28. Calliope
Calliope
Sloane is still awake when I reach the door, watching me from where he lies beside Theo.
Idris is awake too, exactly as he was when Dash found me looking in a few minutes ago.
Theo is still sprawled across both of them, but his head lifts as if some part of him feels me before the room gives me away.
I stand in the doorway with my hand against the frame. “I want in,” I say, and my voice shakes but does not break. “I want all of you, and I don’t want to spend another night pretending I don’t.”
For a second, no one moves.
Then Theo scrambles upright with a sound that is half sob, half relief. “Callie,” he breathes, already reaching for me. He catches himself halfway, hands hovering, his eyes going wide with the fear of asking too hard.
I cross the room before that fear can take root.
My knees hit the mattress, and then Theo is on me, arms around my shoulders, face in my neck, body trying to occupy every inch of mine at once.
He's warm and shaking and so alive against me that I gasp.
His mouth finds my cheek, my jaw, the corner of my mouth, greedy with sleep and grief and want.
“I want you here,” I tell him, holding his face between my hands so he has to hear it. “I want you in this. I want you with me.”
Theo makes a broken little sound and kisses me full on the mouth.
It is clumsy and deep, his hands sliding into my hair, his body pressing me back toward the center of the bed.
Sloane shifts but doesn’t touch until my hand finds his.
Idris sits up behind Theo, his gaze locked on mine, his control so careful it feels like heat under glass.
“Tell me where,” Sloane says, voice hoarse.
I bring his hand to my waist. “Here.”
He touches me like the word is sacred. His palm spreads over my side, thumb brushing the bare strip of skin where my blouse has ridden up.
His breath catches when I lean into it. Idris' hand comes to the mattress beside my hip, not on me yet, and the restraint in it pulls another confession out of my chest.
“I want your voice,” I say to him. “I want you careful, but I want you there.”
Idris' eyes darken. “Then you’ll tell me if careful becomes too much,” he says, and even that is phrased like a place for my answer to stand. “You’ll keep your no where we can all hear it.”
Theo’s eyes fill. He nods once, hard, and kisses me again like the words have unlocked something he was not allowed to open alone.
Sloane is still waiting. I turn my head just enough to find him and tighten his touch over my waist, over the thin fabric of my blouse.
“Here,” I say. “Keep touching me.”
His breath leaves him in a shaky rush. His hand stays exactly where I put it, thumb stroking once along the edge of my ribs.
Idris sits up more fully behind Theo. His voice is low and careful. “Before I use mine, I need the boundary clear. You want my voice?”
“Yes,” I answer. “Soft. Guiding. Not command. As long as my no stays where everyone can hear it.”
“It will,” Idris says. “You say stop and everything stops. You say slower and we slow. You say yes when you want more. Full sentences when you can. If you can't find the words, we pause until you can.”
I nod.
They undress me slowly, and I help.
Theo’s fingers work the buttons of my blouse with careful concentration, looking up at my face after every one.
I nod each time. When the fabric falls open he eases it from my shoulders, then waits again before touching the skin beneath.
Sloane helps with the clasp of my bra only after I guide his hands there.
Idris stays slightly behind them at first, one hand resting lightly on the mattress near my hip where I can see it, giving quiet direction.
“Breathe, Callie. Look at them. Tell us if anything feels like too much.”
“I’m here,” I say. “Keep going.”
My skirt and stockings follow. Theo helps slide them down my legs, kissing the inside of one knee when the fabric clears it, then checking my eyes before he continues. When I am bare they pause. The air in the room feels heavier. My old bond mark throbs faintly under the attention.
Sloane leans in and kisses my throat, then lower across my collarbone and the upper curve of my breast. He moves with deliberate care until his mouth reaches the place just beside the scar of his bite. There he stops completely, breath warm against the mark, waiting.
I bring his mouth to it myself.
My fingers slide into his hair and guide him the last inch.
The first brush of his lips over the old bite sends a shock of recognition through me so sharp I gasp.
Sloane makes a low, wounded sound and kisses it properly—soft, open-mouthed, reverent—while Theo holds me from the other side and presses his face into my neck.
“Color,” Idris murmurs.
“Green,” I answer, voice already unsteady. “I want this.”
Sloane’s mouth stays at the bite for another long moment, then moves lower.
