Chapter 22
Layla
The air in our room is deathly still when Zayd walks in.
I know exactly why. I can feel it, and both males can smell it. The rush of slick down the insides of my legs.
My stomach knots and my heart pounds, waiting for one of them to start the fight. Or for Sutton to storm off, pissed that Zayd has this effect on me.
Zayd and I may not have bonded, but he is the only alpha whom my slick answers to. However, whatever is happening to Sutton, it also answers to him now.
Maybe Sutton will think he triggered it as he gripped my thigh a moment before the door slid open, and we both turned and stood at the shock of seeing Zayd.
“I came to speak with the two of you,” Zayd says, his voice strained. His nostrils flared.
The heat is rising. The threat of violence in the air. Very soon, it may not matter what Sutton or any of us think.
“We’ve been waiting to talk to you, too.” Sutton’s voice is equally strained.
I’m impressed by the restraint both of them are showing, but I am not convinced it will last.
“Now that I am here, I do not think that will be possible.” Zayd takes a step toward Sutton.
Oh, shit.
What do I do? Do I get between them? Would that only make things worse? Bringing more attention to myself?
I don’t want them to fight over me, but I’m not ready to throw Zayd aside. Sutton promised we’d talk to him. Try to figure out something that works for all of us. I have no idea what that would be, but we’ll never get the chance to find out if they kill each other.
I love my husband. I’m going to stay faithful to him and stay with him, no matter what.
But I also have feelings for Zayd. How could I not after everything we’ve been through and how good he’s been to me?
And how he kept his word to Sutton? I had hoped there would be mutual trust between them when the three of us met again.
This can’t end in violence. I have to remind them.
“Please, don’t fight.” I stand between them.
Both males look down at me as I look each of them in the eyes in turn, showing my desperation.
“There’s a thin line between the desire to fight and the desire to fuck.” Sutton shifts his attention to Zayd. “Wouldn’t you agree?” The intensity in their eyes holds a wordless conversation.
“Wh-What’s going on?” My voice trembles.
I desperately wish I understood what they were thinking, but as the three of us stand here, me wedged between them, I’m just thankful they’re not fighting.
“It seems we stand on the same side,” Zayd says, at last.
“For Layla’s sake, of course,” Sutton says.
“Will one of you please tell me what’s going on?” I ask again, my head spinning, trying to understand.
“You miss being able to go out on your own, don’t you?” Sutton asks, running his fingers through my hair.
“I hate feeling like I need to be babysat,” I agree, but am still confused.
“Do you trust me?” Sutton asks, holding my chin in his hand, insisting I look him in the eye when I answer.
Sutton’s resolve calms me, and I smile at him. “Of course.”
Sutton places his hands on my waist and spins me until my back is flat against his chest. My breath catches when my ass collides with his lap and his rock-hard cock.
“Sutton—” I gasp.
“Quiet, baby,” Sutton whispers, his breath hot on the shell of my ear.
My heart flutters, and even more slick coats my legs.
“Mark her.” Sutton grips my waist to keep me in place when I try to turn to question him. “It’s okay, baby. I’m right here.”
Even though I know what he’s doing, and I do trust him, I can’t quell the fear that he’ll regret this… Watching it. Last time, it was only his imagination that drove him away. Maybe he’s here because he could convince himself it didn’t happen because he didn’t see it. He can’t unsee this.
“Show me, Zayd. Show me how it’s really done,” Sutton says, his body growing hotter against my back.
A soft growl rumbles in Zayd’s throat. “Yes, sir.”
My knees shake, and my breath shudders as Zayd drops to his knees in front of me and leans in. His lips part as he closes in. Finally, his tongue darts out to lick a line along the pulse in my neck.
“Be thorough,” Sutton tells him. “We need to make sure she’s safe.”
“The more of her skin I mark, the safer she will be.” There’s a question of permission in Zayd’s voice.
Sutton takes the front of my shirt in both of his fists and pulls, tearing it apart.
Zayd turns away, his eyes closed.
“Why—”
“I told him not to look. Remember?” I say, cutting Sutton off.
“Tell him he can look now,” Sutton orders, but in a gentle, encouraging way.
Sutton may be comfortable ordering Zayd around, but I can’t do that to him.
So, instead of telling him, I place a hand on Zayd’s cheek and turn his head toward me, and offer him the option. “You may open your eyes.”
I fall headfirst into the all-black pools of Zayd’s eyes. Completely forgetting who I am, that my husband’s hands are around me as I bend down to cover Zayd’s mouth with mine.
It’s not until my tongue grazes Zayd’s fangs that I remember who I am and that who I’m kissing is not my husband, and I pull away with a thousand apologies on my lips.
Sutton silences them with his own lips, turning my head and eating my words as he licks the guilt from my tongue.
With my head twisted over my shoulder while Sutton kisses me senseless, I pull Zayd in by the nape of his neck to bury his face between my breasts.
Zayd rubs his cheeks on my skin, massaging the soft mounds. His lips brush my nipple, making me whimper. My knees buckle.
