Chapter 17 Kaian #2
“Canyougetmykeysout?” Quinn grits, voice tight.
“I’m sorry. What was that?” Kaian blinks.
“Fuck. My keys. Can you get them out?”
“Yeah, sure. In your bag?”
“No. My left front pocket.”
Soren is slung over Quinn’s left shoulder, and he’s using that arm to balance the big man’s weight. He’s clearly been trying—and failing—to reach his own keys with his right hand.
Oh.
Quinn’s jeans are tight. Attractively, obscenely so. He’d been hesitating because the tension in the Uber and that kiss hadn’t done anything to loosen them up.
Kaian’s not sure if he’s hoping Quinn tucks to the left or the right because he’s about to find out.
“Today, cher, or we’re going to be out here till sunup.” Quinn’s voice is a low warning.
“Yeah, yeah, sure. Okay. Sure,” Kaian says, flustered.
It’s a groan from Soren that finally sets him into motion.
Eyes down, Kaian manages to get the tips of the keys between his fingers, with only the backs of two brushing the damp fabric covering the head of Quinn’s dick. He’s careful—gentle and slow—because the keys are hard and sharp.
It seems to take forever, but finally, he gets them free. Both he and Quinn are breathing like they’ve just run a marathon.
“Quinn—” Kaian starts, though he’s not sure what he was about to say.
Beg him to fuck him? Ask to suck him off on this dirty landing? Apologize for fantasizing about his unconscious boyfriend, too?
Heat surges up his neck. Shame blooms in his chest. He wants to pull on The Plain—to feel the cool rush of magic that reminds him he’s not powerless.
He still has choices, even if none of them involve Quinn or Soren.
No matter that Fate had nudged him toward them when it set him on that bus to Nashville.
“What’s wrong with you?” Kaian mutters to himself.
“Nothing I can see,” Soren growls from over Quinn’s shoulder, chin propped in one hand, elbow digging into Quinn’s back. There’s a bruised smirk on his face.
“Can you get the door? I’m going to dump him on his fool head.”
“Shit, yeah. Sorry.”
The lock sticks, but when he finally gets it open, he steps aside to let Quinn pass. Soren’s smirk disappears around the corner, followed by a bump and a low sigh as the door closes behind them.
For a moment, Kaian thinks about disappearing down the stairs.
Quinn wouldn’t notice right away, as sounds from the apartment indicate that he’s wrestling with Soren’s pants, if the muttering and cursing are anything to go by.
But dread keeps him rooted to the landing.
An icy trickle of warning he’s learned never to ignore.
He fingers the lunar moth coin in his pocket, the old comfort of letting Fate decide. But tonight, even Fate feels unreliable. He’s managed to survive twenty-seven years without knowing werewolves existed, without being part of anyone’s story but his own. Now he’s dangerously close to wanting more.
He’d wondered after the fight if Soren had been the reason Fate had set him in this direction, but Soren had Quinn.
These werewolves weren’t supposed to be part of Kaian’s life—not even with the connection between them.
They had each other, and Kaian had…well, he had a life on the run.
Escaping the Aeternum Academy and whatever role they wanted him to play in their plans for world domination.
This—whatever it is—couldn’t go anywhere. Kaian couldn’t become anything to anyone, because when the Academy eventually found him—and they would—he wouldn’t be a pawn to be used.
He certainly wouldn’t take these men with him when he eventually took himself off the board.
He turns to go when he hears Quinn call his name. “Kai?”
Quinn’s face appears around the corner, Soren’s pants in his hand, and a frown on his flushed face. “Hey, you coming in or what?”
Kaian lets the coin in his pocket slip through his fingers.
He doesn’t mean to step over the threshold or let the door swing shut behind him, but then he’s standing in a large studio room, a big bed draped in colorful sheets and thick with the scent of sex, where a naked, sleeping Soren lies waiting.
He doesn’t mean to take off his shoes, drop his jacket onto a purple, threadbare velvet chair, or accept a can of Coke.
But he does all of that with a curve of his lips and a murmur of thanks.
“So, you’re twenty-seven.” Quinn sits cross-legged on the end of the bed, with what looks like an unconscious pat to Soren’s leg under the duvet.
Kaian narrows his eyes. He hates people thinking he’s so young, figures it’s the nature of his magic, but every time he looks in the mirror, he looks the same as he did at twenty-one. “That’s what I said. You said that you can smell lies?”
“Yeah, and all kinds of other shit, but not usually on Humans—” He cuts off abruptly, and Kaian realizes it’s not the first time he’d stopped himself from saying something. “You got ID?”
He realizes he’s reluctant to pull out the Sam’s Club card and use the illusion. It’s a lie, even if what it says is the truth. “No. But I’m twenty-seven. I swear. 1999.”
