by Kit Rocha
The stiff length of his cock nudged the back of Mad's thigh, and Scarlet's spellbound silence broke with a moan.
Jade was so much gentler than Dylan would have been. Dylan would already have a finger in his ass—hell, maybe two. He'd make Mad groan into the bed until his cock stirred again, then fuck him hard and long.
Jade tormented. She soothed. Her oil-slicked fingertips trailed over his skin, rubbing tension from his back and legs he hadn't even realized was there. His arms weren't heavy anymore—they were boneless. His whole damn body was melting by the time she spilled more oil across his ass and worked the tip of one slender finger inside him.
Hair brushed his arm, and Scarlet's breath whispered over his cheek. "Almost," she promised. "So fucking close."
Dylan sighed, a sound full of anticipation and pleasure—then hauled Scarlet toward him. "Help me," he murmured, a teasing echo of that first night. The first time. "Put my cock in your boyfriend's ass."
His words on Dylan's tongue, and the memory hit him hard—Scarlet's fingers closing around his aching dick, the playful strokes, the impossible fucking hotness of having Jade writhe and beg as Scarlet guided him into her.
Jade was the one making him writhe now. A second finger joined the first, slick and clever, but it was the noise Dylan made that stirred arousal to life again—a hissed breath, and when Mad squeezed his eyes shut he could envision it. Scarlet, clasping Dylan's shaft, jerking and teasing in turn.
The feral, possessive satisfaction Dylan would feel as she guided him home.
"Filthy motherfucker," Scarlet said, lust and approval dripping from every syllable. "How do you stand him?"
"You should know," Mad grated. "You've got the number-one reason in your hand."
"Mmm, it's got to be more than the dick." She paused, and Dylan groaned again. "Jade?"
Jade kissed his shoulder as she slipped her fingers free, then turned to rest her cheek against his back. Watching, and Mad was so fucking jealous he started to turn.
Before he could, the wide head of Dylan's cock pressed against his asshole.
They'd fucked before. So many damn times—fast and slow, soft and rough. In Dylan's bed and in Mad's, and in plenty of other places besides. But it had always been desperate, edged with darkness and pain and all the words they never said.
And the words they had. Their twisted game, conjuring fantasy versions of Scarlet and Jade. But the real versions were here now. Scarlet gripped his hip, her fingernails digging in as she held him in place. And Jade breathed unsteadily, her hand trembling on his back. Fierce and soft, just like they'd imagined—
But so much more than they'd imagined.
Mad gritted his teeth against the burn as Dylan began to fuck into him, every movement deliberate and unyielding. Not quite teasing and not quite taking, but with the promise of both.
Not enough. Not tonight. "Don't hold back, Dylan."
Dylan answered his plea with a hitching breath—and a long, hard thrust.
Pain sung along his nerves. Twisted with lingering pleasure. Crashed into the conflicting sensation of Scarlet's nails pricking his hip and Jade's mouth feathering over his back. It was too much, and he needed an outlet.
Jade was still nestled against his side. He reached back, tried to hook an arm around her waist and pull her forward, but Dylan grabbed his wrist. "She'll come to you, love," he rasped. "But you have to ask."
Hypocritical bastard. Dylan never had to ask Jade for a damn thing. He looked at her and she obeyed, as if they'd been doing this for years. As if she already understood Dylan's wants and desires on a cellular level, when Mad had rarely been able to pierce that inscrutable wall around the other man's heart.
Jealousy was a foreign emotion, an unwelcome one. But it barely had time to spear through him before Jade banished it by sliding in front of him, flushed and sweetly pliant. "Mad doesn't have to ask tonight. He can have whatever he wants."
No, he still had to ask. Dylan was testing him, playing their twisted game. He had to own all the dirty things he wanted to do to the lush body in front of him—and this time she'd hear every word.
Not so twisted, anymore. Glorious.
"I want you on your back in front of me," he whispered, staring into her endless brown eyes. "I want your thighs spread wide. I want to see how wet you are from watching us—" Dylan drove forward again, scattering any thoughts but one. "Fuck."
