For a moment nobody moves, and I feel all three of them pause, the particular quality of three people who care about doing this correctly taking one last breath before they do it.
Then Santos moves first.
His mouth finds the left side of my neck and his lips press warm against the skin there, and he stays like that for a moment,just the warmth of him, just the saffron flooding close, and my omega goes entirely still the way she goes still before something large happens.
The bite, when it comes, is not what I was expecting.
I thought that I would need to brace against someone or something. What arrives instead is a pressure, deep and immediate, and the sound that comes out of me is not a scream exactly but it is not nothing either, a sharp cry that fills the room and startles all three of them.
Santos lifts his head at once.
"Stop," Matteo says, and his hand at my waist has tightened.
"Jennifer." Santos's warm brown eyes are on my face, searching it, the saffron pulling back from bright to careful. "Talk to me."
“No need,” I say, which is true and also incomplete, there is a warmth running down my neck that I understand is blood and understanding it and being comfortable with it are two different things.
"You cried out," Tomas says. His voice is level and careful and his gray eyes are on my face with the particular focused attention of someone running a rapid assessment.
"It surprised me," I say. "I wasn't expecting the pressure. I thought it would be sharper."
"We can stop," Santos says immediately. "Jennifer, we can absolutely stop. This does not have to happen today or at all if you are not certain."
"I'm certain," I say.
"You're shaking," Matteo says.
"I know," I say. "I'm still certain."
The three of them look at each other over my head, the wordless pack communication, and I can feel the weight of it, the genuine question passing between them about whether tocontinue, whether I am truly all right, whether the wanting of this is enough.
"It was the surprise of it. The depth of it. I want you to continue."
Santos looks at me for a long moment. His thumb moves across my cheekbone, gentle and slow, and his saffron in the air settles from urgent back toward warm. "Tell us if you need us to stop," he says. "At any point. For any reason. We stop."
"I know," I say.
"We mean it," Matteo says, from my left.
"I know you mean it," I say. "Continue."
Tomas reaches past me to the nightstand and comes back with a folded cloth, warm and soft, and he presses it gently against the side of my neck where Santos has already bitten, careful and unhurried, and the warmth of his hands through the cloth is steadying in a way I had not known I needed.
“Okay?” he says.
“Yes,” I confirm.
Santos holds my gaze for one more moment and I look back at him with the particular directness I use for things I mean completely, and something in his face settles, and he nods once.
Matteo goes next.
He turns my head toward him slightly with two fingers at my jaw, the deliberate careful touch that is entirely Matteo, and his mouth finds the spot just beside Santos's mark. Then, I let my body know what is coming this time, and the pressure arrives again, deep and total, and I make a sound but it is lower this time, less startled, more present, the sound of someone receiving something significant and choosing to stay open to it.
My hand finds Matteo's forearm and grips it. He lets me.
When he lifts his head his pale blue eyes are very dark and very close and entirely unhidden and he keeps his forehead against my temple for a moment.
Tomas presses the cloth gently against both marks, cleaning the skin with the quiet efficient care of a man who does everything with quiet efficient care, and I feel the slight sting of it and then the warmth of his hands and then his silver musk coming very close as he leans in.