Chapter 20 #2
He does it again an hour later. And again after lunch—cornering me in the pantry, shelves on both sides, nowhere to retreat. His hand on the wall beside my head. His body so close I can feel the heat without contact. He doesn't touch me. Just stands there. Breathing.
"You smell like you're getting close," he says. Conversational. Like he's commenting on the weather. Then walks away.
Zero isn't reckless. He's surgical. Every near-miss is calculated to keep me on the edge. He's enjoying this. The sadistic bastard is having the time of his life watching me unravel in his parents' vacation house.
Atlas is subtler. His hand on my thigh under the breakfast table, fingers sliding higher while he discusses real estate with Richard, his face perfectly composed.
I grab his wrist under the table and push it away.
His mouth twitches. Later, passing me in the hallway—his palm flat against my lower back, his mouth dipping to my ear.
"You look good in my kitchen." Barely audible. "You'd look better out of that hoodie."
His fingers drag across my back as he passes. Then he's at the coffee pot, pouring, casual, gray eyes innocent over the rim of his mug while my hands shake.
"Your parents are right there," I hiss.
"Mmhm."
But Bane. Bane is the one who scares me.
Because Bane is going feral.
I can see it—the tension building in him hour by hour, the jaw locked tighter each morning, the way his eyes track me across every room with a hunger he's barely containing.
He hasn't bitten me. The gap in the bond is a live wire for him—two brothers claimed, one left out—and his biology is screaming at him to complete it.
To put his teeth in my neck and make it permanent.
The drive is written across every line of his body, and the only thing holding him back is that Margot is twenty feet away at any given moment.
It doesn't stop him from taking chances.
He finds me behind the house at the outdoor shower. I'm rinsing sand off my feet after Margot and Richard went to town and I could finally take off the hoodie and swim. He rounds the corner and stops and looks at me—wet, flushed from the sun—and the expression on his face isn't the polished Bane.
It's the facility Bane. The one who burned through sedatives. The one who's running out of restraint.
He's across the distance in two steps. Pins me against the shower wall.
His mouth on mine before I can finish saying his name—hard, urgent, the taste of salt water and sunscreen.
His hands grip my hips, pulling me against him, and I can feel him—hard, thick, straining against his swim trunks.
His mouth moves to my neck. To the healed over side where Atlas bit me.
His teeth graze the skin and my whole body goes rigid.
"Bane—don't—not here—"
He pulls back. Breathing ragged. Eyes glassy. His jaw working like he's physically chewing on the instinct to bite.
"I can't do the whole vacation, Max." His voice wrecked. "Every hour that mark isn't on your neck, it gets louder. The drive. It's like a sound I can't turn off."
"Bane, they could come home any second—"
"I know." He doesn't move. His thumbs pressing circles into my hipbones. "I know. I just—" He kisses me again. Quick. Desperate. His teeth catching my lower lip—not a bite, but a taste, a promise, a man taking what he can get because what he needs is too dangerous to take here. "Needed that."
He pulls away. Runs his hand through his wet hair.
By the time he reaches the shoreline he's composed again—easy smile, relaxed shoulders, the golden boy on vacation.
My back is still against the shower wall.
My lips tingling. The healed side of my neck throbbing where his teeth grazed it.
My cock throbbing hard in my board shorts and the ghost of his desperation lingering on my skin.
That night in the hallway—I'm heading to the bathroom, Zero is coming out. Bare-chested, sweatpants low on his hips. He blocks the hallway. Hooks two fingers into my collar. Pulls it aside. Looks at the his mark.
"Missing one," he says.
"I know, Zero."
"So what are you waiting for?"
"Oh my God, can you not do this in the hallway where our parents—"
"You're going to make him wait?" Zero's mouth twitches.
The closest thing to delight I've ever seen on his face.
"You're killing him, Max. Trust me. I share a room with him.
He's practically waking up with wet dreams. Last night he said your name in his sleep and I had to throw a pillow at him before Richard heard through the wall. "
My face burns. "Shut up."
"I'm serious. The man is suffering." Zero's eyes glitter with the particular joy of someone who finds other people's desperation entertaining. "Can you feel it? The gap?"
"Yes,” I hiss. Because I can. Two tethers humming and a third space that aches with absence.
His fingers tighten. He pulls me forward—just enough that I step into his space. His mouth brushes my ear.