Jade didn't look away as she moved. Slow, graceful, stretching out in front of him in silence. But she hesitated with her knees drawn up and together, and he knew he was the one who'd put that wariness there. Every time he'd treated her like a fragile creature, every time he'd assumed she was broken, wounded. That she should be broken, and that any desire she thought she felt was a lie.
It would take more than one night to fully earn her trust. But he would, even if it killed him. He kissed her ankle, her shin, brushed a kiss to each knee and let her see the naked relief that washed over him when Dylan rewarded him with another lazy stroke. "Scarlet doesn't know yet," he murmured against her skin. "How he feels when he's fucking you. So full it should just be pain…"
"But it's not." Jade shivered and let her knees fall apart, baring inner thighs slick with arousal and a pussy begging for his tongue. He checked the temptation to descend on her like a starving man and repaid her trust with soft, slow kisses up the inside of her leg.
It worked. Her legs spread wider, and she stretched with a languid sigh. "It isn't pain. It's perfect."
"Tease." Scarlet stretched out beside her and flashed Mad a wicked grin. "Both of you. You're awful."
"Next time," Jade said dreamily, then laughed. "Oh God, I love those words. I want to do so many beautifully filthy things to all of you. I don't even know where to start."
"Next time," Dylan echoed. It carried the weight of a vow, sworn with the same desperation Mad could feel in the strong, nimble fingers that gripped his hips.
And maybe he knew Dylan well enough, because he knew what that grip meant. Ten magical little points of pressure, a sensation so familiar his body shifted to full arousal in a heartbeat. He had seconds at most before the first real thrust.
He used them to smile at Jade before driving his tongue into her pussy.
She arched with a cry, her knees flying up to slam against his shoulders as Dylan drove into him. The pleasure melded together in his mind—soft and hard, giving and taking. He moaned against Jade and licked his way up to her clit. She was so turned on that the first touch of his tongue had her writhing.
He needed more, all of her. He lifted his head and started Dylan's name, but he already knew, he always knew. Strong fingers tangled in Mad's hair, dragging him roughly up until he was balanced on his knees, Dylan's body crushed to his back.
Jade gasped when Mad gripped her hips and hauled her down the bed. But her shock dissolved into a moan when he grasped his cock and guided it toward her. She raised her hips, begged him with her body and her shameless, desperate little moans.
Dylan pushed him forward—and into Jade.
She felt so good, his head began to swim. Hot and tight and wet and bliss, and Mad barely had the presence of mind to brace his weight on his arms to keep from crushing her as Dylan fucked into him again, driving him down toward the bed and deep into Jade's body.
"Oh—" Her voice trembled as she cupped his face, her eyes glazed and beautiful and so, so open. "You're both fucking me—"
Scarlet smothered the words with a kiss, their tongues flashing as she dragged Jade's head back, exposing the vulnerable curve of her throat.
Nothing to do but give in, to let Dylan set the pace and ignore everything but the places he could kiss and lick before pleasure took over. Jade's pulse fluttered beneath his tongue, quick and frantic like the tightening of her body around his cock every time Dylan thrust forward.
He ground forward even more because Dylan did, his cock huge and hard, perfect in ways that made Mad burn from the inside out. Then Dylan pushed his head down, u
rging him to take even more—and pressing his teeth into Jade's skin.
A silent command Mad was all too willing to obey. He bit her, set his mark in her skin, and let the guilty thrill rush through him as she moaned and clenched and came, pulsing and hot, setting off a chain reaction of lust.
Fire licked up his spine, swept through him, and consumed what was left of his reservations. Scarlet's tongue did the rest, gliding up the column of his neck, and he slammed his head back against Dylan's shoulder with a desperate demand. "Come with us."
Dylan snarled, and the carefully calculated thrusts from before turned into something else, something animal and wild. He fucked Mad faster, pounding his ass so hard and deep that the fire went on and on, endless and overwhelming. Bracing his body against the force of it was impossible, and every rough thrust drove Mad deeper into Jade.
