He kissed me slowly, almost carefully, as if the word was still there between us and he did not want to bruise it.
“Vår,” he said into my mouth.
Ours.
Talons
Catalina
Iwoke with Dominic at my back, his arm tucked beneath my head, and Rhain at my front, his hand spread flat over my ribs.
I had slept for eleven hours. Eleven.
Mama would have had a fit.
For a moment, I lay still and waited for the rush that usually found me when I woke. The quick spike of adrenaline. My body checking exits before I had opened my eyes. It did not come.
My heart stayed steady. My hands rested open at my sides. The place in the center of my chest where the bond gathered was quiet, with depth under it.
Dominic breathed against my back. Rhain’s hand was warm over my ribs. Neither of them held me tightly, and somehow that made me feel held more completely. There was space around me. Space inside me. Enough room for both bonds to exist without pulling me out of myself.
I had spent most of my life treating quiet like a trap. A pause before the question. A room waiting for the wrong answer. A silence someone else would eventually use.
But this quiet did not want anything from me. It did not ask me to perform. It did not ask me to translate, defend, calculate, or survive. It allowed me to breathe.
For the first time in longer than I could remember, I did not have to go looking for my center. I was already in it.
Dominic moved first, though not by much. His arm tightened at my waist, a slow pressure that pulled me more securely against him. Histhumb brushed over my stomach, then stilled, and I felt the shift in him through the bond: awake, aware.
Rhain breathed against my collarbone. He did not open his eyes. He only pulled me closer.
“Mm,” I said into his hair.
“Mm,” he answered.
“I have to get up.”
“No.”
I laughed against him, and the sound moved through my body as much as out of it, shifting me back into Dominic’s chest and forward against Rhain’s warmth. They both stilled.
Dominic’s breath caught at the back of my neck, his arm tightening at my waist before he made himself ease the pressure. Rhain’s hand spread over my ribs, his fingers flexing like he had felt the laugh under his palm and wanted, very badly, to follow it.
The three of us lay there in the stillness, breathing around the same small spark.
Dominic’s mouth touched the back of my neck. Softly at first. Barely more than warmth. Then again, slower, his lips finding the place just below my hairline while his arm drew me back against him by an inch. His chest settled more firmly along my spine, heat all the way down my back where I felt him hard against me.
My breath hitched. The bonds lit with warmth.
Rhain’s eyes opened slowly, still heavy with sleep and already dark with wanting. His hand slid from my ribs to my jaw, his thumb brushing the corner of my mouth with drowsy, devastating focus, and the small touch sent a clean pulse of heat down my chest and lower.
“Cat,” he murmured, voice rough from sleep.
That was all he said before he tipped my face toward his and kissed me.
The kiss was warm and unhurried. His mouth opened over mine slowly, tasting rather than taking, while Dominic’s lips moved down the back of my neck in patient increments, each press of his mouth sending a shiver along my spine. One kiss. Then another. Then the edge of histeeth, barely there, just enough to make my stomach tighten and my hips shift between them.
Dominic’s hand flattened over my waist. Rhain hummed into my mouth.