Chapter Twenty-Three Brielle
He stops.
It’s the stopping that I notice first, because everything about Jase is forward momentum, and the sudden stillness of him is so out of place that it pulls me back from cloud nine.
I open my eyes.
He’s looking toward the door.
I follow his gaze.
Evan is leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed and an expression I have no immediate category for.
Not shock. Not embarrassment.
I grab for the sheet.
“Don’t,” Evan says, and his voice is low and easy, like he’s commenting on the weather. “Don’t stop on my account.”
I stare at him.
“How long have you been standing there?” I say.
“Long enough,” he says.
I look at Jase, who is sitting back on his heels at the foot of the bed looking entirely too comfortable about all of this. I look back at Evan.
He hasn’t moved from the doorway. He’s still leaning there, and I become aware that the sheet I’ve pulled up is doing very little work and that the low lamp on the nightstand is doing quite a lot and that both of them are looking at me with expressions that are different from each other and somehow say the same thing.
“You could have knocked,” I say to Evan.
“The door was open,” he says.
“It was barely open.”
“It was open,” he says. “Can I come in?”
I look at him for a long moment.
Then I look at Jase.
Jase raises his eyebrows slightly, which in his language means your call, entirely. I am just a man sitting at the end of a bed waiting to see what happens next.
I look back at Evan.
“You’re serious?”
“Completely,” he says. “But I’ll go if you want me to. Say the word.”
I don’t say the word.
He comes in.
He moves through the room, sits on the edge of the bed, and looks at me with that direct, uncomplicated attention of his, and I realize I’ve been holding my breath and let it out.
“This isn’t weird for you,” I say.
He glances at Jase briefly. “We’ve got a system,” he says, which is not a full answer but carries the implication of one.
“A system,” I say.
“Teamwork,” Jase says, from the end of the bed, and the word lands with the weight of something that’s been true before tonight, and I decide I don’t need the full history right now.
I look between them.
Two men in my bedroom in the middle of the night, both of them looking at me with hunger in their eyes, neither of them making it a competition, neither of them requiring me to choose or explain or justify anything.
“Okay,” I say.
Evan looks at me. “Okay?”
“Okay,” I say again, and mean it fully this time.
Evan holds my gaze for another second, then moves. He doesn’t rush. He simply shifts onto the bed and settles between my legs. Jase comes up beside me, one hand sliding into my hair as Evan lowers his head.
The first touch of Evan’s mouth is warm. He kisses the inside of my thigh, then drags his tongue slowly up my center, tasting me where I’m still slick and sensitive from Jase.
I jerk at the contact, a sharp gasp escaping me. Everything feels heightened, almost too much after the orgasm I had, but Evan doesn’t pull back. He licks me again, broader this time, then closes his lips around my clit and sucks gently.
“Oh my god,” I whisper, my back arching off the mattress.
Jase turns my face toward him and kisses me deeply, swallowing the next broken sound that leaves my throat.
His tongue slides against mine while Evan works between my legs. Where Jase had been warm and teasing, Evan is exact—tongue circling my clit in tight, perfect strokes, two fingers sliding into me without hesitation, curling against that spot that makes my toes curl.
I can’t keep still. My hips roll against Evan’s mouth as Jase’s hand cups my breast, thumb brushing over my nipple before he leans down and takes it into his mouth, sucking hard enough to make me moan into his kiss.
The dual sensations crash through me. Jase’s hot mouth on my breast, tongue flicking, teeth grazing lightly, while Evan fucks me with his fingers and sucks on my clit with devastating focus.
It’s too much. I feel stretched between them, every nerve lit up. Jase releases my nipple and moves to my other breast, sucking harder this time as Evan adds a third finger, stretching me open while his tongue keeps that perfect rhythm on my clit.
“Fuck— I can’t—” I gasp, my voice cracking.
“You can,” Jase murmurs against my skin, his breath hot on my wet nipple. “Let us have you, Brielle. Just feel it.”
Evan hums in agreement, the vibration shooting straight through me.
My hands fly down with one tangling in Jase’s hair, the other gripping Evan’s shoulder.
I don’t know whose name I say. It might be both.
My thighs start shaking uncontrollably around Evan’s head as the pressure builds impossibly fast, tighter and hotter than before.
Jase kisses me again, while Evan curls his fingers harder, sucking my clit with steady, unrelenting pressure.
My orgasm hits like a wave crashing over my head. My back bows off the bed, a loud, broken cry tearing from my throat as pleasure rips through me in heavy, pulsing waves.
Evan doesn’t stop, but keeps licking and stroking me through every shudder, drawing it out until I’m trembling and gasping, tears pricking at the corners of my eyes from how intense it feels.
When the peak finally starts to fade, they both ease off slowly. Evan presses one last soft kiss to my clit, then to the inside of my thigh. Jase trails gentle kisses up my neck and across my jaw. I lie there boneless, chest heaving, skin flushed and tingling, every muscle loose and heavy.
Jase settles on my left side, one arm sliding under my head. Evan moves up on my right, close enough that I can feel the heat of his body but not quite touching yet. The room feels smaller, warmer, the air thick with the scent of sex and my own release.
I stare at the ceiling, trying to catch my breath, my body still twitching with aftershocks.
“Are you both okay?” I ask, the question slipping out before I can think better of it.
Jase chuckles softly, the sound vibrating against my side. “Are we okay?”
“I’m asking,” I say, a tired smile tugging at my lips.
“We’re okay,” Evan says quietly. When I meet his eyes, there’s no trace of his usual easy charm, but something real and unguarded looking back at me.
“That’s good,” I whisper.
He holds my gaze then looks back at the ceiling.
Jase turns his head toward me. “You okay?”
I think about this honestly.
I am lying in this room, in an apartment four blocks from a fire station where I have a job I actually like, between two absolutely hot men, on the same day that my mother officially cut me off, and my first reaction to that information was relief.
Two weeks ago, I was standing in a church in a wedding dress watching the candles catch.
“Yeah,” I say. “I really am.”
Jase smiles, and it’s the real one, and I reach over and take his hand without thinking about it, and he lets me.
Evan gets up quietly a little while later, pausing at the foot of the bed to look at me once more in the low light, and whatever he wants to say he keeps to himself, which is fine, because I can read it anyway.
“Goodnight,” he says.
“Goodnight,” I say.
He goes.
Jase stays a little longer, until my eyes start to close against my will, and then he untangles himself and pulls the blanket up around me and says something quietly that I’m already too far gone to catch, and I don’t ask him to repeat it.