Chapter 35 All Three
Nora POV
The first deep snow of winter covered Pine Harbor by the time I was ready.
Three weeks had passed since Conrad’s attack.
Three weeks of stitches dissolving, bruises fading from purple to green to nothing, and my right thigh knitting itself back together until the limp was gone and only a tight, raised scar remained.
Wade’s ribs had healed clean. Jules’s shoulder moved without stiffness.
Rafe’s scratches had closed to thin lines across his chest, and the gauntness that had hollowed him since September was finally filling back in.
He ate full plates at dinner now, slept through the night, and worked a full shift without his hands shaking.
The bond’s silence still lived beneath my breastbone where it used to burn.
Some mornings I pressed my palm there and felt nothing, and the nothing was so enormous it took my breath.
Other mornings I woke between Wade’s warmth and Jules’s arm across my ribs and felt something better than the old bond had ever been.
Something I’d built myself, like everything else worth keeping since September.
Tonight, I was going to finish building it.
I found Wade first. He was in the kitchen doorway, leaning against the frame with a mug of coffee, watching the snow come down through the dark windows. His beard was trimmed, and the sleeves of his flannel were rolled to his elbows.
“Upstairs,” I said. “Your room. Give me ten minutes.”
He looked me over, and whatever he saw made him set the mug on the counter and go.
Jules was at the stove, stirring something that smelled like garlic and thyme. His dark curls were damp from the shower.
“Leave it,” I said. “Upstairs.”
His crooked grin widened. “Yes, ma’am.”
Rafe sat on the porch in the cold, watching the boatyard’s dock lights throw orange across the snow. He wore one of Wade’s old flannels, and his hair was longer than it had been in September. When I opened the door, the frigid air hit my bare arms and his head turned at once.
“Come inside,” I said. “Wade’s room.”
He stood without asking why or hesitating.
I took the stairs first, Rafe a step below me. My thigh held. My hands were steady. My wolf, who had been patient for weeks while I caught up to what she already knew, pressed forward with something that felt like joy.
Wade’s bedroom was warm from the radiator and lit by the lamp on the nightstand. Wade had made the bed, as always. Jules closed the door behind us. The room had held three of us before. Tonight it would have to hold four.
I turned to face them.
Wade stood nearest the bed, big and broad and watchful. Jules leaned against the closed door with his arms crossed, dark eyes already hot. Rafe stayed between them, his shoulders tight, careful and still, assuming nothing.
“I’m not choosing only one of you,” I said.
Nobody moved.
“Wade.” I looked at him first because he had given me my second chance. “You’re my second chance mate. The Goddess confirmed it when you caught that engine housing, but you never treated the bond like permission. You promised the mark would wait until I asked. I’m asking tonight.”
His jaw worked. His eyes burned.
“Jules.” I turned to him. “No bond told you to choose me, and none told me to choose you. We did that ourselves. I want what we made to be every bit as permanent as anything the Goddess could give us.”
Jules’s throat moved, but his grin held.
“Rafe.” His was the hardest name to say. “You rejected me, and you blamed me when I wouldn’t erase what you’d done. I remember every part of that.”
His face went white, but he held my gaze.
“Then you gave up every claim you had and stayed when staying won you nothing. You stood between me and Conrad when it would have been easier to walk away. There is no bond between us anymore. I broke us free.” I steadied my voice. “If you stay tonight, we make something new by choice.”
The room was so quiet I could hear the snow ticking against the window glass.
“I want all three of you,” I said. “I’m making this choice without the Goddess, the treaty, or my father. I’m choosing all four of us, for good.” I looked from one man to the next. “I choose you. Do you choose this with me?”
Wade spoke first. “I choose it. All four of us.”
Jules straightened. “You have my word.”
Rafe’s voice came rough and low. “I choose it, and I’m not leaving.”
I pulled my shirt over my head and dropped it on the floor.
? ? ?
I undressed them one at a time. I started with Wade’s flannel, working the buttons while his hands hung at his sides and his chest rose and fell under my palms. The scar tissue along his ribs was smooth and hard.
I kissed it, then opened his jeans and pushed them down his legs.
He stepped free with a sound deep in his throat.
