Chapter 52 #2
Ravik had looked at him, ready to make some crude joke, but the words had died in his throat because Sev was looking back.
Not smiling…not laughing. Just watching him with those pale blue eyes gone dark and hungry in a way Ravik had never seen before—a look that stripped away pretense and spoke of a different, deeper appetite.
Lirana had kissed Ravik then, distracting him, her tongue plunging into his mouth, and he had let himself be distracted.
Her mouth was hot, her hands everywhere—one tangling in his hair, the other sliding between his legs to cup the heavy weight of his balls, making him groan.
She had been on her back between them, arching and moaning while Ravik stroked between her thighs, his fingers slipping easily into her slick pussy, and Severin’s mouth closed over one dark nipple, sucking hard. It should have been enough—more than enough.
Then Sev’s hand slid over Ravik again.
Not a brush this time—a stroke. A deliberate, slow drag of his palm across Ravik’s lower belly, the heat of it branding him through the thin material and making his cock jerk in surprised pleasure.
Ravik had shuddered so hard Lirana laughed against his mouth, a breathy, knowing sound.
Sev’s fingers had skimmed along his hip, then lower, tracing the line of Ravik’s erection straining against his trousers—not touching his shaft directly, but so close that Ravik’s whole body went tight and aching with the awareness of it.
He remembered the smell of Goldsheill ale on his own breath, remembered the silver gleam of Lirana’s eyes watching them over his shoulder, remembered the low, rough sound Sev made when Ravik’s thigh pressed against his in a reflexive, seeking movement.
They had never spoken about it—not then and not after.
But Ravik remembered the way their bodies had moved closer around Lirana, until she was almost an afterthought pressed between two walls of tense, hungry male. He remembered Sev’s hand on his hip, fingers digging in, while Lirana took Ravik’s cock in her mouth, her lips stretched wide.
He remembered reaching for her and finding Sev’s cock instead, his own hand closing around his friend’s shaft and holding it for one breathless, too-long moment before snatching his hand away as if scorched.
He remembered Lirana whispering, her voice thick with arousal,
“You are beautiful together,” and laughing, a low, wicked sound, when both males went utterly silent and still.
Then her hand, slick from her own wetness, came up to cradle the back of Ravik’s neck, her silver eyes gleaming with mischievous heat.
“Don’t just look,” she breathed, her gaze flicking between them. “Taste. Kiss him—I want to see it.”
A jolt, sharp as a live wire, went through Ravik.
He froze, his blood roaring in his ears, every muscle locked.
He stared at Severin, whose pale eyes were no longer just hungry, but wide with a shock that mirrored his own.
The air in the room, already thick with scent and heat, seemed to crystallize.
It was Severin who moved first—a barely perceptible shift, a tilt of his head that was neither refusal nor acceptance, but a question…an invitation.
Ravik’s resistance had crumbled—not in a surrender, but in a surge of something darker—more compelling than denial. The ale, the night, the woman between them—it all narrowed to the scant inches between his mouth and Severin’s.
And then he closed the distance.
The kiss was nothing like Lirana’s. There was no practiced cleverness, no perfumed sweetness. It was a clash—a hard, desperate press of lips that was more collision than caress.
Severin’s mouth was cool, but it heated instantly under his, tasting of alien spice and the faint, metallic hint of the wine they’d shared.
Ravik’s hand, now tangled in the cushions, fisted tightly, while his other arm braced him, trapping Lirana beneath them, though she didn’t seem to mind.
He felt Severin’s sharp inhale, then the hesitant, then urgent, part of his lips.
Ravik’s tongue swept in through his friend’s sharp fangs, not seeking, but claiming, and Severin met him with a low, bitten-off groan that vibrated directly into Ravik’s soul.
It was rough, awkward, and devastatingly honest—a five-second eternity that shattered every unspoken rule between them.
He had pulled back first, his breathing ragged and his world tilted off its axis. Lirana’s satisfied hum was a distant echo.
Severin’s lips were parted and swollen, the sharp points of his fangs showing beneath his upper lip. His usually impeccable Blood Kindred composure had been shattered, leaving raw, unmasked need in its place.
They didn’t speak…they just stared, the ghost of the kiss hanging in the air—a new, terrifying thread now woven into their shared memories.
Then Ravik had turned away, ashamed and desperate. He’d taken his turn with Lirana first—filling her pussy almost savagely, as though to prove to himself this was what he wanted. But when she asked if Severin could join in, he reminded her that Beast Kindred didn’t share.
The worst thing of all was that he remembered coming harder than he ever had—his release ripped from him in a blinding, violent rush—because Sev was close.
Because he could feel the tension coiling in his best friend’s frame—could hear the hitch in his breath, could still taste him on his tongue, and could sense the precise moment his control frayed.
Afterwards, Sev had taken a turn himself and Ravik—still hard—had stroked himself as he watched his friend with Lirana.
He’d come a second time when Sev came, looking not at the woman they were sharing but at Ravik—holding his eyes as he shot his seed deep inside her, a ragged moan torn from his throat.
