Chapter 17 #2
We have been lying tangled together for the better part of an hour with our wine—Vale at my back, warm and solid, his hand moving idly through my hair; Kane sitting close, one hand resting at my ankle; Maz beside me, his shoulder pressed against mine, his eyes on the canopy of branches above us.
Black sits apart from the others, his back against one of the pergola’s posts, long legs stretched before him, watching us all with those dark, unreadable eyes.
Always watching me, and I love him for it.
The candlelight catches the sharp lines of his face, and I find myself looking at him longer than I intend to.
How his hair is shaved shorter than usual and he has grown out a slight beard, which only adds to his rugged appearance.
He notices. He always notices when I’m looking. When all I want is to look at my mates.
“Juniper,” Vale murmurs against my hair. Just my name. Just a question wrapped in a single word.
I look at Maz first. Then Kane. Then Vale. Then Black, who holds my gaze from across the pergola with an expression that is carefully composed. We have been together in groups of one or two before, but all of us? Never. I can feel when they want me, and right now? They do.
“I know where I want to be,” I quietly whisper, squirming a little. “Here. With all of you.” I hold Black’s eyes when I say it. “All of you.”
His eyes darken. “I’m here,” he says. Low and certain. Black can’t join in, not when the risk of touching anyone but me is so high. I hate leaving him out, but I don’t have a choice. “That doesn’t change.”
“I know.” I hold his gaze a moment longer, letting him see that I mean it—that his being here, just here, watching over us, is not less. It has never been less. “I want you to see this. All of it.”
Something moves through his expression, and he gives me a single nod, and it is enough.
It is Maz who moves first. He turns towards me on the blankets and cups my face in both hands and kisses me in that way he has—thorough and deep and completely certain, like he has been waiting for precisely this moment and intends to make it count.
I feel Kane’s hand tighten at my ankle at the same moment Vale’s arm wraps around my waist from behind, and I moan into Maz’s mouth because I am already surrounded by them and we have barely started.
Vale’s lips find the back of my neck, slow and deliberate, tracing down the curve of my shoulder.
The night air is cool where he isn’t touching me, which makes every place he is touching me feel like fire by comparison.
Kane moves up alongside me, his hands sliding up my calves, my thighs, unhurried, reading every hitch in my breathing before deciding where to go next.
Maz breaks the kiss only long enough to ease my shirt over my head, and then for a moment, all of them still. I blush under their gazes.
I feel Black’s gaze like his hands are on me—like when we first mated. I look at him across the pergola, and he looks back at me, and his expression does something complicated and beautiful, and I feel more seen in this moment than I have ever felt in my life.
“You are extraordinary and stunning.” Black can always somehow make me love him more with his true words, stated the way he states most things—like a fact he has sat with long enough to be certain of.
“Don’t look away,” I tell him softly.
“I couldn’t,” he says, “even if I wanted to.”
Kane’s hands push my thighs apart, and his mouth finds me, making me incapable of holding eye contact with anyone.
My head tips back against Vale’s chest, fingers curling into the blanket beneath me as Kane works his tongue against my core with that focused, devastating patience of his.
Maz catches my mouth again, his hand finding my breast, thumb rolling over my nipple until I gasp against his lips.
Vale’s arm tightens around me, his mouth at my ear, his voice low and steady, quiet, grounding things that anchor me even as the pleasure starts pulling me loose from myself.
The three of them work together like they have an understanding that needs no words. Kane reads every sound I make and responds to each one. Maz keeps me present with his mouth, his hands, the warmth of him pressed against my side. Vale holds me together when I start to shake.
“I’ve got you,” Maz murmurs against my lips. “All of us have you.”
From across the pergola, I hear Black shift in his seat. I open my eyes just enough to find him leaning forward now, elbows on his knees, watching with an intensity that sends heat flooding through me all over again.
The orgasm builds faster than I expect—Kane relentless and certain below, Maz and Vale surrounding me completely—and when it breaks, it crashes through me all at once, my back arching up off the blankets, a cry tearing out of my throat that disappears into the dark trees above.
For a moment, I can only lie there, trembling, Vale’s arms keeping me from dissolving entirely.
“Still with us?” Kane asks, pressing a kiss to the inside of my thigh, his voice low and amused.
“Barely,” I manage.
His smile against my skin is answer enough.
They give me only a breath to recover before the blankets shift around me—Kane stretching out beside me, drawing me towards him, his hands warm at my waist. I go willingly, turning into him, and when he pulls me onto his lap and I feel the hard length of him against me, I let out a long, unsteady breath.
“Look at me,” he murmurs.
I do. His eyes are dark and certain and full of something I feel echoed in the bond between us. I reach down and guide him and sink down slowly, inch by inch, until I am fully seated and we are both still, both breathing hard, foreheads almost touching.
“Mate,” he says softly. Like a prayer. Like a fact.
I start to move.
Maz settles close behind me, his chest warm against my back, his hands running up my sides, over my stomach, finding every place that makes me gasp.
Vale kneels beside us, his mouth finding my throat, the curve of my jaw, his fingers trailing down my spine in a way that makes me shiver even in the warm night air.
The three of us find a rhythm together that feels inevitable—Kane moving beneath me, Maz’s hands never stilling, Vale’s mouth mapping every inch of skin he can reach—and I am lost in it completely, lost in all of them, the pleasure layered and overwhelming and entirely too much and yet nowhere near enough.
I look up at one point, breathless, and find Black.
He is watching me with those dark eyes, utterly still, one hand pressed flat against his cock through his trousers.
“Black,” I breathe his name without meaning to. “Touch yourself for me.”
“I will,” he says immediately. His voice is rougher than usual. “I’m right here with you. Don’t stop.”
Something about it—the raw honesty of those words, the way he gives me everything he is able to give from where he sits—tips me over the edge all over again.
I cry out, clenching around Kane, and feel him groan beneath me, his hands gripping my hips tight as he follows me over.
Maz groans against my shoulder, his arms wrapping around me from behind, holding me through the aftershocks that roll through my body one after another.
Black groans and I lock eyes with him as he comes into his hand, and he never once stops looking at me.
The forest is still around us, and the candles burn low enough that the shadows are taking over.
Vale pulls me gently back against him, pressing a kiss to my temple.
Maz tucks himself close at my other side.
Kane lies back on the blankets, one arm thrown over his eyes, chest still heaving, and Black only smiles at me.
I came to Bloodstone Academy to find my reason, my family… and I did.