Chapter 3 #2
"Hm." His thumb presses into the bruise on my hipbone—the one his brother left there last night. He watches it darken under his thumb without breaking eye contact. "Tell anyone and I'll drown you."
"I wouldn't—"
"Bane gets to know."
"...okay."
"He'll be jealous. It's the entire point. Hold still."
He licks me from base to tip in one slow flat-tongued stroke.
The sound I make is not dignified. It echoes off the tile.
I clap my hand over my mouth on instinct and Zero, mouth still at the head of my cock, lifts his eyes to mine and somehow communicates the parents are at sea, the house is empty, scream all you fucking want without saying a word.
I drop the hand. He nods, satisfied. Then he opens his mouth and takes me in.
Slow.
He goes slow.
I expect Zero to be a man who fucks his face onto a cock at full speed and worries about gag reflex later.
He is not. He works me into his mouth in increments, careful, watching my face, letting me feel the heat and the wet and the pull of his suction one inch at a time.
His tongue flat under the head. His hand wrapped around the base of me where his mouth hasn't yet reached. His eyes never leaving mine.
"Oh—oh, fuck—"
He hums around me. The vibration runs up my cock and into my belly and I have to brace both palms flat against the tile behind me to stay standing.
My knees are not going to hold me. My hand drops to his hair and he makes a small approving sound and presses into my grip, telling me without words to pull, baby, pull as hard as you want.
I fist my hand in his wet hair.
He hollows his cheeks. Takes me deeper.
"Zero—"
He pulls off long enough to speak. His mouth red. Spit and water on his chin. "Yeah?"
"You—you're really—you're—"
"Words, Max."
"You're better at this than I—than I—"
"Than you expected."
"Than is legal. Fuck—"
He laughs out loud. Real laugh. The kind I have heard maybe four times since I met him.
"You're mine. And I know how to please what’s mine."
He says it like a fact, between one breath and the next, like the weather outside is what it is and the water is wet and Max Carter belongs to him. Then he goes back down on me, mouth wet and warm and tight, and the words land in my chest like a punch.
Mine.
I am being claimed. One again. By Zero. In a shower. With his mouth on my cock and my hand in his hair, with no audience and no excuse for him to be saying it except that he means it.
I am going to come. I am going to come, oh god, I am going to—
"Zero—I'm—"
He doesn't pull off. He sucks harder. Takes me deeper. His free hand reaches up and his palm presses flat against the bond mark on the side of my neck—his—and the second his skin closes over it the bond between us cracks open like a struck bell, and I am gone.
I come down his throat with a cry I do not bother to muffle.
He works me through it. Swallows around me.
Stays there with his lips at the head as the aftershocks roll, his thumb stroking the inside of my thigh while my whole body twitches against his hold.
He doesn't pull off until I am whimpering and oversensitive and my hand has loosened in his hair, and even then he stays one beat longer—flat tongue under the crown, eyes up at me—just to watch me jerk against the tile from it.
The bastard.
He sits back on his heels. Wipes his mouth with the back of his wrist. Looks up at me with the evidence of me still on his tongue.
"You taste like a man who hasn't eaten."
"I—what?"
"Salty. Thin. Not enough of you to swallow." He licks his bottom lip, slow, deliberate, watching me watch him do it. "I want more. Of all of you. And right now there isn't enough of you to have more of."
I make a sound somewhere between a choke and a laugh and my face is on fire.
"Zero, oh my god—"
He stands. Pulls me closer to him by the elbows. Hooks a wet palm around my ribs and drags two fingers down them, slow, one at a time. Counting. His eyes don't leave mine.
"One. Two. Three. Four."
"...stop—"
"That's four ribs I can count without trying, Carter. That's four too many. I want you happy. I want you mine. I want you full—and not just of my cock. Get that through your head."
"Zero—"
"Finish washing. I'm making you something. You're going to eat all of it. If you don't, I am going to feed it to you myself, and you are not going to enjoy how I do it."
"...okay."
"Smart."
And just like that, we are showering. Showering.
Like it's normal. Like he didn't say what he said.
Like I am not still standing here trying to put my brain back together.
He soaps his own arms. He works shampoo through his hair like this is completely normal.
He rinses. He elbows me when I just stand there staring at him.
"Soap, Carter. You're not getting cleaner standing there."
I wash. He helps. Or pretends to help—he is mostly running his hands over me under the spray, working the bruises on my hips with his thumbs the way you work a knot out of a shoulder, sliding wet palms slow up my back.
