Chapter 32
Talon
"Tal, your elbow is digging into my spine."
Luke, predictably, is the one who breaks the silence.
We've been lying here in the big old wooden bed for God knows how long, catching our breaths, inhaling the lingering heat and sweat and sex that still clings to the air, and enjoying the rare kind of quiet that only comes after something like that.
Though it's dark outside, I have no idea what time it is anymore.
Not that it matters. Time feels irrelevant. Like it slipped loose somewhere along the way and never came back. Nothing exists outside this room, this bed, this tangled, overheated mess that is the four of us.
We’re sprawled across the mattress in a loose knot of limbs and bodies, half on top of each other, half twisted together, and for a while I let myself just exist inside it.
The weight of her, the heat of him, the press of skin everywhere.
It’s disorienting in a way that doesn’t feel uncomfortable so much as…
complete. Like there’s no clear edge between where one of us ends and the next begins.
It’s not exactly comfortable. Not really. My arm’s pinned awkwardly beneath Luke, Reid’s knee is somewhere against my thigh, and I’m pretty sure Sierra’s leg is tangled across both of us. But I don’t give a fuck about moving.
Not when her fingers are buried in my hair, slow and absent, scratching lightly at my scalp.
Not when my head is resting on her chest, her heartbeat steady and soft beneath my ear.
It grounds me in a way nothing else has ever done, a quiet, constant reminder that she’s here.
That this is real. That I didn’t imagine any of it.
“Seriously, dude. You’re going to cripple me if you keep it up.”
“If it bothers you so much, just move,” Reid murmurs, his voice loose, almost lazy. I can’t remember the last time I heard him sound like that.
“Why do I have to move? Why can’t he just move his damn arm? Is it that hard to do?”
“It’s a small bed… well, for four people, anyway.”
“Yeah, well, Talon’s a fat fuck.”
For that, I drive my elbow a fraction deeper into his spine.
“Ow! He fucking did that on purpose.”
“No, he didn’t.”
“Yes, he did! You always take his side. You think he’s so innocent, and I’m always the one in the wrong.”
“That’s because you usually are.”
“Oh yeah? Are we forgetting who punched whom today after they were asked a simple question?”
“And you’ve never been known to blow things out of proportion.”
Their voices roll over me, familiar and easy, but distant somehow, like I’m listening from a few steps removed. The fight doesn’t even register anymore. It feels like something that happened days ago instead of a few hours. Like it belonged to a different version of us.
I don’t care about it.
None of it matters right now.
We’re somewhere else entirely.
Sierra shifts slightly beneath me, listening to them bickering back and forth, a small smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. It’s soft. Unbothered.
Relief moves through me, quieter than I expect but deeper for it.
I’d been waiting for the other shoe to drop. For her to tense up, pull away, start overthinking everything that just happened. For reality to crash back in and make this messy and complicated in a way that pushed her out the door last time.
But she doesn’t.
She just lies there, relaxed, fingers still moving lazily through my hair like she belongs here.
Like she’s not going anywhere.
It does something to my chest I don’t quite have a name for.
Something tight. Protective.
Because I know what we did isn’t exactly normal. I might live out in the woods, but I’m not that disconnected from the world. I know how things are supposed to work. One man, one woman. Clean lines. Simple rules.
I’ve done this before, sure. Threesomes, shared nights, women who were all in when the moment was hot and easy.
But morning always changed things.
They’d wake up and remember what it meant. What it looked like from the outside. They’d leave before they had to sit in it too long.
Before it became real. Before it became complicated and messy.
Sierra doesn’t look like she’s about to run.
If anything, she looks… settled.
Her fingers drift again through my hair, slower this time, and the sensation sends a low ripple down my spine. My body reacts before my mind does, tightening, waking back up in a way that has nothing to do with comfort anymore.
She doesn’t pull her hand away.
Doesn’t hesitate.
That simple, absent touch tells me more than anything she could say out loud.
She’s still here.
She’s choosing to be.
I didn’t realize how much I needed that until right now.
