Chapter Sixteen #2
“You are the most honest person I have ever encountered. You’ve been lied to your entire life, and you still trusted your own perception when it conflicted with what you’d been told.
You were isolated, and you still grew into someone with more clarity of character than most people develop in a lifetime of freedom.
” He reached up and touched my face, one hand, deliberate.
“I have spent my entire adult life building walls because I watched love destroy my father. I have been very careful about what I let myself want.” His thumb pressed gently against my jaw.
“I want you. Not because it’s strategic.
Not because it’s powerful. I want you the way I have not let myself want anything in ten years, which is completely.
” Something moved across his face. “You feel like the part of myself I determined to live without because the alternative was too dangerous to consider. I am done considering it dangerous.”
He kissed me.
Different from Thane—slower, more deliberate, his hand moving from my jaw to the back of my head with the careful intention he brought to everything. And I understood what both of them had been trying to tell me. We were three people, but united, we were going to be something much more.
Then the heat hit me like a wall.
Slick warmth flooded through me, soaking through my undergarments and my inner thighs, the unmistakable physical reality of my body making its priorities entirely clear. I broke from Malric’s mouth on a sharp inhale and doubled forward with my hand pressed against my abdomen.
“Aveline.” Thane’s hand at my back.
“I’m all right,” I managed. “It’s the heat. I need my nest.”
Strong arms slid under me, one at my back and one beneath my knees, and Malric lifted me against his chest, not waiting for permission. Which was good because I didn’t think I could make it up the stairs on my own anyway.
I clutched the front of his shirt and concentrated on breathing.
He was already moving to the stairs.
“Your nest,” he said, his voice low and close at my temple. Not a question. Not a suggestion.
I turned my face into his chest and the heat moved through me in slow, insistent waves.
Thane’s hand pressed against my back as he climbed the stairs behind us.
The tower was warm around us as we rose through it, candles straightening from their bent angles.
The stone vibrated with a low contented frequency that was its version of welcome.
Malric’s arms tightened.
“It’s time to make your nest, Omega,” he said, as he sat me down just inside the door of my nest, while he and Thane remained outside.
I was confused for a moment. I had a nest. I always had one. But, as I looked at the pile of fresh furs and blankets and pillows, it looked wrong. The pile, the stacking, the shape was all wrong for my heat. I had to fix it. Immediately.
The nest had to be right.
As soon as I saw my nest and felt the furs, an undeniable urge arose within me, though I didn’t know its cause. Something in my body said no, not yet. An utter sense of wrongness overrode everything else, and I was almost frantic as I started to pull things apart.
I started with the furs. I dragged the top layer off entirely and shook it and repositioned it at a different angle.
Better. Not right, but better. The cushions were wrong, stacked in an order that had been fine yesterday and was now intolerable.
I restacked them by some instinct I couldn’t have explained, largest at the outer edge, softest at the center, the worn one that smelled most like the tower at the back, where it would be against the wall.
I was aware of them watching me and it didn’t matter.
The heat was a living thing inside me, pooling low and spreading outward in slow, insistent pulses.
My body had apparently decided that before it would allow anything else to happen, this nest was going to be correct.
The bottom layer of furs was smoothed from the center outward, with every fold pressed out, bringing a deep satisfaction of a finally flat surface.
The blanket next. I’d had this blanket for years and it went over the furs in a specific way, and I found that way by feel, and then I pulled the second fur—the heavy one, the warmest—and layered it loose over the top so there was weight without constriction.
I sat back on my heels and looked at it. Not yet. Something was still off. It didn’t smell right.
I snapped my fingers. “Your tunics. Now.”
“Our what?” Thane said, surprise in his voice.
“Take it off. She needs our scent in her nest,” Malric said, his voice somewhat muffled by the sound of his tunic being pulled over his head.
I snatched it out of his fingers and buried my face in it.
Yes, that was what I needed. My body wanted to roll in it, get that scent all over me.
Slick dripped down my thighs as the scent of iron and leather surrounded me.
Thane handed me his, and I did the same.
His scent blended with Malric’s, making my knees sag.
Something in my chest settled, and I sighed, dropping to the edge of the pile of furs.
