Page 13 of Dose

Mira is on the floor cushions with Raphael, her dark hair a ruin. She twists to look at me.

“About time. Your terrifying brother has been taking me apart for an hour and won’t let me finish.”

“Won’t,” Raphael agrees pleasantly. He’s kneeling between her thighs, two fingers moving inside her with infuriating patience. “She begs beautifully, though. Listen.”

“I will end you,” Mira breathes.

“You’ll thank me.” He glances up at me. “Front or back?”

“You’ve already established position,” I say. “I’ll take what’s available.”

“God, even naked he talks like a lab report,” Calla says from somewhere in the cushion pile, and Ezra, of all people, laughs. He’s sprawled with her draped across him, her fingers tracing the biomechanical ink up his neck, his own hand moving between her thighs with a metronome steadiness that has her twitching.

“He’s not naked yet,” Ezra points out. “Eleven seconds. He folds his shirt.”

I fold my shirt. The room jeers. I set it on the arm of the couch with dignity and take my time about the rest, because giving them the satisfaction of hurrying would set a bad precedent.

Mira reaches back for me the moment I kneel behind her. “Come here, come here. If he edges me one more time, I’m going to bite through his femoral artery.”

“You’d miss,” Raphael says fondly. “It’s deeper than people think.”

“Tell me what you want,” I say against her ear, because I always ask, because the asking matters more to me than anything that follows it. Choice was the first thing they took from all of us. It’s the first thing we give.

“You. Behind me. Hard. While your sadist brother keeps doing exactly what he’s doing until I lose my mind.” She shudders. “That specific enough for you, Doctor?”

“Adequately parameterized.” I push into her in one slow stroke, and her groan hits the ceiling.

She’s hot and tight and already shaking from an hour of Raphael’s patience. Raphael and I know each other’s timing. After fifteen years of fighting and bleeding together—and this—we rarely need to speak. He works her clit while I drive into her from behind. Her arms give way, and Raphael holds her up between us.

“There she is,” Raphael murmurs, watching her face the way he watches everything. “Stay with us.”

“Fuck—fuck, harder, Theon, please⁠—”

I give her harder. Across the room, Darius groans as Damon shifts him, turns him, bends him over the couch arm with that terrifying gentleness of his, one big hand splayed across the back of Darius’s neck.

“Color,” Damon says quietly.

“Green, green. If you check in one more time instead of fucking me, I’m going to manipulate you into buying a boat⁠—”

Damon fucks him. Darius loses the rest in a shout.

“Twelve percent,” Ezra says, apropos of nothing, his voice fraying at the edges as Calla sinks down onto him.

“Twelve percent what?” Marcus calls from the wall, where Aiden has gone loose-limbed and glassy.

“Probability Korte relocates the stockpile before we breach. Down from nineteen. Her new specialist arrived, which means she’s committed to hardening in place rather than—” Calla rolls her hips, and he stops talking. “Rather than moving. Give me a second.”

“He’s running Ashford models,” Jenna says, delighted, riding Nikolai faster now. “While balls-deep. I love this family.”

“Someone has to.” Ezra’s hands find Calla’s waist. “Nikolai asked.”

“I asked six hours ago,” Nikolai says through clenched teeth. He hauls Jenna down harder and swallows her cry with his mouth. “Report later. All of you. Stop working.”

“Rich,” Raphael says, “from the man who once took a call mid-orgasm.”

“It was important.”

“It was hilarious.”