Chapter 69 Dove
We clean up in the bathroom, and I take longer than needed, lingering at the vanity, hands braced on the marble.
Sounds of movement drift from the other room, the bed creaking as the guys settle back in. Deep voices. Sated murmurs. Familiar rhythms.
Jag and Wolf.
They’re devastating together. Heartbreakingly divine in their love for each other. Captivating and utterly torrid in the way their bodies fit and move together. I can’t unsee it. I never want to let it go.
And Jag? He’s everything I idolized as a child. Every myth I told myself about him is true. Guardian, superhero, protector, family… He’s all those things and more. More human. More resilient. More damaged and real.
I still haven’t recovered from the shocking, mind-blowing intimacy.
He ate my pussy.
Twice.
Jag, my stepbrother, the man I’ve been fantasizing about for seventeen years, shoved his tongue up inside me and made me come.
The truth lands in pieces, struggling to stick. Reality far exceeds every version I dreamed, every safe fantasy, every impossible hope. The real Jag isn’t cleaner or easier. He’s filthy, messy, and beautifully, disarmingly complicated.
What he did for me when we had nothing, what he endured so I could eat, breathe, and go to school, it cuts even deeper now that I understand it.
I was a nightmare. An angry brat with a chip on her shoulder and an inappropriate infatuation with her stepbrother. I made everything harder on him without meaning to, without knowing what he was carrying.
I didn’t know any of it. Not a damn thing about Adrian Crowe or my mother or the promise Jag made to her. I need to give myself grace for that ignorance. I was a kid.
But guilt doesn’t listen to reason. It festers and bleeds inside me. I want to rewind and redo every moment where I failed him.
I can’t.
So I breathe and accept that this reckoning in my heart will take time. Love doesn’t erase the past. It asks me to sit with the consequences and learn how to live differently going forward.
In the mirror, I meet my own eyes and push my shoulders back.
This isn’t something to rush.
The best part? I don’t have to sort through it alone.
I scoop Jag’s discarded shirt off the floor, the one he wore on the flight here. It smells like him and travel and the familiarity of home, making my chest ache.
As a child, I didn’t always have a roof over my head. But I was never homeless. Not until I lost the warmth of his arms around me.
Tears burn behind my eyes as I pull the shirt over my head. The hem slips past my thighs, settling on me the way his shirts always did.
When I was fifteen, I made a promise to myself and never spent another night with Jag Rath. It hardened me when I needed to learn how to be independent. It protected my heart when he rescued me from harm. It did its job.
Now it’s time to let it go.
I leave the bathroom and cross the room toward the bed, toward the love and promise waiting there.
Jag and Wolf sprawl on their backs, heads on pillows, and sheets tangled around their legs. They’re both naked, their cocks lying limp across their stomachs, languid and assuaged.
Wolf’s fingers relax on Jag’s dick, his thumb absently stroking the soft, fat length. Jag’s head rests on his bent arm behind him, his eyes half-mast, reflecting his lazy pleasure. His other hand traces the scars on Wolf’s chest, wordlessly acknowledging them.
They watch me approach the bed with rapt attention. Two pairs of eyes. Arctic wolf blue. Molten jaguar amber. All predatory focus.
Wolf slips his hand from Jag and shifts, opening a space between them. A pocket made just for me.
I set a knee on the bed.
“Stop.” He points at me. “You’re violating the dress code. No shirts allowed. Or clothes, in general.”
Heat flushes my skin, and a soft laugh escapes me. I tug off the shirt and crawl into the space they made for me.
Wolf crowds in, his chest flush against my back. I curl forward into Jag, and his arms close around me, protective and familiar, just like I remember.
Home. My body recognizes him immediately, my breath falling into an easy, relaxed rhythm.
But it isn’t the same safety I knew as a child. Wolf’s presence at my back changes the energy and geometry. And Jag’s embrace? There’s intention there now. Desire. Hardness. A swelling between our hips.
He wants me. I want him. And we’re both viscerally aware of that want.
Jag’s fingers find the small mark at my collarbone, and I reach for the old scar beneath his ribs, tracing it with the same quiet respect. We both know what those places cost. We both know why they matter.
Wolf drapes an arm over our hips and regales us with stories about his day. Joy spills out of him as he talks about the people he met, the tattoo appointments stacking up, the visit from Van Quiso and Liv Reed, and how a casual hello turned into secret cigarettes, plans, tequila, and gossip.
Only Wolf can walk into a brood of vipers and come out with a client list, a job offer, and a new best friend.
I laugh. Jag groans, and underneath the amusement, we’re all thinking it.
How do we hold onto this? How do we secure a future that looks and feels like this moment right here?
Three messy souls. One perfect braid. Threaded together with bloodstained fingers.
Jag’s future is fixed. So Wolf and I will bend and weave ourselves around him. Our place is wherever he is.
But tonight isn’t for maps or decisions. Nothing heavy. Nothing that demands answers.
Wolf keeps talking. I keep smiling. Jag keeps making noises like he’s suffering. He isn’t.
We breathe together, three scarred bodies in perfect alignment, as the stories taper off and sleep finds us where we are.