Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Eli
Rhys is shaking.
He’s still braced over her, muscles locked, shoulders trembling with the aftershocks, but he hasn’t really come down yet. Not the way he needs to.
His knot is thick and obscenely swollen where their bodies meet, sealing him inside her. Every tiny shift of his hips grinds that knot against swollen, reddened flesh, and Mia’s whole body answers in flinches and micro-shudders.
“Mia,” he breathes, voice wrecked. “Fuck. I—”
Her eyes flutter, roll half-closed. For a second my stomach drops.
“Mia.” I crowd in at her side, palm to her cheek, thumb gently prying one eyelid a little wider. Her pupils are big but reactive, breath fast but not shallow. No gasping, no wheeze. I tune out everything else and focus on her. “Hey. Look at me.”
It takes effort, I can see it. Her gaze swims, then finally clicks onto mine, hazy but there.
“Hi,” she mumbles.
“Hi.” My mouth tries to twitch into a smile and mostly fails. “Where are you?”
She blinks slowly. “Nest,” she says. “With… you. All of you.”
Good. She’s still lucid.
“Anything hurt?” I ask. “Sharp, not good-hurt.”
She swallows. Her throat is red where Rhys’s stubble has scraped. “Just floaty. And…full.”
Her voice goes lower on the last word; the word full lands in my gut and makes my shaft throb. Rhys makes a strangled sound above her.
“Yeah,” he mutters, the corner of his mouth pulling in something like a dazed smile. “You’re full, omega.”
His chest is heaving. Sweat drips from his hairline onto the pillow. I can smell the edge of panic still hovering under his pheromones; if she so much as twitches wrong, he’s going right back over that cliff.
“Breathe, Rhys,” I say without looking at him, fingers still on Mia’s face to keep her anchored. “You’re locked until your knot goes down; you know that. She’s okay.”
He drags in a breath, then another. Slowly, the frantic edge in his scent eases back a notch.
On Mia’s other side, Knox wedges himself closer, big hand wrapping around her thigh, the other smoothing over her belly like he’s petting something that belongs to him.
“Smell that?” he rumbles low with satisfaction. “No more fear. She smells like us now. Finally.”
Mia lets out a small, wet laugh that turns into a shaky exhale halfway through. A single tear slides out from the corner of her eye, tracking toward her ear.
My chest tightens.
“Hey, hey,” I murmur, thumbing it away. “What’s that one? Talk to me.”
“Not…bad,” she croaks. “Just…I didn’t think…it could feel…” She trails off. “It’s good. I’m good.”
Good isn’t a clinical term, but I’ll take it.
Declan’s fingers find her wrist, his thumb gently stroking the delicate skin there. He watches her face intently.
“She’s trembling,” he says, his voice low. “But her eyes are clear. She’s overwhelmed, but she’s with us.” His gaze flicks to mine. “She’s not breaking.”
Knox snorts softly, watching her with dark eyes. “Translation: she’s tougher than she looks.”
“She can also say no,” I remind him, sharper than I mean to. His eyes flash, then soften.
“Obviously,” he says, and for once there’s no swagger in it at all. “She growls, I back off. No matter how much it kills me.”
Mia’s lips twitch. “You’d cry,” she mumbles.
He grins, sudden and bright and wrecked. “Maybe.”
For a few long seconds, everything is quiet. The room is hot with sex and pheromones, sweat, slick, and the sharp tang of their orgasms. And at the center of it, Mia’s breathing slowly steadies, her body heavy and loose under Rhys’s weight.
My own heartbeat is still too fast. The logical part of my brain is noting the flush on her chest, the sheen of sweat on her upper lip, the tremor in her thighs. The irrational part is just chanting: she’s okay, she’s okay, she’s okay.
Then her scent changes.
It’s subtle at first. A deeper sweetness under the surface, tarter, almost painful. Heat flares through the room like someone turned up the thermostat ten degrees.
Mia’s hips jerk around the thickness of Rhys’s knot. A little, high sound squeezes out of her.
“There it is,” Knox mutters, low and pleased. “Second wave.”
Her fingers curl weakly in the sheets. “I thought—” Another shudder rolls through her; her breathing stutters. “I thought that would fix it.”
“It did,” Declan says carefully. “It brought your hormone levels down from the cliff edge. But the surge you walked in with? One round was never going to erase that entirely.”
