“You shouldn’t have to tolerate—”
“I crave you, not tolerate.” The confession spilled out unplanned. “Your hunger doesn’t scare me. It…” I swallowed, heat flooding my cheeks. “It makes me feel precious. Wanted.”
“Oh, you’re wanted, all right. Zane’s been leaking on the sheets for the last five minutes.”
“Screw you, Cas! I’m emotionally invested in the moment!”
The tension shattered like dropped crystal. Koa’s shoulders relaxed a fraction as I pressed our foreheads together, our breaths mingling, but his arms locked around me like living chains.
“Never again,” he rasped into my hair.
“Oh, you’ll absolutely again,” Zane taunted. “Once she’s done doe-eyeing your guilt complex into submission.”
I pinched his ankle without looking, earning a yelp.
“You’re certain you’re—”
“Alive? Thrilled? Planning to do that again?” I tilted my head to nip his chin. “Yes, yes, and yes.”
“You’re sure?”
“You think I don’t know my own monsters, Koko? The only thing about you, about any of you, that terrifies me is the day you stop wanting me.”
“Never,” he rasped, a shudder wracking through him. “Neverthat.”
“Ugh, emotional growth. My one weakness.” Zane fake-sobbed into his fist. “She broke you, Ko!”
“Broke me?” Koa laid an open-mouth kiss on the side of my throat, the barest pressure of fangs making me gasp. “She’s remade me.”
“Blech! Someone pass the barf bag.”
Zane’s dramatic retching noises dissolved into laughter when Casimir shoulder-checked him off the bed, and for one crystalline moment, the world narrowed to Koa’s heartbeat syncing with mine.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “If I ever—”
“You won’t,” I assured him. “But if you do? I’ll bite you. Hard.”
A startled laugh rumbled through him. With a whoop, Zane vaulted back onto the bed and tackled us both into the nest of rumpled sheets.
“Group hug! Cas, you’re on spoon duty!”
“We’re going to smother her,” Cas sighed, but folded himself around us, his nose buried in my hair.
“Already dead,” I wheezed, squished amid hundreds of pounds of husbands. “R.I.P. Serafina Rose Cimmerian. Killed by excessive cuddling.”
“Well, you better rise from the dead real quick, starfire, because it’s our turn.” Zane’s eyes gleamed with a promise that made my pulse quicken. “And I’ve got a few ideas about exploration myself.”
“What?” I sat up on my knees as best I could in the tangle of bodies and stared down at three pairs of hungry eyes. Even Koa’s had changed from upset to smoldering in the space of a heartbeat.
“Fair’s fair, I believe you said.” Casimir’s fingers were already peeling Steve’s hem up. “Now it’s our turn to show our beloved how much we appreciate her and her curiosity.”
In no time, my clothes were gone, six hands stripping them away, and Casimir’s thumb circled my navel in lazy patterns, his broad palm flat over the quivering plane of my stomach. Koa’s index finger brushed the sensitive crease where my thigh met my hip, and I shivered, my body already humming with anticipation after exploring theirs.
“Would you like me to use my mouth or tongue on you?” Koa leaned closer, his lips nearly brushing my ear.
“What?No!” Zane howled before I could answer. “She didn’t put her mouth onmeat all, so I should get to put my mouth on her first!”
“Poor Zoodle!” A giggle escaped me even as I rolled my eyes at his ridiculous logic. “Is there a rulebook for this that I don’t know about?”
