The laugh that comes out of me is ugly and wet and it breaks into something else halfway through, and Bane catches my face tighter and holds on until I find the end of it.
Atlas is back beside me. He works my hoodie up over my head with one hand at my nape, gentle, careful of the angles. Pulls my t-shirt off after it. I am bare to the waist, sweating, shaking. He drags the t-shirt across the mouth of the water bottle until the cotton is soaked through, water running downhis wrist, and then he wrings it out once over the empty floor and presses the cold wet bundle to the back of my neck.
It breaks something. I don't know what. Some last piece of the bracing I've been doing since I ran upstairs to be alone, since I sat down at that dinner table with my mother's hand on my arm, since I stepped into this house two days ago.
"Max." Atlas's voice beside me. Low. Final. "We've got you."
That's all. No plan, no walk-through, no list of what's about to happen. The room knows.
My body knows.
He knows.
Another wave hits and the sound that comes out of me isn't a word. It's animal—high and broken andpleasewithout the word for please—and the room moves before I finish making it.
Bane's shirt comes over his head one-handed. Tossed into the dark somewhere I don't see. He's already pulling his belt open with the other hand as he comes back down to my mouth, and at the foot of the bed Atlas's hands are at the waistband of my shorts, peeling them down my thighs in one rough drag. The slick has soaked all the way through, a bit of it dripping down my legs. The cold air on me is shock and relief at once. I kick the shorts the rest of the way off myself.
"Easy, baby." Bane's voice at my mouth. "Easy. We've got you."
I shake my head. I don't want easy. I want him inside me, I want the burning to stop, I want—
Bane kisses me.
Deep. Open. His tongue dark and warm and slow against mine, and one hand cupping the side of my jaw like a man cradling something he's afraid to drop, and the kiss is not slow because he is slow—I can feel him shaking against my mouth, Ican feel the leashed thing in him about to slip its collar—the kiss is slow because he is choosing it, choosing me, choosing the pace I need over the one his body is screaming for.
"There you go," he murmurs. Against my lips. "There you go. Listen to me. This is our time, Max. There's nowhere we have to be. We can go fast. We can go slow. We can do whatever your body needs us to do. Hear me?"
I nod against his palm. My hands are in his hair, fisted, pulling.
"Eyes up here. With me."
We lock eyes. He's so close I can see the gold in the hazel. His pupils are blown but his face is steady, focused, absolutely on me—and under it, in the tight set of his jaw, in the shake of his hand at my throat, theferalis there. The alpha that has been waiting on the other side of his discipline since the concrete cell.
Held. For me.
The held thing is what wrecks me.
I don’t deserve someone so good. So loving.
"Good," he says. "There you are. There's my boy."
Atlas drops between my legs.
His mouth is on my cock before I register it—hot, wet, taking me all the way down his throat, the slow shocking ecstasy of being sucked off fully by an alpha I have wanted to have on me like this for weeks. I cry out into Bane's mouth and Bane swallows the sound, hand at the side of my face, kissing me through it.
"There it is," Bane breathes. "There it is, baby. Let him taste you."
Atlas works my cock with the same patient command he does everything with. No rush. No theater. His hand splayed flat on my hip, holding me down when I try to fuck up into his mouth. His tongue heavy and unhurried on the underside of my length. His other hand sliding my legs wide and then under me,two fingers gathering slick from where it's running down the backs of my thighs onto the sheet, and then he's pressing them into my hole—smooth, easy, my body too soaked and hungry to resist—and I sob into Bane's mouth.
"Oh god—oh god—Bane—"
"I know. I know, baby. Tell me what you feel."
"Full—too much—not enough—"
He laughs against my mouth. Low and rough. "Yeah."
Atlas's voice from below. "His hole's so wet, Bane. He's leaking all over me. You're not going to need anything to get inside him."