Eyes narrowed, Quinn’s nostrils flare again.
“I said, I don’t lie.”
“That’s a fucking relief.” Quinn doesn’t have to say why, because Kaian can still taste the memory of Quinn’s tongue slick and wet on his own.
“Hey, about that. I…uh—” Kaian stumbles through it. “I’m sorry for what happened in the Uber. It wasn’t right for me to—”
The surprise on Quinn’s face almost makes him stop, but if he stops now, he’ll never get it out. “I know you two are, like, together, and I was still—you know. I’m no home-wrecker. So. Yeah. Sorry.”
Quinn snorts and rubs a hand over his face. Sighing, he sits up again, this time looking Kaian dead in the eyes. There’s no hiding the hunger there, and despite his apology, Kaian thinks he could be a home-wrecker for this man, for either of them.
“Home-wrecker implies there’d be a home to wreck, bébé. He and I are—” He hesitates, checking that Soren’s eyes are still closed, “—complicated.”
“What does that mean? He has a photo of you as his wallpaper. He was going to call you when he was hurt.”
For a moment, Quinn’s mask slips—a flicker of surprise, something softer.
He tosses his own phone on the bedside table, following it with Soren’s, so the two of them light up.
Kaian spots an identical photo of Soren on the second phone—a mirrored devotion, two halves of a story Kaian isn’t sure he belongs in.
“What are you, then? If not…”
“Mates,” Soren growls, and in a flash, Kaian is flat on his back on the bed, with Soren leaning over him.
His heavy weight settles over Kaian’s thighs, and it’s all he can do to stop himself from bucking up.
The luxurious scent of expensive cherry cigars puffs up from the sheets.
It makes his mouth water, and he has to swallow around saliva flooding his mouth.
“M-mates? Like friends?” Kaian squeaks out, and he checks to see what Quinn thinks of his boyfriend pinning him to the bed despite his assurances that they’re complicated.
Soren smirks. “Not like friends, Angel-baby. Like fucking, and fated, and forever.” He grinds down into the cradle of Kaian’s thighs, and there are three groans loud in the room.
“Oh. You’re in an open relationship?” Kaian wishes he weren’t more interested in the fucking habits of his new acquaintances than he was in his discovery of a new supernatural species.
Who could blame him, though? Soren on his own is potent, but Quinn’s eyes are molten gold as he tracks Soren’s ass flexing in subtle pulses between Kaian’s legs.
Together, they make Kaian forget why he was here in the first place.
“Fuck no. Fated mates are as closed as it gets, bébé.” Quinn sighs, and a muscle clicks in his jaw as he’d rather be anywhere else but explaining this to Kaian. “Some Weres live in packs. Polygamous, polyamorous, but closed packs.”
Polygamous packs. The information zips around inside Kaian’s head. It’s hard to focus on the specifics of how that might work when Soren’s eyes are glued to Kaian’s face, and his hard cock is twitching against his own.
“You’re mated? Like married to each other and other people? There’s not just the two of you?”
Soren closes his eyes and rolls to the side. He’s still hard, and his big cock is an angry purple with a puffy swelling at the base. He throws an arm over his eyes. “No, we’re not mated, and there’s no one else.”
Quinn huffs a laugh, but it sounds mean, as if Kaian had stepped into shit that has been sitting between them for a long time. “See, that’s where he’s wrong. There are at least three others. And now—” He stops so he can look at Kaian, gauging his reaction. “There’s you.”
Soren slowly lowers his arm so he can see Kaian, too.
Him?
“Me? You’re crazy. I’m human.” Kaian crawls off the bed to slip on his shoes and jacket. Kaian can’t be married—or whatever mated means. He’s alone—has been, will always be, until the end.
But he can’t deny his heart beats harder at the thought of a family and belonging somewhere. Belonging to them.
“It’s not that uncommon, bébé, especially since you have magic. Fate doesn’t fuck around unless They’re fucking with you, and in my experience, They like that just fine. ”
“You’re making this up,” Kaian scoffs. “Why would you say that? I would have fucked you both without the lies.”
Soren growls and joins Kaian standing beside the bed. Not crowding, but certainly more menacing than he’d been before, when he’d been all dopey from a concussion. His smirk is replaced with narrowed eyes and a clenched jaw. It doesn’t seem to matter that he’s completely naked, either.
He’s the predator, and Kaian is the prey.
Kaian’s knees threaten to buckle, but he locks them, hand on the back of that purple velvet chair.
“Yeah, you would have. It’s what being mates means. You want us like we want you.”
“Soren. Don’t be an asshole. He doesn’t know shit about Weres.”
Soren’s eyebrows go up, and he sways back until his ass hits the side of the bed. “Well, damn.”