Chapter 12 The Present #2
“Gentle,” Nathaniel reminds him, without looking away from me.
“Gentle,” Talon echoes, smirking. “Of course.”
Nathaniel’s mouth dips. His lips close over my nipple, the chill of his piercing sparking heat so fast I gasp. He hums—a pleased, sinful sound—and suckles soft, slow. No games. No cruelty. Just that steady draw that knots my belly.
Somewhere under the blanket, Talon’s fingers start wandering. I feel the shift of air a second before his tone drops into that smug, irreverent purr.
“Let’s see this situation with the panties,” he muses. The blanket lifts. Turns out I’m wearing the polka-dot pair that weren’t on my body last night. Someone—ahem—picked them out of the stash and put them on me while I was out.
“Adorable,” he murmurs, thumb brushing the bow at the top. “Absolutely criminal.”
“Then arrest me,” I mutter.
His fingertips trail the inside of my knee.
“I just might.”
Nathaniel lifts his head. His lips are wet. His eyes are molten hunger with edges sharp as razors.
“Open for him,” he tells me, soft… so soft it isn’t an order at all. Which is exactly why it works like one.
My knees fall apart without conscious decision, like my body is simply obeying gravity in his orbit. Talon exhales a sound that is half prayer, half filth, and his finger taps slow against my clit. Then he drags downward.
My hips twitch. My mouth parts. The moan slips out before I can bite it down.
“Oh, you did miss us,” he says, all velvet gloating.
“Is she wet?” Nathaniel asks.
“Soaked through the panties already.”
“Shit,” Nathaniel whispers.
Talon’s gentle. So gentle he’s outright toying with me.
“Mm… how about this?” he purrs, lowering himself. And then his mouth replaces his hand.
The first stroke of his tongue is a shock to my entire system.
It’s warm, and lush, and slow. He flattens his tongue and licks me like he’s being lazy on purpose.
My thighs would snap shut if his hands weren’t there, holding me open.
Then he slips a finger beneath the fabric and finds my opening, easing one digit in like we’ve got all the time in the world.
Nathaniel kisses lower, teeth grazing the underside of my breast. His hand slides to my throat, and I turn into his palm.
Talon licks again, a long, careful stroke, then gathers me with his lips and sucks until my stomach flips. My hands fist in the blanket, then in Nathaniel’s hair when he kisses my jaw, my mouth, the corner of my lips.
It’s decadent and tender and a new kind of ruin.
“Shh,” Nathaniel murmurs when I make a wrecked sound. “We’ve got you, Skye.”
It feels… like floating. Like the world is padded and distant, and the only real things are their mouths, their hands, the slow, relentless melt low in my belly. Every time Talon’s fingers crook, sparks blow through me; every time Nathaniel’s lip ring brushes me, my pulse stutters.
“More,” I whisper.
Nathaniel moves to my other breast, teeth gentler and tongue lazier this time, like he wants to spread me out over the mattress and age here with me.
When I start to shake, Talon slips his finger out, makes me whine, and replaces it with his tongue. He fucks me with it.
“Oh—” I break on it. “Talon, please—”
“That’s it, Skye,” Nathaniel breathes. “Just like that.”
I come softer than last night but longer. It lasts and lasts. My thighs tremble against Talon’s wrists. Nathaniel rubs his nose against my cheek, murmuring nothing-words that somehow mean everything.
When they finally let me go, I melt straight down into the mattress like all my bones have dissolved. I couldn’t hold myself upright if I wanted to.
Talon doesn’t stray far. Of course he doesn’t. He crawls closer with that lazy predator grace, palms gliding up my thighs as if checking whether my muscles are still shaking. Then his mouth finds the inside of my knee, then the curve of my inner thigh, then the sharp edge of my hipbone.
“Want more?” he asks.
I let out this ridiculous choked laugh that almost sounds like I’m crying. “You’re asking me?”
He smirks against me. “Should I ask Nathaniel instead?”
“Oh, fuck off,” I grunt.
“Just answer the question.”
In all fairness… I do.
I look at him, meet that smoldering hot gaze of his and nod.
“I want you,” I say, biting my lip. “Inside.”
A shiver runs through him so violently I can feel it through his breath. He has to shake himself off—literally pull himself back from the edge—before that slow, devastating smile curls.
“Let’s get you on the bed, then,” he murmurs.
And gods, there’s a laugh caught somewhere in my throat at the irony. For all the times I’ve let these beautiful, deranged men ruin me, not a single one of them involved a bed. Floors, walls, cars, furniture, showers—yes. A mattress? Never. Somehow this feels far more intimate. Dangerous, even.
