Chapter 22 Room for Two
Liza POV
By midnight, the stove was the only light in the hut. The wind set the walls groaning, then settled into a long, grinding rhythm overhead.
I was still between Dominic and Shane on the plank floor, my back against the wall under the window and my knees drawn up. The air smelled like woodsmoke and the mineral tang of sweat that hadn’t been washed off.
None of us had spoken in a while.
It was the rescue. The adrenaline had to go somewhere.
I’d felt it before after bad calls on the mountain, the way your body keeps running hot long after the danger passes, looking for something to burn.
But this was different, because Dominic sat to my left with his scent wrapping around me like smoke, and Shane sat to my right with his hip touching mine and his hair still damp from melted snow, and the two pulls inside me had stopped pretending to be separate things.
Dominic’s fated bond was a deep, steady heat beneath my ribs.
Shane’s chosen mark throbbed at the right side of my neck with a pull of its own.
They’d been running parallel since yesterday, and now, in this small room with the storm shutting out everything else, they tangled together and became one demand.
I turned my head and looked at Shane.
He was already looking at me. His green eyes caught the stove light and held it, and his mouth was slightly open, and the pulse in his throat was visible. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to.
I kissed him.
His hand came up to the side of my face, and he kissed me back with the reckless focus that was purely Shane, like he’d been waiting for exactly this and intended to make it count. His mouth was warm, and when I bit his lower lip, he made a sound against my teeth that went straight through me.
Behind me, Dominic shifted. I felt his heat move closer, felt his breath on the back of my neck where my hair had fallen aside. He didn’t touch me. He waited.
I reached back with one hand without breaking Shane’s kiss. My fingers found Dominic’s thigh, gripped, and pulled.
He came against my back in one swift movement. His chest pressed along my spine, his beard rough against my ear, and his hands settled on my hips with a grip that said finally. The mate bond flared open between us, and I felt his desire hit mine and double.
Shane pulled back from the kiss just enough to look over my shoulder at Dominic.
Something passed between them that I couldn’t see, some silent understanding that took less than a second.
Then Shane’s mouth found mine again, and Dominic drew me to my feet.
His hands moved from my hips to the front of my shirt.
He opened it from behind, one button at a time, unhurried even though his breathing had gone ragged against the back of my neck.
The flannel fell open, and his big rough hands slid up my bare stomach to my breasts.
He cupped them, thumbs dragging across the nipples until they hardened under his touch, and I arched back against him and gasped into Shane’s mouth.
Shane broke the kiss and dropped to his knees on the plank floor.
He looked up at me, his expression dark and intent, and his hands went to my waistband.
He worked my belt open, then the button, then the zipper, all while holding my gaze.
He tugged my pants down, his palms sliding along my thighs and calves.
When he reached my boots, he unlaced each one and set them aside before peeling everything off and leaving me bare from the waist down in the warm air off the stove.
I stood between them with Dominic’s hands on my breasts and Shane on his knees looking up at me, and the storm roared outside, and none of it mattered.
Dominic’s right hand left my breast and slid down my stomach.
His fingers moved between my thighs, finding me already slick and swollen, and he groaned low against my ear when he felt how wet I was.
He knew exactly where to press and how much pressure to use, and he worked me with measured strokes until my legs started to shake and my head fell back against his shoulder.
He brought me to the edge and stopped.
I made a sound that was part frustration and part plea, and I felt him smile against my neck. Shane was still on his knees, watching Dominic’s hand between my legs with an expression that looked like it was costing him everything he had not to replace those fingers with his mouth.
I grabbed the front of Shane’s shirt and hauled him to his feet.
He came up breathless and hard against my hip, and I pushed him backward until the cot caught behind his knees and he sat down heavily.
I stripped his shirt over his head while he kicked off his boots and shoved his pants down, and then I pushed him flat on his back, turned away from him, and straddled his hips.
The cot was narrow and it creaked dangerously, but I didn’t care. I took him in my hand, guided him to where Dominic’s fingers had left me aching, and sank down in one long stroke. Shane’s head went back and his eyes closed and both hands gripped my thighs hard enough to bruise.
“Fuck,” he said through his teeth. “Liza.”
