Page 103 of What We Become

“Good?” he asks.

“Good.” I catch his face before he can retreat into caretaking and kiss him properly. I can taste myself on his mouth, and underneath it, him. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For giving me what I asked for. For trusting me to know my limits.”

His eyes go soft in the way that still makes my chest ache. Then Eli’s hand slides up my spine, and he peels another wax petal from my collarbone—slow, deliberate, every edge lifting free.

“We’ve made a mess,” he says, holding the crimson wax between his fingers.

“You love the mess,” I say.

“I love you.” He says it like it comes easy for him now, and I’m glad it does, because we’ve conquered a lot to get here.

Micah leaves the room for a moment, and Eli’s eyes move over my body, taking in the marks, the rope burn, the wreckage he helped make. When Micah returns, he has a blanket and hands Eli a washcloth.

“Lie still,” Eli says. “I’m going to clean you up.”

He works the washcloth over my chest while Micah wraps the blanket around my shoulders. The wax comes away piece by piece.

“I could stay in this room all day,” I say, sighing happily.

“That could be arranged,” Eli murmurs, and when he drags the washcloth over my collarbone, I shudder. He presses his mouth to the hollow of my throat, and suddenly I’m reaching for them again, one hand sliding into the back of Micah’s hair while the other drags Eli toward my mouth.

Our lips have barely brushed when the security chime sounds downstairs.

Then voices.

Eli’s head snaps up. Micah freezes, eyes hard, every trace of softness replaced by alert.

“Is someone here?” I ask as all three of us go silent, listening to what’s happening below.

Those aren’t the voices of the other men—theirs I’d recognize through walls, through floors, through anything. This is different. A voice I know, but that doesn’t belong in this cabin, in these mountains, in this carefully sealed world we’ve built.

Odin.

“Shit,” Micah says.

“Shit,” I agree.

Eli is already moving, untangling from both of us, reaching for his jeans on the floor.

Micah pulls on sweatpants. I grab the first thing I can find—Eli’s hoodie, because his hoodies have become my unofficial uniform—and yank it over my head. It falls to mid-thigh and smells like cedar and laundry detergent.

We look at each other. Hair wrecked. Faces flushed. Micah has a hickey blooming on his collarbone that I vividly remember giving him.

“We look like we just had sex,” I say.

“We did just have sex,” Micah points out.

“We look like it, though.”

“Sage.” Eli cups my face, kisses me once, brief and firm. “Nobody in this house thinks we were up here talking. Now, come on.”

We head downstairs.

The living room is full. Knox is standing by the fireplace, arms folded, face giving away nothing. Across the room, Milo scratches at one of the last stubborn patches on his forearm until Holden catches his wrist and lowers his hand, but the second Holden turns away, Milo starts again.