Chapter 2
I wake up alone.
My hand finds the cold half of the sheet behind me before my brain catches up, before I remember the kiss in the dark and Bane's mouth at my ear and I have to be gone before you wake up. My fingers close around nothing. The pillow that should be Bane is just a pillow.
Something in my chest clenches.
He told you.
I close my eyes. Try to breathe past it. Try to remember what he said—you're not going to be without me again, that's a fact now, this thing in your chest, that's me—and—
Oh.
Oh, there.
It hits me before I've even gone looking.
A warm bright thread, thrumming low in my sternum. Bane. Not in this bed but in me. A pulse that isn't mine but lives next to mine now, steady, present, awake. I press my hand flat over my chest and the thread pulses back into my palm like a small kept secret.
Underneath it, two more.
Atlas, deeper. A weight at the base of my skull, the same weight I've worn for weeks without naming. The one that kept me upright when my body was trying to come apart at the seams. Anchor.
And Zero. A bright filament, somewhere in the house already, awake. A match kept lit in the dark. He's downstairs—I can almost feel the direction of him, the floor under him, the room.
Three.
I lie there. Sore. Naked. Marked. Smiling at the ceiling.
Mine.
I lift the sheet.
My body is a wreck. Bruises on my hips in the shape of fingers, dark on the bone where Bane's grip went tight when he was about to come.
Slick dried on the inside of my thighs, sticky and cool.
The deep low ache between my legs that says something thick was in me for a long time and didn't want to come out.
My throat scraped raw from Atlas. The corners of my mouth chapped.
I lift my hand to my neck.
The bonding mark is right there—a clean half-moon at the junction of my shoulder, the skin around it warm and tender.
I press it lightly with my fingertips and the thread Bane left in my chest answers—a small electric sweetness running down my spine, pooling low in my belly.
I gasp out loud. Press it again on purpose.
Same shiver. Same heat blooming under my navel.
Oh.
I am going to have to learn what that does to me. I am going to have to be careful where I press.
The other two marks live a little further down—Atlas's near the base of my throat, fully healed into the rest of my skin, Zero's near my pulse point, almost a scar.
I press Atlas's. The answering thrum is slower, deeper, a settling instead of a sparking.
I press Zero's. Bright flicker, like a wick taking flame, then steady.
I lie there a long time.
Naked. Sore. Thoroughly, repeatedly fucked. Marked by all three of them. Loved.
Usually by now I've done the math.
How many hours of sleep I got. How many hours till I have to fake okay. Where the pill bottle is. What's about to be hard about today. How long until Linda resurfaces in my mind.
I haven't done any of it.
I'm just lying here. Naked. Stupid with it. Sore in places I didn't know had nerves.
Happy.
I think I'm happy.
I don't know what to do with that.
A knock at the door.
Three soft taps. Margot's pattern, the one she's used since I was sixteen.
"Max, sweetheart? Are you up?"
My body goes hot and cold at once. I yank the sheet to my chin so fast that leftover slick smears against my hip and my throat closes around—don't think about Atlas's cock, don't think about Bane's hands, don't think about the noises you made into a palm last night Max, do not—
"Yeah." My voice scrapes out of my raw throat. I cough. Try again. "I'm up. Come in."
The door opens and my mother slips through it the way she always does—sideways, like she's trying not to take up too much space. Soft gray cardigan. No makeup. Hair clipped back. A glass of orange juice in one hand and the little brown bottle of acetaminophen in the other.
"How's your head?"
"Better."
I clear my throat. It scrapes again. I cough.
"Sorry. Throat's dry."
"Mm. That's the orange juice for." She sets the glass on the nightstand. The bottle next to it. Doesn't sit on the edge of the bed, and I love her for it. Stands at the bedpost, hand resting on the wood. "Zero said you went up with a migraine."
"Yeah. I think the drive caught up with me."
"Probably the wine, too."
"Probably the wine."
I had two sips. She knows I had two sips. I'm not sure what we're doing here, but we're doing it together.
Her eyes are on me, and they're doing the thing they do when she's worried. Not pushing. Just looking. The careful Margot stillness that says I know something is off, and I am choosing to trust you, and I am also leaving the door open in case you need it.
