Chapter 22
Cole pushes open the door, the blinds still closed, blocking out the day, because that’s the way, I’ve learnt since being here, Blaze likes his space to be. Closed off from the outside world so he can catch a break from it.
Reality.
I’ve been slowly adjusting to the dark, something I still can’t sleep well with, the knowledge there are no lights on, but Blaze has been learning that, too. The lamp stays on whilst I fall asleep, and because he can’t drift off like that, he waits, holding me tight to his body, until my breathing evens out. That’s when he clicks the lamp off.
Now, though, as Cole pulls me gently into the room, Blaze following us in, but not closing the door, instead, stepping around and in front of us, going straight to his dresser.
Sitting me on the edge of the made bed, Cole releases my hand, clicking the door closed with a soft snick at the same time the hiss of a match draws my attention at my back. I glance over my shoulder, the soft orange glow growing as Blaze plants a mass of candles onto the bare wood, lighting them with a match and then with each other. Cole starts the same activity beside me, taking large pillar candles in reds, oranges and blacks from the small cupboard in the bedside table, matches from the drawer above it. He sets them over the surface, lighting them in the same way Blaze does.
Once they meet in the middle of the dresser opposite the foot of the bed, the entire room glowing with orange, flickering light, they turn towards me.
Ice creeps its way down the back of my neck, but fire ignites beneath my skin, heating my blood.
Two demons standing tall, shoulders brushing with their closeness, stare down at me, perched on the edge of the bed. My lips part on a soft exhale when Blaze reaches over his shoulder, fingers curling into the thick fabric of his hoodie. I fist my own hands in my lap as he hefts it over his head, threading it free of his body, revealing his ribbed abdomen, muscles wrapped in tattooed olive skin.
Both men stare at me with a hunger I can feel reflected deep in my lower belly. I swallow hard as they continue to stare, and I start to squirm under their attention. It feels as though, when they glance at each other, a million words pass between them, all of them in a language I cannot understand. Then they both split, Cole coming to my side of the bed, Blaze stepping right up to the end of it, closing the space between dresser and mattress.
“Take your clothes off, Pretty Girl,” Blaze rumbles and I baulk.
“No!” I protest immediately, the headache building firmer in my temples at revealing myself to them.
“Ember.” A dark brow arching slowly on his head, a warning in his tone. “Do as you’re told.”
Uncomfortable, I glance up at Cole, his eyes creasing at the outer corners before I drop my gaze back to my lap, fingers twisting anxiously together.
“She might not want to get naked in front of me. Jesus,” Cole snaps back immediately, almost like it’s in my defence, making a shiver roll down my spine, settling in my lower back like a throbbing ache.
“You feeling shy in front of Cole, Pretty Girl?” Blaze teases, drawing my eye, his tongue rolling over his lip ring.
“No,” I whisper in response, making a smirk instantly flick up the corner of his pretty mouth.
Another eyebrow raise, he smirks openly at me, “Oh?”
“I mean-”
“Let us take care of you,” Blaze interrupts, a different look in his dark eyes, concern, worry, all of it swirling with lust. “We’ll take such good care of you,” he promises with a salacious curl to his words.
His knees come to the big bed, his left and then his right, Cole still at my side, my head level with the bulge in his loose shorts, making my cheeks heat, but I don’t look at it, at him. Instead, keeping my eyes on Blaze as he plants his hands on the bed, toeing off his socks and joggers, he crawls towards me, the muscles in his arms tensing, his shoulder blades carving their way up through his skin.
His head is dipped, but his eyes are lifted, focussed up through his lashes, gaze laser focused in on me, “Get on the bed properly, Ember.”
My breathing is hard as I do as I’m told, chest rising and falling rapidly as Cole very gently lifts my legs, his hands coming to my waist to lift me into the middle of the stacks of pillows. Blaze stops moving closer as he reaches my feet, his onyx eyes rolling onto his best friend, then back to me, that dangerous smirk reappearing on his full, dark blush lips.
“Cole’s gunna slide right on in behind you, Pretty Girl,” he tells me, and even if he wouldn’t take no for an answer, I’m pretty sure Cole would.
But he doesn’t get a protest from me. Instead, Blaze hovering over my ankles, hands planted either side of my feet, I twist my head, lift my chin, staring up into those fiery amber orbs.
Cole’s this harsh sort of handsome, intimidating in his strong features, his hard glares, a little bit scary. Unsettling. He’s built like a bodybuilder and hones the glare of a demon, but right now, as he kicks off his trainers, reaches down to peel off his socks, the look he daggers me with makes my heart flutter chaotically in my chest.
