45. Dakota
DAKOTA
Candlelight spills across Dante’s apartment when I push through the door, dozens of small flames scattered over the bookshelves, the windowsills, the coffee table. The whole place glows amber and gold, and for a second I just stand in the doorway with my keys in my hand, taking it in.
Cruz let it slip three days ago. Dante’s “doing something special” for the anniversary.
One month since Eli came back to us. One month since Victor decided family mattered more than rules.
Cruz can’t keep a secret to save his life, and I love him for it, because I’ve had three days to anticipate this and the anticipation has been its own kind of gift.
Eli and Dante move around each other in the kitchen, passing dishes and utensils without words, a choreography they’ve built over weeks of cooking together. Cruz sprawls across the couch with Brady tucked under his arm, both of them laughing at whatever’s on Cruz’s phone.
Domestic. Normal. Everything I never thought I’d have.
Cruz spots me first. His whole face changes, lighting up like I’m the best thing he’s seen all day, and he’s off the couch before I finish closing the door. He wraps me up and lifts me clean off my feet.
“There she is.” He buries his nose in my hair. “Missed you, sweetheart.”
“You saw me four hours ago.”
“Four long hours.”
He smells like the cologne Brady bought him and underneath that just Cruz, warm and solid. I let myself hang in his arms an extra beat before he sets me down.
Dante emerges from the kitchen holding a bottle of champagne with a label I don’t recognize, which means it’s expensive. Eli follows with five glasses balanced between his careful hands.
“You went all out.” I gesture at the candles, the wine, the smell of garlic and butter drifting from the kitchen.
“One month.” Dante works the cork loose with his thumbs. “That deserves more than pizza.”
“I like pizza,” Brady offers from the couch.
“You’ll like this more.”
The cork pops. Cruz whoops. Eli distributes glasses and Dante pours, golden bubbles rising in the candlelight, and we settle into our natural configuration—me in the center of the couch, Brady on one side, Cruz on the other, Eli in the armchair, Dante perched on the couch arm beside Brady.
Dante raises his glass.
“To us. To surviving. To whatever comes next.”
“To us,” we echo, and the glasses chime together, and I drink and the bubbles tickle my nose and I think about a month ago, sitting in Victor’s office convinced I’d destroyed everything by existing.
Now this.
The champagne flows. Conversation wanders—Brady’s fight in three weeks, Cruz’s new conditioning program, the house Eli found twenty minutes outside town with five bedrooms and a fenced yard and a kitchen big enough for all of us to cook in without elbowing each other.
“Five bedrooms.” Brady turns his glass between his fingers. “Like we’d use five.”
“Guest rooms,” Eli says.
“Office,” Dante adds.
“Sex room,” Cruz says, and Brady chokes on his champagne.
“We are not calling it that,” Eli says.
“What would you call it, Coach?”
“A multipurpose recreational space.”
Cruz’s laugh booms off the walls. “That’s so much filthier. I’m putting that on a plaque.”
I laugh with them, warm and loose from the champagne, and somewhere in the middle of it the energy starts to shift.
Cruz’s hand drifts higher on my thigh, thumb tracing lazy circles through my jeans.
Brady’s lips brush my bare shoulder, barely a touch, there and gone.
Across the room, Eli watches me over the rim of his glass, and his eyes have gone dark in the way that makes my stomach drop through the floor.
I set my glass on the coffee table.
They all notice. Of course they notice. Four sets of eyes find me, and the conversation dies mid-sentence.
“I want to celebrate properly.” My voice comes out steadier than I expect. “I want all of you. At the same time. The thing we talked about.”
Cruz’s hand freezes on my thigh. Brady inhales sharp through his nose. Dante and Eli exchange a look that holds an entire conversation.
They know what I’m asking. We’ve mapped it out in whispered late-night conversations, discussed positions and preparation and logistics that seemed impossible. Talked about it the way you talk about climbing a mountain you’re not sure exists.
“Princess.” Eli sets his glass down, slow and deliberate. “Say it plainly. I want to hear exactly what you’re asking for.”
Heat crawls up my neck, but I hold his gaze.
“I want all four of you inside me at once. Two in my ass. Two in my pussy. I want to be so full of you there’s no room left for anything else.”
The silence that follows has weight. Cruz exhales, slow and unsteady.
“Fuck,” Brady whispers.
“You’re sure.” Eli’s not asking. He’s confirming.
“I’ve never been more sure of anything. You’ve given me everything. Safety. Family. I want to give you this. I want to feel you claim me so completely that every ghost I’ve got left gets evicted.”
Eli rises from the armchair. He crosses to me, takes my hands, pulls me to my feet, and kisses me slow and thorough, a question and an answer wrapped together. When he pulls back, his eyes search my face.