It cuts.
"Should we cancel?" she asks. "Richard booked he and I a boat tour at ten, that one along the coast, but I told him we could—"
"No. Go. Please."
"Are you sure?"
"Mom. Yes. Go. I'm just going to shower and sleep some more. If I'm hungry I'll find you guys later for dinner."
"And if you're not?"
"Then the boys will look after me."
It comes out softer than I mean.
She blinks. Just once. Brief.
"...the boys will look after you."
"I—yeah. I mean—Atlas always knows where to find painkillers, and Bane gets weirdly hovery, and Zero will probably yell at me about water."
I am pushing past it too fast. I hear it. I keep going.
"They've been good to me. Since the—since everything. They check on me."
She's quiet for a beat. Her face doesn't change. Just that small steadying inhale she does when she's deciding not to ask the question she's been carrying.
"Okay, Maxie."
"Okay."
She comes around the post and kisses the top of my head—just the top—and my chest tightens around something that lives between grateful and guilty, and I think it's going to live there with her for a while now. Maybe always. Maybe that's the cost of having to be both her son and the thing I am.
And lying to her about all this.
"Drink the orange juice. All of it." She smiles soft. "I love you, sweetheart."
"Love you, Mom."
The door clicks shut behind her. I hear her footsteps down the stairs, Richard's voice low in the front hall, the keys lifted from the bowl, the screen door opening and falling closed. The car starts in the drive. The car pulls away.
The house goes still.
I sit up slow. Drag the sheet off. Drain the orange juice in one long pull.
Stand—too fast, regret it, sit back down, stand again—and limp across the room to the dresser.
I pull on a robe and grab what I need. Boxers.
Sweats. A long-sleeved shirt soft enough not to scrape the bite.
I bundle the lot under my arm and head for the door.
The hallway is bright with morning. Empty. Quiet enough that the bond hum under my collarbone sounds louder, all three threads. Bane's the loudest. He's awake somewhere too, maybe even watching the same hallway from the other side, knowing I just talked to her.
I cross to the bathroom. Lock the door behind me out of habit.
I twist the shower handle and the water hisses out. Steam climbs the mirror in seconds. I drop the bundle on the closed toilet, peel off my robe and step under the spray.
It's almost too hot. I leave it.
The burn is nice.
Hot water on my scalp. Down my spine. Into the deep ache between my legs. Across the bruises at my hipbones. Over the bite at my shoulder. The bite thrums under the spray, and I have to brace one hand against the tile and just breathe.
Oh.
It comes back in pieces, the way a body remembers things the mind hasn't filed yet.
Bane's hands on my hips, hard enough to bruise.
The slow shocking depth of Atlas's cock easing past my tongue, the warm salt of him, the way he hold my face steady.
There he is. There's my good boy. The wet slap of Bane behind me.
The way he buried his cock in me in one stroke because I was so wet I couldn't have stopped him if I tried.
The brothers talking about me over my head.
He's been like that all night. You should've seen him when I had my fingers in him.
Atlas's hand fisted in my hair, holding me down on his cock while Bane's knot finally locked inside me and Bane's teeth broke the skin and Atlas came down my throat and—
I shiver and hear the small sound I make under the water, but I can't stop it.
I'm hard.
I'm hard and my hand is on myself before I've decided to put it there, fingers wrapping around my cock under the spray, slow, testing.
My thumb finds the slit and I shudder. The bond at my throat thrums right there under the water, a sweet electric pulse I can almost taste.
I press the mark with my other hand and the heat coils tight under my navel and—
Christ.
I should stop. I should rinse off and get dressed and go eat some breakfast. I should be a normal twenty-year-old who goes down to the beach on vacation and doesn't get hard remembering his stepbrothers fucking him at both ends in the middle of the night.
I don't stop.
I close my eyes. Tip my head back into the spray. Slide my fist slow down my length and let myself remember—Bane's mouth at my throat just before he bit—
The bathroom door clicks open.
My eyes fly open. My hand stops.
"Mom?" I call—too loud, too fast. "I'm in the shower, did you forget—"
I push the curtain back two inches and lean my head out, expecting her, expecting an orange juice glass she meant to take down with her, expecting—
It isn't her.