"He won't ask," Zero whispers. "He'll wait for you to come to him. That's Bane. He'll wait forever if you let him." His lips graze my earlobe. "Don't let him."
He lets go. Steps past me. Disappears into his room. And I stand in the hallway with my knees weak and my skin buzzing and the sound of my mother turning a page drifting up through the floor.
The days blur after that.
Each one a tightening of the same wire. Zero's hand on my ass when I bend to pick something up—a squeeze so quick I almost convince myself I imagined it.
Atlas murmuring filth against the back of my neck while we stand at the kitchen counter slicing tomatoes for Margot's salad.
Bane on the deck at sunset, his chest against my back, his mouth at my ear—"Two more days of this and I'm going to carry you into that bedroom and lock the door and I don't care who hears"—the hard line of his cock pressing against my ass for one devastating second before he's three feet away watching the sunset like nothing happened.
Each near-miss ratchets the tension higher. Each one pushes my body closer to a line I can feel approaching—the warmth in my belly building, the sensitivity in my skin, the awareness of every alpha in proximity dialed to maximum.
The suppressants are two hundred miles away in my nightstand drawer. My biology is unchecked, unsuppressed, and surrounded by three alphas in a house with thin walls that are getting thinner by the day.
I'm holding it together.
Barely.
The fifth evening, Richard grills fish on the deck. Corn on the cob. A salad Margot made with more tomatoes from the farmer's market. Wine for the adults, water for me because I don't trust my control enough to add alcohol, but I claim I just feel a bit dehydrated.
The table is round. Small. My knee touches Atlas's on my left. Bane's elbow brushes mine on my right. Zero sits across from me with that lazy, knowing expression, his fork in one hand, his chin in the other.
"You've got a sunburn," Margot says. Reaching across the table to touch my cheek. Her fingers graze near my collar and I lean back—too fast, too obvious—and she blinks.
"I'm fine. It's just the sun."
"Let me see—"
"Mom. I'm fine."
She pulls her hand back. Hurt flickers across her face—quick, suppressed—and the guilt hits me like a wave.
She's been so happy this trip. Lighter than I've seen her in months.
Cooking and laughing and holding Richard's hand on the beach and finally getting the family vacation she's been wanting.
And I'm flinching away from her because her fingers got too close to the evidence of what her stepsons have been doing to her son.
"More wine?" Bane asks her. Smooth. Redirecting. Drawing Margot's attention toward the bottle he's already pouring.
"Thank you, Bane." She smiles. The hurt fading. "You know, I'm so glad all of you came. I know it's not easy to get away from work, especially—" She looks around the table. Her eyes bright. "This is all I wanted. Just this. Everyone together."
Richard raises his glass. "To family."
"To family," Margot echoes.
The brothers raise their glasses. I raise my water. We drink. And underneath the table, Atlas's hand finds my knee and squeezes once and the bond hums and I smile at my mother and lie with every muscle in my face.
After dinner, Margot and Richard take their walk on the beach—post-dinner, arm in arm, barefoot in the sand. I watch them from the kitchen window while I dry dishes and the brothers clean up around me and the domestic choreography of it is so painfully normal that it makes my throat tight.
"We should call it a night," Atlas says. The responsible eldest brother. Always managing.
"One sec." I set the last dish in the rack. Dry my hands.
And then it hits me like a freight train.
Not a cramp. Not a slow build. One second I'm standing at the counter with a dish towel in my hand, and the next my entire body flashes hot—scalding, instantaneous, like someone poured boiling water through my veins.
My vision swims. The kitchen tilts. All the blood in my body drops south in one dizzying rush and I'm hard—achingly, obscenely hard—in the space between one heartbeat and the next.
I grip the counter. "Hold on—I just—"
My legs aren't working right. I push off the counter and rush up the stairs.
One hand on the wall, my gait wrong, my head spinning.
The bathroom. I need the bathroom. I need cold water and a locked door and I need to be away from them because their scents are hitting me like a wall—cedar and amber and gunpowder—and my body is responding to all three simultaneously, my cock throbbing, slick gathering between my thighs, and if I don't get out of this kitchen in the next five seconds—
The bathroom door. I get inside. Lock it. Twist the faucet. Splash cold water on my face. My hands are shaking so badly the water goes everywhere—on the mirror, the counter, down the front of my shirt.