Mad was drunk on it, hazy and unsteady, when his lover—his lover—stiffened and froze. Dylan whispered something against his shoulder, but it only registered as heat and breath until he whispered it again. "Fucking beautiful."
That was the damn truth.
Some distant part of him was aware that Jade was beneath them, that he had to move, but his thoughts and his body seemed disconnected. Dylan was the one who pulled him away, and Mad collapsed to the bed, weak-limbed and panting, with the amused thought that this must be what Jade and Scarlet felt when he and Dylan pushed them into that foggy place beyond simple pleasure.
Nothing, and everything.
Scarlet curled against his side and traced his parted lips with her fingers. "Still with us?"
He laughed and turned toward her palm. "Not even a little."
"Good," Jade said sleepily, rolling to tuck herself against his other side. "Enjoy it. Dylan will take care of us."
He would. It was one of the few things in which Mad had unshakable faith, even when Dylan didn't. Dylan needed people to take care of—not patients whose lives hung in the balance, but ones he could soothe and hold and stroke and comfort, who trusted him enough to surrender in this one small way.
And maybe, most of all, he needed people who would care about him in return. And if all three of them did it at once, Dylan would start to understand that he deserved it.
Hawk
Jade's rooftop garden was finally in bloom.
Maybe bloom was too optimistic a word, but with the world grinding toward war all around them, Hawk would take his hope where he could find it. And there was hope in watching Jade and Jeni transfer tenderly nurtured plants from the safety of the greenhouse to the raised beds Hawk had spent the last week constructing.
They were still in the first blush of spring, but the weather was warm enough for broccoli and peas and peppers. Tomatoes and onions would join them soon, and carrots and spinach. He did the math in his head by reflex as he anchored a trellis to the bed that would hold beans—but not until closer to summer. They'd be harvesting some of the early vegetables by then. Those could be replanted, would have to be replanted, because they needed everything they could can or preserve.
"You've got this now," Jade said, watching Jeni transfer a seedling from the tray to the spot they'd prepared for it in the soil. "Do you think you can finish this row while I check on the greenhouse?"
Jeni tried to hide a smile behind the back of her hand, but it showed through in her eyes. "I'll be fine, Jade. Thanks for your help."
"No, thank you." Jade touched Jeni's shoulder as she rose and graced Hawk with the brightest smile he'd ever seen on her usually tired face. "And thank you, too, Hawk. It means a lot to me that you found time for this, even with all your other duties."
He'd discovered the trick to dealing with the O'Kane women. He pretended Jade was one of his sisters and treated her to the same gruff affection he would have given any of them. "I'd be pissed if you didn't ask."
"Noted."
She picked a path between the maze of beds and disappeared into the greenhouse. Then it was just him and Jeni in the clear morning sunlight, and the devil himself couldn't have helped Hawk view her as a sister. Not that the devil would bother. Hawk had no illusions there—the devil was probably laughing at him.
All the bright sunlight didn't help, either. Hawk usually saw Jeni in shadows, in the bar or at parties, or under the blazing lights on the stage at the Broken Circle, where makeup and wigs transformed her into a mysterious, dangerous stranger.
Her hair was naturally red. Not the bright, brassy shade Trix sported, but a deep auburn streaked with rich brown and spun gold.
He'd never before been so damn obsessed with a woman's hair, but hers seemed like an intricate code. It changed as she moved through life, hidden beneath platinum-blonde wigs when she performed, done up in a riot of curls when she worked the bar.
It was straight now, drawn back in a simple, sleek ponytail. A new variation to add to his collection. Jeni at war.
She carefully placed another seedling, patting the soil down around it with her bare fingers. "I'm sorry. About the other night."
He drove the final nail into place with more force than necessary, leaving an indention in the wood where the hammer had hit too hard. "For what?"
"For making you uncomfortable." Her answer was matter-of-fact. "I didn't realize my proposition would, but it did, and that's what matters. So I'm sorry."
