Chapter 8
Mom's been deadheading peonies for ninety minutes and shows no sign of stopping.
I'm on my knees in the gravel between the patio stones, pulling weeds from the cracks because she asked me to and I have spent the last forty-eight hours discovering I will, evidently, say yes to almost anything anyone asks of me, in the panicked hope they will not ask the question I actually don't want to answer.
My hands are filthy. My t-shirt is sweat-stuck to my back. The sun is in the wrong place to make any of this less hot.
Somewhere in the house, in the dresser drawer of the bedroom I drove home to yesterday afternoon, are the clothes I wore to a private dining room and a hotel suite I am not allowed to mention.
Atlas's car keys are in the bowl by the front door, where I dropped them when I came in, because Atlas kissed me goodbye outside the hotel yesterday morning and got into a black car bound for the airport and let me drive his to the estate alone.
He is currently in another time zone doing the thing he tried to tell me about over the duck.
I have spent the last twenty-six hours feeling the absence of him in the bond like a tooth I keep finding with my tongue.
I'm also still—
I shift my weight on my heels. Wince.
—sore.
So deeply, delightfully sore. Sore in a way that has, all morning, been a small private heat under my skin that reminds me, every time I move, that two nights ago Atlas Graves was inside me for what felt like several hours of my life. The body keeps the receipt.
I have not said one word about it.
I am not going to say one word about it.
Margot, currently bending over a peony with shears the size of her forearm, is six feet away from me and has the maternal radar of a woman who has been raising me one way or another since I was sixteen.
If I sit wrong on the patio stones, she’s so in tune to me I swear she would hear it.
She straightens. Wipes the back of her wrist across her forehead.
"How was Wren?"
"...good."
"You haven't said much about her since you got back."
"There's not much to tell. It was nice."
"Did she cook for you? You said she was going to try."
"...yeah. Pasta."
"What kind?"
I blow out a breath. I should have prepped for the third degree. Now I’m going to have to improvise.
"...with the red sauce. I don't know, Mom."
"Was the couch comfortable, sweetheart? You know she could've called us, we'd have come and picked you up."
"It was fine. I slept fine."
"Hmm."
"What?"
"You sound tired, sweetheart."
"It was late."
"Speaking of late."
She straightens. Presses a hand to her lower back. Looks at me with the soft careful attention she has been turning on me increasingly often since the family vacation.
"What about the workouts?" Her eyes narrow on me.
I freeze with my hand around a stubborn dandelion root. "...workouts?"
"You told me, on the phone, the other night. That you and Wren had just come back from a run?"
I do not look up. "Oh, yeah. That." I feel the heat of embarrassment flood through me. My cheeks have to be bright red.
"At eleven o'clock, honey?"
"It's a—college thing. Everyone's doing it. I told you."
"You told me a lot of things on that phone call, sweetheart, very quickly."
"...did I?"
"Mm-hm."
I yank the dandelion. It comes up all at once with a clump of gravel and I almost overbalance backward.
"It's a phase, Mom. Isn’t that what all parents freak out about? Phases. Don’t worry, I’ll grow out of it." I internally cringe at how much I just said, but I can’t help it. All I can think about is Atlas’ tongue on my asshole as I tried desperately to keep it together that night.
"You're flushed."
"I'm in the sun."
"Mm."
She isn't pushing. Thank God she doesn’t push any further. But I have a sinking feeling she will bring it up again and I will, eventually, have to lie better.
I yank another weed. Try not to think about the fact that I currently smell like dirt and sweat and the specific way I smell two days after a man fucks me for hours and hours. Maybe it’s an omega thing.
Or maybe I’m just slutty.
The bond between my sternum and three different threads is going hot and bright every time I shift, which is, apparently, what happens when you walk around the garden carrying the residual feeling of your alpha still inside you. I wonder if the other two can smell it on me too.
The back patio door slides open behind me.
"Maxie. You've got a smudge on your face."
Zero.
Jesus it’s like I summoned him.
Bare feet. Glass of something cold in his hand. The familiar warm-bright pulse of him in the bond going visible like someone turned up a dial.
"It's dirt."
"I know what it is. I'm informing you."
"Informed."
I sit back on my heels and look up at him.
He's leaning against the doorframe in track pants and one of Bane's t-shirts—a thing he does about once a week without comment, because Zero will steal anything not nailed down and pretend he didn't notice—and he is, very obviously, freshly out of the shower.
Wet hair. The smell of his soap reaching me even across six feet of patio.
