Chapter 19 House Rules
NINETEEN
HOUSE RULES
DECLAN
Five days since the crash and my body still hadn't forgiven me.
Every bruise had layered on top of older bruises.
My ribs were a mess of purple and yellow that hurt with every breath.
The cut on my forehead itched under the butterfly bandages.
My hands were stiff and sore from gripping the steering wheel during impact.
I rolled over slowly. The bed beside me was empty with sheets still warm, but Troy was gone.
The absence bothered me more than it should have. I'd gotten used to waking up with him there, to feeling his weight in the bed, to watching him sleep with his guard finally down.
Now the empty space felt too noticeable and too quiet.
I sat up carefully, and my ribs protested.
Today was training day, the first real session since the crash. Mara had been texting me daily asking when I was coming back. I couldn't afford to keep putting off preparation.
I was running out of time and running out of excuses. My body needed work and sitting around the house wasn't going to fix it.
I stood slowly and tested my weight. Everything hurt but nothing felt broken, just battered and sore, the damage that came from impact and age and pushing too hard for too long.
The smell of food cooking drifted up from downstairs. Coffee. Bacon. Something else I couldn't identify but that made my stomach growl.
I pulled on sweatpants and left my shirt off because putting one on required lifting my arms and my ribs weren't ready for that yet. I headed downstairs following the smell.
The kitchen was bright with morning light streaming through the windows. Troy stood at the stove with his back to me. He was wearing the apron I kept hanging on the hook by the sink, just the apron, and underneath it, barely visible, black lace hugged his hips.
My brain stopped working properly.
He was cooking breakfast half-naked in lace like this was completely normal, like we did this every morning. The apron strings tied at his lower back drew attention to the curve of his spine and the shift of muscle when he moved, and I was hard before I made it three steps into the room.
Troy glanced over his shoulder, saw me, and smiled in that way that said he knew exactly what he was doing. “Morning.”
I crossed the kitchen without answering and came up behind him, pressing my body against his back with my cock hard against his ass through the thin barrier of sweatpants and lace, and I felt him inhale.
“I'm cooking,” he said.
“I can see that.” My hands went to his hips and slid over the lace, feeling the delicate fabric shift over muscle. “Turn off the stove.”
He took his time about it. He plated the eggs with infuriating calm, made me wait, then set the spatula down and turned. The apron covered the front but I could see the outline of his cock through it, hard and straining against the fabric.
“Hi,” he said.
I grabbed the back of his neck and kissed him deep and immediate, tasting coffee and want, and he kissed back just as hard with his hands spreading across my chest.
“Get on the table,” I said against his mouth.
He untied the apron and dropped it. The full picture of him in nothing but black lace in morning light hit me somewhere low and permanent.
He climbed onto the table and got on his hands and knees. He looked back at me over his shoulder with dark eyes. “This what you want?”
Then the footsteps came on the stairs.
Dmitri walked into the kitchen in boxer briefs with his hair loose from sleep and tattoos covering his chest and arms in dense geometric patterns I'd looked at a hundred times without really seeing.
He stopped and took in Troy on the table, me behind him, and the obvious shape of what was happening.
“Oh,” he said. Then he grinned. “Do not stop on my account.”
He moved to the coffee pot, poured a cup, and drank. Then he sat down at the table close enough to watch with one hand dropping to the bulge in his boxers, touching himself slow and deliberate with his eyes fixed on Troy's ass like it was the most natural thing in the world.
“You two are very pretty together,” Dmitri said. “Is nice view.”
Troy looked back at me and smirked. Then his eyes moved to Dmitri. “You want to play?”
Dmitri's grin widened. “Da. If you are offering.”
Troy looked back at me. “What do you say?”
The feeling that should have been jealousy arrived instead as heat and want, and I heard myself say, “Yeah. Come here, Dmitri.”
Dmitri set his coffee down and stripped the boxer briefs without ceremony. He was already fully hard, thick and flushed and unashamed about all of it, and he came around the table to stand beside me.
I looked at him properly for the first time. The tattoos up close. The breadth of his shoulders. The particular quality of his attention, which was direct and easy and entirely without pretense.
Then I grabbed his jaw and kissed him.
He made a surprised sound against my mouth that turned immediately into approval, one hand coming up to grip my shoulder, kissing back with a directness that matched everything else about him.