So it had been a proposition. He'd wondered, in the moment, even as caution had him turning it down. But afterwards, alone in his bed, trying not to imagine her there with him, he'd been sure he'd read too much into it. That being an obsessive fucker, watching her so closely that he'd catalogued her favorite hairstyles, had made him turn a friendly overture into something illicit.
And it would be illicit, because she belonged to Dallas and Lex. At least, she had.
When she glanced up at him, her eyes were gentle and a little sad. His heart beat faster. "I wasn't uncomfortable. I misunderstood."
"How?"
Hawk tightened his grip on the hammer and moved to the other side of the trellis. Calm, casual movements, as if his words were casual, too. "I heard you had a thing with O'Kane. So I didn't think you were...propositioning me."
She laughed softly, a rough exhalation that was at least as much sigh as rueful amusement. "No. No, I don't have a thing with Dallas and Lex, not anymore. That's been over for a while."
"Oh." It was all he could manage. He was scrambling to replay the last few months' worth of parties in his mind, to pinpoint when he'd last seen her with them. But he'd taken Jas's warning to heart. He'd stopped watching—at least when it was easy for people to catch him at it.
"Yeah." Jeni set the empty seedling tray aside and wiped her grimy hands on her jeans. "Can you hand me the tray of—those—" Her cheeks turned pink, and she shrugged. "I don't know what those plants are."
"Spinach." Feeling like the ground beneath him had finally stopped shifting, Hawk picked up the tray and carried it to her. "If I'd gotten the beds built sooner, Jade could have started these outside. Spinach is tough. Doesn't mind a little cold weather."
She ran one finger along the flat of a slender, curling seed leaf, then traced the rounded edge of a proper leaf that had just begun to grow in. His heart beat even faster, as if she was tracing that fingertip over his skin instead.
One of her nails was chipped, and her hands were covered in dirt. He took one and wiped it clean with the hem of his shirt. "You should wear gloves for this."
"It's just skin." She managed to make the words sound seductive—or maybe anything would sound seductive while they were touching. "It washes."
"The dirt leaves its mark." He turned his own hand over in hers, showing her the roughened skin, the calluses. The dirt under his nails. Earth and engine grease—two things he'd never been able to scrub away completely. "Your hands are soft."
Her gaze clashed with his. She stared at him like she didn't give a shit if his hands were rough or soft as long as he put them on her. And this time he wasn't imagining it—there was no room for doubts or misu
nderstanding in the bright light of day.
He should say no anyway, because Dallas still might not take kindly to Hawk trespassing on someone so recently his. Because war was coming to Sector Four. Because something worse—starvation—could be for his family back in Six. And Hawk would have to be there, fighting, one way or another.
He should say no. Instead, he rubbed his thumb down the center of her palm and molded his voice into the same sort of velvet-wrapped steel Jas used to melt Noelle's knees. "Put on the gloves, Jeni."
At first, her only reaction was a fine tremor. Then she slowly pulled her hand from his. "You're a tricky one, Hawk. I don't think you misunderstand anything." The words were still hanging in the air when she stretched past him—and picked up her discarded gloves.
"Sure I do. But only once." And he wasn't misunderstanding the satisfaction that stirred low in his gut. It was the biggest reason he should say no. The O'Kanes came together casually, easily—and temporarily. He'd tasted enough of fleeting to know it wasn't for him.
Before he took Jeni to bed, he had to learn everything he could about what she wanted and needed. Because when he took Jeni to bed, he had to be ready to convince her to stay there.
Chapter Fourteen
It felt strange to be back in Three.
Not bad, exactly, but different and familiar, all at once. In a way, it still felt like coming home for Scarlet—the blocked, often-shattered surfaces of the streets, the scent of the mud-and-grass mortar used for makeshift repairs to brick and stone, even the way people milled about without ever seeming to come out of cover.
People in Three had long, long memories.
And so did she. She'd gladly volunteered to be part of the labor force clearing some of the more structurally sound tunnels in the sector. It was something she could do, a way to be productive while nearly everyone else she knew was making big plans and even bigger decisions.