Without a word, holding my gaze like I couldn’t look away if my neck was snapped in the opposite direction, he gets a knee up onto the bed, planting a hand beside me, and Blaze is fisting the fabric of my hoodie, pulling my upper half forward, my eyes coming to his instead, so his best friend can slip into the space behind me.
Cole leans back into the mountain of pillows, legs spread on either side of me as Blaze releases his grip on my clothing, the splay of his hand pressing firmly between my breasts, pushing me into the cradle of Cole’s thighs. I go willingly, Cole’s hands coming back around me, his big hands slowly pushing up under my t-shirt and hoodie, resting over my belly.
I squirm in his hold as Blaze gently parts my legs, shackling my ankles with rough fingers, he pushes my legs apart, crawling up the bed between them until he’s resting over me on his palms, his face hovering above mine. Head cocked to the side, that delicious smirk back on his pretty face, he licks his lips, his tongue close enough to touch, but he doesn’t even graze me.
“You have a headache?” he asks, breathing over my mouth, Cole’s breath ghosting down the side of my neck. I nod, “You gunna let us take care of you, Pretty Girl?” he asks, but it doesn’t really feel like a question.
Because when he’s like this, smooth and charming and dangerous, I’ll let Blaze McCoy do anything he wants to me.
He nips at my lower lip, licking over my pout, a groan of appreciation growling its way up his throat. My fingers fist tight in the loose material of my hoodie, my hands resting atop Cole’s through the heavy layers. Blaze’s knee grazes my inner thigh and stars spark across my vision, a low, pained groan catching in my chest. Both men stiffen at the poorly suppressed sound. I feel it in the dip of the mattress, the hard planes of muscles at my back tightening, the man hovering above us both locking his elbows, shoulders stiffening, expression creasing.
Instead of talking, the time for that apparently over, Cole continues to smooth tiny circles with the tips of his fingers into my skin. Blaze licks into my mouth as my head drops back against Cole’s chest, Cole’s face burrowing into the side of my neck, his lips lazily mouthing at the skin of my throat.
Blaze’s tongue devours my mouth, his teeth nipping at my top lip, the cool touch of metal from his lip ring against my burning flesh feels like ice to an inferno. I kiss him back as Cole clutches me possessively to the enclosure of his body, his hands tightening on my belly, his breath harsher pants into my neck.
I let my eyes drift close, as Blaze bites my bottom lip, dragging it out and away before releasing it to clap back against my teeth. His mouth sucking a trail over the ball of my chin, one of Cole’s hands coming from beneath my hoodie to my face, his palm cupping across my forehead, pulling my head back firmer against him, giving his best friend more access to my skin.
Blaze huffs a laugh into the hollow of my throat, Cole’s mouth latching onto the delicate flesh below my ear, his teeth scraping over my skin. I tremble, almost missing it, when Blaze drops down my body, his fingers curling into the waistband of my borrowed joggers.
“Wait!” I gasp, but Blaze’s eyes harden on mine, grip tightening on my bottoms and Cole is sucking hard on the skin of my neck making me cry out in tortured pleasure, squeeze my eyes closed.
A shiver rips through me, one of my hands flying up, curling over Cole’s head, fingers burying themselves into his short curls. And Blaze is dragging my jogging bottoms down to my knees, Cole is licking over his mark and my knees stiffen, eyes snapping open as Blaze’s hot breath pants over my wound.
The room is silent, and it feels like everyone is frozen, my heart hammering so hard in my chest that both men must surely be able to hear it. I know they’re both looking at it. The deepness, the length, the carving pulled tightly together with bright but bloodied, turquoise stitches.
Cole strokes down my belly, his fingers smoothing across the band of my knickers. His other hand moving further up, cupping the underside of my breast.
“Pretty Girl,” Blaze says, and I can’t bear to look at him, to see his face, the disgust in his eyes.
My heart feels as though it’s going to tear free of my chest, offering itself up to them, a bloody mangled sacrifice at the feet of two demonic gods.
The way Blaze repeats it, the endearment he uses for me, something that, some days, feels like a mockery. There’s nothing pretty about me. A fragile, fractured soul with barely enough glow to be considered much more than mere existence, in a world full of cruel hands and liars.
That’s the thought that punctures my brain like a railroad spike being hammered agonisingly slowly into a coffin.
My father is a liar.
