It doesn’t stop them from looking worried.
Arc picks me up. “Let’s get you to bed.”
“Yes please.”
“Not like that.”
I pout and he knows just how much I don’t like it. It’s a low blow, but I say, “I thought you’d do anything to make me happy.”
Arc is theonlyone who comes into the room with me, and I don’t let go of him when he stops beside the bed.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I tell him, even though he already knows. “And I have it on good authority that women have bonded to multiple men at once.”
“The three of us won’t fit inside you at once, Chrys.”
Not yet.
He closes his eyes and shivers.
I kiss him until he opens them again, and then I tell him, “We will find a way.”
“What if there isn’t one?”
If there isn’t?—
“Do you not want this to work?” I ask, quietly.
I think I know the answer, but if I’m wrong, it’s going to break my heart.
“No.” A flash of pain crosses his face. “I want you here more than I’ve ever wanted anything before.”
“Then why are you fighting me?”
“Because the saints have never given me anything I’ve wanted in my entire life. Because if we try and you bond to them, but not to me, I think it might kill me. Because I love you and I don’t know what to do about it.”
He loves me.
I take his face in my hands and pull him down so that I can kiss him again before I whisper, “We are not going to do anything until Risk is sure it will work and Shock has seen that it does. The four of us are endgame. If the saints don’t like it, they can come down here and fight me.”
He laughs, and I look at the others, standing in the doorway now, watching, waiting for the opportunity to join us.
I hold out my hand and they come to us.
“If we weren’t meant to be, I would have fallen from the sky in some other sector, or in the middle of the city, or I mighthave made it all the way to Calisan, who knows.” I let Arc lay me down. “But I didn’t. I’m here, exactly where I’m supposed to be. Now, who’s going to get my pants off so we can give me a better reason to pass out?”
“Not today,” Risk crawls into bed beside me. “We’ll take off those pants if you want to put on pajamas, butwearen’t going to fuck you right now.”
I pout, even though it’s clear I’m not going to change their minds.
“Fine. Bring me comfy clothes and cuddle me to sleep if that’s all I can have.”
I don’t argue, because theyloveme. Arc might be the only one who’s said it, but I see it in the way they look at me. I feel it in the way they move around me, in the way they care for me.
I don’t argue, because I love them too.
There’s no other explanation for this feeling, no other way to describe this happiness, this overwhelming desire to be with them always.
I don’tneedthe sex.
