I look at him. "I would have frozen too. If it had been any of you."
"That's not the point." His jaw works for a moment. "When that spike hit you, there was nothing steady about what I felt." His hand finds my knee, squeezing once. "Don't do that to me again."
"I'll try not to get impaled in the future."
He huffs something close to a laugh and leans his shoulder against mine. Jade reappears with the water a moment later, and Rumi doesn't move away. The three of us sit together until Ambrose calls us to keep moving, and when we stand, Rumi pulls me to my feet himself, his hand lingering on my arm.
By evening, we've found a sheltered cave that Ambrose deems defensible. The others set up camp while I sit against the wall, hating every second of being useless. Jade settles beside me, his demon form mostly receded except for the tail around my ankle.
"Stop brooding," he says. "I can taste it."
I turn to look at him. "I need you."
Hesitation flickers across his face. "You're still healing—"
"You saved my life. Now remind me I'm alive." I reach for him, my hand finding his jaw. "Please."
He shifts until he's hovering over me and kisses me, gentle and questioning. I try to deepen it, to pull him closer, but he resists. "Let me love you soft for once," he murmurs against my lips.
I want to argue. But he's scared, and he needs this as much as I do. So I surrender to it. His mouth traces down my jaw, my neck, my collarbone. When he reaches the healed wound on my side, he pauses. "Does it hurt?"
"A little. Don't stop."
He presses his lips to the new skin and I shiver beneath him. His tongue traces the edge of the scar tissue, tender nerves unsure how to interpret the contact. "You're beautiful," he whispers against my skin. "Even scarred. Especially scarred." My throat tightens, and I pull him back up and kiss him instead.
A sound from the entrance makes us both look up. Rumi is standing there, one hand braced against the stone, his golden eyes unusually dark. He looks like he's been standing there for a while, unable to make himself leave.
"I felt it through the bond," he muses, his voice lower than usual. "Both of you. I tried to ignore it."
Jade's tail flicks against my ankle. He looks at me, a question in his eyes, and the answer rises in my chest before I even think about it. I hold my hand out toward Rumi.
He crosses the alcove in three strides. His mouth finds mine first, the kiss deeper than I expected, carrying the weight of what he told me earlier about freezing when I went down. His hand cups the back of my head, angling me up toward him as Jade's breath hitches against my neck as he watches.
"I need to feel you alive, too," Rumi says against my lips.
Jade answers by pulling Rumi's mouth to his. The two of them kiss over me, Rumi's golden essence threading through Jade's hunger, and the combination floods through the bond hardenough to make my hips roll. Rumi groans into Jade's mouth, one hand tangled in Jade's hair while the other slides beneath my shirt, fingers tracing the scar on my side.
We undress in pieces, hands pulling at fabric between kisses, nobody willing to stop touching long enough to be efficient about it. Jade gets my shirt off while Rumi's mouth is on my neck. Rumi sheds his own clothes while Jade works my pants down. By the time we're skin to skin, the three of us are tangled so thoroughly I can't always tell whose hands are where.
Jade's mouth closes around my cock, and the sound I make echoes off the cave walls. Rumi swallows it with a kiss, his tongue sliding against mine while Jade works me with the hunger he's been holding back all day. His tail wraps around Rumi's thigh, pulling him closer until Rumi's cock presses against my hip.
I reach for him, wrapping my fingers around his length, and Rumi's hips stutter forward into my grip. His wings spread wide above us, gold and black feathers blocking out everything except the three of us. Jade pulls off me long enough to run his tongue along the underside of Rumi's cock where it sits against my palm, and Rumi makes a sound so wrecked it goes straight to my core.
"Fuck," Rumi breathes. "Do that again."
Jade does, his tongue tracing along Rumi's shaft while I hold him steady, then takes the head into his mouth while my hand strokes the base. Rumi's fingers dig into my shoulder, his whole body shaking.
"I want you inside me," I tell Jade, and his purple eyes snap up to mine. "And I want Rumi to feel every second of it through the bond."
Jade's fingers work me open until I'm gasping, clutching at Rumi's arm. Rumi watches, his hand stroking himself, his wings trembling. When Jade pushes inside, the stretch sends pleasurerippling through the bond in both directions. Rumi's head falls back, his hand tightening on his cock, feeling every inch as if Jade were inside him too.
"Goddess," Rumi manages. "I can feel all of it."
Jade starts to move, building a rhythm that has me arching off the cave floor. Rumi shifts closer until his cock brushes my lips, and I open for him without hesitation, taking him into my mouth as Jade fills me from below. Their pleasure echoes through the bond and tangles with mine until we're a closed circuit feeding back on itself.
Rumi's hand slides into my hair, guiding my pace, his hips rocking forward in shallow thrusts that match Jade's rhythm. His other hand reaches back to grip Jade's hip, pulling him deeper into me, and all three of us groan at once.
Jade leans forward, pressing his chest against my back, his teeth grazing my shoulder as his pace quickens. His tail wraps around Rumi's wrist, linking all three of us in a physical loop that mirrors the bond. I can feel both of them getting close, Jade's hunger sharpening and Rumi's energy pulsing erratically.