Next, I tugged Jules’s thermal over his head while he grinned down at me, his olive skin hot beneath my calloused hands. The healed scar above his eye had gone silver. I traced it with my thumb and he turned his mouth into my palm and bit gently. Then I stripped off the rest of his clothes.
Rafe stood still while I unbuttoned his borrowed flannel. His chest was lean and hard beneath my hands. When my fingers brushed the pink scar on his right shoulder where the enforcer’s bite had healed, he shivered but didn’t pull away.
I undid his belt and took my time baring him. When all three men stood naked before me, I pushed my jeans and underwear down and stepped out of them.
I took Wade’s hand and led him to the bed. “Lie down.”
He lay flat on his back on the quilt he’d smoothed that morning, his gaze fixed on me. I climbed over him and straddled his chest, my knees on either side of his ribs, and felt his heart race beneath me.
“Jules.” I looked over my shoulder. “Behind me.”
Jules knelt behind me on the mattress, put his hands on my thighs, and lowered his mouth between them.
He dragged his tongue over me, and my hips jerked forward. Wade’s hands came up to grip my waist, bracing me while Jules worked. His tongue moved in long strokes and then flattened against me until my breath caught. I ground against his mouth because I was done being patient.
Rafe stood beside the bed, frozen, watching. Without the old bond to carry his desire into me, I read it in his parted lips and the rigid line of his body.
“Rafe,” I said and pulled him down to kiss me.
His mouth tasted like cold air. He kissed me carefully at first, like he was waiting for permission to want this, and I bit him hard enough to make him stop asking.
His hand came up to cup the back of my neck, and I reached down and wrapped my fingers around his cock, already thick and hard in my grip. He groaned against my mouth.
Jules flicked his tongue against me, and heat gathered low in my belly.
I broke the kiss with Rafe and dropped my forehead to Wade’s chest, gasping, while Jules’s hands tightened on my thighs and he pressed deeper.
I squeezed Rafe’s cock, and he made a strangled sound.
Wade’s grip on my waist was bruising and perfect.
I came with Jules’s mouth on me and Wade’s heartbeat under my cheek and Rafe’s cock pulsing in my fist. It hit hard, and I rode it out shaking while Jules licked me through every aftershock.
Before the trembling stopped, I slid down Wade’s body and sank onto him.
He filled me, and we both groaned. I planted my hands on his chest and rolled my hips, finding the angle that made my vision blur. Wade’s fingers dug into my hips, letting me control the rhythm as he always had.
Jules moved behind me, his chest against my back, his hands sliding around to cup my breasts. He rolled my nipples between his fingers while his mouth found the curve of my ear. “That’s it,” he murmured, and the low heat in his voice made me clench around Wade.
Rafe knelt beside us and reached between my thighs.
His fingers found my clit and stroked it with deliberate, firm pressure until my rhythm faltered and I ground down harder onto Wade.
With the three of them around me and inside me, there was no silence where the old bond used to live, because every empty space was full.
I came again with a cry I didn’t try to stifle, clenching hard around Wade, and felt him lose his rhythm beneath me. He thrust up once, twice, and buried himself deep as he came. At the same moment, he rose from the quilt, found the place where my neck met my shoulder, and bit down.
The mark burned with a heat that went deeper than skin and muscle, all the way to the place where our second chance bond had been waiting since September. It locked into place with a rightness that made my eyes sting. I felt Wade’s bond inside my chest, permanent and unmistakable.
I bent to his neck and bit the same place on him. His blood tasted like salt and pine, and his arms tightened around me until I couldn’t tell whose heartbeat was whose.
“Mine,” I said against his marked skin. “That took you long enough.”
His laugh was breathless and shaking. “You told me to wait.”
? ? ?
I eased off Wade and turned to Jules. “Your turn.”
Jules sat against the headboard and I straddled him facing away, my back against his chest, his legs beneath mine.
When I lowered myself onto him, the new angle took him deeper, making me gasp and press my head back against his shoulder.
Jules wrapped one arm across my stomach and used the other hand to tilt my hips, finding the position that made both of us groan.
Rafe knelt in front of me. He kissed my mouth, softer than before, and then my throat, and then the hollow between my collarbones while his hands traced the curves of my body.
Jules moved inside me at a measured pace, letting my pleasure build instead of chasing it.
