FIFTY #2
I bend slowly, slow enough that she can change her mind and slow enough that every single bond in the room feels like the shape of consent before instinct can touch it. My mouth brushes the side of her throat and I feel her pulse jump.
So does mine.
She smells like soap, rain, honey, bruises, heat building under healing skin, and Dakota. Not Vector’s chemicals. Not blood and smoke. Not fear alone.
Dakota.
Her hands grip my shirt and she whispers, “Do it.”
The thin hold on my control snaps at the need in those two small words, and my teeth sink into her throat before it becomes a full thought in my brain. Dakota gasps and the sound cuts through me with a mixture of pleasure and pain, both tangled together bright and sharp.
The bond opens slowly at first. No explosion or rumble of thunder.
Just a single line drawn through the dark from her to me.
Frost and steel. Her breath shudders against my cheek and mine follows while the bond slides under my ribs deep and cold and perfect, not empty of feeling but too full for noise.
It settles like a blade laid down carefully between us, like a door closing against a storm, like silence turning into shelter instead of distance.
Then Dakota moans.
Low.
Broken.
Wanting.
And the bond deepens in a way I never could have anticipated.
I pull back with her blood on my mouth. Her eyes are wide, wet, and darker than before.
“There you are,” she whispers.
I almost break, right there in front of her.
She touches her fingers to my mouth and smears her blood against my lip, staring at it like proof.
Then Ewan makes a sound behind her. A soft, wrecked little curse that makes her turn her head.
The moment she does, the entire room changes.
Not from quiet to hunger, because the hunger has been lingering in the room for a long time.
It simply changes from waiting to chosen.
Ewan’s bond hums first, bright and warm as sound.
His smoke and clove curl through the room, grief and relief and want all mingled together until Dakota’s lashes flutter.
Kaito follows, deep and controlled, restraint wrapped in burning wood and flannel and built in devotion rather than distance.
Fletcher comes in last, steady and broad, cedar and leather and the kind of protection that opens its hands.
And mine. Frost and steel settling under her ribs.
The four bonds touch and Dakota goes very still. I feel it happen through her, not forced or stolen. Just a bigger shape forming because she’s allowing it.
Her breath comes out in a soft, startled sound. “Oh.”
Ewan laughs under his breath. “That a good oh or someone’s about to get stabbed oh?”
Dakota looks at him, flushed and trembling. “I can’t say I’ve decided yet.”
“Keeping things exciting,” he says. “Love that for us.”
Her gaze drifts from him to Kaito. To Fletcher. Back to me. The scent of wild honey and rain thickens, but not suddenly. Not violently. But there’s absolutely no mistaking it.
Heat.
Fletcher’s nostrils flare.
Kaito’s hands grip the table edge.
Ewan mutters something in Welsh that sounds like a prayer and profanity got married in a storm drain.
Dakota’s cheeks grow beautifully pink, and she says, “Well, that’s incredibly inconvenient.”
Her voice has grown breathless, and her pupils have blown wide enough that the pale hazel has been overrun by darkness. It’s not drugs, and it’s not panic. It’s want. Pure need showing over her face so obviously that I almost choke.
Fletcher pushes away from the wall slowly. “Darlin’, tell us what you need.”
Dakota swallows. Her eyes drop to his mouth, then Ewan’s hands, then Kaito’s throat, then back to me.
“All of you,” she says without an ounce of hesitation. Silence answers her, so she adds with a little more bite, “Unless someone wants to have a crisis about it. In which case, I’m accepting only written complaints and you can post them to the Bermuda Triangle.”
Ewan’s grin turns soft and filthy. “Won’t hear a single complaint from me, Tiny Terror.”
Kaito’s voice is low when he tells her, “You lead.”
Fletcher nods. “We follow.”
I say nothing and Dakota looks at me. I understand that look instantly. She doesn’t need more promises, she just needs me to stay.
Her breath shakes and then she reaches for me again. This time, it’s not for the bite, it’s for the kiss. And there’s nothing quiet about this kiss. And it’s not gentle for very long.
Dakota opens for me with a small, hungry noise that punches straight through the new bond. Her fingers fist in my hair while mine settle on her waist, careful of her bruises. When she presses closer, I feel every single tremor she tries to hide.
Ewan comes up behind her, not touching until she breaks our kiss and tilts her head back against his shoulder, leaving her taste on my tongue.