Sutton pulls back, his lust-filled eyes follow Zayd as he moves to tease the other side.
Before I have a chance to fear Sutton’s jealousy, Sutton cups my breast in his hand and offers it to Zayd, tracing Zayd’s lips with the pebble-hard peak.
Zayd’s lips part, and he laps his flattened tongue in a circle over my nipple before sucking in a mouthful of me.
“You like that, baby?” Sutton asks.
The answer is on the tip of my tongue, but I struggle to say it out loud.
Not just because someone who is not my husband has my tit in his mouth, but because I worry that they are only doing this because I like it, and maybe they actually hate it.
Sutton swore he wouldn’t leave me again, and Zayd swore he’d protect me, but I can’t imagine either of them had considered this when they made those promises.
“Wait. Stop,” I say, and they both let me go as I step out from between them, wrapping my arms around my chest.
“This… It’s too much. Too fast. I don’t understand what’s going on, and… Do you two know what you’re doing? Do you have any idea what kind of Pandora’s box you’re opening? Is this really what you want? Either of you?”
Sutton and Zayd look at each other before Sutton says, “I can’t say that I know what I’m doing or why, but I can say, with one hundred percent certainty, I want this.
” Sutton looks back at me. “I realized something when Zayd came to the house to bring me back. Something that I think only the time away would let me see.”
“What?” I ask with a lump in my throat.
“Smelling you on him and him on you…” Sutton takes a moment, squeezes his eyes shut, then says, barely above a whisper, “It turns me on.”
“What?” There’s no way I heard that right.
Sutton turns his eyes back to meet mine, letting me look into them, allowing me to gauge his sincerity.
“It was such a foreign feeling,” he continues.
“I mean… You know me. I’m straight as an arrow.
Never even considered being attracted to a male.
So… When I felt aroused around Zayd, before I left the Center, it confused me and pissed me off.
I associated it with smelling you on him.
I thought it was smelling you on him that was pissing me off.
Really, I was just pissed off that I didn’t know what the hell was going on.
I was out of control and didn’t know how to get it back. ”
“Oh, my god,” I gasp.
Sutton rolls his shoulders and takes another deep breath.
“When I smelled you on him again, when he came to our house to get me, it started making sense. When I smelled him on you again, it made even more sense. Then, when he walked through the door, it made perfect sense. Whatever I am, my desire is linked not just to you, Layla, but to Zayd too.”
Zayd sighs, sitting back on his heels, his focus locked on Sutton. “You put into words what I could not.”
“You feel it too?” Sutton asks him.
“It has haunted me. It is not our way. This dynamic… It is unprecedented.”
“Then it’s not what you want?” I ask Zayd.
“It is not what I expected,” Zayd says.
Sutton claps a hand on Zayd’s shoulder. “It’s not what any of us expected.”
The way they look at each other, I sort of feel like I’m intruding on their moment.
Until Sutton reaches out, grabs my wrist, and pulls me back in to stand between them again.
“What does this mean?” I wonder.
“What do you think?” Sutton asks Zayd.
Zayd looks back and forth between Sutton and me, then sits up on his knees, putting him eye level with me again. “I think it means it is up to us to figure it out.” Zayd glances over my shoulder at Sutton, who nods.
“One thing we know, for sure, is that you need an alpha’s mark to move freely around the Center. Without an escort,” Zayd says.
“And I know I can trust Zayd to mark you without giving into the instinct to claim you…” He lets his statement hang as the male’s eyes meet again, and a smile appears on both of their faces before Sutton adds, “Before we’re ready.”
“What does that mean?” I ask even though I know what he means. I just want to be sure Sutton truly means it.
“Just that nothing is off the table,” Sutton says, cupping both of my breasts in his hands from behind me, his cock growing hard against my rear. “But for now, we’ll do what we need to do to keep you safe.”
Knowing I’m not alone and that I’m not being saddled with a horrible choice, my body relaxes into Sutton’s hold, ready for whatever he has planned.
Zayd leans in and covers my breast with his mouth, lapping his tongue over my nipple, bringing it to a hard point again, picking back up where I broke us off.
“Mark her good, Zayd,” Sutton says. “Show me how it’s done. Properly.”
Zayd and Sutton exchange a look before Zayd nods, stands, takes me from Sutton, and throws me over his shoulder before dropping me on the bed, flat on my back.
Behind Zayd, Sutton sits on the couch, watching us and rubbing his cock through his sweatpants.
“Get her naked,” Sutton orders, and Zayd obeys, stripping my bottom half. I have to grip the sheets to keep from being pulled off the bed with my clothes.
As Zayd drops to his knees between my legs, Sutton pushes the waistband of his sweatpants down to free his hard cock.
I can’t believe he’s into this. Not just okay with Zayd marking me but watching, participating.
My pussy throbs, watching Sutton watch us. When Zayd rubs his cheeks on my inner thigh and says, “Your scent is divine, omega,” my slick flows like it never has before. I moan when Zayd covers my mound with his mouth and licks and drinks me in.