Chapter 29 #2
Two males. Almost identical in silhouette—the horns, the build, the predatory stillness—and utterly different in everything else.
Kaede’s hunger was controlled. Calculated.
A psyblade kept sharp through discipline.
Zyxel’s was raw and wondering, the hunger of a male still learning the shape of his own desire in an unfamiliar body.
Both of them looking at me like I was the center of their universe.
I shuddered.
“Touch her.” Kaede’s order landed softly in the dark. He was watching Zyxel now, and something passed between them—not quite trust, but an agreement. A truce forged in the shared territory of my body. “Her neck. Her shoulders. Slowly. Let her feel you.”
Zyxel’s hands slid up my back. Careful. Deliberate.
Those long fingers—healer’s hands, surgeon’s hands, capable of such devastating precision—mapped the ridges of my shoulder blades, the knobs of my spine, the sensitive skin where my neck met my shoulders.
He pressed his mouth to the spot just below my ear, and his breath came hot and unsteady.
I tilted my head. Gave him access. His lips traced my pulse point, then the line of my jaw, and the crimson bond sang through me so brightly I gasped.
Kaede captured that gasp with his mouth. Kissed me deep and slow while Zyxel explored the landscape of my back with a thoroughness that made my toes curl. His fingers found the dip of my waist. Slid forward. Hovered at the underside of my breasts without touching—waiting for the command.
Kaede pulled back. Read the question in Zyxel’s hesitation through whatever silent communication passed between them.
“Her breasts. Cup them. Be gentle—they’re sensitive.”
Zyxel’s hands closed over me from behind, and I arched into the touch with a moan that came from somewhere primal.
His palms were different from Kaede’s—slightly warmer, the texture of his skin smoother where Kaede’s had the roughness of old scars.
He cupped me with exquisite care, his thumbs skating over my nipples, and the sensation shot through me like lightning.
“Yes.” The word fell out of me. “Stars, yes—”
Kaede watched. That was what undid me—the way he sat back on his heels and watched another male touch me with those sharp neon green eyes blazing. Not jealousy. Ownership. The absolute confidence of a male who knew that no matter how many hands were on my body, I was his. I would always be his.
And that confidence let him share me. Directed how I was shared, with the same tactical precision he brought to battle.
“Keep going.” Kaede’s voice was darker now. Rougher. He reached for the nightstand, pulled open the drawer without looking, and I heard the quiet click of a cap opening. “Roll her nipples. She likes it when you—”
Zyxel did it before Kaede finished the sentence. Rolled both peaks between his fingers with a pressure that rode the psyknife-edge between gentle and too much, and I cried out, my hips jerking forward.
“She’s a fast learner,” Kaede murmured. But he was looking at Zyxel with something that might have been approval. “And so are you.”
Slick fingers found me.
Kaede. His hand between my thighs, coated in the cool gel from the nightstand, and the contrast of the temperature against my overheated flesh made me gasp.
He didn’t tease—not this time. His touch was focused, purposeful.
Working me open with steady strokes that had me clutching at Zyxel’s forearms behind me.
“You’re already so wet.” Kaede’s murmur was for both of us. His forked tongue flickered against his lower lip, tasting the air between my thighs with that devastating adopted Ezzaska ability that meant he could read my arousal like data. “You needed this. Needed us.”
“Yes.” I rocked against his hand, chasing friction, chasing fullness. Zyxel’s mouth worked the spot below my ear, his breath coming ragged against my skin, and between the two of them—Kaede’s expert fingers, Zyxel’s worship—I was drowning. “Please. Don’t make me wait.”
“Patience.” Kaede added a second finger.
Curled them. Found the spot that made my vision white out and worked it until I was shaking, until my thighs trembled and the moans pouring from me were sounds I didn’t recognize.
“I’m not rushing this. Not with you carrying our daughter.
You’ll be ready when I say you’re ready. ”
That tone. The authority of it. The way it brooked no argument and somehow made me feel safer than any locked door or armed guard.
I surrendered to it. Let my head fall back against Zyxel’s shoulder.
Let Kaede’s fingers drive me higher while Zyxel’s hands mapped my body with increasing confidence—learning the spots that made me gasp, the pressure that made me moan, cataloguing my responses with the same methodical attention he brought to his research.
The first orgasm hit me like a wave.
Not a crescendo—a crash. One moment I was climbing, Kaede’s fingers relentless inside me while Zyxel whispered something rough and wondering against the shell of my ear—and the next I was shattering, my body clenching around Kaede’s hand, my cry swallowed by the hum of the ship’s engines and the wild pulse of two bonds blazing neon-green and crimson in my chest.