Bane appears behind him. Tall. Glasses–the ones he never wears around the house that make him look like a sexy professor. Coffee mug. Already dressed for the day like he’s ready for a meeting.
"Morning, Margot."
"Morning, darling."
"Maxie, you look gorgeous."
I shoot him a shut the fuck up look, eyes wide. He has got to be kidding me. "I'm filthy, Bane."
"I noticed. Suits you."
Zero snorts into his glass.
Margot is, by some miracle, oblivious. She straightens. Asks if either of them wants coffee. Gets told by Bane that he's already on his second and by Zero that he's having juice today, thank you, and goes back to her peonies.
Bane drops into one of the patio chairs and stretches his legs out. Zero crouches down next to me on the gravel, picks up a weed I'd missed, and tucks it into the small pile by my knee.
"Pretty," he says, soft, only to me. "You look pretty when you're working."
"Zero."
"Sweaty. Dirty. Fuck, baby, you smell like—"
"Zero," I whisper snap at him. My eyes dart to Margot to make sure she didn’t hear but she’s too focused on the delicate flowers in front of her to notice.
Zero grins.
What an asshole.
Just through the open back door, I hear the familiar sound of Margot's phone ringing. She sighs. Sets the shears down. Peels off her gardening gloves. "That'll be Liz. I'll be back."
She goes inside.
The back door slides shut behind her.
I have exactly one second of silence, one second of peace before Bane sets his coffee down. He's out of the chair before the latch on the door clicks closed.
"Up."
"Bane—"
"Up, Maxie."
I groan as I raise to my full height and then I’m looking up into his beautiful hazel eyes behind those glasses.
He's got one hand at my hip and one hand at the back of my neck and he is, very deliberately, walking me three steps backward toward the side of the house where the limestone is in shade and the kitchen window doesn't see, and Zero is right behind him, mouth at the back of my shoulder, breathing me in.
"Bane—the door—"
"She's on the phone."
"She just—"
"Trust me, Maxie. If I hear that door open again, I’ll unhand you and send your right back to Mommy."
"Bane—"
He kisses me.
One hand still at the back of my neck, his thumb stroking down behind my ear, the other one sliding to my jaw to hold me right where he wants me.
His mouth is hot. His tongue is unhurried.
He kisses me like he has all the time in the world and nothing and no one could possibly stop this from happening.
I melt against him.
God, I can’t help it. The bond between us, which has been a steady warm pulse since I came down the stairs of the beach house weeks ago, is roaring.
I feel his hand against my jaw and I feel Zero's breath against the back of my neck and the two of them have me pressed between them in the shade of the side of the house and—
Zero's hand slides under the back of my t-shirt.
"Mm. He's all sweaty."
Bane pulls off my lips and tilts up my jaw. My eyes pop open to look at him. "Of course he's sweaty. He's been in the sun for an hour."
"He smells good, Bane."
"I know." Bane drags his thumb across my lower lip, gathering the remnants of our mixed saliva. My lower belly dips and flips and my entire body is on fire.
"Like dirt and—" Zero's nose against my nape, slow inhale—"...fuck. Baby."
"Don't—Zero, don't—" I whimper, my cock absolutely begging to be touched, to be looked at, fuck I don’t even care. I want to be touched and I don’t. We’re skating a fine, dangerous line here but God it feels so fucking good.
"He's still smells—"
Bane stills.
His mouth is still at the corner of mine, breath warm against my cheek. He tilts his head slightly, looks at Zero past my shoulder.
"...still?"
"Smells like him."
"Like—"
"Atlas. Yeah. As if he’s still freshly fucked."
The bond goes molten.
Both of them—Bane against my front, Zero against my back—go absolutely still for one beat. Then Zero exhales hot against the back of my neck, and the sound that comes out of his throat is a low pleased rumble I have, before, only heard from him directly after sex.
"Oh, baby," he says. Soft. Wrecked. "Did our brother do you good?"
I cannot speak.
Zero inhales again. "It’s like he hasn't washed him off at all. I can—Mmm. Max."
"You—"
"You sore, baby?"
My face is in flames.
I don’t answer. How fucking can I?
Bane, very gently, lifts my chin with one knuckle. Tips my face up to his. Looks at me with the small private smile he wears when he has decided to be tender.
"...are you, Maxie?"
The bond between the three of us is so wide I can’t tell where my body ends and theirs begin. My cock twitches and aches in my athletic shorts. I know Bane can feel it.
"...yes."
Zero laughs.