She catches her breath, then slides beside me, reaching for the bottle of lube on the nightstand.
“Your turn,” she says, eyes dark with promise.
She drops to her knees beside the bed, urging me to the edge. I assume she’s going to suck me off, which I have no objection to, though I also know she hates the taste of lube and latex so always preferred to do oral when condoms weren’t involved.
The condom comes off with a flick of her wrist, but what she does next is the most intriguing thing ever. She squeezes lube between her full breasts, then wraps them around my cock.
“Oh fuck, Nina…” The first slick glide is exquisite—warm pressure surrounding me as she moves up and down on her knees, working me between those beautiful mounds. On the downstroke she wraps her lips around my tip and sucks. The sight of her looking up at me, dark curls falling around her face as she watches my reaction with each stroke, is almost too much.
When I finally come, it’s with her name on my lips, my hands tangled in her hair, my mind filled with the knowledge that she’ll tell Chris every detail later.
Afterward, we lie tangled together, sweat cooling on our skin, her breasts still coated in my semen. I’m in no rush to move or speak, but silently marvel at the difference in her compared to the Nina I dated all those months ago.
“You were right,” she says finally, tracing patterns on my chest.
“About what?”
“About how different this feels. The three of us.” She props herself up to look at me. “It shouldn’t work, but it does. Or it will, I hope.”
She turns to face the ceiling, but I catch the emotion that flashes across her face. “I was twenty-two when it finally happened between me and Chris. He was my best friend’s older brother—always there for me, yet still untouchable. Then for the first time he finally saw me as me, not an extension of his younger sister. We had one night, after years of me pining for him, and then he was gone.”
“But some things don’t change,” I say gently.
Morning light illuminates the room, gilding everything in it—especially Nina. Her dark curls are a wild halo around her head. We should get up, get moving. But neither of us moves to leave the bed.
“But they did. I mean, losing him changed me. I don’t think there’s any going back from what it did to me. Finding you made me want to be better. I felt like I needed to put on this persona of having my shit together. I almost had you believing it.”
I raise an eyebrow. “You do have your shit together, Nina.”
She chuckles. “Only because you were the one who packed it. That’s not who I am and you know it. As much as I wanted to open up to you completely, we didn’t have time. Who I was with you was a façade. Please don’t tell me you believed it.”
I’m careful to choose my words because I don’t think she’s seeing the full picture. “I always believed there was more to you than you let me see. And maybe I should feel jealous that you couldn’t be honest with me before he came back. But you know as well as I do that sometimes true healing means reopening an old wound. I’m just … I don’t know the right word, because happy doesn’t cut it—Honored? Privileged?—That you’d let me be part of the process. Or that he would.”
“But it’s more than just a process,” she says quietly, her gaze earnest. “You say that as if once I’m healed I won’t need you. I love you, Wyatt. Both of you. That’s what made it so hard to figure out when Chris came back. Mourning him in some ways would’ve been easier, and I’m glad I don’t have to. But figuring out how you both fit in my life was more than I could handle.”
“We still need to figure that out.”
“Yes. But at least now I know it’s not something I have to figure out alone.” She darts a glance toward the window and takes a breath. Then asks, “Is it too soon to name it?”
The question I’ve been expecting. The one we all avoided last night, too caught in heat and need to define it.
“Feels like we should have that talk,” I say. “But not without him here.”
She nods, relief flickering across her face. Grateful I didn’t try to decide for all of us.
“We’re surrounded by unconventional families,” I continue. “Celeste’s triad. Elle’s polycule. Marco and his situation. Maybe we’re just following the pattern.”
Nina straightens slightly, her voice taking on that clinical cadence. “Polyamory is?—”
She stops herself, shaking her head.
“What?”
“Nothing. Just trying not to turn this into a lecture.”
I reach for her hand, brushing my thumb over her knuckles. The same way Chris did last night, like he couldn’t stop touching her either.
“I love you,” I say simply. “That’s not complicated. He does too. And whatever this is between me and him—it’s becoming real. Whether we like it or not, it’s shaping itself.”
