Chapter 26
Chapter
Twenty-Six
Chase turned her in his arms, facing away from his brother and back to him, and the heat on her face nearly melted him.
To say he hadn’t expected this would be the understatement of the ages.
Everything he’d wanted—everything he’d let himself want in the nights he was alone—was to have her for himself.
To win her back from his brother. To forget the vial of Adric’s blood—hell, his own blood, too—sitting at her throat.
To forget she was betrothed to another man.
He’d feared the vial and the ceremony and the deal she’d struck would gut him even as it kept him alive. The blood in his veins. The betrothal taking the one thing he wanted, leaving him to wonder if each time she crossed to the castle would be the last time he had any right to her at all.
And now this. A truce with the brother he’d thought lost to him for good.
It almost felt like this was the dream, and the Real was the part that wasn’t.
“Chase,” she whispered, turning to him, with Adric’s hands still on her, and her voice so full of need it humbled him.
“Cora.” He cupped her head and bent to kiss her, and the way she rose to meet him—the way her hands fisted in his hair and dragged him down—cracked something open inside him.
She was his.
She was Adric’s.
And despite his fucked-up history with his brother, he could live with that. More than live with it. He actually liked it, probably more than he’d ever admit even to himself, though he could hardly hide it. Certainly not from the one man who’d feel every bit of it as deeply as himself.
What astounded him was that he didn’t care. For that matter, he actually welcomed it.
And how the hell had that happened?
He walked her back three steps to the sofa, then broke the kiss to look at her—her swollen mouth, the wildly tousled hair, and far too much clothing still in the way.
She bit her lower lip. “Are you okay? If you don’t want—”
He pressed a fingertip to her lips. Then he turned to his brother and, with a single tilt of his head, invited him in.
He heard Cora’s small gasp, then leaned in to kiss her forehead. “I want this,” he whispered. And I know you do, too.”
She met his eyes with just the tiniest of nods, and then he looked at his brother. “Take her shirt off,” he said, in a voice he didn’t recognize as his own.
Adric’s brows arched, but he didn’t hesitate.
Instead, his hand came up, and Cora’s eyes cut to him as Adric’s fingers caught the hem of her shirt.
Then her lips curved, and Chase watched the pleasure dance over her face.
Heard her startled little inhale from the brush of Adric’s fingers against her bare skin as his brother drew the shirt up over her head and let it fall.
She wore one of the thin cotton bras she favored. Plain, no lace, and her nipples were already hard against the fabric. Chase felt his cock ache, and beside her, Adric made a sound at the back of his throat that wasn’t a word, but seemed to echo everything Chase was feeling.
Then Chase moved closer and pressed his lips to the soft place where her neck met her shoulder. She drew in a ragged breath twined with a sigh of pleasure as her hand locked in his hair, and she pulled Chase closer, then moaned as Adric’s finger stroked her nipple through the cotton.
She arched between them—her back against his chest, her breasts hard against Adric’s hand.
And in that moment, with a clarity that almost stopped him cold, Adric knew that this was going to work.
That he and his brother could share her without breaking each other, because it was what she wanted, and because they both wanted her.
“Bed,” Cora said, her voice breathless as she glanced at the open sofa bed. “Please. The bed.”
They wasted no time getting there, and Chase had her jeans open by the time her knees hit the mattress, though not quite as quickly as Adric had managed to fully remove her bra.
She pushed herself up onto her knees, then turned to face them both, half-naked and glowing and looking from one to the other with a wild hunger that Chase had never seen in her.
“Come here,” she murmured, her hand extended to Adric.
“You, too,” she said to him, and he felt his heart flip over. He looked from her heat-filled eyes to the smugness of Adric’s grin.
“You heard the lady,” Adric said. “Join us.”
So he did.
Not since their years as the Guardian had Adric shared a bed with his brother, and he could fairly say that he had never expected to again
And yet here he was, though he supposed he could play word games and say he was in a bed with Cora that his brother simply occupied as well.
Honestly, it didn’t much matter. He would take his pleasures however they came, and in this moment, the pleasure of having Cora meant sharing her.
Whatever the lady wanted.
He moved to her left, leaving Chase at her right as Cora knelt on the bed in nothing but her open jeans and her hair gleaming in the moonlight that streamed in through the curtains. A bland white light without the character of the orange glow of his home.
But bland light didn’t much matter at the moment. There was enough light to see her, and that was sufficient. And, of course, to see her with his brother. That was a show for which he was surprisingly happy to have a ticket.
Now, though, he simply looked at her. Her swollen lips. Her tight nipples. The smooth skin revealed by her open zipper that led down to her delicious, wet core.
“Undress,” she said, looking between him and Chase.
He inclined his head. As you wish, Beloved.”