He settles between my thighs with Theo still wrapped around my upper body, kissing my mouth, my cheek, the corner of my eye.
Idris' hand rests where I placed it earlier, a steady point of contact. Sloane’s tongue finds me in slow, careful strokes.
The first wave of pleasure hits harder than I expect.
My body remembers him. The memory does not feel foolish.
It feels like grief and relief tangled so tightly I can't separate them.
Tears come without warning.
Sloane stops the second he feels me shake for the wrong reason. His head lifts. “Callie—”
“Don’t stop.” I reach down and touch his face, making sure he sees me. “I’m crying because I want this. Because my body knows you and I am allowed to want that. Not because I need you to stop.”
He searches my eyes once more, then lowers his mouth again. Theo holds me tighter, one hand stroking my hair, the other laced with mine. Idris' voice stays quiet and present.
“Breathe through it. You can want this. You are allowed.”
The first orgasm builds under Sloane’s mouth and the steady pressure of Theo against me.
When it breaks I cry out softly against Theo’s shoulder, body arching, tears still slipping free.
Sloane stays with me through every pulse, gentling only when the oversensitivity starts.
Theo kisses the wetness from my cheeks and keeps murmuring my name like proof.
I turn my head and find Theo’s mouth. While Sloane still rests between my thighs I touch Theo in return—sliding my hand down his chest, over the soft plane of his stomach, wrapping around him where he's hard and leaking against my hip. He gasps into the kiss.
“You feel good,” I tell him. “I want you close. I want you touching me and being touched.”
Theo becomes clingy in the best way. He presses himself along my side, hips shifting into my hand, soft broken sounds leaving him every time I stroke him.
Sloane rises enough to kiss the inside of Theo’s knee, then higher when Theo nods, keeping him inside the circle instead of outside it.
Idris' hand moves to Theo’s back when Theo reaches for him, steadying.
“Idris,” I say, looking at him over Theo’s shoulder. “I want your hands on me too.”
He moves closer only after the clear request. His palm settles on my thigh, then higher when I guide it. He does not rush. When his fingers slide through the wetness Sloane left he watches my face the entire time.
“Still yes?”
“Yes. More.”
He adds the pressure of his hand while Sloane returns his mouth to me.
The combination is almost too much. Theo’s hand joins theirs, shy at first and then bolder when I moan into his mouth.
I come a second time between the three of them, shaking hard, Theo’s name and Sloane’s and Idris' tangled together in my voice.
When I can speak again I reach for Idris more fully.
“I want your mouth. Then I want you inside me when I’m ready.”
Idris asks one more time before each new step.
His mouth on me is controlled and devastating, the same careful intensity he brings to everything.
He does not bite when his lips find my neck, though the hunger is obvious in the way his breath shudders.
He stops at the edge of where a permanent mark would go and holds himself there.
Sloane stretches out beside me while Idris works. His cock is hard against my hip. When I wrap my hand around him he groans softly and presses his forehead to my shoulder.
“I want to be inside you,” he admits, voice raw. “The bond is answering. I can feel how close the knot is. But not tonight. Not until you are ready for that future yes. Your body isn't a debt I get to collect because I suffered.”
I touch his face. “I know. Thank you for waiting.”
He kisses me hard for that.
When I tell Idris I am ready he settles between my thighs only after another clear yes.
He enters me slowly, watching every shift in my expression, stopping the moment my breath catches the wrong way and waiting until I pull him deeper myself.
The stretch is perfect. Theo stays curled against my side, one leg over mine, hand stroking my hair.
Sloane remains close enough that I can touch him, kiss him, keep him inside the same moment.
Idris moves with steady, controlled rolls of his hips. Every few thrusts he checks.
“Still with me?”
“Yes. Don’t stop.”
Idris keeps exactly the same rhythm, one hand firm on my hip while the other settles at the back of my neck. The pressure there is familiar enough that my body answers before I think about it, my shoulders loosening as he guides my face back toward his.
Sloane stays against my other side, Theo warm and needy beneath my hand, but Idris becomes the point everything else gathers around.
His voice. His hand. The deep, measured drag of him inside me.
Every time my mind tries to reach outward and count who needs what, he brings me back with another quiet instruction to breathe, look at him, and to let them hold me.