Chapter 29
LYRAE
Ten minutes later, we were all stuffed in my bedroom like a bunch of nervous Rockwraiths.
Actually, if I wanted to get all technical, Ryland’s bedroom. And here I was, barefoot, pacing nervously back and forth in front of the window, something like terror mixed with nervous energy tangling into a knotted mess of self-doubt.
I glanced at the door, wondering if I still had time to find some dark corner to sleep in for the night.
But it was too late.
I’d started something with that impulsive, reckless kiss, with my cheeky taunt about what came after, and now that we were together, there’d be no walking those words—or that kiss—back.
But gods, tasting him…everything had flooded back, the past century dissolving away like it had never happened. Once our lips met, I couldn’t touch him fast enough, couldn’t wrap my hand around his hot, ready length, our tongues tangling like we were at war.
And all I wanted was more.
I’d meant what I’d said. I was tired of dancing around. Tired of looking and not touching, of wondering and not knowing. Of fantasizing whether or not that life-altering connection between us had been my imagination.
I wanted to feel Ryland inside me. I wanted both of them inside me.
I twisted my hands together, blowing out a breath.
It was just…
Ever since Ryland, I’d been cavalier with my lovers, the few I had. The act itself became brusque and utilitarian, where sex was no different than washing my hands or eating a bowl of soup. A task to be completed. Checked off the list, until the next time I had an itch to scratch.
Nothing had ever come close to what Ryland had given me during those rare, stolen moments, and I’d long ago decided nothing ever could.
But this…with Ryland’s green eyes reflecting the fire, and Varian staring at me like I was the answer to all his prayers…too much rested on this night.
A hundred years of wishing and hoping and hating…
Love could never hold up the weight of all that yearning without everything crashing down around us. One mistake—and somehow, tonight felt like an enormous mistake—we’d be tossed back into that bitter past.
Maybe we’d become enemies again.
We didn’t have much right now, but damn, friendship counted for something.
I looked between them, my stomach dropping.
No. I wasn’t ruining what we had right now.
“I know that look, Lyrae. Stop obsessing,” Varian chided softly, draped over a chair like an indolent cat, stripped to the waist, barefoot, washboard abs gleaming in the firelight, more relaxed—yet more on edge—than I’d ever seen him.
“This is…” he blew out a long, slow breath.
“We could just go to sleep. Gods know we all need to rest.”
Ryland shook his head with a strangled laugh, and I agreed. There’d be no sleeping tonight.
“It’s just that…”
“It’s just…what?” Ryland was on his feet, his hand sliding around my throat, sword-calloused fingers capturing my jaw, gripping just hard enough to hold me in place.
“Let the doubts go, Lyrae. Just for tonight, let all of your reservations go. Just be…you.” He brushed his lips across mine, and that brief contact had my body loosening in anticipation, wanting more.
“Remember how things were between us? We were perfect together. No doubts, none of these hard edges.” He ran his hand down my side, sending the rest of my weapons thudding to the floor.
“Shed the cold, in-control commander and let me taste the Lyrae I know is deep inside, the one who moans my name when she comes, unraveling down to her very soul.”
His hand swept to the back of my head, gripped my braid. “That’s the Lyrae we want tonight. Come here, Varian.”
It took my poor, dazed mind a moment to realize Varian was pressed behind me, hands following the same path as Ryland’s, fingers digging greedily into my hips, soft lips skimming over my shoulder, hungry and curious.
“The only thing you are allowed to focus on tonight is your own pleasure.” Ryland’s dark, commanding tone had my bare toes curling deeper into the rug. “The only words on your lips will be these…harder, faster, more. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
Gods, I wanted this so badly.
I wanted to push our shattered past so far behind us, none of that ugliness could ever touch us again. As for the unknown future stretching ahead, filled with possibilities and probably death—that didn’t matter.
Not now.
Not when they were both right here, where I could finally touch them.
Taste them.
My fingers twisted into Ryland’s shirt as I pulled him to my mouth, arching my back, pushing my ass against Varian’s greedy hands, his hard cock.
Varian’s mouth closed over the crook of my neck in a hot, possessive bite. Ryland devoured my lips until our teeth clashed, his hand working down the front of my leathers, delving for my pussy, slickening up by the second.
