Chapter 33 #2
Halston kisses her, and while he does, I reach for the lube. He is still watching me when I slick my fingers, and there is no shame on his face. Only want. Only that dangerous, trembling restraint that makes me want to give him everything and ruin him slowly enough that he remembers who did it.
I touch him first with my hand on his hip, grounding him.
“Tell me if you need me to stop,” I say.
His eyes hold mine. “I won’t.”
“You might.”
“Then I’ll tell you.”
Halston moves between her thighs, and I shift behind him. Liv’s knees open around him, her eyes fixed on his face as he lines himself up. I watch the way he pauses before entering her, watch the way his control pulls tight as he feels how wet she is for him, how ready, how much she wants.
“Liv?” he asks.
She nods, then catches herself. “Yes. Please.”
He pushes into her slowly.
Her mouth opens.
The sound she makes is small and stunned, and Halston lowers his forehead to hers as if he has to contain himself there, against her skin, or he’ll lose the careful part of him entirely.
I put my mouth to the back of his shoulder and feel him shudder.
“Fuck,” he breathes.
I don’t move yet.
I let him have that first moment with her.
Let Liv’s hands find his back. Let her body take him. Let the two of them look at each other while he sinks deeper, inch by inch, until she wraps around him with a broken little exhale.
Only then do I slick my fingers again and press them to him.
Halston’s body tenses once.
I kiss the back of his neck. “Easy.”
He laughs under his breath, rough and almost gone. “You first.”
I work him open with care, one finger, then two, not rushing because I know him. I know the way he tries to take too much when he thinks giving more will make it easier to keep him. Liv watches over his shoulder, her eyes shining, one hand reaching past him to touch my wrist.
“Creed,” she whispers.
“I know.”
I do.
I know what this is.
Halston inside her. Me behind him. Liv beneath us, not choosing one of us over the other, but letting herself be loved from both sides of the life we built in secret.
When Halston is ready, I slick myself with more lube and line up behind him. My free hand slides to his stomach, feeling the muscles tighten under my palm.
“Still yes?” I ask.
He turns his head enough to look at me.
“Yes.”
I push into him slowly.
Halston’s breath catches.
His body grips me, hot and tight, and the sensation punches through every civilized thought I have left. He drops his head beside Liv’s, and she wraps both arms around him, holding him while I give him more.
I stop halfway.
“Hal?”
He exhales hard. “Don’t stop.”
Liv’s eyes find mine over his shoulder. “Don’t.”
So I don’t.
I press in until I am fully inside him, until my hips meet his and his body locks between us, taking me as he holds himself inside her. For one breath, none of us moves.
The room goes quiet.
Too quiet.
Just the sound of us breathing. The air conditioner pushing cool air over sweat-damp skin. Liv’s hand searching for mine and finding it against Halston’s hip.
Then Halston moves.
A slow roll into Liv.
The motion drags him back against me.
All three of us break a little.
Liv gasps, and Halston groans into her neck, and I have to close my eyes because the feeling is too much.
Not just the physical part, though fuck, that is enough to make me lose language.
It is being inside Halston while he is inside Liv.
It is the three of us becoming one motion, one breath, one want finally given a body.
I grip his hip.
“Again,” I say.
He does it again.
This time, I move with him.
Halston thrusts into Liv, and I thrust into him, slow at first, careful because she asked for one and he asked for me, and neither of us is disposable inside this.
Liv takes him with a soft cry. Halston takes me with his teeth gritted, his control breaking one breath at a time.
I feel every part of it. His restraint. Her pleasure.
My own body is starting to shake from the effort of not turning this into something too hard, too fast, too much.
Liv reaches up and touches my face.
Even from under Halston, she finds me.
That nearly ends me.
“Creed,” she says.
“I’m here, baby.”
Halston’s rhythm falters.
I lean over him, bracing one hand beside Liv’s head, my chest against his back, my mouth near his ear. “She wants both of us.”
His eyes close.
“She has us,” he says.
Then he moves deeper into her.
Liv cries out.
The sound changes everything.
The restraint goes thinner, not gone, but stretched to its limit.
Halston’s hips drive into her with more need now, and I follow, thrusting into him as he gives himself to her.
The rhythm is imperfect and human, bodies adjusting, breath breaking, hands sliding over skin slick with sweat.
Liv’s nails dig into Halston’s shoulders.
His hand clamps over mine where I hold his hip.
I kiss the side of his neck, then Liv’s mouth when she lifts for me.
We are not neat.
We are not simple.
We are real.
Liv starts to shake first.
I can feel it through Halston. The way her body pulls him deeper, the way her legs tighten around him, the way her breath becomes uneven, little sounds that make my name and his blur together.
“Hal,” she gasps.
“I’ve got you.”
“Creed—”
“I’ve got him.”
Halston makes a sound at that.
A broken one.
Liv hears it too. Her eyes open, wet and fierce, and she reaches past him for me again.
“Come with us,” she whispers.
Fuck.
That is the line that takes me apart.
It’s an invitation.
Halston’s body tightens around me. He is close. I know him well enough to feel it before he says a word. He lowers his mouth to Liv’s, kissing her like he is trying to give her everything he never learned how to say.
I move harder once.
Then again.
Halston’s thrusts into Liv lose their rhythm. Mine into him follows. The three of us are breathing in broken pieces now, locked together, chasing the same edge from different places.
Liv comes first.
Her body clamps around Halston, and she makes a sound against his mouth that is half sob, half relief.
Halston curses, rough and low, his whole body shuddering between us as her pleasure pulls him under.
I keep moving because he asked me to, because she asked me to, because I can feel them both coming apart, and I need to hold the motion until it takes me too.
Halston follows a few seconds later, spilling into her with his face buried against her throat, one hand still locked around mine.
The feel of him coming around me finishes what’s left of my control.
I thrust into him once more and come so hard the room disappears at the edges.
For a moment, there is nothing but heat.
Halston under me.
Liv under him.
My hand in both of theirs.
Then the world returns by degrees.
The sound of Liv breathing. Halston’s body is still trembling between us. My forehead pressed to the back of his shoulder, my mouth open against his skin.
No one moves.
No one can.
Liv’s hand reaches up, slow and shaking, and touches my cheek.
Then Halston’s.
That is the part that stays with me.
The way Liv touches both our faces afterward, like she is counting us.
Like she is making sure all three of us made it back from the same place.
Her thumb moves over Halston’s cheek, then mine, slow and trembling. No one jokes. No one reaches for clothes. No one tries to make the room smaller than what just happened.
For once, we are not three people negotiating the edges of a difficult love.
We are simply here.
Liv beneath us. Halston between us. Me holding on to both of them with a hand that will not quite stop shaking.
The feeling is too large to name cleanly. It is not just pleasure. It is not just relief. It is the terrible, beautiful intimacy of being known in motion, of trusting the next breath to two people who could ruin you and choose, over and over, not to.
Liv’s eyes move between us.
“You’re both here,” she whispers, like she needs to hear herself say it.
Halston kisses her palm.
I press my mouth to her wrist.
“Yeah,” I say, voice rough. “We’re here, Liv. We’re still right here—always for you. For us.”