Chapter 6 Steele
STEELE
Of course Niz hadn’t warned me what was happening up here when he pointed me in the direction of where to find them. I should have fucking known by that cheeky little smirk he struggled to suppress, though.
The sound of soft gasps, breathy and uneven on the other side of the door, almost caused me to turn away when I first approached.
Almost.
Admittedly, my tone had been a bit snarky when asking if they were done yet. However, the moment Gabe asked if I wanted to join, all the jagged feelings of insecurity and annoyance fled my body.
Could it be that simple? Could I just…join?
Staring at Gabe’s body pressed over hers now–both of them flushed and trembling–with Kieran’s golden hair spread out like a halo across the sheets…
Everything I wanted was staring back at me.
She didn’t flinch or hide as my gaze drank her in.
She simply looked at me, open and steady, as if the choice had always been there for me to make.
Every instinct screamed to move, to close the door, to give them privacy and keep what was left of my composure. But I couldn’t. Not when the woman who bled for this world was silently asking me to stop fighting the thing I’d been denying since the day she crashed into my life.
He was my brother and his heart beat for hers, but so did mine.
I’d spent years drawing firm lines as the commander of the fallen army—what was allowed, what wasn’t, and what I could stomach losing.
Sharing her had always been the boundary I refused to cross.
I could fight beside Gabe, bleed beside him, call him my brother in every sense that mattered, but this always felt like an insurmountable battle.
And yet, watching her beneath him…alive and breathing once again, with those hazel eyes pleading for me to stay—I felt the resistance inside me crack. My hand found the doorframe, fingers biting into the wood hard enough to splinter.
I’d thought love was supposed to be simple.
One person. One promise. But nothing about Kieran had ever been simple, and neither was the way I’d fallen in love with her.
Ever since she crashed into the rebel camp with a fire within her that refused to be put out, I was enamored by her.
Everything in me fought the magnetic draw and failed time and time again.
I could never resist her, not truly. Even when we clashed, I burned for her.
It had always been her.
Either I accepted what stood before me, or I walked away from both of them for good.
For the first time in my life, walking away from her and this situation felt like the coward’s choice.
As if I would be admitting that I wasn’t good enough.
That everyone else was better for her. And fuck me for not caring if that was true.
I didn’t have it in me to give a shit anymore.
I wanted her and she wanted me and I’d take whatever bit of her I could claim.
I didn’t care if someone else was better for her.
If she was willing to have me, I’d fall to my knees for her once and for all.
“Kieran.”
Her name left my mouth before I could stop it, my tone dipping to one of warning and pleading all in one.
Did she truly understand what they were offering me?
I watched her lips part as her chest rose with uneven breaths. The look in her eyes damn near undid me on the spot
“Come here, Steele.”
Three simple words, yet my heart needed to hear them from her lips.
That she wanted me. That I could exist next to her and be included, even if there was someone else. That I wasn’t beneath any of the other guys in her heart.
My pulse roared in my ears as I asked, “Are you sure?”
The part of me that would have sneered and reminded her I would never share what was mine died alongside her on the battlefield.
Not long ago, I stood outside and watched her at Gabe’s door as he moaned her name within. Every breathy noise that left her lips had shredded me from the inside out. I told myself then that I didn’t care. That I was above it. That I didn’t want her that way.
I was a liar.
I remembered her face that night, the way she flinched when she realized I’d seen her, trembling but unable to walk away.
The fury that burned in my chest then had nothing to do with anger at her—it was envy.
A hollow, gnawing thing that made me want to destroy something just to stop feeling small and unworthy of her.
And now, she was looking at me like she wanted me just as badly as she wanted him that night.
I took one step into the room, and her eyes lit with something that felt like relief. Gabe turned, meeting my gaze, and for a second there was no tension—just a flicker of understanding. We’d both bled for her and nearly lost her. We both knew what she meant to us.
And maybe sharing her wasn’t losing her. Maybe it was the only way to keep her. Perhaps it would take all of us loving her as fiercely as we did to ensure she never crossed death’s doorstep again.
The crimson stain of her blood spilling out from her neck was still burned into the back of my mind, a memory that surfaced in flashes.
I hadn’t hesitated or thought twice in the moment.
The second her father touched her, I was already moving.
Before he could feel any sense of victory, I ensured his head was separating from his body, and my blade dripped with justice I didn’t regret for a second.
“I’m sure, Steele,” she mumbled before a breathy moan followed a thrust of Gabe’s hips. “I need you too.”
Warmth spread through my chest as my cock hardened with her admission.
Stars, I needed her. I needed her love. I needed her feisty attitude. I needed the sharp quips that made me fall in love with her to begin with.
Watching her life slip through Gabe’s hands pulled the breath from my lungs like I was the one bleeding out, and it crystallized one brutal truth I could no longer ignore—walking away from Kieran would never be an option.
