19. Lena
Lena
I wake up in darkness, breath caught in my throat.
For one slow, disorienting second, I don’t know what pulled me out of sleep. No sound. No hand on me. No sudden jolt of fear. Just that strange, awful feeling of being dragged up from something warm and filthy and too good to leave willingly.
My body knows before my mind does.
The dream.
Fuck.
I lie still on the motel bed, staring into the dark where the ceiling should be, my pulse climbing as pieces of it come back in hot, broken flashes.
A mouth at my throat. A hand between my thighs.
Someone behind me, someone in front of me, all of them too close, too much, and me letting it happen like I wanted every second of it.
Worse.
I did want it.
Even asleep, even in a dream, my body opened for them like it already knew them.
Knox with that brutal steadiness of his, the kind that makes everything feel pinned down and inevitable.
Havoc all heat and teeth and wicked hands, smiling into my skin like he liked the way I came apart.
Vale quieter than the other two somehow, but not softer for it, his mouth on mine while his hands held me in place like he’d already decided I wasn’t going anywhere.
I squeeze my eyes shut.
That does nothing. It only makes the last part hit harder.
In the dream, all three of them had me. Not in turns.
Together. Hands overlapping, mouths everywhere, my legs spread and shaking while they touched me like they’d agreed without words who got what, who held me down, who made me moan next.
I can still feel the shape of it, the press of bodies around me, the humiliating, aching pleasure of not knowing whose hand was on my breast and whose fingers were between my thighs and whose mouth was dragging over my neck while I begged for something I couldn’t even name.
A small sound escapes me before I can stop it.
I go very still.
The room stays quiet. No one stirs.
Good.
Because my body is hot all over now, and not from the bad motel blanket twisted around my legs. My nipples ache. My thighs are tight. Between them, I’m damp enough that the realization makes heat crawl all the way up my throat.
I shift carefully under the sheets and regret it immediately. The friction drags right through me.
“Jesus,” I whisper into the dark.
This is unbelievable. I’m lying in a motel room, half-scared out of my mind, caught in some mess I still barely understand, and apparently my subconscious has decided the most urgent issue at hand is whether I’d let three dangerous men fuck me senseless.
The answer, judging by the dream, is yes.
Enthusiastically yes.
I drag a hand over my face and stare into the dark again, furious with myself now on top of everything else.
Because it wasn’t vague, dream-blurred nonsense.
It was specific. Knox holding my wrists above my head, his mouth by my ear, telling me to stay still in that flat voice of his that somehow made me wetter.
Havoc on his knees between my legs, grinning when I shook, when I tried to close them and he pushed them back open and laughed low in his throat like he already knew I wouldn’t make him stop.
Vale kissing me through every moan, like he needed to swallow them, like he was the only one trying to keep anything about it tender and failing because he wanted it too badly.
I press my thighs together.
That’s a mistake too.
A pulse of pleasure goes straight through me, sharp enough that my breath catches again. My whole body feels overaware, sensitized by the dream and by the very real memory underneath it. Because this isn’t coming from nowhere. Not really. My body knows them now. Too well. Better than it should.
That thought settles low and dangerous in me.
I turn onto my back and force myself to breathe slowly, evenly, like I can calm my way out of this.
It doesn’t help. Every little movement of the sheet over my skin feels obscene.
I can still picture Havoc’s smile. Vale’s scar catching the low light.
Knox’s hands, steady and capable and far too easy to imagine on me.
I should be horrified.
I am horrified.
That just isn’t the only thing I am.
I lie there for another second, trying to breathe my way back down from the dream, when I realize I’m not the only one awake in the dark.
The bed shifts beside me. Not a normal sleeping movement. Not someone rolling over or stretching out. This is tighter than that. Restless. Wrong.
I turn my head.
Vale is next to me, on top of the covers like he didn’t trust himself to get under them, still in his clothes except for his boots, one arm flung over his stomach, the other half-curled by his side.
In the dark, he’s mostly shape and shadow.
But I can hear him now. His breathing. Too rough.
Too uneven. Like he’s running somewhere in his sleep and can’t get free of it.
He says something under his breath, too low to catch. Then his face tightens. His hand flexes against the blanket.
For one second I just watch him.
Then I sit up a little and whisper, “Vale.”
