Chapter 28
Chapter
Twenty-Eight
Iwake with my cheek against Adric’s chest and the gold of late afternoon coming sideways through the window, his arm a heavy, comfortable weight across my back.
Chase, however, isn’t in the bed.
I roll over and curl against Adric as it comes back to me—Mr. Griffin and Solenne at the bookstore.
Whistler’s injuries. And Chase leaving to go check on his Whistler.
I sigh, understanding that of course he’d want an update on his friend.
But at the same time, I want him here on my right side just like Adric is on the left.
More, I want to look into his eyes again, just to make absolutely certain he’s okay with what happened.
With a sigh and a little bit of a wince—I’m pleasantly sore this morning—I snuggle closer to Adric and let the deliciously wonderful memory of last night wash over me.
Then I bite my lower lip, hoping both Adric and Chase are on board with that deliciously wonderful assessment. Because if they aren’t, I may have to hide under my bed for a year. And that would suck because I’d definitely fail my finals.
“You’re thinking very loud, Beloved,” Adric says, breaking the snuggle by easing back. I grumble but roll over to face him.
“I’ll try to think softer,” I say as he cups my head and then kisses my forehead.
“That’s not regret I’m seeing on your lovely face, is it? Because I do not regret a single moment of last night.”
The tension slips out of me. “Oh, thank goodness,” I say, and he laughs.
“I am glad we are of a mind,” he says.
“Chase?” I ask. “He’s at Griff’s, right? He didn’t bolt because he thought it was weird or awkward or—”
He cuts me off with a soft finger to my lips.
“Trust me. He enjoyed himself thoroughly.”
“You two talked?”
“We did not,” Adric says, and though it takes me a minute, I remember their blood bond.
“Right,” I say, feeling my cheeks heat. Which, under the circumstances, is a little ironic.
But at least this time it wasn’t unexpected sensations at unexpected times.
I think about that, then bite back a giggle.
Adric’s eyes narrow. “I shouldn’t have told you about Kali,” he says, referring to a conversation we’d had earlier, which had left me shaking with giggles.
“Are you kidding? You on the receiving end of that bond during a meeting with that bitch? That’s an image I cherish.”
“It does not trouble you?” he asks. “This bond. What my brother and I share and feel?”
I shift to see him better, then prop myself up on my arms. “I’ve already told you it doesn’t. But it’s kind of unfair that you both don’t have that privacy.”
He shrugs. “We were meant to be one being. I split the Guardian. There is a price.”
“You split it, but Chase is paying, too.”
He holds his hands out in a gesture of futility. “How else could it work? He is me.”
It’s a strange answer, because I know it’s technically true, and yet these are two very different men. Honestly, my head has a hard time picturing the whole We were one being thing. And since they aren’t anymore, I figure I can safely pop that out of my mind.
There’s just this one thing…
“Adric?”
He’s on his back now, his hands clasped behind his head, but he rolls over to face me.
“Yes, Beloved.”
“I love you. I just, you know—I thought you should know.”
His face goes entirely expressionless—a king’s got to be good at hiding his emotions—and in that moment, my gut twists, and I want desperately to call the words back and go hide under the covers.
Then the mask falls and sweet relief sweeps over his face. He’s no longer a king. Instead, he looks like a guy who’s been knocked flat, but in a good way.
“Beloved,” he says, but what I hear is I love you, too.
He takes my hand. “And Chase?”
I meet his eyes. “You already know the answer to that.”
He nods but says nothing.
Something cold slides through me. “Please, Adric,” I say. “Don’t make me choose. I can’t. I love you both.”
He leans forward and kisses me so gently it feels like butterfly wings. Then he sits up and takes my hands in his.
“I have loved you since before you knew my name. I watched you in the scrying pool when you were nothing to me but a face and a prophecy, and somewhere in the watching, you became Cora, and you became mine, and I loved you with no right to you and no way to reach you. I loved you on the night I gave my brother back his life. I claimed your hand in exchange because I loved you then, and I thought it was the only way to have you.”
