Chapter 10
Chapter ten
I'm not sure when Leo got there.
Somewhere in the night he let himself in and curled around me.
I didn't ask. Leo arrives when Leo decides to arrive.
The bond was warm and settled when I woke — the Dalton-arc deep and quiet, the Leo-arc warm and present — and Leo being in my room felt like the natural continuation of a perfect night.
He doesn't look up when the knock comes. "That's Jake," he murmurs.
"How do you know."
"Because he's been in this corridor for twenty minutes."
Slipping into my pajamas, I open the door.
Jake is there. He looks like a man who has been arguing with himself and hasn't finished. His eyes go to Leo immediately — still on the bed, entirely unhurried — and something moves in his expression.
"I can come back," Jake says.
"No," Leo says. "You can't."
Jake looks at me. I step back from the door. After a moment he comes in.
***
The three of us in the same room is its own thing. Jake standing near the window. Leo still on the bed, watching him. Me in the middle of it, the bond running between all three of us in different frequencies — Leo's warmth, Jake's rough insistent pull — and the room too small for all of it.
Jake looks at Leo like he's waiting for him to leave. Leo doesn't leave.
"I'm not good at this," Jake says finally. To me. Not to Leo, but Leo is part of what he means.
"I don't know how to want something that isn't the mountain."
"Jim's here," I say. "The mountain isn't the only thing that survived it."
Something shifts in his face. He looks at the floor. Then at Leo, who is watching him with an expression that isn't challenging.
"This is how it works," Leo says. Quiet. Not performing. "You don't just get her. You get all of it."
Jake is still for a long moment.
Then he crosses the room and his mouth finds mine.
Leo is off the bed before the kiss ends.
Not leaving. Moving. His hands find my waist from behind and Jake's hands are on my face and the bond completes the instant all three of us are touching.
No build. No warning. The fourth arc blazes into my wrist like a brand — permanent, done, the circuit closed — and Jake goes completely still against my mouth and Leo's grip tightens at my waist and all three of us hold it for a second. The weight of something that just became real.
Jake pulls back from the kiss. His eyes find mine. Something in them has changed — not the hungry barely-contained look from a minute ago. Something stilled. Something that knows what it is now.
He looks over my shoulder at Leo. Something passes between them — not words, not challenge. Two people on the same side of something.
"Don't stop."
Leo knows what he's doing — he always knows — and Jake learns fast, both of them finding a rhythm around me that works better than it should.
Leo at my back, his hands on my body with the familiarity of months, his mouth at my shoulder.
Jake in front of me, watching my face, learning what makes me gasp.
Leo gets my shirt off. Jake's follows. I reach for Jake's drawstring and Leo laughs low against my neck.
"She's not patient," Leo tells him.
"I noticed," Jake says. The ghost of something in his voice that might be humor if it weren't so rough.
"Not patient," I confirm, and pull Jake back down.
Leo's hands slide my underwear down and his mouth finds my shoulder and Jake's mouth finds my breast simultaneously and I stop being able to track anything except heat and hands and the want that's been building since the bond fired and hasn't stopped.
Leo's fingers find me from behind — slick, certain, knowing exactly what they're doing — and I gasp and grab Jake's shoulder and hold on.
Jake watches my face while Leo works me. Dark eyes, present, learning. His mouth moves down my stomach and I dig my hand into his hair and Leo laughs against my neck again, quieter this time, the warm Leo-laugh that means he's genuinely pleased with how this is going.
Leo behind me, inside me in one slow push that makes me arch back against him — his arm across my stomach, his hand working between my legs while he moves, murmuring how good I feel.
Jake’s mouth on my breast, his hand replacing Leo's between my thighs, both of them finding a coordination that makes me lose the ability to form sentences entirely.
The bond between all three of us running open and hot, Leo's warmth and Jake's rough insistence braided together through every point of contact.
Jake hard against my hip. Waiting. His jaw tight with it.
"Jake," I manage.
He pulls back to look at me. Dark eyes. Present.
Leo pulls out and Jake pushes inside me. Leo works himself back in and the fullness is immediate and overwhelming, both of them, and I make a sound that has no dignity whatsoever and I don't care at all.
"There she is," Leo says against my ear. Warm. Satisfied.
Jake goes completely still for one breath. His hands grip my hips. His forehead drops to mine. Both of us feeling the bond — amplifying everything, his and mine and Leo's.
Then he moves.
His rhythm builds and Leo matches it and I stop thinking about anything that isn't this — a hand working my clit while Jake drives deeper, Jake's mouth on my throat while Leo's hands hold me exactly where they want me, the bond so loud between all three of us that I can feel what they're feeling and they can feel what I'm feeling and the feedback loop of it is catastrophic in the best possible way.
Leo and I come hard and I yell both their names, my whole body shaking. Jake follows us over a minute later with his face buried in my neck and the least guarded sound I've ever heard from him.
Alex.
Rough and real and wrecked.
***
We tangle on my bed.
Jake on his back, staring at the ceiling. Leo beside me, his thumb tracing slow circles on my hip, already half-asleep.
"You okay?" I ask Jake.
He doesn't answer immediately.
"Didn't know it would feel like that," he says. Quietly. To the ceiling.
"Good or bad?"
A long pause. "So intense."
I wait.
"So good," he says finally. Like it surprised him.
Leo makes a small sound that is almost certainly satisfaction. Jake looks at him. Leo's eyes are closed. Jake looks back at the ceiling.
The room is warm and quiet and the bond is settled — all four arcs, steady, a chord that's fuller than it was an hour ago.
***
Leo waits until the door closes.
"Four," he says.
He opens his eyes fully and looks at the ceiling. "Jim next."
"How do you always know."
He turns his head. "Because I pay attention," he says. "Someone has to."
I press my face into his shoulder and think about the pack taking shape — person by person, arc by arc.