The breaths come short, sharp and quick, but so heavy it feels as though my lungs are filling with sludge, decay.
I think of the scar on my belly. The night of my eighteenth birthday. The drugging. The abduction. The botched back alley surgery. All of these terrifying things that I’ve been through and not one of them has made me any stronger.
I’m weak.
I’ve always been weak.
And now these two strong, caring, if not slightly deranged, men, can see all the evidence of it.
I don’t peel open my eyes when Blaze continues to carefully slide down my joggers. I don’t look when his rough fingers come to the wound, a fire along my flesh with the gentle but searing touch of his skin on mine.
I bite down hard on my tongue when Cole’s scarred fingers brush delicately beneath the waistband of my underwear, nudging them lower. Off of my hip bones where Blaze’s calloused hands drag them the rest of the way down, exposing me to them.
The air in the room is warm, outside its December and fucking freezing, but in here, in this home they’ve made, it’s never cold.
There are always people here.
People, who, despite the way I arrived here, want me here.
I don’t feel like a burden in this house that was very clearly built with love. Love for one another, and themselves. I’m not sure any one of these men understands what it’s like to hate themself.
At least, not quite in the way that I feel it.
That’s why it’s such a shock, when the flat of Blaze’s tongue scorches a long, wet stripe up the centre of my pussy. Forcing my eyes to ping open, confusion settling like a crater between my furrowed brows. I’m not sure what sound I make, some sort of strangled ‘oh’, but I feel his smirk turn into a sharp sinister grin against my centre.
“Mmm,” he hums, flicking the tip of his tongue up through my folds, making a sharp, daggering curl around my clit. “So fucking pretty,” Blaze breathes over my wet flesh. “So fucking wet for us,” he murmurs before dipping his tongue back between my folds, and all I can do is stare down at the top of his head, thick, loose curls of dark brown hair bobbing along eagerly with the movement of his mouth.
Cole reaches down, one hand still on my belly, and wraps his fingers beneath my upper thigh, the left one, the one that’s wounded but not stitched, pulling it outwards, gifting his best friend more room, easier access, exposing more of me. His leg twines through mine then, his weight enough without force to hold me open. It’s all I can focus on, the scarred pattern running up his calf, twisting around from the back of his knee to the cap.
Until Blaze’s tongue is dipping inside my clenching hole, and a sound I’ve never heard myself make before is punching from my lungs with the force of a jet rocket.
Cole’s hand returns to my belly, his fingers lacing through mine, my other still up and over our heads, tangled in the coarse but soft curls of his black hair. I focus on his movements as he drags our joined hands down my belly, my muscles jumping beneath my skin at the feel of it.
Our knuckles brush over Blaze’s cheekbone, his temple, but he doesn’t stop at our touch, fucking his tongue even deeper into my hole. Cole works our hands into Blaze’s hair, fisting the roots tightly, tearing a grunt from Blaze as Cole directs my fist, forcing Blaze up to my clit.
A cry chokes off in my throat as Blaze suctions his mouth over it and drives a single finger into my cunt. Every muscle in my body spasms, stiffening and vibrating and contracting as a wash of heat rolls over me like a wave.
“That”s it, Little Spark, let him have it,” Cole breathes into my ear, and my hips are lifting up from the bed.
Blaze’s hand holding him up finds my lower belly and forces me down as he drops onto his chest, still eating me.
I twist my neck, my face angled into the hollow of Cole’s throat, and he realises before I do that I’m straining for something more, from him. This man who has been nothing but cold, almost terrifying, to me, at times, but now, it’s as though every atom in the universe is already aligned for this, because his lips find mine like a magnet.
Cole’s mouth captures mine like he’s been searching for it his entire life and is never going to let go. He kisses like he’s starved, and I’m a forbidden delicacy he has to consume before anyone else dares lay an eye on me. His tongue winds into my mouth, steady and strong, skilled and determined, showing my own exactly who owns it. And I feel safe, in his hold, his cock this steel pipe digging into my lower back, covered only by the thin fabric of his silky gym shots. But he does nothing with it. Only showing me he can be something else, more, than the silent, brooding shadow that hides from me at every encounter.
He opens me up like I’m a treasure chest and only he has the key, all of our parts fitting perfectly together as he clicks the padlock free, opening me up and admiring my insides instead of pillaging them. He’s the one who would keep me safe, my treasures, my soul.
I lick back into his mouth, my tongue gliding across every tooth, as his own licks over mine, and the cry that tears from my throat as his best friend impales me on his cock is something he swallows like a reward. A trophy.