His thumb brushes my cheekbone, then he turns his hand over, and I watch as a white daisy unfurls between his fingers out of nothing at all, and I melt a little because he knows me so well.
“So no,” he says. “I will not make you choose.” He meets my eyes. “At least not now.”
Not now.
For a beat, I let the words hang there, then take the daisy. After all, not now can be a very long way off.
“Beloved,” he says, then draws me in and kisses me, slow and tender.
But tender isn’t what I need right now, so I push up over him, the sheet sliding down, and my hair falling around both our faces.
Then I look down at the King of the Nightmare Realm in my boyfriend’s bed with his cock already hard against my thigh, and I want him so much it’s hard to breathe.
I reach down and take him in my hand, and his head goes back against the pillow, as I lower myself onto him, going slow to tease him, to draw it out, and to punish us both in the best possible way.
And then—when he’s deep inside me, my body stretched gloriously around him—I rock my hips, feeling the pressure of him and hearing the low, desperate noises he’s making.
Then his hands settle on my hips, and his eyes meet mine, and in that moment, I’m done with slow, and I rock hard against him, his cock inside me, his fingers teasing my clit, and his eyes so full of heat and lust, it’s a wonder that I don’t come right then merely from the heat I see in his eyes.
And then it crests over me—that wild rising that has me craving more—everything—and I can’t go slow anymore. I rock down on him hard, and his eyes never leave my face and when I come, it’s with my hands flat on his chest and his name in my throat and his cock buried inside me.
He comes with me, his whole body going taut under mine as he releases a ragged cry that is pure, undiluted pleasure in the same moment that the door clicks open.
Chase is back.
For a moment, I go tense—then I remember I don’t have to. “Hi,” I say, as Chase stands there, looking at me naked with his brother still inside me. He says nothing, and ice courses through me as a horrible fear builds inside—the fear that last night was a fluke, and that Chase can’t handle it.
Then he steps closer, his gaze raking over me. “I’ve been enjoying the show,” he says, his mouth curving into the tiniest of smiles—but that’s all I need to send relief coursing through me.
“So much,” he continues, “that Griffin probably thinks I’m a bit psychotic.”
I glance down and meet Adric’s eyes, and I can’t help it.
I start laughing. I roll off Adric, leave him the sheet, then cross naked to Chase and put my arms around him.
Then I kiss him, and for one cold, hard, terrifying moment, it’s just my lips against flesh.
Then it’s Chase, pulling me close and kissing me hard, as if to mark his claim upon me, too.
“You know I love him, too,” I whisper. “This morning, I told him so.”
For a moment, he doesn’t react, and I fear I’ve crossed his line in the sand. “You didn’t have to do that,” he says, as that fear turns my blood to ice.
Then he meets Adric’s eyes with a soft smile. “He already knew,” Chase says, and the fear that had coiled in my blood shifts into warm, sweet relief.
“He hoped, Brother,” Adric says. “What I knew was that she loves you.”
A moment passes. Then Chase nods. “I guess that makes the two of us some pretty lucky men.”
“Yes,” Adric says, his eyes cutting to me. “I think it does.”
I exhale, only then realizing how tense I’d been—and that I’m the one in the room who’s truly lucky.
“Well,” I say perkily. “That was a thing.” I clear my throat, then turn back to Chase. “Whistler?”
“Stable. Solenne’s with him.”
“You’re okay?”
He doesn’t answer with words. Instead, he pulls me in for a slow, deep kiss. When he breaks it, my heart is pounding, and my body’s on fire all over again.
“Chase,” I murmur, but he presses a finger to my lips, then leads me to the bed, then nods to Adric, still twisted in the sheets. “Brother?”
I hold my breath, hearing the question in that one simple word.
Then I smile as Adric pulls the covers back in silent invitation.