Chapter 31 #2
“Oh, who said anything about you leaving?” Ridge’s grin sharpens into something I should genuinely be more worried about.
“I’ve been here when baby boy fucked Lennon in her dreams before, and honestly?
It wasn’t half as bad as I thought it’d be.
And our girl loves having all our hands on her at once. Don’t you, sweetheart?”
Heat goes up my neck so fast I could fry an egg on it.
“I never,” Nevan says, looking from Ridge to me and back. “Slept with her in dreams.”
Ridge’s grin gets worse.
“Ridge,” I warn.
“Oh, you didn’t,” Ridge agrees pleasantly. “But Lennon’s dream version of you did. Repeatedly. The girl wanted you long before you’d worked up the nerve to want her back, so she dreamed up a Nevan who’d actually do something about it.”
“Ridge. Goddammit.”
“What?” He spreads his hands, the picture of wounded innocence. “We’re one big happy family now. We don’t keep secrets from each other.”
Paul mutters something I don’t catch and pinches the bridge of his nose like he can press the headache out through the front.
“I’m serious,” Ridge goes on, and underneath the smirk there’s something that’s actually serious.
“We eat together. We sleep in the same bed. Imagine if we agreed on sharing her in bed, too, then we wouldn’t have to do this stupid thing every night about whose turn it is to sleep next to her, and our entire lives would get easier.
Sure, I could come to Lenny in dreams and handle the little itch she has myself. Be all of you. Save you the trouble.”
Ridge turns into a second Paul right before my eyes, then wiggles Paul’s eyebrows at me before he grows even taller and turns into a second Nevan.
“Ridge,” I warn again, even though I know it won’t do shit at this point.
Ridge turns back to himself quickly, and I’m already exhaling in relief when he splits, with a Paul standing to his right and a Nevan to his left. They’re obviously projections, but they’re flawless.
Nevan stares at the copy of himself with naked wonder, as if he’s meeting a twin.
Paul stares at the copy of himself as if it owes him money.
“Ooor,” Ridge says, reabsorbing the projections with a flick of his wrist. “We use what we have right now as a stability exercise for our baby boy. Holding lucidity in a dreamscape that isn’t even yours, while you come.
” He whistles low. “That’s the highest level there is.
And I want her to come at least twice tonight, so educational. ”
“For fuck’s sake, Ridge.” My whole face is on fire. “I don’t think they want—”
“Do you want it?” Paul cuts right across me, the question written all over his face.
“I-I mean, yes. But only if you actually want…”
“It’s just a dream, right?” Nevan shrugs, and I turn to him already braced, already feeling the little splinter going in, because it’s just a dream, can mean so it doesn’t count, so it’s fine, so don’t make it more than it is.
“No, Lemon.” He catches it on my face before I can hide it and steps in.
“Baby, no, I mean, we can try it in a dream because it’s just a dream.
Like, if sharing you in the actual bedroom, awake, isn’t my thing, or Paul’s thing, then the worst that happens is we tried it once in a dream, and we know.
” He rubs the back of his neck. “And if we like it…”
Paul lifts one eyebrow. “If we like it?”
Ridge starts laughing. “Look at that,” he says, delighted, pointing at Nevan. “Baby boy is out here proposing waking-life group sex. What do you think of that, Lenny?”
I think I have lost the ability to form language. That is what I think.
“I’m aware,” Paul says slowly. “That boundaries is a word Ridge Wells has never once used correctly in a sentence. But…” He looks at me, the teasing draining out of his voice, and something steadier taking its place.
“If we can hold them in at least this one part of our lives, then, I can’t see why we shouldn’t try it. For science.”
My eyes snap to him and go wide. “Really?”
He reaches over, fits a hand to my jaw, and kisses me in front of them.
“I told you,” he says against my mouth. “You are everything I want. And I want everything for you.”
I’m going to combust.
I’m going to take Ridge’s whole flower planet down with me.
Ridge turns to Nevan. “What about you, baby boy? Any hard no’s?”
Nevan shrugs. “In a dream? Don’t think I care all that much.”
“Then don’t be surprised when I shove your hairy ass out of the way the second you take too long for my taste.”
“Only if I get to pick you up and move your hairy ass in waking life when she wants you somewhere your legs won’t get you.”
Nevan says it with a glint, chin up, holding Ridge’s eye, and I suck in a breath because that could go so many ways.
Ridge glares at him.
Nevan glares back.
“All right…” Ridge squares his shoulders and reaches out a hand, “… deal.”
Before I can even react, they shake on it.
I open my mouth to say don’t, you idiots, never shake hands on anything in dreams, but then I think about what they just shook hands on, and see it’s two grown men being idiots over sex positions, so I shut it again.