Nothing.
He shifts harder, jaw clenched, breath catching like he’s choking on something invisible.
“Vale,” I say again, louder this time.
Still nothing. I reach out before I can overthink it and put my hand on his shoulder.
He jerks hard under my touch, and his eyes snap open.
For half a second he looks terrifying. Not because he’s awake, but because he isn’t all the way back yet. His body goes rigid, eyes wild in the dark like he’s seeing something else over me, something old and bad and bloody.
“Vale,” I say quickly. “Hey. It’s me.”
He blinks once. Then again.
The room comes back to him in pieces. The motel. The dark. Me.
His chest rises and falls too fast.
I take my hand off him slowly. “You were dreaming.”
He looks away first. “I know.” His voice is rough with sleep and something heavier under it.
For a second neither of us says anything. The room is dark except for the weak wash of parking-lot light leaking around the curtains. It cuts his face into angles, catches in the scar, leaves the rest of him in shadow.
“You were making noise,” I say quietly.
A humorless little breath leaves him. “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.”
He doesn’t answer.
I tuck my knees up under the blanket and look at him. He’s still on top of the covers, one hand over his ribs now like he’s holding himself together there.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I ask.
He lets out another short breath, almost a laugh, except there’s nothing amused in it. “No.”
“Okay.”
I settle back against the headboard. He stays where he is, staring at the ceiling like he can will himself into calm if he’s quiet enough.
A minute passes. Maybe two.
Then he says, “It was nothing.”
I turn my head and look at him in the dark. “That’s very obviously a lie.”
That gets the faintest shift in his face.
“Probably,” he says.
There’s something about the two of us like this, talking in the dark in voices barely above a whisper, that feels strange and intimate in a way I don’t know what to do with.
Not romantic. Not exactly. More like a confessional.
Like he’s on one side of a screen and I’m on the other, and whatever he says next is going to sound like sin no matter what words he uses.
I lower my voice even more. “Was it about tonight?”
His silence answers first.
Then: “Not just tonight.”
I swallow.
He still isn’t looking at me.
“What, then?”
His jaw shifts. “Things.”
I stare at him. “Vale.”
He closes his eyes briefly. “You don’t let go, do you?”
“Not when people wake up looking like they got dragged out of hell.”
He goes very still. Then he says, “I’ve seen worse places.”
“Me too,” I say.
The motel room is dark except for a weak stripe of light leaking in around the curtains.
It cuts across the bed and leaves the rest of us in shadow.
He’s still on top of the covers, like he didn’t trust himself enough to lie down properly, and I’m half sitting up against the headboard with the blanket pulled to my chest.
For a few seconds, neither of us says anything.
Then he says, very quietly, “What were you dreaming about?”
I laugh once under my breath. “You first.”
“That’s not how confession works.”
“You’re the one who looks like a penitent.”
I can hear the faintest shift in his breathing, almost a laugh, but it fades fast.
Then he says, “I was back there.”
“Back where?”
He takes too long to answer for it to be anywhere good.
“Places I couldn’t fix,” he says. “People I couldn’t keep alive.”
I turn my head and look at him in the dark. “That’s not one place.”
“No.”
“So it’s all of them.”
His silence is answer enough.
The room hums quietly around us. Air conditioner. The old building settling. A car passing somewhere outside. The ordinary sounds make this feel stranger, not less, like we’re having the wrong conversation in the wrong place and somehow that’s the only reason it can happen at all.
I tuck the blanket tighter around myself. “Do you always carry it around like that?”
“Yes.”
No hesitation. No defense.
I let out a slow breath. “That sounds exhausting.”
“It is.”
There’s something about the way he says it that gets under my skin. Not dramatic. Not looking for pity. Just true.
I stare into the dark for a second, then say, “I dreamed about all three of you.”
That gets him to turn his head. I can feel it more than see it.
“I figured,” he says.
I narrow my eyes even though I know he probably can’t tell. “How exactly did you figure that?”
“You woke up breathing like you’d been running,” he says. “But you weren’t scared.”
Heat crawls up my neck. “That is wildly annoying,” I mutter.
“What is?”
“That you noticed that.”
He’s quiet for a beat. “I notice a lot.”
“Yes,” I say. “I’ve gathered.”
Another pause.