The celebration is about to begin.
29
LUCIA
The door clicks shut and the party disappears.
Not all at once. In layers. The bass goes first. Then the voices. Then the clinking glass and the laughter and the rumble of thirty men celebrating in a building that was built to contain exactly this kind of noise. What remains is the hum of the clubhouse ventilation and the quiet breathing of four people standing in a room that belongs to no one and, tonight, belongs to us.
The private quarters are simple. A bed. A lamp. A chair in the corner. The cut is draped over the chair where I put it thirty seconds ago, my name stitched into leather, catching the low light.
I do not look at the patch.
I look at them.
Nick is closest to the door. He closed it behind us and now he is leaning against it with his arms at his sides and his dark eyes on me. He is not moving. He is not commanding. He is waiting. Patient. He has learned, over the course of a war and a mountainand a night that changed everything, that I move first. That I choose.
Rafe is by the window. He checked it when he entered. One sweep. Clear. Old habit. The golden eyes are not tactical now. They are warm. Warm is not a word I would have used for Rafe a month ago. A month ago his eyes were vigilant. Calculating. The eyes of a predator assessing the field. Tonight they are the eyes of a man who is exactly where he wants to be and has no intention of being anywhere else.
Jude is in the chair. The corner. His default position. Elbows on his knees, hands hanging loose. The surgeon at rest. Except that cataloguing stillness in his eyes has not powered down. They are on me. Tracking. Cataloguing. Taking the inventory he always takes of the things he plans to keep.
Three men. One room. No perimeter to walk. No comms to monitor. No lullaby cycling through a closed door. No sleeping child to stay quiet for.
For the second time since we started this, there is nothing between us and us.
I pull my shirt over my head.
No ceremony. No buildup. I reach for the hem and I lift and the fabric clears my head and I drop it on the floor and I am standing in front of three men in a bra and jeans and bare feet and the air on my skin is cool and the three sets of eyes on my body are not.
This is not discovery. We did that on the mountain. We did that in the cabin with the fire low and the wool blanket scratching my back and the wonder of it, the is-this-real-ness of three men touching me at once. That was the first time. That was the proof.
This is the second time. The settled time. The time after the war and the vote and the patch and the knowledge that we are not experimenting. We are not testing. We are fluent. We know the language of each other’s bodies and tonight we are not learning vocabulary. We are speaking in complete sentences.
Nick pushes off the door.
He crosses to me the way he crosses to everything. Direct. Two strides. His hands find my face and he tilts my chin up and his mouth covers mine and the kiss is different from the mountain. On the mountain he kissed me like ownership. Like a man proving to himself and two other men that his claim was real. Tonight he kisses me like the claim is settled and what remains is the keeping. Slow. His tongue traces my lower lip before he opens my mouth with his. His thumbs press into the hinge of my jaw. Holding me at the angle he wants. Not forceful. Certain. A man who knows this face, this mouth, this woman, and does not need to grip hard because she is not going anywhere.
Rafe moves from the window. He does not interrupt Nick’s kiss. He approaches from behind the way he always does. His hands find my hips. The calluses drag across my bare skin above my jeans and the sensation travels up my spine in a slow wave. His mouth lands on the back of my neck. The top vertebra. Then lower. Each press of his lips a word in the language he speaks. Reverent. Unhurried. The man who has never once rushed a perimeter is not going to rush this.
His fingers find the clasp of my bra. He unclasps it with one hand. The practice shows. The fabric loosens and Nick’s hands leave my face long enough to slide the straps off my shoulders and the bra falls between us and his palms cover my tits and the warmth of his hands against my skin makes my nipples harden and the sound I make into his mouth is involuntary.
Jude stands from the chair.
He moves to me. Not behind. Not in front. To my side. His scarred hand comes to my waist. His thumb traces the curve of my rib cage. He does not rush. He does not compete. He occupies the space between Nick’s claiming and Rafe’s worship. Quiet authority. Studied precision. He knows which nerve fires at which pressure because he has mapped this body the way he mapped operating tables for a decade.
Three men. Hands on me. Three distinct registers of touch converging on the same skin.
Nick’s: firm. Directional. His palms know where they are going and they take the most efficient route. His fingers close around my nipple and roll and the pressure is exactly calibrated to the threshold between pleasure and ache and he knows the threshold because he memorized it on the mountain.
Rafe’s: broad. Thorough. His hands map my lower back, my hips, the sensitive skin above my waistline where the nerve endings cluster. He does not grab. He covers. His palms are so large that they span the full width of my waist and the comprehensiveness of his touch is its own specific devastation.
Jude’s: precise. Targeted. His thumb finds the pulse point on the inside of my wrist. His fingers walk up my forearm. He traces the line of my collarbone with one fingertip and the lightness of the touch against the weight of the other two men’s hands is a contrast that makes my breath stutter.
I reach back with one hand and grip Rafe’s belt. Pull. He presses closer. The hard ridge of his cock against my ass through denim. I reach forward with the other hand and grip Nick’s shirt. Pull. He presses closer. His erection against my hip. I turn my headtoward Jude and his mouth meets mine and the kiss is not a claim. It is a conversation. His tongue asks. Mine answers. His scarred hand cradles the back of my skull like he is holding a specimen he cannot afford to damage.
I break the kiss.
“Bed,” I say. Not asking. Telling.