Our lips part and I’m panting into the hollow underside of his chin where his face is dipped to meet mine, but his eyes are up on his best friend.
My fingers tighten in his hair, my other hand free from Blaze’s hair, but still captured in Cole’s palm.
Blaze’s hips smash into my own, fucking into me with harsh brutal thrusts, so hard that the pain in my pelvis from his colliding with it, is enough to forget about the pulsing agony in my thigh, if only for this moment.
“You are so beautiful, Pretty Girl,” Blaze breathes, dipping his mouth into the protruding tendon in my neck, my face angled away from him, up and into Cole’s throat.
A tremor runs through me, like self-disgust, knowing it can’t be true, I’m ruined, cut up, scarred, everything about me is imperfection, I’m not pretty. I’m definitely not beautiful. Why would he even bother to lie to me?
It makes me squirm, my eyes wide on Cole’s as he angles his head back, dropping his bright amber gaze to look at me. It’s as though he sees into my soul, daggering it in place, like a blade through to my spine. It feels surreal, Blaze’s hands on my hips, holding onto me, tilting my hips up as he thrusts himself into me over and over in a punishing rhythm.
But I don’t want him to stop, the pain feels too good, but Cole see’s inside me, and I suddenly feel so vulnerable, tears gather in my eyes, blurring my vision with the sudden flood of them, but they don’t fall. Even when he cups my face, smoothing his rough skin across my cheek.
Blaze is pounding into me harder, his breaths frenzied as he moves impossibly faster and faster into the cradle of my thighs, his cock hitting somewhere so deep inside of me that I don”t think I could even name it.
“I hurt myself too,” Cole whispers.
Our noses brushing, he licks his lips, catching my own which has me wanting to chase him for another kiss. One of his hands still holding open my thigh.
Blaze slows his pace, still fucking me, but rolling his hips, his cock dragging out of me slowly before he punches back inside.
“It’s hard sometimes, to express how you feel,” he says softly, looking into my eyes. “And when you feel like you can’t get out words, it can be easy, can’t it, to find a release in a different way. One that feels like a punishment and reward. Because you think you deserve it. But, in the end, it’s always about the hurt.”
Tears slip down my cheeks, but I don’t try to hide them, for once. Blaze is still inside me, but he’s not moving now. He’s resting against me, our combined weight on Cole, and when I glance at Blaze from the corner of my eye, I see pain in his expression, as he stares at his brother.
“I was in a fire,” Cole tells me, his silky voice wrapping us up in silk, it feels as though he’s tethering us to him, with this confession that is clearly the first and possibly the only time he’s going to give it. “Years ago, one of my sisters left a candle burning when she fell asleep.” He swallows, reminding me to do the same at the lump in my throat. “I had three sisters, I only managed to get one of them out.”
My hand falls from his head, planting instead against his chest, wrist twisted at an awkward angle, but I feel as though I need to feel his heart as he speaks. He licks his lips again, frowning down at my hand on his scarred chest, before he covers it with his own, his grip leaving my spread thigh.
“I used to be the last to bed, checking on each of them before I turned in, and I didn’t that night, for some reason I just went to my room. The only person who can punish me for not being able to save them both, for letting anything happen in the first place, is me. I should have checked; I would have blown out the candle.” He looks into my eyes, opening himself up to me.
I want to protest it, tell him differently, reassure him that no matter what, it wasn’t his fault. But that wouldn’t matter. It wouldn’t matter if he told me the same thing, that the feelings I carry, the control I seek, it’s not my fault. Because it doesn’t change how we feel about ourselves. It won’t. But maybe, a problem shared…
“Sometimes I burn myself,” Cole breathes out, flicking his gaze between Blaze and I, “just to feel.”
I’m unsure what to say, and he looks almost the same way, warring with words inside his head. But we’re not alone here, in this moment, in this room, this house, this family.
“You’re both fucking beautiful.” That’s what Blaze says, his voice this gruff, heavy emotion. “Neither one of you are what”s on your skin.” Both Cole and I turn our attention onto Blaze as he speaks, his gaze flicking between his best friend and me. “No matter what you need to do, to yourselves, to me, to us, we’re unity. This is your family,” he tells us both firmly. “Family sticks together, brings each other up, and we don’t judge each other. We love each other, no matter what. We wouldn’t be this,” he swallows then, his dark eyes blazing so hot there are flames licking at his irises. “Without either one of you. So, no matter what you have to do,” his eyes dart from me to Cole, holding onto his best friend’s for just a moment longer, “I’ll always be here.”
