Chapter 34 #3
Zane stretches out beside me with one hand moving lazily over my thigh.
Cameron stays near my other shoulder. Neither of them tries to take over.
They touch me in the spaces Beckett leaves open, Zane’s fingers tracing the inside of my knee while Cameron’s mouth brushes my shoulder and his palm stays warm over my ribs.
It isn’t anything like being overwhelmed. It’s being surrounded, and there’s a difference.
Beckett changes the angle of my hips, and the next thrust hits deep enough that my nails dig into his chest. His breath breaks, the first real crack in the control he’s been holding all night, and I do it again deliberately.
His eyes narrow. I’m expecting a joke, but he doesn’t make one.
Instead he drives into me harder.
The mattress shifts under the force of it.
My legs tighten around his waist and he loses the careful rhythm he’d been holding, each thrust coming faster and deeper than the one before.
The room fills with the wet sound of our bodies meeting, my breathing, his, the occasional involuntary noise I can’t swallow fast enough.
Beckett bends and kisses me, messy now, nothing like the controlled kiss that started this. His teeth catch my lower lip and his hand slides under my ass, pulling me into the next thrust while his bond burns steady inside my chest.
I feel his knot beginning to swell, the pressure building at my entrance with every stroke and stretching me wider. My body recognizes what’s coming before my brain does and tightens around him.
“Reese.”
The way he says my name is the first thing tonight that’s sounded like something he couldn’t control.
My second orgasm starts lower and slower than the first. Not the sharp climb Zane gave me. This one builds with Beckett’s knot, with every deep stroke and the steady pressure of him stretching me, with Beckett’s fingers still laced through mine and Zane’s hand moving over my thigh.
Beckett’s eyes stay on me, and I finally understand what he’s been doing all night. He wanted me looked at while it happened. Not watched like somebody waiting for me to break, not monitored or managed. Just seen.
His knot catches.
Beckett drives deep one last time and locks inside me, the sudden fullness tipping me over with him. My body clenches hard around his cock and knot as I come, and his face drops into my neck with a rough sound I’ve never heard from him before.
For several seconds neither of us can move.
His knot holds us together while the aftershocks work through both of us, every pulse of him inside me echoed through the bond.
Beckett’s forehead rests against my collarbone, one hand still under my hip and the other holding mine.
Zane’s fingers move through my hair while Cameron’s palm settles flat on my stomach.
Nobody says anything because, for once, nobody needs to.
By the time Beckett’s knot goes down enough for him to ease out, I’m boneless. He rolls onto his side beside me instead of leaving the bed, one hand staying on my leg while Zane moves between my thighs.
The look on Zane’s face is different now. No grin, no running commentary. He kneels between my knees and runs both hands slowly up my legs, watching my face when he reaches my hips. There’s something almost shy underneath all that Zane that I hadn’t noticed before.
He bends and kisses my stomach, then higher, taking his time until he reaches my mouth. His kiss is softer than Beckett’s, softer than I expect from him at all, and when he settles over me, I reach up and push his hair off his forehead.
Zane closes his eyes for a second, and that’s when I realize he needed this too. Not sex, exactly. He needed me to have the day.
I hook a leg around him and pull him closer. He slides inside me with a long exhale, and I’m oversensitive enough that the first stroke makes me shudder. Zane immediately stills, his hand smoothing down my side while he waits for my body to settle around him.
When he moves again, he does it slowly.
That’s the surprise. Zane does everything else like he’s afraid the world might end before he finishes it. He talks fast, eats fast, laughs before anybody else gets the joke. But he fucks me slowly, drawing each stroke out until my body starts following him without thought.
His forehead presses against mine, and for once he doesn’t say anything. I can feel what he isn’t saying anyway. His bond is wide open, all that bright Zane warmth stripped of the humor he usually wraps around it, with so much affection underneath that my throat tightens.
He feels that too. His mouth brushes mine, then his hips roll deeper and the emotion gets lost under sensation.
I’m too sensitive for another long climb. Every stroke drags over nerves that haven’t recovered from Beckett, and Zane seems to realize it because he keeps the pace steady and lets my body do the rest. Cameron’s hand moves over my shoulder while Beckett’s fingers trace lazy circles against my knee.
Nobody is directing anything anymore. Somewhere along the way the plan dissolved, and I don’t need it now.
Zane’s control goes all at once. His slow rhythm stutters, his hand tightens on my hip, and the sound that leaves him is nothing like his usual voice. His knot starts to swell inside me while he buries his face against my neck, and his bond flares so bright that I pull him tighter without thinking.
He knots me with his mouth against my shoulder, hips pressed flush to mine as the pull locks us together. His whole body shudders once, then again, and I feel the pleasure roll through the bond before I feel his knot pulse inside me.
I run my fingers into his hair, but he doesn’t lift his head, so for a while I let him hide there.
When he can finally move, he kisses me once before pulling away and collapsing beside Beckett, who immediately throws an arm over his face because apparently even Beckett Monroe has reached the end of his available personality.
That leaves Cameron.
He’s been quiet long enough that when I look at him, something in my chest turns over. He’s sitting beside me with one knee on the mattress, watching. Not impatient, not assuming anything. Just there.
I reach for him, and Cameron comes without making me ask.
He lies down beside me first instead of climbing over me. His hand slides along my waist and around to the mark at the base of my spine, fingertips resting there before his mouth finds mine. His kiss is nothing like either of theirs because there’s no agenda in it.
That’s Cameron. Even now, after months of watching everything, he doesn’t seem interested in proving he knows me better than I know myself. He just pays attention.
His hand moves between my legs and he feels how sensitive I am immediately. The first pass of his fingers makes me twitch, and he changes the pressure without asking, gentler the next time.
I turn toward him, and he rolls me with him until I’m on my side with my back against his chest. It’s quieter this way. Beckett and Zane are still on the bed behind us, but I can’t see them and don’t need to.