Not when she already carved herself so deep into my chest, there was no version of the future that didn’t have her in it.
I was fucking done pretending like there was even any other choice. I tried. Stars, I tried to keep myself separate. I told myself that what she gave to the others, she’d never give to me. That I didn’t want to share. That if I couldn’t have all of her, I didn’t want anything at all.
But watching her here, alive and whole and moaning beneath Gabe’s hands, her body still shaking from the force of her last orgasm, it shattered the last of those lies I’d fed myself.
I didn’t want to walk away. Not when she was already so deeply buried in my chest that the thought of one of the men she cared for touching her didn’t bring jealousy anymore, but hunger. A hunger to be part of it.
Because I knew now—with devastating, perfect clarity—that loving her wasn’t about owning every piece of her. It was about being trusted with any piece.
My shirt peeled off my body in one slow movement, the fabric clinging to my muscles briefly as I stepped closer to the bed and tossed it to the ground.
The heavy thud of my boots hitting the floor was the only sound that joined the rhythm of their bodies moving and Kieran’s stuttered moans.
Her eyes didn’t leave mine, wide and dark with emotion so raw it hollowed something in my chest.
And fuck me, I would take it. I would take whatever she offered and still crave more, because she had become the oxygen in my lungs and the blood in my veins. I’d rather burn alive in the fire of what she gave than spend another second on the outside, untouched.
By the time I pushed my jeans over my hips and let them fall, Gabe had shifted her, his hands guiding her until she was splayed atop him, legs spread, back arched with her perfect ass lifted in invitation.
Stars help me, the way her body looked like that, glistening with a light sheen of sweat and flushed with satisfaction, undid whatever control I had left.
My hands found her hips first, palms dragging slowly across the curve of her ass.
Her body arched into my touch like she’d been waiting for it, craving it, and the heat of her skin beneath my palms made it damn near impossible to remember that I was supposed to take this slow.
But I wasn’t here to rush, not after everything we’d been through.
Not when this moment was laced with so much more than lust.
I lowered my mouth to her shoulder, my lips brushing over the curve where skin met muscle.
She smelled like sweat and sex and stars—all of it uniquely her, grounding me in a way nothing else ever had.
My breath stuttered against her skin as I kissed a trail along the slope of her shoulder, my hands still gripping her hips, thumbs brushing soft circles into her flushed skin as Gabe continued to thrust into her.
She made a soft, barely-there whimper as her head fall back against me, and it went straight to my fucking soul.
“I hope you know what you’ve done to me,” I murmured into her shoulder, letting the confession curl in the air between us. “Because you’ve ruined me, Kieran.”
My lips hovered near the nape of her neck as I pressed one more gentle kiss against her pulse point, then whispered, “You’re stuck with me forever now, Princess. Are you ready for that?”
Her whole body stilled, the kind of quiet stillness that happens when something real sinks all the way in. I felt it in the way her back rose with a shivering breath, in the way her fingers twitched against Gabe’s chest, in the tiny tremor that rolled underneath my hands.
She let out a breathy, exhausted laugh as she wiggled back closer against my chest, her body lax and warm against mine. “You say that like I haven’t been waiting for you to catch up.”
Gabe’s hand reached up to lightly clap against my forearm, drawing my attention to his. With a quiet nod that passed between us, of accepting this is where we were always meant to be–with her–the moment grounded me even further, the intimacy of it startling but not unwelcome.
This was what we were now. Not a fractured group of possessive, broken men. But hers…All of us.
Somehow there was enough space in her heart for every one of us. She really was everything I didn’t even know I needed.
She was it for me. There was no turning back now.
I watched the way she squirmed against Gabe, her hips jerking with each thrust of his cock, her moans pouring out like a melody meant for only our ears.
And still, I needed more. I needed to carve myself into this moment, into her.
I’d dreamed of this, of claiming her and knowing that when her body fell apart, it was because of me.
My hands roamed down to splay against her ass, squeezing lightly and helping jerk her body up and down on Gabe’s cock that drove into her with a slow, punishing rhythm.
I tilted my mouth toward her ear, “Kieran…” Her name burned on my tongue. “Have you ever let someone fuck your ass?”
Her body tensed lightly, a shiver racing down her spine, and a flush blossomed on her skin. Her head turned just slightly, eyes meeting mine from over her shoulder, wide and curious.
Instantly I knew the answer. No one had claimed her there.
The light embarrassment on her face only made the hunger inside me twist into something dark and possessive. My hand gripped tighter at her hip as I bent forward, my chest pressing to her back firmly.
“Tell me,” I growled, lips against the shell of her ear. “Tell me no one has touched you there.”
“No,” she whispered, almost too soft to hear, her voice breathless. “No one has.”