Chapter 14 #3
This is happening. This is actually happening. Atlas's hand on my cock, Atlas's tongue in my mouth, Atlas's body pinning me to his bedroom wall in the dark.
And I want it. Want him. Want everything he's been denying both of us for months.
But I also want Bane. Want the way Bane held me in the dark and whispered you're perfect against my hair. Want Zero—the intensity, the hunger, the one who pushes me and makes me want things that scare me.
I want all three of them. And at that dinner table, I saw what wanting does. The jealousy. The territorial looks. The fractures forming in real time between brothers who nearly destroyed their empire to get me back.
They're not okay with sharing. That was clear. Every loaded glance, every stiffened jaw, every possessive touch under the table was a man staking a claim and watching his brothers do the same.
And I'm standing in the dark with one of them while carrying a secret that could shatter everything.
I could hide it. That's what the old Max would do—swallow the truth, bury it, let Atlas have this moment and deal with the fallout later. Hiding is what I do. It's the only survival skill I've ever mastered.
But I don't want to be the old Max anymore. And if there's ever going to be a world where I don't have to choose—where wanting all three of them isn't a betrayal but a beginning—then it starts with honesty.
Right here. Right now. Even if it ruins this.
"Atlas." My hand finds his wrist. Stills his hand where it’s working my cock. "Wait. I need to tell you something."
He pulls back enough to look at me. His eyes are almost black in the dark. His lips are swollen. His chest heaving. Every line of his body says don't stop and I'm asking him to stop.
"Something happened," I say. "With Bane. In the facility."
He goes still.
His nostrils flare. My stomach drops.
I keep going. Because if I stop I'll lose my nerve.
"The guard withheld my suppressants. My heat came back. Bane was there—drugged, restrained, in that cell because he walked in voluntarily to keep me safe." I swallow. "We… We had sex. He knotted me."
Silence.
"He didn't bite me. He chose not to. Even with the knot, even with everything his body was screaming at him to do—he stopped. I wasn’t ready for that."
Atlas hasn't moved. His hand is still on my hip but it's gone rigid—locked in place, the tendons standing out.
His jaw is clenched so tight I can hear his teeth grinding.
His chest rises and falls in the controlled breathing pattern I recognize—in through the nose, hold, out through the mouth.
The thing he does when everything inside him is screaming and he's forcing the scream through a sieve.
"I'm not telling you to stop what's happening between us.
" My voice is steady. Calm. Even though my heart is hammering and my body is still aching for his hands.
I reach out and wrap my hand around the back of his neck, pulling him slightly closer.
"I'm telling you because I don't want secrets.
Not between us. Not about this." I take a breath.
"And because I saw what's happening between you three.
At dinner. The way you all watch each other watching me.
I won't be a secret that breaks this family apart. "
Atlas exhales. Long and shaking. His hand slides off my hip. He shakes off my hand. His body creates distance—one step back, then another—and the absence of his warmth is a physical loss that makes my chest ache.
But I can see him. Still hard. Visibly, achingly hard, his body saying yes while the rest of him tries to say something else. His hands flex at his sides. He turns toward the window. Presses his palms against the glass—hands flat, arms locked, shoulders rigid.
I watch his shoulder blades move with each breath. Watch his hands press harder against the glass. I give him the space he needs even though every part of me wants to cross the room and put my hands on his back and say come back, don't stop, please don't stop.
"When?" His voice is rough. Scraped raw.
"The night before they released us."
He nods. Once. Processing. I watch the information move through him—layered, categorized, each piece slotted into place.
The hurt. The jealousy. The understanding that Bane was there when he wasn't. That Bane showed up while he held back.
That the thing he denied himself, his youngest brother gave freely.
"He didn't bite," Atlas says. Quietly.
"No."
"And you're telling me. Not him. You."
"Because it's my truth to tell. It happened to my body.
" I hold his gaze when he turns from the window.
"And because I was hoping—" My voice catches.
The honest part. The terrifying part. "I was hoping it wouldn't change anything.
That you could hear it and still want to be here.
That maybe this could be the first step toward something that doesn't require anyone to give me up. "
The words hang between us. Something that doesn't require anyone to give me up.