I gave Ryland one of those moans when his fingers found my swollen wetness, gliding in gently, almost hesitantly. I broke the brutal kiss, hissing the word I knew he wanted to hear, “harder,” and those fingers plunged in, tearing another sound from me, this one feral and wild.
Varian peeled my shirt over my head, breaking the kiss, earning a curse from Ryland, stripping my leathers down my legs, and then…
I was naked between them, clothing tangled around my feet, Ryland’s hand cupping my breast, his thumb and forefinger working my peaked nipple with a hundred years of experience I was equally jealous and grateful for before he turned me around to face Varian, my hair still wound into his fist.
“Kiss him, Lyrae.” My fingers drifted up Varian’s muscled torso, and he shivered, shoulders curving towards me, a hiss escaping his lips.
I ran a finger down that trail of dark blond hair, greedy for my first real look at that perfectly sculpted body before I cupped his face to look into those eyes I knew as well as my own.
“He’s been dreaming about you for a hundred years,” Ryland urged, unbraiding my hair, dragging his fingers through the heavy length. “Show Varian how much you want him.”
Var dipped his head, lips tentatively brushing against mine before he yanked my hips tight against his, fingers leaving divots.
His tongue dove between my lips, hungry in a way Ryland wasn’t, delving deeper, demanding more, until my head was bent back and he was devouring me with a hundred years’ worth of wanting.
Then Ryland turned my head and I was tasting him again, our tongues dancing.
This was every bit as good as I remembered as I disappeared into a rush of pure, consuming pleasure.
Varian’s lips and teeth nipped at my neck, greedy and fast, like he’d lost patience, working his way down to my breasts.
Ryland captured my hands, trapping my wrists behind my back, my body bared for Varian to explore.
“Taste her, see how wet she is,” Ryland rasped against my ear, one hand ruthlessly binding my wrists together, the other arm banded across my belly, pinning me against him as Varian went to his knees and pressed my thighs wider.
This was…holy fuck, this was hot, being handled by the two of them, shared between them like some kind of treat.
“You smell so fucking sweet.” Varian pressed his face into my pussy and inhaled, then spread my folds apart, eyes shining, chest heaving as he stared. Then he dove forward, licking a molten stripe up my center, lashing my pussy so viciously with his tongue my knees buckled.
But Ryland had me, holding me up while Varian spread me wider, driving his tongue deeper and deeper like he couldn’t get enough. My head bent back onto Ryland’s shoulder, a guttural oomph escaping my mouth when Varian’s tongue thrust up into my core.
“Harder,” Ryland hissed, firming his hold on my wrists, his arm braced across my belly to pin me in place as Varian feasted like a starving male. “Fuck her harder with your tongue. Use your fingers. Give her two of them. She likes it rough, don’t you, little fox?”
Gods, that nickname, the one I hadn’t heard in years…
“I…fuck, Varian. Yes, yes, right there. Gods.”
Those commanding words, the delicious aching pressure as Varian’s fingers drove up into me with hard, merciless thrusts, the fast, vicious way his tongue worked my clit had me thrashing in their hands, thrashing against the raging pleasure ready to break.
And then it did.
I did.
Break.
My orgasm was a shattering, mind-numbing plunge, an earth-shifting crash, after years of self-service and aborted trysts and disappointments.
Then I was flying, higher and higher, splintering apart into a thousand pieces.
The world fell away, my flushed, still-shaking body sagging in Ryland’s strong hands as Varian stared up at me, fingers loosely caging my ankles, looking at me like he was worshipping a god.
“And that’s just round one,” Ryland murmured in my ear with a dark chuckle. “My plan is to make you come five times, little fox, and before you tell me you can’t, let me remind you, I always get my way.”
Then they dragged me to bed.
In a tangle of hands and fingers and lips and tongues I never wanted to end.
Them. Ryland and Varian. My two oldest friends from a world that had existed before this one. I loved them both, my aching heart finally admitted. Nobody could make me choose between these two males who had consumed my life forever, even when they were gone.
Ryland pressed me down onto my back, then stretched beside me, pushing my legs apart, thrusting his fingers inside my pussy, making the most erotic, wet, humiliating sound. Even though I’d just come, my hips bucked to meet his every plunging stroke, heat burning like a fire between my legs.
“Look at how wet she is, Varian. Such a beautiful pussy, and it’s all ours. What do you want, Lyrae? Do you want us to take turns fucking you, or…”