He tasted like coffee and smoke and something sharp underneath, entirely foreign from Troy, and the difference was striking and good and made heat pool at the base of my spine.
Troy made a sound from the table. “Fucking hell.”
I pulled back from Dmitri's mouth. His eyes were dark and his expression had shed the easy grin for intent.
“Go,” I said.
He climbed onto the table and positioned himself in front of Troy, and Troy reached for him immediately with one hand wrapping around his cock, stroking once from root to tip while Dmitri's jaw went tight.
“Blyat.” His hand went into Troy's hair. “Troy. Easy.”
“No.” Troy licked the head of him in a slow deliberate swipe with his eyes up and watching Dmitri's face. Then he looked back at me. “Declan. Now.”
I hooked the lace down over his ass and let it catch at his thighs. I spit into my palm, slicked two fingers, and pressed inside without preamble.
Troy gasped. His mouth opened around Dmitri's cock, taking him halfway down, and I worked a third finger in and watched his spine arch and felt him clench and loosen in alternating waves.
Dmitri had both hands in Troy's hair without forcing the pace, just holding and watching Troy work him with a focused intensity that made his chest rise and fall faster. His eyes moved up and found mine and something passed between us that was direct and uncomplicated.
I pulled my fingers out and freed my cock. I spit into my palm and lined up.
I pushed inside in one smooth thrust.
The sound Troy made around Dmitri's cock was muffled and long and his whole body shuddered with the fullness of it. I felt him everywhere with that grip, that heat, that specific tight welcome that had rewired something fundamental in my brain the first time and hadn't stopped since.
I held for two full seconds just feeling it.
Then I started to move.
I set a rhythm that built fast with my hands gripping his hips hard, watching the way his body rocked forward onto Dmitri with each thrust, watching Dmitri's face do things it couldn't control.
Troy was taking both of us simultaneously with an ease that was deeply obscene and deeply beautiful and the sounds filling my kitchen were nothing like anything that had ever happened in this house before.
Dmitri looked down at Troy. Then up at me. He reached across Troy's back and grabbed my shoulder, pulling slightly, and I understood the ask. I leaned forward over Troy's body with one hand braced on the table, and Dmitri met me halfway.
We kissed again while both of us used Troy between us.
It was different than the first time, deeper and more deliberate.
I felt Dmitri groan into my mouth when Troy did something specific with his tongue and I swallowed the sound and kept moving and the three of us found a rhythm together that was feral and fluid and nothing I'd ever anticipated in my life.
Troy pulled off Dmitri long enough to say, “Fuck, are you two actually—”
“Quiet,” I said against Dmitri's mouth.
Troy made a sound that was entirely approval and went back down.
Dmitri broke the kiss, breathing hard, with his forehead dropping briefly against mine. His hand moved from my shoulder down my back, tracing muscle there, and the touch was easy and exploratory and entirely without agenda.
I reached around Troy and grabbed Dmitri's hip, pulling him forward and deeper into Troy's mouth, and Dmitri made a sound in Russian that needed no translation.
His hips rolled forward with his hand tightening in Troy's hair, and Troy took it and made a continuous muffled sound that vibrated straight through to where I was buried inside him.
“He has magnificent mouth,” Dmitri said, strained.
“I know.” I drove in harder and felt Troy clench.
“And you are brutal with him,” Dmitri said, watching my hips. “He likes this.”
“He loves it,” I said.
Troy pulled off again just long enough to speak. “I can hear you.”
“We know,” Dmitri said pleasantly, and pushed him back down.
My free hand wrapped around Troy's cock and stroked in time with each thrust, felt the slick heat of him and felt the tremble building in his thighs, and then Dmitri's hand closed around my wrist and stopped me.
I looked up.
Dmitri's eyes were dark and specific. He pulled back from Troy's mouth slowly, dragging himself free with a wet sound that filled the kitchen, and Troy made a noise of protest that turned into something else when Dmitri looked at me with an expression that had a very clear proposal in it.
I pulled out of Troy.
Troy's whole body dropped forward onto the table with a shaking exhale, his arms giving out and his cheek pressed to the wood. “What are you—why did you—”
“Come down,” Dmitri said to me with his voice low and direct.
I understood him immediately.