“What is even happening right now?” Paul groans, making me chuckle and reach out to take his hand.
He smiles down at me.
We’ll be fine.
“The clothes have to go,” Ridge announces, and in the next breath we are all naked.
All four of us instantly. My brain whites out for a second at the sheer amount of information before Ridge keeps talking.
“We need a bed, though.” He’s surveying the flowers critically. “We can get creative later. But the first time, a bed’s the correct call, I think. Civilized.”
The dreamscape folds, and the yellow goes white. The flowers stay, but they climb walls now, green everywhere, a whole room built out of growing things, and Paul actually looks around and approves, the traitor, tipping his chin at Ridge in something close to respect.
Ridge grins like he won something.
In the middle of it all is an enormous white bed. I blink, and on the next blink, I’m on top of it, sprawled across the middle like I was placed there, which I was, by someone who didn’t bother to ask.
The three of them stand at the foot of the bed, looking down at me.
“So,” Ridge says. “Who’s going first?”
I reach up and grab his wrist, pulling him down before I can overthink it. “Come here.”
He comes willingly, that one-sided smirk already curving his mouth as he crawls over me on the bed.
The white sheets of Paul’s dream-version bedroom feel cool against my back, but Ridge is warm, smelling like sour lemon.
His hair falls forward as he settles between my spread thighs, and I feel the others watching, the weight of their attention like another set of hands on my skin.
My heart is pounding.
Fuck, why am I so nervous about this?
It’s just a dream. I’m dreaming.
“You good, sweetheart?”
I nod quickly. “Yes.”
Ridge hooks my thighs over his shoulders and drags his tongue up my slit in one slow stroke, making me gasp, my back arching hard off the bed. All thoughts about nervousness disappear.
“Fuck, Ridge.”
“Mm.” The vibration goes straight through me. He does it again, then seals his mouth over my clit and sucks. My hands fist the sheets. He’s relentless in that focused way he gets when he wants to wreck me, tongue circling, then flattening, then flicking fast while two fingers slide into me.
Paul’s hand smooths tentatively over my stomach, like he’s asking for permission with touch. “Darling?”
“Yes,” I breathe out. “Please touch me.”
He leans in and kisses me first, before his hand moves higher, cupping my breast, rolling my nipple between his fingers.
When he breaks the kiss, I notice Nevan hesitating on my other side.
“You too.” I reach out toward him. “I want all of you.”
Nevan makes a low sound before lowering himself next to me, mouth finding my nipple, sucking gently at first, then harder when I moan.
Their hands are everywhere now. Paul’s are steady, Nevan’s almost reverent, both of them mapping me out by touch and tongue while Ridge works me open with his mouth and fingers. Every time I get close, he slows down, dragging it out until I’m shaking.
“Please, Ridge, I want your cock.”
Nevan curses beside me, and Paul’s grip on my breast turns a little rougher.
Ridge pulls back enough to look up at me, chin wet, eyes dark. “Greedy girl. We’re just getting started. Want to come on my tongue first?”
I nod frantically. He chuckles against me and dives back in, sucking my clit hard while his fingers curl and stroke.
“I’m enjoying the sight more than I should.” Paul kisses my temple, thumbs brushing my cheek. “You’re doing so well for us, darling. Falling apart so beautifully.”
Nevan nips my nipple, then soothes it with his tongue, sucking gently before grazing it with his teeth. “So fucking pretty when you’re like this,” he murmurs against my skin. “All flushed and needy. I want to fuck you so badly.”
Fuck.
Fuck.
I’m lost in them. Ridge’s mouth is wet and greedy between my thighs, Paul’s voice low and praising in my ear, and Nevan’s hands and mouth worshiping my breasts.
Every nerve is lit up, and I’m gasping, rocking against Ridge’s face, chasing the pleasure while they hold me right there. I’m close, so close, but they are not quite letting me tip over.
“Please,” I whimper, my voice breaking. “Ridge, I’m so close.”
He hums against my clit, the vibration shooting through me, and curls his fingers harder. Paul’s hand slides down to pinch my nipple just right while Nevan sucks on the other one.
“You’re allowed to come, sweetheart,” Ridge murmurs against my clit. “But only if you stay with us. Stay right here.”
I can’t even form words to promise anything. My hips chase his mouth, a little uncoordinated and a lot desperate, and then I shatter, thighs clamping around Ridge’s head as a broken cry tears out of me. The orgasm rolls through me, and every pulse drags another helpless sound from my throat.
Ridge keeps licking me through every aftershock, until I’m shaking and oversensitive, whimpering and trying to twist away.