Rhys shifts, the move so small most people wouldn’t notice, but Mia still gasps, her body twitching, interior muscles clenching down around his knot and shaft.
“Fuck,” he breathes. “She’s—she’s milking me.”
My cock strains, harder than I’ve ever been. “Mia.” I lean in, thumb tracing her cheekbone. “Talk to me. Head clear, or fuzzier now?”
She works for the words. I can see it; the way she drags them up through the fog.
“Floaty,” she whispers. “But I know…where I am. Who you are.” Her fingers twitch; I catch one and squeeze. “Before was…like drowning. This is more like…” Her hips roll helplessly again; she moans. “Like I’m starving.”
Knox’s breath comes sharp through his teeth. Rhys swears under his breath. My own body goes taut.
I take a breath, make myself steady.
“Okay,” I say. “Then I’m asking you clearly, while your head is as clear as it’s going to be. Do you want more right now? Not just the heat talking. You.”
Her answer is immediate, feral. “Yes. Please. All of you. I don’t—” She squeezes my hand, frantic. “Don’t stop halfway.”
There’s a sound like someone punched Rhys in the diaphragm. Knox mutters something obscene that sounds suspiciously like a prayer. Declan exhales a slow release of tension.
I push a hand through my hair, make the call I’ve been circling since we walked into this room. “We do it in order,” I say. “Rhys is locked; he stays until the knot goes down. We do not leave her empty. I go next. Dek last.”
Knox growls. “I’m second to last?”
“You’re a lot of man,” I say. “And you have zero chill. Dek has more patience. He’ll take care of her if she needs to come down slow.”
Declan’s mouth tightens, but he doesn’t argue. Knox looks like he wants to, jaw flexing, but then he glances down at Mia and sees the way she’s already trembling, the flush high on her cheeks, and some of the fight drains out of him.
“Fine,” he bites out. “But I’m not moving. I’m holding her through it.”
I roll my eyes. “That part was not in doubt.”
But we don’t move yet. Rhys is still locked tight inside her, his chest heaving against hers. You can’t rush the knot, and you don’t try.
“Declan,” I say, keeping my voice low. “Water.”
“Way ahead of you.” Declan is already moving to the nightstand, grabbing the insulated bottle he keeps there. He cracks the seal, and the sound it makes is loud in the heavy silence. “I have electrolytes in the kitchen, too. The raspberry kind. Should I—?”
“Water first,” I say.
He nods, dropping to his knees beside the nest. He looks serious, like he’s debugging a critical error, but his hands are gentle as he lifts Mia’s head.
“Drink,” he murmurs, tipping the bottle to her lips. “Slow sips. Don’t choke.”
She drinks greedily, water escaping the corner of her mouth. Knox is there before it can drip, catching the droplets with his thumb and smearing it over her lower lip, his eyes dark and tracking every swallow she takes.
“Good,” Declan praises, pulling the bottle back when she tries to chug. “Easy. You lost a lot of fluids. We need to get you back to baseline before we go again.”
Rhys shifts, burying his face in the curve of her neck. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles against her skin, the vibration running through her. “I’m not…I can’t move yet.”
“It’s okay,” Mia whispers, her hand coming up to tangle in his sweat-damp hair. She sounds wrecked, but content. “Heavy,” she slurs. “Warm.”
Knox grabs a towel from the built-in cubby beneath the nest and gently wipes the sheen of sweat from her forehead and temples. It’s a surprisingly tender gesture from a man who looks like he’s about to snap the bedframe in half.
“You’re doing good,” he rumbles, tossing the towel aside. “Just rest. Let him finish.”
We wait.
It’s agony, watching her flushed skin and heavy eyes, smelling the spiked sweetness of her second wave. For ten long minutes, the only sounds are her breathing and the soft murmur of Rhys whispering things against her skin that I can’t hear.
Finally, Rhys lets out a long, shuddering exhale.
“It’s…softening,” he grits out.
The pressure releases all at once. When he finally slips free, the sound is wet and heavy, and Mia makes a small, bereft noise that hits me right in the chest.
“I know,” Rhys whispers, pressing a kiss to her forehead before he rolls off, collapsing back against the pillows. “I know.”
But we can’t leave her empty. Not when she’s in a wave like this.
I shift down the bed, stripping the rest of the way without ceremony. My cock is aching, a hard, painful throb I’ve been trying to ignore.