Rafe’s mouth on my skin sharpened every sensation.
Jules murmured something in French against the back of my neck that I didn’t understand and didn’t need to. His free hand found my clit and stroked in time with his thrusts, and Rafe’s tongue traced a line down between my breasts while his hands gripped my thighs.
I came shaking between them, clenching around Jules as his breath went ragged behind me. He drove up hard and came inside me with his teeth sinking into my left shoulder, the opposite side from Wade’s mark.
The chosen bond settled into my chest beside Wade’s, carrying Jules’s stubborn devotion. We had built it from mutual want and the decision to stay; the Goddess had never needed to touch it.
I turned my head and bit the junction of his neck and shoulder. He tasted like salt and garlic. His arm tightened around me and he pressed his forehead against the back of my head.
“Nora.” His voice was rough. “Jesus Christ, Nora.”
I smiled against his skin. “I chose you.”
? ? ?
Wade moved aside, and Jules slid out from behind me, both of them staying close, their hands never fully leaving my body. I went onto my hands and knees on the rumpled quilt and looked over my shoulder at Rafe.
Rafe had stepped back to the edge of the bed and watched me without any of the old confidence that the Goddess, his father, or his bloodline entitled him to what he wanted. He had knelt in the dirt and received nothing for it except the truth.
“Rafe.” I held his gaze. “Get behind me.”
He climbed onto the bed and positioned himself, his hands gripping my hips. I felt him at my entrance, hard and shaking. When he pushed inside me, the sensation was raw and immediate, made sharper by the knowledge that I had chosen him.
Wade lay beside me, his big hand supporting my chest, his thumb brushing the underside of my breast. Jules pressed close along my other side, his fingers trailing down my spine, his lips against my shoulder near the fresh mark he’d left.
Rafe’s first thrusts were careful, as if he still expected me to send him back to the bunkhouse. I pushed back against him hard enough to make the headboard hit the wall.
“Don’t hold back,” I told him. “Not tonight.”
His hips snapped forward, driving deep enough to rock me onto Wade’s supporting arm.
Jules’s hand slid between my thighs and found my clit again, working it while Rafe fucked me hard, all the restraint of the past weeks gone.
Wade braced me while the bonds he and Jules shared with me pulsed in my chest. Rafe moved inside me with no bond but the one we had chosen to make.
I came, and my elbows gave way. Wade caught me. Jules stroked me through it. Rafe drove deep and followed, his cock pulsing inside me, his forehead dropping against the back of my neck as his breath came in harsh, broken sounds.
Before he could pull away, I reached back and guided his mouth to my right shoulder, to the skin beside Wade’s fresh mark.
“Here,” I said.
Rafe’s teeth broke the skin with controlled pressure, sealing the third bond. I felt it settle, new and distinct, after weeks of watching him work, wait, and leave the decision to me.
He eased out of me, and I turned in his arms, found the same spot on his neck, and bit until I tasted blood. He shuddered against me and cupped my face. The unguarded look in his eyes made me close mine for a moment.
“You don’t deserve this,” I said.
“I know.” He didn’t look away.
“I’m giving it to you anyway.”
His thumbs brushed the tears from my cheeks.
? ? ?
Later, we tangled together in Wade’s too-small bed, wrapped in the quilt and too exhausted to care about the lack of space.
Wade lay on my left with his arm heavy across my waist, Jules on my right with his face in my hair, and Rafe at my feet with his forehead against my scarred thigh and one hand wrapped around my ankle as if I might vanish.
Three marks throbbed on my skin. Wade’s hummed with our second chance bond. Rafe’s beside it was new and tender, a bond we’d forged from nothing. Jules’s, his chosen mark, proved that the Goddess didn’t get to be the only one who decided who I loved.
Outside, gusts off Lake Superior drove snow against the windows and rattled the old frames. The radiator ticked. Someone’s stomach growled, and Jules mumbled something about reheating dinner without opening his eyes.
Rafe lifted his head from my thigh. I reached for him, and Wade shifted to make room while Jules pulled the quilt back over all four of us.
I lay in the center of three men who had fought for me, bled for me, and waited for me, each in his own way. I had chosen each of them whole, and they had chosen the life we would make together.
Three bonds. Four bodies. Nobody left outside.