That’s when I realise that he didn’t know. He didn’t know about Cole hurting himself, and Cole felt safe enough, in this moment between the three of us, to confess it for the first time.
Tears really do fall then, but I don’t cry, not even when both men wipe a wet cheek each with rough thumbs, neither one of them saying anything more. But together, they work my hoodie and my t-shirt free, Cole unsnaps my bra, dropping it to the carpet. His hands engulfing my breasts, a harsh pant of breath huffing from my nose.
Blaze fucks back into me, but this time, it’s softer, slower, and his eyes are moving between us both. There’s nothing sexual about it, the way he locks eyes with his best friend, his dick deep inside me, but there is love there. Confidence. Support.
And when Blaze sinks his teeth into my breast, his teeth circled around my nipple, my back arches, my hands flying up onto his shoulders. Cole reaches towards the bedside table, jostling us both as white sparks fly across my vision, my eyes flicking chaotically beneath my closed lids.
“Trust us, Little Spark,” Cole whispers in my ear, that nickname igniting my lower belly into an inferno.
He noses at my temple, sucking a deep breath of me in and then one of his hands is back across my forehead, holding me to his chest. One of Blaze’s pushing my hair back off of my chest as he detaches his teeth from my pulsing nipple. Fucking leisurely into me like he could easily spend all day here, just like this.
It’s a sudden hiss and shock of heat in a droplet against my breast that forces my eyes open. A small, red, splat of wax quickly drying on my skin. There’s blood around the circle of my nipple, in the indents of Blaze’s teeth, and a little droplet of wax hardening just beside it. My cunt pulses, Blaze grunts, and then a wicked grin is spreading over his face.
“Didn’t mean to make you bleed, Pretty Girl,” he tells me, and although it feels like a truth, I know he likes seeing it there.
And evidently, as my fingers reach up, running around the bloody marks, before gliding over the small semi-hard drop of wax, I know I like seeing it there too.
I look up into his dark eyes, feel the warmth of the candle beside my face. Safe and steady in Cole’s firm grip, little dribbles of the red wax running over the curl of his dark fingers.
Looking right into the black depths of Blaze’s eyes, seeing them as their actual colour, deep, dark brown, for what feels like the first time, I confess in a safe whisper, “I like it.”
The grin that unfurls on his face is sick and sinister and excited. Blaze’s eyes are heavy, half lidded as he rolls his hips, his cock swelling even harder inside of me, the tip of it flush with my bruised cervix.
His dark gaze flicks to Cole’s, Cole’s big hand still firm across my head, holding me to him. It feels like protection, rather than a shackle. Whatever silent words pass between them has Blaze dropping his gaze back to me, licking over his lips, he drips his face into mine, taking my lips with a delicious lap of his tongue over my mouth, pulling back before I can even attempt to kiss him back.
“I’m a sick fuck, Pretty Girl,” he tells me softly, said in a way that’s a compliment to himself, something that’s not supposed to scare me off, and it doesn’t, because I like it, I don’t think I’d ever want him to be anything else. “But I think you might be sicker.”
A gasp tumbles from my lips as he withdraws himself from between my thighs, dropping his mouth back to my used pussy, tongue circling my swollen clit.
Cole’s cock is even harder against my spine, and I want to reach for it, but when I do, angling my hand back, he shakes his head against the side of mine, his short, neat stubble scraping against my temple.
“This is all about you, Little Spark.”
That’s when, in perfect synchronicity, their teeth drive beneath my skin.
My back arches, hips lifting as Blaze’s teeth tear into the slices along my inner thigh, leaving the stitched wound on the other side well alone. He sucks and bites and finds his tongue between parted skin, drawing my blood into his mouth with a deep rooted groan I feel all the way down in my marrow.
Cole’s teeth burrow beneath my skin, in the soft part of my upper throat, just beneath the corner of my jaw. He sucks and pulls and tears his way into me like he’s going to tear back my skin and bury himself beneath it.
I’d let him.
Let them both.
Consume me.
Hurt me.
Love me.
Fuck me.
Bury me.
Instead, I’m ignited, every nerve ending in my body alive and kicking my soul back to life. My heart thunders in my chest, hot wax dripping onto my skin like a tiny stream of heat I can’t tear my gaze from. Watching the red rivulets of wax slide their way over my breast, wrapping around my nipple.
