"Okay, Maxie."
"Okay."
She comes around the post and kisses the top of my head—just the top—and my chest tightens around something that lives between grateful and guilty, and I think it's going to live there with her for a while now. Maybe always. Maybe that's the cost of having to be both her son and the thing I am.
And lying to her about all this.
"Drink the orange juice. All of it." She smiles soft. "I love you, sweetheart."
"Love you, Mom."
The door clicks shut behind her. I hear her footsteps down the stairs, Richard's voice low in the front hall, the keys lifted from the bowl, the screen door opening and falling closed. The car starts in the drive. The car pulls away.
The house goes still.
I sit up slow. Drag the sheet off. Drain the orange juice in one long pull. Stand—too fast, regret it, sit back down, stand again—and limp across the room to the dresser. I pull on a robe and grab what I need. Boxers. Sweats. A long-sleeved shirt soft enough not to scrape the bite. I bundle the lot under my arm and head for the door.
The hallway is bright with morning. Empty. Quiet enough that the bond hum under my collarbone sounds louder, all three threads. Bane's the loudest. He's awake somewhere too, maybe even watching the same hallway from the other side, knowing I just talked to her.
I cross to the bathroom. Lock the door behind me out of habit.
I twist the shower handle and the water hisses out. Steam climbs the mirror in seconds. I drop the bundle on the closed toilet, peel off my robe and step under the spray.
It's almost too hot. I leave it.
The burn is nice.
Hot water on my scalp. Down my spine. Into the deep ache between my legs. Across the bruises at my hipbones. Over the bite at my shoulder. The bite thrums under the spray, and I have to brace one hand against the tile and just breathe.
Oh.
It comes back in pieces, the way a body remembers things the mind hasn't filed yet. Bane's hands on my hips, hard enough to bruise. The slow shocking depth of Atlas's cock easing past my tongue, the warm salt of him, the way he hold my face steady.There he is. There's my good boy. The wet slap of Bane behind me. The way he buried his cock in me in one stroke because I was so wet I couldn't have stopped him if I tried. The brothers talking about me over my head.He's been like that all night. You should've seen him when I had my fingers in him.Atlas's hand fisted in my hair, holding me down on his cock while Bane's knot finally locked inside me and Bane's teeth broke the skin and Atlas came down my throat and—
I shiver and hear the small sound I make under the water, but I can't stop it.
I'm hard.
I'm hard and my hand is on myself before I've decided to put it there, fingers wrapping around my cock under the spray, slow, testing. My thumb finds the slit and I shudder. The bond at my throat thrums right there under the water, a sweet electric pulse I can almost taste. I press the mark with my other hand and the heat coils tight under my navel and—
Christ.
I should stop. I should rinse off and get dressed and go eat some breakfast. I should be a normal twenty-year-old who goes down to the beach on vacation and doesn't get hard remembering his stepbrothers fucking him at both ends in the middle of the night.
I don't stop.
I close my eyes. Tip my head back into the spray. Slide my fist slow down my length and let myself remember—Bane's mouth at my throat just before he bit—
The bathroom door clicks open.
My eyes fly open. My hand stops.
"Mom?" I call—too loud, too fast. "I'm in the shower, did you forget—"
I push the curtain back two inches and lean my head out, expecting her, expecting an orange juice glass she meant to take down with her, expecting—
It isn't her.
Zero is leaning against the door.