My body is loose and warm and used and I am not going to survive the next four hours of being in proximity to him and his brothers without supervision.
He turns the water off. The silence rushes in.
He grabs a towel from the rack and tosses one to me. I miss it. He laughs. I bend to pick it up off the bathmat and—
Crack.
Zero’s towel snaps against my ass with a sound that echoes off the tile. I yelp—loud, startled, furious—and clap my hand over the spot.
"Zero!"
"Sorry. Hand slipped."
"Your hand did not—"
"Hard to tell with these tile floors. Slippery."
"You—I am bleeding—"
"Are you?" His voice has gone soft.
He's already moving. Drops to one knee on the bathmat.
Hooks two fingers in my wrist and tugs my hand off the welt.
I feel his breath on my skin a second before his mouth finds the welt—open, hot, wet, an unhurried tongue dragging across the raised line he just put on me.
He sucks. The flesh stings sharp, then aches, then throbs in a way that goes straight to my belly and my mouth falls open on a sound I do not authorize.
"There," he murmurs, against the welt. "Better."
"That is not—"
"Mm." Another open kiss. Slower. His thumb traces the edge of the welt. "Atlas will have my head when he’s seen what I’ve done to your beautiful ass."
"You are unhinged—"
"Yeah, baby." He stands. Drags the towel down my back, my ass, my thighs in slow possessive strokes that have nothing to do with drying me off. "I know."
He drops the towel over my head. Rubs my hair with both hands. Comes out the other side with my hair stuck up in fourteen directions and a private smile he doesn't bother to hide.
I look up at him. He’s so devastatingly handsome my lower abdominals clench and my cock twitches.
"You're very different in here than out there," I say.
"Don't tell anyone."
"You'd kill me."
"In your sleep. Painlessly. Out of love."
"...thanks."
"Mm."
He bends down and kisses the welt one more time through the towel. Then he kisses my forehead. Then he is past me and out the bathroom door, naked and dripping, leaving me to put my brain and my clothes back on alone.
∞∞∞
Lunch is on the back deck.
Sandwiches Bane stacked together. Iced tea sweating in glass tumblers. A bowl of grapes sweeter than dessert. The breeze off the water moving the wind chime over the door.
In front of me, in addition to the sandwich, there is a chipped white bowl of scrambled eggs. Slightly too much pepper. A piece of toast cut diagonally and propped against the rim like a flag.
Zero made these. He came down to the kitchen forty minutes ago looking like a man on a mission, and apparently he wasn’t kidding about making me something to eat.
He is watching me across the table to see whether I'm going to eat them.
I pick up the fork.
"Good boy," he mouths at me. Silent. Filthy.
I almost choke before I've even taken a bite.
The sun is high. The boat is still out. We have hours together–the four of us.
Atlas is in dark sunglasses with one ankle crossed over the opposite knee, suit slacks rolled up at the ankle for the sand on the deck, the most off-duty I have ever seen him. He is watching me more than he's watching anyone. He hasn't said much. He doesn't need to.
Bane is in the chair on my other side, all sleeves and forearms, brushing the back of his hand against mine every time he reaches for his drink. I don't think he realizes he's doing it. I do. The bond hums every time.
Zero is across from me, sprawled like a cat in the sun, his bare foot pressed against mine under the table.
"More?" Bane asks. Pitcher already lifted.
"Sure."
He refills my glass. His hand brushes the small of my back as he leans across, his thumb finding the dip of my spine through my shirt for one slow second before he sits back down. Atlas, behind his sunglasses, sees it and does not say anything.
My cheeks flush but not from the sun. I am not going to make it through lunch.
"How's your throat?" Atlas. Quiet. The first thing he's said in a few minutes.
I cough on iced tea.
"It's—fine."
"Mm."
"I'm fine."
"Eat the sandwich, Max."
"I'm eating it."
"Slower than that. Please."
The please lands in my chest like a hand on the back of my neck and I obey before I can decide to obey. He nods once, satisfied, and goes back to looking at the water. Bane is hiding a smile behind his glass. Zero is openly laughing at me with his eyes.
"I love watching this," Zero says. To no one. To the air.
"Watching what?" I bite.
"Atlas tell you to chew slower and you doing it like he just told you to walk across hot coals for him. It's adorable. It's deeply, deeply compromising. Bane, are you seeing this?"
"I'm seeing it."
"Be useful," Atlas says. Mild. Not even looking at his wild middle brother. "Pick a movie for tonight. Margot's going to want one after dinner."
"Margot's going to bed early," Zero says. "She and Father have been up since five."