The headache in my temples soars, pain and pleasure mashing together, the tendons in my neck straining so hard as I try to lift my head from Cole’s chest, that I momentarily go blind. An orgasm tearing its way up and out of my soul, with nothing more than heat singeing my skin, the wax dribbling over my flesh, their teeth buried beneath my skin. All of my most private parts untouched, but throbbing. My clit pulsing, hole clenching, every muscle in my body tensed and strained as a fire rips through my insides like a supernova.
My chest heaves as I come down, their tongues in sync, lazily lapping over their teeth indents, Blaze’s incisors nipping and tugging at the shallow cuts I gave myself last night. They burn as much as they make me shudder. Goosebumps rippling their way across my flesh. I can’t stop staring at him, and like he knows, can feel my gaze on him, he lifts those deep dark eyes onto mine, holding my gaze with his teeth still in my flesh.
Shuddering, Cole’s tongue lapping over the broken skin in my neck, I realise, glancing down at my chest, seeing the black wax, that he’s switched out candles. Black rivulets marking my pale flesh alongside the red.
Blaze finally releases my skin, his lips smeared with red, his teeth tinged pink, and his cock is back inside me before I can even think to blink.
“We made you come, Pretty Girl,” he gloats, a wicked smirk on his pretty face.
His rough stubble dark, but I can see all the places my blood taints his skin. And I like it, I realise with a sudden wash of heat, something like shame and excitement all combined into a messy blur of confusion.
“I liked it,” I whisper again, making the two men eye each other silently once more.
And I don’t care that I don’t know what they’re saying, because Cole’s dribbling more wax over my chest, covering me like artwork when he places down the candle, dragging his fingers through the wet black wax, letting it stick to his own skin as much as it marks mine.
“You”re so perfect for us,” Blaze praises, a little inferno blazing to life in the pit of my stomach. The way he says us injecting fuel into the fire, “Such a good fucking girl, so pretty, so perfect, so fucked up,” he says it like a compliment, like a delicious realisation that I’m not as soft and fragile as I think I am.
It’s apparent now, that regardless of what I think of myself, what Cole thinks of himself, what we feel we need to do to ourselves to survive another day. That here, with this man, the leader of a ruthless gang, patriarch of this family, a family that evidently, they feel I’m already a part of. He loves us.
It’s in the punch of his hips, his cock greeting my cervix like he wishes it would open up and welcome him inside. He wants to be a part of me, as much as he wants to be a part of Cole, because, realistically, that’s what he craves.
Our love.
Cole’s fingers drag through the drying wax, picking and peeling little pieces of it off, making my skin snag and smart and hum. His tongue dancing along the shell of my ear, dipping inside, sucking on my lobe. Blaze fucks into me harder, my blood along his outer thigh, over his face, his chin, a scar hidden beneath the very short layer of dark stubble, something of our history that I’m glad is there.
It grounds me as I feel that heat unfurling once more in my lower belly. Travelling up my spine, down my legs, tingling in my toes and the tips of my fingers. My back arches and Cole is playing with my nipples, cupping my breast, one and then the other, his other hand still holding onto my head. Blaze dips closer, their breaths mingling as Cole sucks a second bruise into my jaw, Blaze’s lips connect with mine. His pelvis grinding against my clit and his cock swells and swells ever harder inside of me.
Stars spark across my vision, heat rushes over my flesh and then I feel him, Cole’s cock twitching at my back, Blaze’s releasing deep inside of me, filling me with him, owning me as we both succumb to the height of pleasure.
It’s Cole’s waxy fingertips over my cheek, a warm cloth between my legs, that rouses me from a slumber I didn’t know I’d fallen into. When I open my eyes, heavy lidded and sticky with sleep, they fall on Blaze, boxers on, sitting up and leaning forward on his knees, as he cleans between my thighs.
Cole kisses my temple, and I know he knows I’m watching, just like I know he’s watching too. The leader of our family taking care of me, of us, because he’ll keep our secrets, he’ll shoulder the heavy burden of loving two people who some days can’t stand to look at themselves in the mirror.
He’ll do all of that whilst continuing to lead, to work, to rule. And it feels a little like what I imagine being in the presence of royalty would feel like. Awe and wonder and something else.
Pride.
So, when he cleans the mess he made, leaking from inside of me, going back to the bathroom to wash his hands before disappearing from the bedroom completely, coming back moments later with ointments and medical supplies to care for my wounds. Both new and old, born from hatred and something heavier, like love. I fall asleep in the arms and warmth of two men, I think, one day, I could love.