leans back on her elbows, panting lightly as I coast my palms around the soft globes of her breasts, graze my knuckles lightly over her nipples.
I lean back down and kiss her again, deeper this time.
She arches into me, humming against my mouth, and I take my time with the rest. Hooking my thumbs into the waistband of her leggings, dragging them down her hips, her thighs, peeling them off her ankles one at a time.
I shift back over her, and she slides her hands up beneath my sweatshirt, grazing my bruised ribs. I don’t care about the tenderness. We break our kiss just long enough for her to pull the sweatshirt over my head. Then she’s pushing my sweatpants down off my hips, eager to get me naked again.
I pause and rock back on my heels just long enough to take her in. My cock is already fully hard, twitching between my legs. Her gaze coasts down my body, and she winces the barest bit at the sight of the worst bruise, a dark purple blotch that covers my ribs just below my right nipple.
“It’s not as bad as it looks. No broken ribs.”
“Come here,” she murmurs. She parts her legs and I slide between them, covering her body with mine, capturing her mouth again in a bruising kiss that she returns in full force.
We writhe like that for a minute, her hips tilting toward mine, her slick heat grazing along the underside of my cock until my breath hitches.
But the memory of Nina’s hotel room a month ago still lingers.
The promise Wyatt made. I don’t feel as desperate now as I did then, but I still want it just as much.
I slide down Nina’s body, kissing my way across her sternum, cupping her breasts in both hands and teasing both nipples with lips and tongue until she’s gasping.
I continue down, across her navel, the soft skin of her hip, the inside of her thigh.
She sighs when I settle between her legs, her fingers tightening in my hair, her hips already tilting toward my mouth.
I’ve barely gotten started when I feel Wyatt kneel behind me.
He starts slow.
Too slow, probably. The first press of his mouth sends heat flooding up my spine, and my hips jerk involuntarily.
Then his fingers, slick and patient, and the stretch burns in a way that hovers right on the edge between pleasure and pain.
My breath stutters against Nina’s thigh.
A sound slips out of me, low and involuntary, and I bury it against her skin, licking deeper into her because the taste of her and the slide of his fingers are short-circuiting every rational thought in my head.
It feels like the night of Callie’s wedding, when Wyatt fucked me for the first time and I realized this was something I could want without apology. That I could have both him and Nina, and surrender to them both without fear.
When he finally pushes in, I groan against Nina’s pussy and she gasps, fingernails digging into my scalp.
He’s thick and slow and relentless, filling me in one long, steady stroke that makes my cock pulse against the rug.
I grip Nina’s hip with one hand to anchor myself, and I can feel his body taut behind me, holding still to let me adjust.
“Oh god,” Nina breathes. “Please don’t stop.”
I go back to work on her, sucking her clit between my lips as Wyatt starts to move.
Slow at first, finding the angle, and then he hits it and my entire body lights up.
I moan against her, the vibration making her arch off the rug, and we’re all connected.
This circuit of pleasure and want and heat that builds every time he drives into me.
Nina comes first. It always starts with her letting out a sharp breath followed by a shaky moan.
I feel it in the way her thighs shake, the way her fingers yank my hair hard enough to sting, the way her whole body goes rigid and then releases and her pussy floods my mouth.
She cries out, loud and unashamed, and I work her through it with my tongue while Wyatt fucks into me with increasing urgency that has my cock leaking onto the rug beneath me.
When she comes down, boneless and panting, she reaches for my hand and squeezes.
I push back against Wyatt, chasing the sensation of his cock every time it slides back into me. He hooks his arm around my torso and pulls me upright, my back pressed to his chest, still buried inside me. I gasp at the shift in angle—deeper, fuller, better—and his mouth finds the side of my neck.
The same position. The exact same position as that night. Except this time, Wyatt’s the one holding me. And instead of my own distorted reflection in a dark window, I’m looking at Nina.
She’s watching us, flushed and sated and so full of love it makes my chest ache.
Wyatt’s hand wraps around my cock. His hips roll up into me in slow, deep strokes while he works me with his fist.