He’s asking permission without uttering the words, and she gives it by tilting her head a little more, revealing her neck to him.
His mouth finds the side of her neck, opposite my bite, and she shivers hard.
“There she is,” he murmurs against her. “Making demands and setting the atmosphere on fire while you do it.”
Dakota laughs, but it quickly bleeds into a moan when his hands slide over her hips.
Kaito moves next. He drops to the floor, kneeling in front of her, and the sight almost destroys the whole room. Kaito, controlled Kaito, on his knees with his eyes lifted to hers, hands resting on his thighs like he won’t take a single thing she doesn’t offer him.
Dakota looks down at him and her breathing changes again.
“Kaito,” she whispers.
“Say stop and everything stops,” he tells her.
“Don’t stop,” she breathes.
He nods and raises his hands to the waistband of her sleep pants. He waits for her nod before he does anything. Ewan helps her stay upright as Kaito eases the fabric down her legs, careful over her wrapped knee.
Fletcher steps closer then, offering his hand to her for support. Dakota grabs his wrist, not because she needs the balance only, but because she wants him there. He makes a rough sound at the back of his throat before he tells himself more than her, “Easy.”
Dakota’s shirt follows quickly after.
Then Ewan’s.
Then mine.
Clothes disappear in pieces, not elegantly or smoothly.
Someone’s elbow slams into the table and Ewan swears.
Dakota laughs into my mouth as I lean in and kiss her again.
Fletcher tears his own shirt off because the buttons piss him off and Dakota makes a sound so openly appreciative against my mouth that Fletcher’s restraint almost splinters at her feet.
“Fucking hell, Scar,” she breathes when she pulls away.
His smile is slow and dangerous. “Keep talkin’ like that and I’ll forget I’m tryin’ to be careful.”
“Maybe I’m tired of careful.”
Kaito’s head lifts sharply and Dakota sees it. She touches his face, trailing a finger over the bridge of his nose as she says, “I’m not asking you to stop checking. I’m just asking you to stop treating me like I’ll shatter if the wind blows against me all wrong.”
Kaito’s eyes soften.
Fletcher bends and kisses her. Deep and slow and possessive without possession.
She melts into him with a moan that drags heat through all four bonds.
Ewan groans behind her and Kaito exhales harshly against her thigh.
I feel her through the bond and with my hands, every pulse and flicker of pleasure, every scared edge wrapped in need and want.
We lay her down together but no one crowds her.
Not really. It should be impossible with five bodies on one bed, but it somehow works because every one of us is watching her.
Following the shift of her mouth. The curl of her fingers.
The sound she makes when she wants more and the silence that means wait.
Dakota lies back against the pillows, hair spread around her like a halo, and Maine’s hat on the pillow above her head like a strange little guardian.
Her body is bruised and marked but healing, and she’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life.
And not because she’s unhurt, but because she’s here.
Because she’s looking at us like she wants us more than her next breath and refuses to apologize for it.
Ewan kisses down her ribs, whispering absolute shit against her beautiful olive and pale-patched skin until she’s laughing and squirming.
“Stop making me laugh while I’m lying here naked and wet,” she gasps.
“Can’t,” he tells her. “It’s one of my gifts.”
“It’s a curse.”
“Ooh, a sexy curse?”
“That’s so debatable,” she says.
Then Kaito puts his mouth between her thighs and all debates leave the room entirely.
Dakota arches with a sharp cry, her hands flying to his hair, not pushing away but rather holding on for dear life.
Kaito groans against her like the taste of her is unraveling him from the seams, and the bond between them grows dark and molten-hot, control quickly turning to worship.
Ewan grips her hip and sucks a mark under her breast while Fletcher takes her mouth again, swallowing the broken little sounds she keeps making.
I kneel down next to her and let her pull me down until my forehead rests against her temple. Her pleasure hits the new bond in quiet waves at first, then they grow harder and deeper.
She whimpers my name into Fletcher’s mouth when Kaito’s tongue works over her, when his fingers slide into her with patient and devastating precision.
Every single sound she makes becomes something I feel in every part of my body.
In my chest, in my brain, and in the places I’ve kept empty for years because empty was safer than anything else.
“Xeon,” she gasps again, crying out when Kaito does something she enjoys.
“I’m here.”
“Touch me,” she says, just shy of tipping over the line of begging. There’s a needy whine in her voice that I can’t ignore, so I do as I’m told.