The next morning, Ravik had woken with a pounding head and Lirana gone from the bed, with only the indentation in the cushions and the scent of sex remaining.
Severin had been on the other side of the room, already dressed, fastening his cuffs with careful, precise fingers, his face a mask of cool detachment.
Neither of them had looked the other in the eyes.
“Too much Goldsheill ale,” Ravik had muttered, the words tasting like ashes in his mouth.
“Clearly,” Sev had said, his voice flat and final.
And that had been the end of it.
Only it hadn’t been, because here they were again.
There was no ale this time—no Tenebrian pleasure house. No easy excuse to blame for the way his body had responded when Cassie pressed his shaft to Sev’s and tasted them both together.
And no excuse for the way his chest had felt when Sev said he cared for him more than anyone else in the universe.
Ravik went to the sleeping platform and sat heavily on the edge.
He was not a lover of males, he told himself. He had never wanted males.
Except Sev wasn’t just any male—Sev was Sev.
His friend. His partner. His shield-brother.
The male who had dragged him out of firefights, stitched his wounds, argued with him over rations, sat beside his Med-Center bed for three nights after the Karridian ambush, and fought the Hunger Virus for months while Ravik disappeared into the fog.
The male who had injected himself with an untested cure and then bitten Ravik even though he knew Ravik might hate him for it.
Sev was the male who had saved his life—the male he could not stop wanting to punish because he had made Ravik feel something he didn’t fucking know how to deal with.
Ravik bowed his head, elbows on his knees, hands hanging between them.
He had agreed to Cherubin Three because of Cassie. That was what he would keep telling himself. Cassie needed him. Cassie was suffering. Cassie was his mate in his heart, and he would give her his seed, his body, his protection, and anything else she needed to get through this nightmare.
If that meant sharing her with Sev for the cure, he would do it.
If that meant touching Sev, maybe even letting Sev touch him, he would do that too. He had said as much because Cassie had been crying and because he would have promised anything to stop the pain in her voice.
But afterward, he was leaving—he had to. Because if he stayed, he would want to stay forever.
The thought hit him like a ton of rocks dropped on his chest, crushing his heart until he couldn’t breathe.
No, that wasn’t right. That wasn’t what he meant, he tried to tell himself.
He didn’t want forever with Sev and Cassie—he only wanted Cassie.
He wanted to keep her safe, to hold her close, to make her laugh and taste her honey and fill her with his seed, and hear her call him ‘big guy’ in that soft, sweet voice of hers that he could feel all the way down in his balls when she talked.
But if Cassie turned to Sev too…if Sev held her from behind while Ravik kissed her… Or if Sev’s hand came to rest on Ravik’s hip—not by accident this time, not because of ale or infection or medical necessity…
Ravik’s body tightened all over as he imagined touching them both…and being touched by both of them.
He fucking hated himself for it.
A soft tone chimed from the quarantine door, and one of the medical assistants in protective gear appeared on the other side of the clear panel.
“Commander Ravik?” the woman said carefully. “Commander Sylvan has authorized transport preparations to Cherubin Three. We’ll need to take one final blood sample and confirm your consent to travel.”
Consent—right, he’d consented all right—to all of it. He was doing all of this of his own free will. So why did he feel so raw inside?
He lifted his head and looked toward the barrier where Cassie and Sev were still talking quietly on opposite sides of the clear wall. Cassie’s eyes were red from crying and Sev looked pale and tired, his broken oculars replaced by a temporary visor that did nothing to hide the hurt in his face.
Ravik had put some of that hurt there—maybe most of it.
He stood slowly.
“I consent to travel,” he said, his voice rough. “I consent to help Cassie make the vaccine.”
The med tech nodded.
“And Commander Severin?”
Ravik’s jaw clenched.
Across the room, Sev looked over at him and for a moment, their eyes met.
Ravik wanted to look away but he didn’t. He forced himself to hold that pale blue gaze and say the next words, even though he could barely get them out.
“I consent to work with Sev,” he said. “For the duration of the treatment.”
Sev’s face changed. Not much—not enough that anyone else would have noticed, probably. But Ravik knew him. He saw the flicker of pain and hope and resignation, all tangled together in his best friend’s pale blue eyes.
For the duration of the treatment—that was the line Ravik had drawn and he was determined not to cross it.
The assistant entered the note into her tablet and moved toward him with the blood collection kit. Ravik offered his arm without looking away from Sev. The needle pierced his skin, but he barely felt it—he had survived worse.
He would survive Cherubin Three, as well, he told himself. He would survive sharing Cassie. He would survive whatever strange, humiliating, impossible things the cure demanded of him and Sev.
Then he would leave before wanting became needing…before needing became Bonding.
Before he looked at his best friend and admitted the one truth he had been running from since the night with the Tenebrian woman—the truth he still couldn’t even let himself think, let alone say our loud.
He wanted Sev like he wanted Cassie. He wanted them both together as badly as he wanted his next breath.
And that was exactly why he had to go.