“I’ve got you,” he murmurs against my ear. “Let go.”
I’m shaking now, my head tipped back against his shoulder, and I can’t keep quiet—these raw, broken sounds I’d normally swallow are spilling out of me because there’s nothing left to hide behind.
Nina closes in and presses her mouth to my chest, right over my heart.
She kisses her way up to my neck, resting her head on my shoulder as she takes hold of my dick right above Wyatt’s hand, thumb sliding over my tip, slicking the fluid around it.
They keep stroking me together, Wyatt’s free hand at my hip, his mouth pressed to my ear, and the three of us are so close I can feel both of them breathing against my skin.
“Let go,” Wyatt says, and I do.
I come hard—harder than I have in months—my whole body seizing as Wyatt and Nina both stroke me through it, his hips stuttering as he follows me over the edge, burying himself deep and holding on.
We stay like that for a long moment. His arms around me. Nina’s mouth still pressed to my neck. My body trembling between them.
When I shift in his arms, I realize my face is wet. Not just sweat—actual tears I didn’t feel coming.
“Hey.” Wyatt cups my face, brushes the moisture away with his thumbs. “Hey. You okay?”
“Yeah.” My voice cracks. “Yeah, I’m—that was—”
I don’t finish.
I don’t apologize for the tears either. Don’t explain them away or laugh them off. I just let him see me—open, wet-faced, more wrung out than I’ve ever been in front of another person, at least no one besides the two of them.
It occurs to me that I’ve never let a man hold me like this. Not after. Not without immediately rebuilding the walls or seeking escape.
I don’t know what to do with that.
I just pull him close, and he comes, and we’re clinging to each other on the floor of this safe house while the storm rages outside and Nina watches us with that smile on her face—the one that says she knew we could do this, even when we didn’t.
“I love you,” I say against his neck. “Both of you. I love you both so much.”
“I know.” He presses a kiss to my hair. “I know.”
Wyatt handles the next perimeter check, then we shower.
All three of us, crammed into the master bathroom because none of us want to be alone right now.
It’s not as big as Nina’s shower, which makes it awkward and ridiculous and perfect—elbows bumping, soap getting everywhere, Nina laughing when Wyatt accidentally gets shampoo in my eye.
Normal. We’re almost normal.
The bed is big enough for all of us. Nina takes the middle—she always takes the middle, I’ve noticed, and I wonder if that’s deliberate or just instinct. I curl around her from one side, Wyatt from the other, our arms overlapping across her body.
The stormy ocean is a steady, ambient roar outside.
“Sleep,” Nina murmurs. “Both of you. We’re safe here.”
I want to believe her. I want to close my eyes and let the warmth of them pull me under into something that doesn’t hurt.
For once, I do.
I don’t know what time it is when I wake up.
The storm hasn’t let up—thunder rolling, rain hammering the roof, lightning flickering through the curtains.
Nina’s breathing is soft and even against my chest. Wyatt’s arm is still draped over her, his hand resting on my hip.
Everything is exactly as I left it.
So why am I awake?
I lie still, listening. Training takes over—cataloging sounds, sorting them into categories. Storm: ocean, wind, rain, thunder. House: refrigerator humming, that gutter still dripping, something creaking that could be the structure settling.
Or could be a footstep.
I go rigid, wracking my memory for what it was that drew me out of sleep. The very specific sensation of pressure changing in a well-sealed building when someone opens a door or window. Everything was locked down tight when we went to bed.
My hand finds the weapon I stashed under the bed before we fell asleep. Muscle memory. Caution that would look like paranoia to an outside observer.
There it is again. That sound. Wrong frequency for the storm, wrong rhythm for the house.
Someone’s in the house.
I’m already moving when Nina stirs beside me, her voice sleep-rough and confused: “Chris? What—”
“Shh.” I put a hand on her arm. Feel Wyatt wake up on the other side, his body going from slack to alert in the space of a heartbeat. “I heard something.”
Lightning flashes. Thunder rolls.
And somewhere in the darkness beyond the bedroom door, I hear it again.