It’s the memory of her standing in her window, looking so soft it made my teeth ache.
Everything about this woman has been testing the absolute limits of my restraint since the day we moved in.
It’s the taste of her scent on the back of my tongue.
I’ve been starving for a real taste of her, and I am done with just watching.
Mia’s gaze catches on me, heavy-lidded but still a bit clear in a way that makes me weirdly proud.
“You still with me?” I ask.
She nods. “Yeah.”
“Then I’m going to ask you again.” I brace one knee between her thighs, but I don’t touch her yet. “Do you want me to fuck you?”
It’s not safe. I know it. If she hesitates even a heartbeat, I’ll back off.
She doesn’t.
“Yes,” she says, immediate and helpless. “Please, Eli. I want you.”
The sound of my name like that punches the air out of me.
“Okay.” My voice comes out more like a growl than speech. “Then we’re doing this slow, and you tell me the second anything crosses from ‘intense’ into ‘bad.’”
Declan shifts to support one of her thighs, angling her pelvis in that small, careful way that gives me better access without torquing her hips.
I palm my cock, slicking it in the mess already on her skin. When I’m sure I’m not about to drag dry, I bring the head to her entrance.
The heat there is intense. Swollen, throbbing, so sensitive she flinches at the first touch.
“Look at me,” I command, my voice rough and low.
She drags her gaze to mine, hazy and blown wide.
“Don’t hide,” I tell her, holding her eyes. “Stay right here with me while I stretch you.”
Her body softens by a fraction, surrendering to the order.
I press in, inch by careful inch. The resistance is there, a tight ring of muscle and abused tissue, but there’s also so much slick that my cock slides along the path Rhys has already forged.
She whimpers.
“Pain?” I ask, freezing.
Her fingers clutch the sheet, then force themselves to relax. “Big,” she rasps. “Don’t stop.”
I move in another small increment. And another. I stay laser-locked on her face, on her shoulders, on the way her thighs tense and release.
When I’m finally seated as deep as I dare, the air leaves my lungs in a quiet, helpless rush.
“Okay?” I ask again, because I need to hear it.
She nods, releasing a whimper that breaks into a moan when I roll my hips, just once, experimentally.
I move just enough to find a slow, grinding rhythm that drags along every sensitive inch inside her without slamming her into the mattress.
Another ragged breath shudders through me, my eyes rolling back.
I’m dimly aware that Knox is a constant, warm presence pressed along her side, his fingers stroking patterns on her stomach.
Rhys has shifted to her other side, face buried in her hair, his scent thick with exhausted relief.
Declan has claimed the head of the nest. He’s braced on his elbows above her shoulders, effectively caging her in from the top.
He isn’t watching the mechanics anymore. He’s capturing the sound.
He swoops down, sealing his mouth over hers in a kiss that looks bruising and desperate. It’s messy. It’s loud. He’s drinking down every gasp and whimper she tries to let out, his tongue tangling with hers in a rhythm that matches the snap of my hips.
Mia’s hands fly up to grip his hair, her back arching off the mattress as she gets lost between the two of us.
Each thrust pulls a sound from her throat, little gasps that grow wetter, looser. Her body stops bracing against the stretch and starts to move with it, tiny rocking motions that meet me halfway.
The orgasm that comes for her now isn’t the violent explosion Rhys pulled from her earlier. It’s a long, shivery unwinding, the kind that trips from hunger into release and then just keeps going, washing through each muscle like a delayed wave.
She tightens around me, gasping my name against Declan’s lips. My own control frays, then snaps; I spill into her with a low, hoarse sound I’m grateful no one’s going to quote back to me later.
When I ease out, she winces, then sighs, sinking deeper into the nest. I watch her carefully for that panicked hollowing we saw when Rhys came free, ready to cover the breach if it opens again.
It doesn’t. Not quite.
Her scent is heavy, sweet, and sluggish. The frantic spike of the heat has leveled out into a low, rolling hum. Her eyes flutter closed, the adrenaline crash hitting her all at once.
“She’s out,” Knox murmurs, brushing damp hair off her forehead. His voice is tight with envy, but he stays back. “She’s done for tonight.”
“We all are,” I say.
I pull the duvet up to her chin. She burrows into it, her nose pressing against the spot where Rhys’s scent is strongest on the sheet.
We settle in around her, gaze shifting to each other. None of us say it, but we all know the hardest part is still coming.