I rolled my hips, finding the rhythm, and Shane’s right hand left my thigh and moved up to the mark he’d left on my neck. He pressed his palm against it, and the bond between us surged. Every sensation sharpened until I felt his heartbeat through the mark, beating in time with mine.
Dominic knelt on the floor at my back, beside the cot, and his hands came around to cup my breasts again.
He was shirtless now, and when I leaned back against his chest, I could feel the bandage wrapping his left side and the careful way he held himself to keep his weight off the wound.
His mouth found the left side of my neck, the scarred side, and he kissed along the ridge of scar tissue from my jaw to my throat, taking his time.
I came hard, the cry raw and uncontrolled as Shane’s hips drove up to meet mine and Dominic’s arms locked around my chest. As the last of it ran through me, Shane arched beneath me, groaned my name, and spilled inside me.
The cot had skidded halfway across the floor.
I laughed, shaking and spent, and Shane laughed beneath me, and even Dominic made a sound that might have been a laugh pressed against the back of my shoulder. Shane sat up and shoved the cot back with his heels until his shoulders met the wall, then stayed braced there so it couldn’t move again.
I rose off him, and he hissed through his teeth.
Dominic’s hands guided me down onto my side on the narrow cot, and he stretched out behind me, spooned close, his wounded left side up and away from the mattress.
His right arm slid under my head, and his left arm came over my waist, and I could feel him hard and thick against the curve of my ass.
He eased into me from behind. Slow, because the cot gave him nothing to brace against. Deep, because from this angle there was nowhere else to go. His breath came hot and uneven against the back of my neck. His arm tightened around my waist, and every stroke rocked me forward into Shane.
Shane had turned to face me. He lay on his side with his forehead almost touching mine, and his hand traced the scar down my cheek with the backs of his fingers, gentle, following the line from beneath my left eye to the corner of my jaw.
His kiss was soft and lingering, a counterpoint to Dominic’s deep rhythm behind me.
Then Shane’s hand moved down between us. His fingers found my clit and pressed, circled, matched the pace that Dominic set.
Dominic’s cock filled me from behind while Shane’s fingers worked me from the front. The narrow cot held all three of us close enough that I felt Dominic’s heartbeat pounding against my back and Shane’s quick pulse where his wrist pressed to my thigh.
“Don’t stop,” I said, and I wasn’t sure which of them I was talking to, and it didn’t matter because neither of them did.
Dominic’s pace stayed controlled. He couldn’t thrust hard without his ribs screaming, and the restraint turned every stroke into something deliberate and devastating, angled to hit the spot that made my breath catch.
Shane watched my face from inches away, adjusting the pressure of his fingers to match every shift in my expression.
This climax built more gradually, with each deep thrust and circling finger.
Every point of contact registered at once as Dominic spread his hand across my stomach, Shane pressed his mouth to the scar at my jaw, Dominic kissed the nape of my neck, and Shane’s wet, slippery fingers stayed relentless.
It broke in one long shudder that locked every muscle in my body.
I cried out while Shane’s fingers rode me through it and Dominic pulled me hard against him, buried himself to the hilt, and came with me, his teeth pressed, without biting, to the scarred side of my neck.
Shane eased off only when my tremors began to fade.
Dominic held the place where a mark would go, a promise and a question in one gesture, his breath ragged and his body jerking against mine.
I pressed back into him and let him stay there.
? ? ?
The stove ticked as it cooled. Wind drove snow against the single window in bursts.
We lay tangled under the hut’s scratchy wool blankets with me in the middle, which was the only arrangement the cot could hold without someone falling off.
Shane’s hand rested on my hip. Dominic’s arm was still under my head, and his breath stirred my hair in a slow, even rhythm that meant he was close to sleep.
I stared at the stove’s dying glow and felt both bonds humming inside me. They belonged together. I lay between the men who carried them and felt nothing missing.
Shane shifted closer, his lips brushing my shoulder. Dominic’s chest moved against my back with a quiet exhale, and their body heat kept the chill off my skin.
Outside, the storm’s howl climbed and fell in long, toneless cycles. Inside, the hut held.
I closed my eyes. I was heavy all over, my legs tangled with Shane’s, my back fitted against Dominic’s chest, and both of their scents blended with mine into something that smelled like home and sex and woodsmoke.
My last clear thought before I fell asleep was of Everett in the West infirmary, his shoulder strapped and the mate bond still open between us.