Chapter 5 #2
The mattress dipped on either side of me a moment later as they climbed into bed, Trace on my left, Dominic on my right, the three of us settling into a configuration that was going to test every last thread of my self-control tonight.
I stared up at the ceiling in the dark, trying very hard not to focus on the fact that they were both half-naked in my bed while I was chained up and helpless between them, and failing spectacularly at every step of it.
The harder I tried not to focus on them, the louder everything else in the room became. The sound of ragged, uneven breathing. The intoxicating scent of spiced chocolate and whiskey. The way their bodies bracketed mine on either side, leaving almost no space between us at all.
My thighs pressed together involuntarily, a deep, insistent ache blooming low in my belly and refusing to be reasoned with. I couldn’t tell if it was mine or theirs or the spell braiding all of it together into something I had no hope of untangling or controlling.
“Angel.” Dominic’s clipped voice cut through the darkness, smooth as honey but wrapped in something darker. Almost scolding. The sound of it moved over my skin like liquid heat, igniting every nerve ending in my body.
“What?” I asked breathily.
“We can feel you.”
“Feel me what?” I asked, confused.
“Your arousal.”
My breath stopped cold in my lungs as heat blazed across my face so intense I was certain they could see it even in the moonlit darkness. Especially with their heightened sense.
I didn’t know if I wanted to scream, cry, beg, or die of shame on the spot.
“What do you want me to do about it? I’m not doing it on purpose,” I defended, my voice coming out breathless and unconvincing, even to my own ears. “And it’s not like either of you are helping.”
“Perhaps that’s because we’ve no interest in helping you resist what your body is clearly begging us for.”
“That isn’t what I…I’m not…my body isn’t—”
Trace shifted beside me, his lips brushing against the side of my neck and dissolving whatever excuse I’d been fumbling for. “We can make you feel better,” he murmured, his baritone like smoke against my ear. “If you want us to.”
My body responded traitorously to the promise in his tone, to the offer hanging in the air between us, dangerous and tempting and terrifying in equal measure.
But somewhere deep beneath the heat, beneath the want, beneath the spell humming its approval, there was also fear curling tightly and watchful inside my chest.
Because I knew how thin the line was and how easily I could cross it.
“I just…I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said, practically choking on the lie. Everything in my body was screaming that that was exactly what I wanted—what I needed.
“Are you quite certain of that, angel?” asked Dominic, his fingertips grazing along my thigh. “Forgive me if I find that rather difficult to believe, given the way your body is saying otherwise.”
“It’s the spell,” I rasped, tugging against the chains as Dominic’s gaze briefly jumped to my hands.
“Of course it is,” he said, his tone dripping with false sympathy as his fingers traced higher, drawing patterns on my inner thigh that made my breath hitch. “Surely that’s the only reason you’re writhing for us like this.”
Trace’s mouth moved to my collarbone, his lips pressing soft kisses along the sensitive skin there. “That must be why her pulse is racing too,” he added, rumbling against my throat.
“And the reason she keeps arching into my hand,” continued Dominic, his fingers sliding higher still, moving achingly close to where I needed him. “Surely she’s never felt this way about us before the spell.”
The condescension in his voice should have made me angry, but instead it just sent more desire pooling low in my stomach.
They were both messing with me on purpose.
Proving a point. Because they knew I wanted them.
That I’d wanted them long before William or his bullshit spell had ever laid a finger on any of us.
“That’s—” My protest morphed into a moan as Trace’s teeth grazed the side of my throat, not quite biting but close enough to make me gasp and cry out between them.
Dominic hummed lowly in his chest, his fingers drawing maddeningly light circles on my inner thigh. “You were saying, angel? I didn’t quite catch that.”
“Please,” I breathed, the word escaping before I could stop it.
“Please what?” murmured Trace against my neck, his hand sliding up my ribcage as his fingers brushed against the curve of my breast.
My hands pulled against the chains involuntarily, wanting to touch them, to pull them closer, but the metal held firm. The helplessness of not being able to use my hands and feel them only made the ache between my thighs deepen to the point where I thought I might actually die from it.
Dominic’s hand stopped moving on my thigh, halting any progress before he could reach where I desperately needed him to. “Tell us what you want, angel.”
“You know what I want,” I managed, my voice breaking on the last word.
“Do we?” His fingers traced back down, away from where I needed them, and I made a sound that was embarrassingly close to a whimper. “I think we need to hear you say it.”
Trace’s mouth slid lower, his lips finding the hollow of my throat, his teeth scraping lightly over my racing pulse. “Gotta make sure it’s what you really want and not the spell talking.”
I sucked in a breath, my fingers curling uselessly around the chains. “You’re doing this on purpose.”
A low, dark sound rumbled through Dominic’s chest. “We’re simply being thorough, angel. Ensuring this is truly what you want. That it’ll still be what you want long after whatever magic is working through you has burned itself out.”
I was practically crying for them to touch me, my body arching into every barely-there caress, chasing contact they kept pulling just out of reach. They were denying me. Torturing me. And they were definitely doing it on purpose.
“See?” murmured Dominic. “Even now, you chase it.”
“That’s not fair,” I cried out, my breath needy and ragged.
“No,” he agreed calmly without a lick of remorse. “It isn’t.”
“But we could help you,” added Trace, his hand finally cupping my breast through the thin fabric of my shirt, his thumb teasingly brushing over my nipple. “All you have to do is say you want it.”
“Fine! I want it, okay? I want it!” I hissed, my eyes squeezing shut as the admission tore through the last of my defenses.
Trace’s fangs snapped out, the sharp tips scraping along the column of my throat in a way that made every nerve ending in my body light up. His hand tightened on my breast, no longer teasing, and I arched into his touch with a desperation that should have embarrassed me.
But I was past shame. Past fear. Past everything except the overwhelming need for them to finally, finally take me the way I was begging them to. The way I needed them to.
“That wasn’t so hard, was it, angel?” murmured Dominic, his voice thick with approval as he slid down my body, his hands sliding between my thighs and spreading them open for him.
Whatever was left of my self-control dissolved completely.
In that moment, it didn’t matter if we were still under the spell or if we were going to wake up and regret every second of this in the morning.
All that mattered was Trace and Dominic and the dark, consuming certainty that I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
And tonight, they were going to make sure I never forgot it again.