"...still?"
"Smells like him."
"Like—"
"Atlas. Yeah. As if he’s still freshly fucked."
The bond goes molten.
Both of them—Bane against my front, Zero against my back—go absolutely still for one beat. Then Zero exhales hot against the back of my neck, and the sound that comes out of his throat is a low pleased rumble I have, before, only heard from him directly after sex.
"Oh, baby," he says. Soft. Wrecked. "Did our brother do you good?"
I cannot speak.
Zero inhales again. "It’s like he hasn't washed him off at all. I can—Mmm. Max."
"You—"
"You sore, baby?"
My face is in flames.
I don’t answer. How fucking can I?
Bane, very gently, lifts my chin with one knuckle. Tips my face up to his. Looks at me with the small private smile he wears when he has decided to be tender.
"...are you, Maxie?"
The bond between the three of us is so wide I can’t tell where my body ends and theirs begin. My cock twitches and aches in my athletic shorts. I know Bane can feel it.
"...yes."
Zero laughs.
Soft, almost surprised. His forehead falls forward against the back of my neck. His hand slides up under my t-shirt and rests, warm and possessive, against my belly.
"That's a good boy. Hmm. That's a—"
The back door slides open.
We don’t move. We freeze in a precise three-body knot in the shade of the limestone, Bane's hand at my jaw, Zero's hands on my belly, and footsteps on the back porch.
Margot's voice, slightly raised: "Boys? Where'd you go?"
Bane—who has, I now understand, lived an entire adult lifetime perfecting the art of looking innocent—steps back with the ease of a man straightening a tie.
"Out here, Margot. Showing Max where the ivy needs cutting back."
My eyes go wide. My cock is heavier, thicker, harder than it’s ever been and he’s leading my mother right to us? “Bane–” I grit.
"Oh good. I want to talk to you boys about lunch."
She appears around the corner of the house before I can take a breath.
Sun hat. Phone in one hand. Her face still slightly soft from whatever Liz just said on the call.
Zero is, somehow, already two feet away from me, crouched, examining what appears to be a thoroughlyuninteresting patch of ivy with intense concentration like he’s studying for a final.