Whatever he’s looking for, he doesn’t find it, because there’s no doubt in me anywhere.
“Okay.” His voice drops, quiet and absolute. “Then we do this right. Slow. Careful. You safeword the second anything feels wrong, and I mean anything.”
“Red means stop, yellow means slow down. I know, Daddy.”
His jaw tightens at the name, the good kind of tight.
“Bedroom first,” Dante says, already standing. “Prep takes as long as it takes. No rushing.”
They undress me slowly. No tearing fabric, no desperate hands.
Eight hands work in concert, deliberate, reverent.
Cruz peels my shirt over my head and kisses the curve of my shoulder.
Brady kneels to work my jeans down my legs, pressing his mouth to every inch of skin as it appears, the inside of my knee, the top of my thigh.
Dante unhooks my bra with a flick of his fingers and Eli catches it as it falls, and then Dante’s mouth is on the back of my neck and Eli’s thumbs are dragging my underwear down my hips and I’m naked in a room full of candlelight with four men looking at me like I’m sacred.
“Look at you,” Cruz murmurs. “Prettiest thing I’ve ever seen, and you’re asking us to ruin you.”
“Not ruin.” Dante’s teeth graze my earlobe. “Complete.”
They lay me out on Dante’s bed. The men strip between touches, clothes hitting the floor in a trail, and then it’s skin everywhere, warm bodies surrounding me, and Dante settles between my legs with the lube already in his hand.
“Breathe for me, baby.” He slicks his fingers. “We’re going to take our time.”
One finger first, working into my ass slow while Eli’s mouth finds my breast and Cruz kisses me deep and lazy and Brady traces patterns on my inner thigh with his fingertips. By the time Dante adds a second finger I’m rocking down against his hand, chasing more.
“Greedy girl,” Dante says against my hip. “You want it that bad?”
“Yes. God, yes.”
“Tell Cruz what you told me last week. About your dreams.”
My face burns, but Cruz pulls back from my mouth with interest sparking in those blue eyes.
“I dream about being full of all of you,” I manage. “Wake up soaked. Grinding against nothing.”
“Fuck, sweetheart.” Cruz’s voice cracks in the middle. “You dream about us stuffing you full and you didn’t say anything?”
“I’m saying it now.”
Dante works a third finger in and I moan, long and shameless, and Eli lifts his head from my breast to watch my face.
“Listen to her,” Eli says. “Three fingers in her ass and she sounds like she’s already close.”
“She is.” Dante crooks his fingers and I jolt. “She’s squeezing me like a fist. Give her your mouth, Brady. Let’s see how loose we can get her.”
Brady settles between my thighs, ducking under Dante’s arm, and when his tongue finds my clit I nearly come off the bed. Cruz pins my shoulders down, grinning above me.
“Easy, angel,” Brady murmurs against me. “We’ve got you.”
“Four fingers,” Dante announces, and the stretch drags a sound out of me that makes my whole body vibrate. Brady sucks my clit at the same moment, and the orgasm crashes through me without warning, my ass clamping down on Dante’s hand.
“There’s one,” Cruz says. “How many you think she’s got in her tonight?”
“We’re going to find out.” Eli strokes my hair back from my damp forehead. “You with us, princess?”
“Green,” I gasp. “So green.”
Dante eases his fingers out and there’s the cool press of the plug, thick and heavy, sliding into the space he made. My body swallows it and I whine at the fullness that isn’t enough, that’s just a promise.
“That stays in while we get ready.” Dante kisses my hipbone. “Keep you nice and open for us.”
They talk logistics in low voices while I float on the sheets, the plug shifting inside me with every small movement. I catch fragments—Eli and Dante on the couch, legs interlocked, Cruz on top, Brady standing—and the clinical planning against the throb between my legs is its own kind of torture.
“Living room,” Eli decides. “More room to work with. Cruz, grab the lube.”
They guide me back to the living room on unsteady legs.
The couch cushions have been rearranged, towels laid down, and Eli and Dante position themselves on the couch facing each other, legs spread and interlocked, and when they shift together their cocks press side by side between them, both hard, both slick with lube, and my mouth actually waters.
“C’mere, princess.” Eli holds out his hand.
I go to him. Dante’s hands find my hips from behind as I climb up, one foot planted on either side of their tangled legs, hovering over two cocks aligned and waiting for me.
“Plug’s coming out,” Dante warns, and then it does, and I gasp at the sudden emptiness, my body gaping, aching, ready.
“You control this.” Eli steadies my waist. “Every inch is yours to take or not take. Understand?”
“Yes, Daddy.”
“Good girl. Down you come.”