He stripped, letting his clothes fall casually to the ground in a way he never did. At the foot of the bed, Chase was going through the same brisk, unceremonious business of getting undressed. Honestly, Adric felt like a human teenager. And rather liked the sensation.
Then he stopped thinking altogether because Cora was there, her mouth on his bare chest, then moving up his throat to find his mouth for a long, deep kiss that—somehow—made his cock go even harder.
Then Chase was there, too, and Adric felt the pressure as Chase’s kiss eased Cora around, and then back against Adric’s chest, and the sound she made as he kissed the back of her ear while Chase closed his mouth over her breast was surely something he would remember for the rest of his life.
“Off,” he ordered, his hands going to her jeans as he pushed the waistband down.
Then she lifted her hips, and as if they’d timed it, Chase slid down the bed, then pulled the denim all the way off and tossed it to the floor.
Adric saw the heat in his brother’s eyes as he raked his gaze down her naked body, then looked up to meet Adric’s steady gaze.
“Ours,” Adric said, and went even harder when it was Cora who answered with a breathless, “yes” as she moved naked to the center of the bed, her gaze sliding between the two men in a way that made Adric suck in a breath.
And his cock—already hard, already aching—throbbed at the sight of her. His beloved. His Queen.
“Adric?”
He looked at her stretched out, her fingers now twined with his brother’s as he stood by the bed. “Yes, Beloved?
She shifted slightly, her eyes moving to Chase. “I love you,” she said. “But tonight I want Adric first.”
Adric went perfectly still as something warm and wonderful seemed to shoot through his veins, and he looked across the bed at his brother, who stood straight, met his eyes, then nodded.
Adric felt the weight leave his shoulders. More, he knew what that nod had cost, and he set the cost aside to repay later when the time was right.
Now, though, it was Cora’s time, and he moved over her naked body, letting his lips kiss his way up her skin, slowly teasing as she closed her eyes and played with her nipples in a way that made him harder than he could ever remember being.
“Chase,” she whispered, and his brother came to her side, then twined his fingers in her outstretched hand. “I like that you’re watching,” she whispered, her cheeks turning adorably pink. And, Adric noticed with some amusement, his brother’s were slightly pinker.
Adric straddled her thighs and watched her face, anticipating the moment when he’d feel her heat tighten around his cock.
Her lips were parted, and she was breathing hard, and he could actually smell her desire.
For a moment, he considered fucking her mouth.
Ordering her down on her knees and twining his fingers in her hair.
But that was a delight best left for later. Right now, he needed to be inside her. Needed to feel her tight around him. And, strangely, he needed his brother as witness, just as he would witness his brother taking their beloved, too.
“Please,” she murmured, and the word was a combination of a moan and a sigh, and he couldn’t bear the weight any longer.
“Spread your legs,” he ordered, almost laughing when she obeyed so eagerly.
He slipped his fingers inside her sweet, warm cunt, then felt himself grow even more rigid in response to how slick and hot and wet she was.
With anticipation coursing through him, he slid his hands under her perfect ass, positioned his cock at her core, and thrust inside her with shallow, punishing thrusts that made her lift her hips and beg and make the kind of noises that only made him harder as she begged for harder and deeper.
He turned, then looked at his brother, now standing behind Adric and stroking his own cock, presumably losing himself in the pleasure of Cora’s heated moans as Adric teased and thrust and led her to the edge, but never so close that she could fall over and into bliss.
“What say you, Brother? Shall I take her over? Or keep her on the edge a little more?”
“The edge,” Chase said, the words surprising but not at all unwelcome.
Clearly, they were of a mind as far as Cora was concerned, and with his brother’s blessing, Adric fucked her slow and shallow for what felt like hours, ignoring her begging for more and deeper, and feeding his own desire off her sighs of yes, and oh, god, and please until he knew she couldn’t stand it any longer—and he thrust into her with one long slow stroke that took her over the edge.
He felt the long shuddering grip of her cunt around him, and the broken sound she made into Chase’s mouth where Chase had brought it down to muffle her cries as her whole body went rigid, then melted into the depths of pleasure with a soft, glorious sigh, and the low whisper of his name.
As his name hung in the air, Adric held himself absolutely still, fighting the urge to let go and follow her over. Not yet. He wouldn’t come yet.
He wasn’t sure when that decision had come to him, but all he knew was that this first time between the three of them belonged to Chase.
Adric could wait. He’d waited an age. He could wait a bit more.
He pulled out of her slowly once she’d stopped shaking, then kissed between her breasts before turning his head and looking at his brother.
“Now you,” he said, his attention going back to Cora. “Assuming the lady still has it in her?”
Cora nodded, her eyes on Chase as Chase looked at Adric, his brow furrowed.
Adric merely lifted a shoulder casually, then he moved to sit on the bed, his back against the upholstery. Then he drew Cora’s head into his lap—his cock still hard—and stroked her hair while he waited for his brother to take her.