Nathaniel scoops me up before the thought even finishes forming. He lays me down so carefully I want to kick my legs in the air and giggle.
Perhaps the universe can be kind to me after all.
I sink back into the pillows. The lavender blanket sighs down my hips, and I return to the sensation of velvet all around me. Only now I crave something solid and hard to go with it, and preferably right between my thighs.
Talon climbs onto the mattress on one knee, then the other, while Nathaniel slips in on the opposite side. Their hands bracket my thighs. They lean in to kiss me. Talon at my shoulder, Nathaniel just below my ear.
“Morning devotion,” Talon whispers. “Say amen.”
“You’re a deviant,” I murmur.
“Clearly, you fucking love it,” Talon continues.
Yes. I do. I love it so much, it honestly scares me.
“Just stop teasing me already,” I whisper.
Nathaniel props me on my side, one leg hooked over his thigh, cradling me against him while Talon stays in front.
“Look at me,” Nathaniel says softly.
I do. The metal in his lip catches the light when he smiles, and I swear the world tilts just for that.
“Remember how I said we’re not good men?” he asks.
“Like it was yesterday.”
I don’t tell him I think about it all the time, too.
“We can be good,” he says. “But only to you.”
My belly clenches.
And that’s when the bad thought slips in. It’s dark, intrusive, and impossible to burn away.
Mark again. It’s always Mark.
Because the contrast is too strong to ignore.
Mark was good to everyone but me. I was the only person he was bad to. And it was always behind closed doors, where no one could see. It’s like he was saving every rotten part of himself just to spill it onto me in the end.
These men? They kill others.
They are objectively, publicly, irredeemably wrong.
Ask a cop. Ask a judge. Ask a true crime podcast. Every system in the world would put them in cages or body bags.
And yet—
They’re good to me.
Good in a way no one has ever been.
Maybe it’s twisted, but after everything... I don’t think I want goodness that comes gift-wrapped for the public. I think I just want the kind that will choose me over everything else, no matter the cost.
I think I don’t mind their crimes at all.
“I’m fine with that,” I say, confessing it. “Be good to me.”
And that’s all it takes.
Something in Nathaniel clicks, like all he ever wanted was for me to accept every wrong thing about him. And all I ever wanted was to know I’d be the exception to their rules—the one untouchable girl who could only be worshipped, never punished.
We both get what we want, together.
And so, the boys move in tandem.
Nathaniel tilts my chin toward him and kisses me slow and deep, while Talon slides down, dragging his mouth over my ribs, my belly, until he’s nudging at the waistband of my polka-dot panties.
Nathaniel helps. He hooks his fingers into the thin elastic and peels them down.
Talon takes over, tugging them the rest of the way and tossing them aside without looking.
I’m bare between them. Nothing but skin and nerves.
Nathaniel shifts behind me, one long arm cradling my head, the other slipping down to palm my breast.
“Spread for me, Little Grim,” Talon murmurs.
My leg’s already hooked over Nathaniel’s thigh, so I just let my knee fall open, and Talon groans like it’s a gift. His cock presses against me, thick, hard, ready, and my body clenches in anticipation.
“Mm. That’s right,” he purrs.
He lines himself up and pushes in. And gods—
You’d think it wouldn’t surprise me how good it feels anymore, not after last night. But it does. The shock hits me all over again, like we’re doing this for the first time. My body gives, stretches, takes him, and the ache blooms into something so sharp it borders on bliss.
“Oh, I missed you, baby,” Talon whispers.
I missed him too. I missed this. Somehow, I managed to long for it in the short hours I had to sleep.
They are gentle with me. Or at least, trying really, really hard to be. For a minute or two. Then Nathaniel nudges my neck with his nose, breathes me in, and moves closer, so he can feel every rock of Talon’s hips through me.
“Think you could fit one more in?” he asks.
The question steals my breath. My hips twitch against Talon, my pulse stuttering. I can barely think through the haze of Talon dragging deep inside me, and now Nathaniel wants to push me further.
“W–what?” My voice cracks.
He doesn’t mean anal. Not with how we’re lying. He means my pussy. Two of them, from two different angles, where only one should ever fit.
My pussy clenches hard around Talon at the thought, and he groans, forehead pressing to my shoulder.
“You’re out of your mind,” I rasp. “That’s not even—”
“Possible?” Nathaniel murmurs against my ear, lips brushing the shell of it. “I assure you, it’s very possible.”
Talon chuckles low. “God, I love how tight she just got. You’re thinking about it, aren’t you, babe? You want to try.”
“No, I—” My protest breaks into a gasp when Talon angles just right, hitting the spot that makes me shake. “Fuck, Talon—”
Nathaniel’s hand slides down my belly.
“What do you say, Skye?”