Zero is leaning against the door.
His t-shirt is in his hand—he must have peeled it off coming up the stairs—and as I watch he tosses it on the counter and reaches for the button of his jeans.
His pupils are blown so wide his eyes look black.
His mouth is doing the slow devil curve I have learned to be afraid of and want at the same time.
He doesn't say anything yet. He just looks at me through the steam.
I yank back behind the curtain so fast I hit my elbow on the tile.
"Zero—"
"Yeah."
"What are you—I'm—"
"In the shower. Yeah. I see."
His belt clinks. The denim hits the tile. Bare feet on the bathmat.
The bond between his sternum and mine flares—the bright filament going from steady to aurora, alive in a way I haven't felt it in days.
It runs straight down my spine and pools in my belly with the rest of the heat I was already carrying, and a small involuntary sound escapes me before I can swallow it.
He hears it.
The soft predator laugh comes through the steam.
"That's a fun new toy, isn't it."
"Zero, oh my god, you’re supposed to—"
"What, knock?"
"Yes!"
"Knocking's for people who you don’t owe a big, generous thank you to."
I press my forehead against the tile. My heart is hammering.
I am painfully, embarrassingly hard, my cock heavy and wet between my thighs, and I am still half in shock from going zero-to-Zero in the span of fifteen seconds, and the bond between us is singing, and I am also—god help me—grinning against the wall.
"You can't be in here," I manage. Mostly to the tile. "If anyone—"
"They left. I watched them leave. Boat doesn't dock until two."
"What if they forgot something—"
"Then I'll be in the shower. With you. Won't be the first family scandal."
The curtain pulls back.
Cool air. Steam billowing. Zero standing there absolutely naked, all lean lines and ink and that low predatory grace he does, his cock already hard and rising against his stomach and his eyes raking over me like he's been starving for this for weeks.
My hand drops to cover my cock before I can stop it.
Like that does anything. Like he hasn't seen all of me before, like he wasn't the first one to see all of me, like a wet shower curtain and a sore body and a hard cock are something to be modest about with the man who flushed my pills and read every page of my journal.
He sees the hand. He sees the flush on my chest. He sees what I'm standing in the middle of trying not to do.
His grin breaks open.
"Oh, baby," he says. Soft. Wrecked. Already moving. "Hand over your dick? Now? After everything that’s happened between us?"
He steps into the shower.
The water hits him. His hair goes immediately dark against his skull. The rivulets trickle down his hard body, every muscle and ridge straining against the heat and my mouth goes dry.
He doesn't reach for me. Doesn't crowd me. Just stands there in the spray, close but not touching, looking at me the way he looks at a thing he's deciding how to take apart.
"I was," he says. Quiet. "Downstairs. All night. Listening to my brothers wreck the object of my obsession and being a very, very good boy about it."
I swallow. My throat clicks.
"Zero—"
"I sat at that kitchen table with your mother and listened to her tell me about her sister's divorce while my brother was knotting you upstairs.
I poured her a brandy and asked thoughtful questions.
I practically tucked her in." His thumb finds my jaw.
Lifts my face. "I have earned this shower, Max. "
The bond is screaming between us. My cock is throbbing. The water is hot on my back and Zero's eyes are black and his thumb is stroking the corner of my mouth and I cannot remember a single thing I was going to say to make him leave.
"Hi," I whisper.
His face does something I've only seen a handful of times. The look that lives under all the rest of him.
"Hi, baby."
He closes the gap. His hand cups my jaw and his mouth comes down on mine slow, wet, deliberate—not the bruising kiss I half-expect from him but something filthier in its restraint, his tongue pushing into my mouth like he has all the time in the world and intends to use every second of it.
My belly clenches hard. The bond between us flares.
My hand drops away from my cock without my permission and lands on his hip and Zero makes a low pleased sound into my mouth that I feel all the way down my spine.
He pulls back just far enough to look at me.
Then his palm cracks against my ass.
I yelp into the steam.
"Grab the soap," he says. Voice rough at the edges. "Wash me. You do a good enough job, I just might suck your cock for you. Consider it a tip."
"Oh my god—"
"Tick tock, baby." Another smack. Lighter. Filthier. "You know I’m not patient."