The implication is clear. All three. Not a choice. A sharing.
Atlas's jaw works. His eyes are red but dry.
He turns from the window. Crosses the room toward me and for a half-second I think he's coming back—think his hands are going to find my face again and his mouth is going to find mine and we're going to pick up where we left off because the want is still there, I can see it, written across every tense line of his body.
But his eyes—his eyes are wrong. Not soft. Not tender. Something hard and wounded and angry, aimed at me or at himself or at Bane or at all of it, I can't tell. His jaw is locked. The vein at his temple pulses.
He bends down. Picks up his shirt from the floor. Pulls it on without looking at me. Buttons it—each one deliberate, precise, the armor going back on piece by piece. Then he crosses to the bedroom door. His hand on the doorknob.
His eyes on the floor.
The message is clear. Get out.
I stare at him. Half-naked in his bedroom, my lips still swollen from his mouth, my body still aching from his hands, and he's holding the door open like I'm a guest who's overstayed.
The humiliation hits me like ice water—sudden, total, flooding through my chest and turning everything that felt good thirty seconds ago into something that burns.
One step forward. Two steps back. The Atlas Graves waltz.
"You're doing it again," I say. My voice comes out harder than I expect. Flatter. Typical. I’ve been here before with every person who ever got close enough to matter and then decided I wasn't worth the complication.
His hand tightens on the door. He doesn't look at me. Jaw working. Eyes fixed on the floor beneath his feet like it holds answers he doesn't.
"You just had your tongue in my mouth and your hand on my cock and now you're ready to see me out.
" I grab my t-shirt from the floor. Pull it over my head.
My hands are shaking but my voice isn't and I'm holding onto that like a lifeline.
"Last time you said no because you thought you were protecting me. What's the excuse this time?"
Nothing. His chest rises and falls. The controlled breathing. The sieve.
"Because this time it's not about me, is it?
" The anger is building now. Real and raw. This was mutual, this attraction, this care–and now I’m getting shoved out the door because Atlas Graves can't handle the idea that he's not the only one.
"This time it's about you. About the fact that I've been with your brother and you can't stand it.
About the fact that sharing me means you're not in control of this, and Atlas Graves doesn't do things he can't control, does he? "
He flinches. Small. Almost invisible. But I see it—I see everything, I always have. It’s my superpower.
"You know what? You were right." I step toward the door.
Toward him. Close enough that he has to smell me—vanilla and honey and his own cedar still clinging to my skin.
"Downstairs. When you said you only know how to love by building a cage.
You were right." I look up at him. Hold his gaze.
Watch him flinch. "You're selfish. And you're fucking cruel. "
He opens the door and I walk through. Don't look back.
"Coward," I say. Quiet.
I hear the door close behind me. Soft. Controlled. Even now.
I stand in the hallway with his scent on my skin and the taste of him still on my lips and the ache between my legs where his hand was and a hollow, furious heat in my chest that has nothing to do with biology.
I press my fingers against my mouth. Feel the ghost of him. Feel the humiliation and the want and the anger braided together into something I don't have a name for.
He wanted me. That wasn't fake. His hands, his mouth, his cock pressed against me through his dress pants—that was real.
All of it was real.
And he still kicked me out.
Because Bane got there first. Because sharing means Atlas isn't the only one. Because the eldest brother, the one who controls everything, can't control this—can't strategize his way into being okay with the fact that I belong to more than just him.
I go back to my room. Lie down. Stare at the ceiling.
This is so fucked up. My heart aches in my chest as the rush wears off.
Last time he said no, I ran. Drove to a parking lot and got kidnapped and spent five days in a concrete cell.
His restraint didn't protect me. It almost killed me.
This time I'm not running. I don’t want to be the boy who runs anymore.
But I'm also not going to wait forever for Atlas Graves to decide he's brave enough to want me the way I want him to. To figure out that wanting me means wanting all of what that looks like—even the parts that include his brothers.
I close my eyes.
Tears leak out the sides, dribble down past my ears and land on my pillow. I don’t wipe them. I just pretend to be asleep until eventually I am.