Then my shift scraped against my skin, and I couldn’t bear it.
I laid the tunics on the nest, arranging them perfectly.
Then I ripped my shift over my head and threw it aside.
The air of the room against my bare skin was initially a relief and then immediately insufficient, the heat rising to meet the absence of fabric, and I reached back and freed my hair from the loose knot I’d put it in.
No pulling at my scalp. More comfortable everywhere.
I looked up.
They hadn’t moved from the edge of the room. They’re chests and muscles on display, sweat glistening in the lowered candlelight. I shivered, my core clenching, begging for something I didn’t have words for yet but desperately needed.
Malric stood with his fists clenched at his sides, his muscles tense, his eyes on me with a hungry expression, as if I were a feast and he had not eaten in days. The candlelight caught the tension in his jaw, the deliberate stillness of a man keeping himself in place through determined effort.
Thane looked thunderstruck, his gaze eagerly moving over me with frank admiration. It made me feel powerful and sexy. I preened under their regard, my skin heating under their gazes as if they were touching me.
The nest was ready. I took everything else off and settled into the center of it, the heavy fur under my hips, their tunics surrounding me and looked at them.
Malric held himself back with great restraint. “Omega, will you invite us into your nest?”
His voice was low, gravelly, and unbearably sexy.
The way they both looked at me made me feel powerful and in control, not weak or a victim.
I wiggled in the nest a bit and stretched my arms above my head, and their eyes immediately went to my breasts, arched and waiting for their touch. I spread my legs and smiled.
“Will you join me?” I asked.
Neither of them moved immediately. Thane glanced at Malric. Malric looked at me.
“Alphas,” he said.
I frowned. “What?”
Something predatory shifted in his expression, making me shiver. He crossed the room and stood at my feet.
“Call us alpha when we’re in your nest, Omega.”
My core clenched and slick leaked out of me at his commanding words. “Join me, Alpha.”
He smiled, a triumphant one. “Gladly, Omega.”
He stripped his pants off and prowled over me, caging me with his body. He claimed my lips in a deep, drugging kiss. I sank into the moment, letting my heat suck me under.
Thane settled on my other side, and the warmth of them against my bare skin after the cool air of the room was immediate and overwhelming. The heat in me spiked hard, and I tried to press my thighs together, but Malric had settled in between them.
“Easy,” Malric said, low. “We have time.”
“My body disagrees.”
“Your body is wrong.” His hand settled at my waist, warm and unhurried. “We’re doing this right.”
Malric’s hand moved to my hair, threading through it slowly, gathering it to one side to expose my neck. He pressed his mouth there, unhurried, just lips against skin, and the contact moved through me like a current finding the path of least resistance.
I exhaled.
“Good,” he said against my neck. “Let it move.”
Thane’s hand traced up from my waist to my ribs and back down, gently stroking my skin, unhurried, teasing me. I turned toward him slightly and kissed him. Slow and deep, no urgency in it, his hand still moving at my side in those steady passes that were lighting me up and winding me up further.
Malric’s mouth moved up my neck to the curve below my ear and my head fell back against his shoulder.
“First time,” he said quietly, not a question.
“Yes.”
His hand settled at my hip from behind, steadying. “Tell us what you need.”
“I don’t know what I need.”
“Then we’ll find out,” Thane said against my mouth, and kissed me again before I could answer.
They took their time with me.
Thane’s mouth moved from mine to my jaw, my throat, my collarbone, tracking downward with kisses and caresses that wound my heat into a frantic level, making me twist and arch under their attentions.
Malric’s hands moved over my back, my waist, learning me from behind while Thane learned me from the front, and between them I was surrounded in a way that should have been overwhelming and instead felt like the first time in my life I had been completely held.
When Thane’s mouth reached my chest, I stopped thinking at all and sank into the feeling, thoughts scattering.
His hands cupped me, lifted my breast for his mouth, and I arched into it. Malric made a low sound at my neck, his hands tightening fractionally at my hips, and the combination of both of their attention simultaneously sent a rush of heat through me so sharp I gasped.
“There,” Thane said softly, and did it again.