Dante’s eyes went half-lidded above Orion’s hand. He looked, if anything, more aroused by being silenced than he had by the suggestion.
“DANTE that’s fucking gross, don’t lick my hand,” Orion snapped, yanking his hand back and wiping it on his pants.
Riot crouched beside them and his hand found Cass’s back—warm and steady with the touch that always saidI’m here—and the bond flared so bright between them that Cass gasped. “You okay, princess?”
“Mm.” Cass’s face was still against Orion’s neck. “We synced. My heat pulled his forward. Or his pulled mine? We’re still figuring it out.”
“You’re going to need to let go of Orion now.”
“But he’s comfortable...”
“I have more surface area to get comfortable against,” Riot chuckled.
“Orion.” Dante’s voice had gone low and rough in a way that wasn’t teasing anymore. “Time to go.”
“Fine.” Orion unwound himself from Cass with a reluctance that was either the heat or genuine affection or both. Dante reached for him as he stood, but Orion put his hand on Dante’s chest and shoved. “No. You don’t get to suggest a foursome and then get a hug. That’s not how this works.”
“I wasn’t trying to hug you. I was trying to—”
“I know what you were trying to do.” Orion pushed harder. Dante took a step back, but his hand found Orion’s wrist and stayed there; Orion didn’t pull his wrist away. The whole thing looked like two people who had been doing this exact dance for months and knew every step by heart.
“I’ll see you whenever the caveman passes out,” Orion said over his shoulder to Cass. Dante leaned close to Orion’s ear and whispered something that made Orion’s face turn bright red. He grabbed Dante’s jaw and shoved his face away. “Let’s go before I fucking kill you.”
They went, Dante walking backward for a few steps so he could keep looking at Orion’s face, Orion pushing him forward by the chest, the two of them arguing about something Cass couldn’t hear but could guess the shape of. They fought their way out of the greenhouse and into the daylight and Cass could hear Orion’s voice getting louder and Dante’s getting lower and it was the strangest, most aggressive version of love Cass had ever witnessed and somehow it worked.
Riot helped Cass up. The standing made the warmth shift lower and sharper, the heat moving fromhappeningtohappening now. His legs went loose and his vision went soft as his body decided what it wanted with a certainty that left no room for anything else.
He looked at Riot with his gold eyes and red hair and the freckles that had made Cass thinkfarmboyin an alley when he was bleeding and scared and didn’t know that the smell of strawberries was going to rearrange his entire life. At the hands that sharpened knives every morning and held Cass every night and had once broken a sink instead of breaking a person because Cass had saidpleaseandBrennanand that had been enough.
“I’ll race you home,” Cass said with a grin.
The gold blazed bright. “You have a five-second head start.”
Cass ran.
Out the greenhouse door and through the overgrown suburb, bare feet on packed dirt, the air cool on his hot skin, not even minding how the heat made everything brighter and louder. He could practically feel his own scent trailing behind him like a banner and through the bond he could feel Riot’s response, thepredator waking up, the counting that was also a leash being slowly unclipped.
He sprinted past the community garden where someone looked up and said something Cass didn’t catch, because he was running and laughing and his body was doing the thing it had learned to do: turning the scared into the wanting, turning the flight into the play, the thing that was his and Riot’s and nobody else’s.
He ran past the house with the rose bush through the bathroom floor. His overalls were too big and the straps bounced with every step, but he kept moving because he knew Riot wasn’t far behind because Riot never made it to five.
Riot caught him at their door, lifting and spinning him so fast that Cass just laughed. They crashed through the door together and the momentum carried them into the kitchen, knocking the knife-cleaning supplies off the table, and then Riot was pulling at the overall straps like he had been thinking about how to remove safety-pinned overalls all day and was discovering that safety pins were his nemesis.
“These…how did you even? There aresixsafety pins, Cass—”
“They keep falling down.”
“I’m going to ban safety pins from this house.” He got two unclipped and the strap fell as he kissed Cass’s neck. Then Riot’s fingers found the spot below his ribs, a terribly ticklish spot he loved to weaponize, and Cass yelped and twisted and laughed. His back hit the kitchen floor and it was cool against his overheated skin as Riot pinned him with his body, working on the remaining safety pins with his teeth now because his hands were busy doing other things.
“Stop! I’m ticklish, you know I’m—” Cass cackled, pushing against Riot like he could actually do something about it.
“I know.” He got another pin. Pulled the strap down. His mouth followed the scar map across Cass’s chest, each circlekissed, slowly, the way he’d touch something he was grateful for, which was a strange way to feel about scars. But Riot had told him once that the scars meant he’d survived, and surviving was beautiful, and that made Cass cry so hard it just became a thing Riot said he was going to do until they didn’t make him cry anymore.
“What are you planting next season?” Riot asked, licking a slow line down Cass’s stomach as his hands finally got the overalls past Cass’s hips.
“You’re asking me thisnow?”
“Tell me.” He squeezed Cass’s hip hard before drifting lower. Cass’s back arched and his mind tried to keep up, but Riot’s hands were having a conversation with his body that his brain wasn’t invited to.
