Page 39 of Roar of the Wild

Daska came to stand at my back, and I felt the warmth of him before he touched me, that great banked heat like a fire behind me, and his hands settled at my waist with the familiar patient certainty that had taught my body months ago that it was safe to want. He bent his head and put his mouth to the side of my neck,unhurried, and I felt the two years of frost that never fully left me begin to go soft at the edges, as it only ever did with him.

"Safe?" he murmured against my skin, the old question, the one that had ruined me for anyone who'd never think to ask it.

"Safe," I breathed, and leaned back into him, and let my eyes fall closed.

And in front of me, watching, was Rivik.

That was the thing I hadn't reckoned on, that being wanted by two men wasn't a doubling of the same sensation but two entirely different weathers meeting in my body at once. Daska behind me was warmth and patience, his big hands mapping me slowly, easing the ties of my outer hide loose as gently as he'd ease a splinter free, all the time in the world in every touch. And Rivik in front of me was banked fire, that alpha stillness he wore over so much heat, watching me come apart under the bear's patient hands with his own jaw tight and his amber eyes gone dark and something leashed straining behind them; he didn't touch me yet. He waited, letting Daska bring me up slow, and the watching was its own kind of touch, the focused hunger of a man who'd starved for six months and was making himself go careful now that the feast was in front of him.

"Come here," I said to him, and my voice didn't shake. "Stop being so bloody disciplined about it. I've seen how you kiss, and I haven't forgotten a moment of it."

Something broke loose in his face, that same wildness from the night of the confession, and he closed the space to kiss me while Daska's hands worked the last of my hide from my shoulders. Where Daska was slow, Rivik was deep and consuming, kissing me as he hunted, focused, relentless, wholly present, one scarred hand cradling my jaw to tilt me exactly where he wanted me. Two mouths found me at once, the bear's reverent at the curve of my throat and the wolf's devouring onmy own, and between the two of them I made a sound I didn't recognise and felt my knees give.

They caught me between them, of course they did. That was the whole thing I kept failing to trust and they kept quietly proving, that I could come apart and be caught, that letting go wasn't the same as falling.

The guilt tried once more. It surged up through the pleasure as it always had, that reflexive flinch,this is too much, you don't deserve two men's hands on you, no one gets this, it'll be taken.

And this time I watched it come, and I let it be there, and I felt anyway.

Because Daska had laid me down on the furs with the same care he'd use setting a broken bone, and knelt over me huge and unhurried, his dark eyes moving over me like I was something he still couldn't believe he'd been allowed. And Rivik had stretched out along my side, his mouth learning the line of my collarbone, his hand splayed possessive and warm across my belly, and neither of them was measuring, neither of them was keeping score of who had which part of me. They kept finding each other in it, Daska's hand covering Rivik's where it rested on me, a glance between them over my body that had no rivalry in it at all, only a shared and steadying wonder, as though I were the fire they were both warming their hands at and glad, each of them, that the other was warm too.

"You've gone quiet," Daska said, pausing, his palm flat and still against my hip until I answered. It was always the checking with him, always making certain the quiet was the good kind. "Where did you go?"

"The old voice," I admitted, because I'd learned with these two that the truth cost less than the hiding. "Telling me I don't deserve this."

Rivik lifted his head from my collarbone; "And are you still listening to it?"

"And I'm not listening to it." I reached for him with one hand and for Daska with the other, and felt the enormity of it, a man in each hand and my heartstretchingwhere I'd braced for it to tear, growing to fit them both. "I'm choosing not to. You told me love multiplies. I want to find out if you're right."

"Then let us show you," Daska murmured, and lowered his mouth to me.

He settled between my thighs with all his old patience and put his mouth on my pussy. I cried out and reached blindly for Rivik, who caught my hand and pressed it to his chest so I could feel his heart going hard and fast under my palm. Daska licked into me slow, his tongue finding my clit, reading every helpless sound and following it, and Rivik held me through it, his mouth at my ear murmuring rough wolf-words and my name, his free hand cupping my breast, rolling my nipple between his fingers until I arched up off the furs.

"That's it," Rivik said against my ear, low and dark. "Let the bear take care of you. I've got the rest of you. You're not going anywhere, and neither of us is either."

I came on Daska's mouth with both of them holding me, shaking apart, and before I'd finished he'd gentled me down and kissed his way up my body, and Rivik was already turning my face to his to kiss me deep. I could taste myself on the bear's beard and the wolf's tongue at once and it undid something in me completely.

"More," I heard myself say, greedy and unashamed for the first time in two years. "Rivik, I want you. Please."

His control slipped its leash at that word. He rose over me while Daska stretched out along my side and gathered me back against his chest, one great warm hand splayed over my racing heart, his low voice in my ear telling me I was safe, I was loved, that I could feel all of this and it wouldn't break me. Rivik notched himself against me and pushed in on one long deepstroke, and the sound he made was half a growl, six months of held-back hunger finally breaking loose.

"God, Ellie..." His forehead dropped to mine, his hips already moving, deep and hard and losing their rhythm as the discipline he wore over everything finally gave out. "I've wanted this since the road. Since before I let myself know I wanted it. You feel—"

"I know." I wrapped my legs around him and pulled him deeper, one hand fisted in Daska's forearm where it crossed my chest, anchored between the two of them. "I've got you. Both of you. Don't hold back, Rivik, not tonight..."

He gave up the last of his control at that. He fucked me like a man who'd stopped being able to be careful, deep and desperate, and Daska held me steady through all of it, his mouth at my throat, his hand sliding down to find my clit and rub tight circles in time with the wolf's driving hips until I was sobbing between them. Two men, one at my front and one at my back, neither measuring, neither keeping score, they kept finding each other in it, Daska's hand covering Rivik's where it gripped my hip, a glance passing between them over my body with no rivalry in it at all, only a shared and steadying wonder, as though I were the fire they were both warming their hands at and glad, each of them, that the other was warm too.

I came apart a second time with Rivik buried deep and Daska's fingers on my clit and both their names broken in my mouth, clenching hard around the wolf until he lost the last of himself and spilled hot inside me with his face buried in my hair, shaking. And Daska held the both of us through it, murmuring low that he had us, that we were safe, that this was allowed.

What came after was slow, and tended, and wholly mine, Daska taking his turn while Rivik held me and murmured filth and tenderness into my ear in equal measure, the two weathers trading places over and over through that long firelit night until I lost count of which hands were whose and stopped needing to. Inever once, though, lost track ofwhothey were, the patience and the fire, the bear and the wolf, each so wholly himself that even blind and boneless between them I always knew which of them was reaching for me.

And between the two of them the thing I'd been certain I'd lost forever at the Savoy came flooding back into me, the very opposite of the careful grey numbness I'd called peace for two years. I felt everything, so much of it that the tears came again, and this time they had nothing of grief in them.

For the length of that firelit night, held between two men who'd each proven they'd sooner suffer than cage me, I felt allowed to be loved this much. Perhaps that was healing, not the wound closing over, but discovering it had been lying to me all along.

* * *

Later, I lay quietly, watching the sparks from the fire burned low to embers, and I was warmer and more thoroughly held than I'd been in my entire life. Daska at my back, his heavy arm over both of us, his breath already gone slow and even. Rivik curled at my front, one hand still laced through mine as though he'd forgotten how to let go, his amber eyes half-closed and soft in a way the daylight never let them be.