The kiss was immediate and commanding. No hesitation. No slow build. He kissed me like he’d been waiting for me to ask—like the only thing that had kept him from taking me apart the moment I opened my eyes was respect for my rest and the thin veneer of his legendary control.
His forked tongue slid against mine and I moaned into his mouth, my whole body arching toward him. The neon-green thread blazed between us—his want flooding through, urgent and possessive. He tasted like the tea he’d been drinking while he watched over me, and beneath it, something sharper. Hunger.
The crimson bond flared on my other side. Zyxel. Close enough to feel the heat pouring off both of us, close enough to hear the sounds I was making against Kaede’s mouth. I reached for him blindly, my free hand finding his chest—warm, solid, the hard planes of muscle beneath unfamiliar skin. His heart hammered under my palm.
Kaede broke the kiss. His lips were wet, his breathing barely controlled.
“Zyxel.” That voice. The one he used in combat. In strategy sessions. When directing his drones through an assassination. Cool. Precise. Completely at odds with the heat I could feel scorching through our bond. “Slow. Follow my lead. She’s carrying, so we take care with her.”
“Always.” Zyxel’s voice was rough. He’d been quiet so long I’d almost forgotten how it sounded in this form—deeper than his mental voice, resonant, with a faint rasp that vibrated through my chest. His hand tightened around mine. “Show me.”
Something about that exchange—Kaede commanding, Zyxel yielding, both of them focused entirely on me—made my pulse kick so hard I saw spots.
Kaede sat up. Reached for the base of his living suit and deactivated it, the disc collapsing in his hand. The suit peeled away and left him bare, the dim light catching the planes of his chest, the faded scars, the dangerous architecture of a body built for killing and somehow also for this—for tenderness delivered with lethal hands. He tossed it onto the side table with the same precision he brought to everything—controlled, deliberate, already mapping the next ten moves.
“Sit up,” he told me. Gentle beneath the command.
I obeyed. Zyxel helped me—his hand at the small of my back, steadying me with the specific care of a healer assessing a patient’s limits. But his touch lingered. His fingers spread wide against my spine, and the warmth of them sank into muscles I hadn’t realized were knotted.
Kaede knelt in front of me. Pressed his palm flat against the disc on my collarbone and deactivated my living suit. It slithered off my skin in a whisper of smart fabric, leaving me bare too. The cooled air of the ship kissed my overheated flesh, and I shivered—not from cold.
He dropped his gaze. Tracked the changes in my body with a focus that bordered on reverent. The slight swell of my belly. The fullness of breasts heavy with pregnancy. The pink spots that pulsed faintly along my shoulders and collarbones, responding to my arousal with a bioluminescent flush I couldn’t control.
“Stars.” Kaede breathed. His thumb traced the curve of my belly, and through the bond I felt the staggering force of whathe kept locked behind his control—love and want and a fierce, territorial pride that made my throat tight. “Look at you.”
Behind me, Zyxel’s breath caught.
I turned my head. Found those chartreuse eyes tracking the same path Kaede’s had taken—my neck, my breasts, the constellation of spots glowing pink and purple against my dark skin. His lips were parted. Fangs visible. That forked tongue flickered once, unconscious, tasting the air between us.
Two males. Almost identical in silhouette—the horns, the build, the predatory stillness—and utterly different in everything else. Kaede’s hunger was controlled. Calculated. A psyblade kept sharp through discipline. Zyxel’s was raw and wondering, the hunger of a male still learning the shape of his own desire in an unfamiliar body.
Both of them looking at me like I was the center of their universe.
I shuddered.
“Touch her.” Kaede’s order landed softly in the dark. He was watching Zyxel now, and something passed between them—not quite trust, but an agreement. A truce forged in the shared territory of my body. “Her neck. Her shoulders. Slowly. Let her feel you.”
Zyxel’s hands slid up my back. Careful. Deliberate. Those long fingers—healer’s hands, surgeon’s hands, capable of such devastating precision—mapped the ridges of my shoulder blades, the knobs of my spine, the sensitive skin where my neck met my shoulders. He pressed his mouth to the spot just below my ear, and his breath came hot and unsteady.
I tilted my head. Gave him access. His lips traced my pulse point, then the line of my jaw, and the crimson bond sang through me so brightly I gasped.
Kaede captured that gasp with his mouth. Kissed me deep and slow while Zyxel explored the landscape of my back witha thoroughness that made my toes curl. His fingers found the dip of my waist. Slid forward. Hovered at the underside of my breasts without touching—waiting for the command.
Kaede pulled back. Read the question in Zyxel’s hesitation through whatever silent communication passed between them.
“Her breasts. Cup them. Be gentle—they’re sensitive.”
Zyxel’s hands closed over me from behind, and I arched into the touch with a moan that came from somewhere primal. His palms were different from Kaede’s—slightly warmer, the texture of his skin smoother where Kaede’s had the roughness of old scars. He cupped me with exquisite care, his thumbs skating over my nipples, and the sensation shot through me like lightning.
“Yes.” The word fell out of me. “Stars, yes—”
Kaede watched. That was what undid me—the way he sat back on his heels and watched another male touch me with those sharp neon green eyes blazing. Not jealousy. Ownership. The absolute confidence of a male who knew that no matter how many hands were on my body, I was his. I would always be his.
And that confidence let him share me. Directed how I was shared, with the same tactical precision he brought to battle.
“Keep going.” Kaede’s voice was darker now. Rougher. He reached for the nightstand, pulled open the drawer without looking, and I heard the quiet click of a cap opening. “Roll her nipples. She likes it when you—”
Zyxel did it before Kaede finished the sentence. Rolled both peaks between his fingers with a pressure that rode the psyknife-edge between gentle and too much, and I cried out, my hips jerking forward.