Reid shifts slightly beside her, and I glance up just enough to take in the way his hand moves over her side, slow, almost absent, like he’s grounding himself the same way I am. He looks different. Softer around the edges, even if there’s still something sharp underneath it all.
I’ve never seen him like he was tonight.
Never even imagined it.
The Reid I know barely looks at women. Keeps himself locked down so tight it’s like he doesn’t even feel it. I always figured if he ever let himself go, it would be controlled. Careful.
Not that.
Not the way his hand closed around her throat. Not the way he pushed her right to the edge and held her there, denying her until she broke for him. Not the way he watched her unravel like it was something he needed to see.
And not the way he tasted her tears after.
There’s something darker in him than I ever gave him credit for.
Something that lines up a little too well with the things in me I don’t usually let people see.
And fuck… watching it did something to me. Even after I’d already come, even after I should’ve been spent, it still hit hard enough to pull me right back under.
But that version of him is gone now.
Or buried again, at least.
Now he just looks… content. Resting back, arguing with Luke like it’s any other night, his hand still moving over her side like he doesn’t want to lose contact with her for even a second.
Luke’s not as uncomfortable as he’s pretending either. His grip on her legs hasn’t loosened, and the way he’s shifted puts him just a little too close to where he clearly wants to be again. His complaints are more habit than anything else.
I follow his line of sight without meaning to.
Her skin is still flushed. Damp.
My mouth waters before I can stop it.
My body tightens, heat stirring low and immediate, my cock thickening again as the memory of her taste hits me like a punch.
I want it again.
The thought comes fast. Sharp. Possessive in a way I don’t question.
I imagine dragging her back under me, spreading her open, taking my time this time. Making her scream slower. Louder.
Luke catches the direction of my stare and then flicks his eyes lower, following it.
His mouth twists.
“Yeah, okay. I’m not sitting here staring at his fucking hard-on.” He rolls out of bed with a grunt and stretches, working the tension out of his shoulders. “What time is it?”
I glance across to the nightstand where an old-fashioned metal alarm clock sits. “It’s a quarter to eight.”
“Quarter to eight? Damn.” Luke sifts through random items of clothing strewn about the room, looking for his jeans, which he eventually locates and pulls on.
“Hazel said supper was at six-thirty. We’ve missed it…
but I bet she’s got some apple pie left over.
I’m going to see what I can rustle up.” He slips back into the blue flannel shirt he’d been wearing previously but hadn’t bothered to unbutton when he’d taken it off, then located and pulled on his old brown leather cowboy boots and headed for the door.
"I should probably call the retreat," Reid says.
The rain hasn't stopped, but it has slowed to a softer patter against the glass now, punctuated by the occasional low roll of thunder somewhere out in the distance.
"See if everything's going on okay. Make sure it hasn’t been washed away in all this rain. "
"Okay," she says quietly, and despite the words, neither of them moves right away. Reid leans in first, kissing Sierra slowly and deliberately, like he’s trying to say something without words. It’s not rushed, not just physical.
There’s weight in it, something unspoken but clear.
When they pull apart, they don’t go far.
Their eyes stay locked, something passing between them that feels both fragile and unbreakable at the same time—aching and healing, all at once.
I watch it without interrupting. I don’t begrudge them that connection.
I can’t. But I feel it too, a quiet pull in my chest that isn’t quite jealousy, not exactly, but something close enough to make me aware of it.
They have a past. A long one. Complicated, painful in places, and still very much alive between them.
It threads through everything, even now.
I know we’ll hear more of it eventually, piece by piece, the way these things always come out.
I’m patient enough to wait, and steady enough to know that whatever they have doesn’t take anything away from what I can build with her.
Because what I want with Sierra isn’t borrowed from anyone else. It has to stand on its own.
That thought settles deeper than anything else.
This—whatever we are now—isn’t just shared.
It’s layered. If I want a place in it, I have to meet her properly.
Not just physically, not just in moments like tonight.
I have to open up, let her see more than what’s on the surface.
That doesn’t come naturally to me. It never has.
But for her, I find myself wanting to try.