Kaede worked me through it. Didn’t stop. Didn’t let me come down.
“Again.”
I whimpered. “Kaede—”
“Again, star.” His free hand cupped my jaw. Tilted my face until I met his gaze—those blown-out neon eyes, pupils swallowed by black, the predator underneath the control staring back at me with naked want. “You said you needed to stop thinking. So stop thinking. Let go. We’ve got you.”
Behind me, Zyxel’s arms tightened. A cage of warmth and muscle, holding me upright when my body wanted to collapse. “We’ve got you, enax,” he echoed, and the Rkekh endearment in his new voice—deeper, rougher, vibrating through his chest into my back—shattered something.
The second crest built faster. Kaede’s fingers. Zyxel’s mouth on my shoulder, teeth grazing my skin. Two bonds singing in harmony, neon-green and crimson braiding together in a chorus that drowned out the distance, the grief, the fear.
I broke apart again. Harder this time. Longer.
When the tremors faded, Kaede withdrew his fingers. Brought them to his mouth. Held my gaze while he tasted me, and something dark and satisfied moved through our bond.
“Now.” He leaned forward. Pressed his forehead to mine. “Now you’re ready.”
Kaede repositioned me like I weighed nothing—careful of my belly, always careful—settling me on my side in the deep softness of the nestbed.
He stretched out behind me. The heat of his chest against my back.
His thick, textured stav pressing against the curve of my ass, and my whole body clenched with anticipation.
“Zyxel.” Kaede’s chin rested on my shoulder, his forked tongue flicking against my earlobe. “Lose the clothes. Then face her.”
Movement across the nestbed. The rustle of fabric.
And then Zyxel was there, mirroring my position, his body a breath from mine.
I ran my gaze over him—the broad chest, the lean musculature, the warm brown skin that still looked new on him.
A body built for something else, worn with the self-conscious grace of a scholar inhabiting a warrior’s frame.
His stav stood thick and flushed between his thighs, and the sight of him—aroused, aching, held in check by nothing but Kaede’s command and his own desperate want to do this right—made me reach for him.
My fingers wrapped around him. He hissed—a sound that belonged to his serpent form, involuntary and raw—and his hips jerked into my grip.
“Easy.” Kaede’s hand covered mine, adjusting my grip, guiding the pace. Teaching Zyxel’s body through my touch the same way he’d taught mine. “Slower. He’s close already.”
Zyxel’s eyes met mine. Chartreuse burning into blue-green. “Selena.” My name in his voice was a plea and a prayer.
“I know.” I cupped his face with my free hand.
Drew him in. Kissed him slow and deep while Kaede’s hand trailed down my hip, spreading slick where he wanted it, coating his own length.
His stav notched against me from behind—the blunt, textured head pressing, pressing—and I exhaled into Zyxel’s mouth as Kaede pushed inside.
Slow. Devastatingly slow. Every ridge of his textured shaft dragging against nerves already oversensitized from his fingers, and the stretch was exquisite—that perfect, aching fullness that only Kaede could give me.
He seated himself to the hilt and went still. His mouth found the juncture of my neck and shoulder—his mark—and he bit down gently. Claiming. Grounding.
“How does that feel, star?”
“Like coming home.”
His laugh was a low, dark thing. His hips rolled once, shallow, testing, and I moaned against Zyxel’s mouth.
“Touch him,” Kaede instructed. He guided my hand with his back to Zyxel’s stav, wrapping my fingers around him in a rhythm that matched the slow rock of Kaede’s hips. “Keep him on edge. Make him wait.”
Zyxel groaned. Dropping his forehead to mine, his breath came in sharp bursts.
Through the crimson bond, I felt everything he was fighting to contain—the overwhelming newness of sensation in this body, the desperate need to bury himself inside me, the aching gratitude of a male who’d spent decades alone and still couldn’t believe he was allowed to have this.
It wrecked me.
“Kaede.” I pressed back against him, taking him deeper, savoring the rumble of his groan against my shoulder. “Let him. Please. I want—I need—”
“Tell me.”
“Both of you. I need both of you.”
Silence. Then Kaede’s hand reached past me to the nightstand. More slick. His fingers working between my thighs, spreading the cool gel where Zyxel would press. Patient. Thorough. Making sure I could take them.
“Zyxel.” The command was quiet. Weighted. “Careful. Slow. Watch her face—if she tenses, you stop.”