"Perfect," Bane says. The charming smile. Seamless.
She disappears back into the kitchen.
I stand. My heart is hammering. Zero's breath still lingering on my neck. Bane's handprint burning on my shoulder. Atlas's eyes still on me from across the table, saying later. Saying we're not done.
But the thing that follows me up the stairs isn't any of that. It's the argument. The low, furious whispers of three men who can't agree on anything except that they want me, and can't figure out how to want me without destroying each other.
Bane said this isn't sustainable.
He's right.
I close my bedroom door. Press my back against it. Breathe.
They all want me. And it’s clear that they all wantallof me.
No sharing. No half claims.
Each alpha wants to claim what’shis.
And that’s… me.
But–
What do I want?
I scrub my hands down my face, trying to focus on anything but my dick hard as a rock in my pants and all three of their scents swirling around in my lungs.
God fucking help me.
I want all three of them.
I don’t care if they don’t want to share.
Chapter 14
Atlas
The house is quiet in the way it only gets after midnight—settled into itself, the HVAC cycling low, the floors done creaking. Richard turned in at ten. Margot followed twenty minutes later, her footsteps soft on the stairs, the bedroom door clicking shut with the particular care of a woman trying not to wake anyone.
Bane and Zero left two hours ago. Didn't say where. Didn't need to—Zero's face said enough when he came downstairs in black, jaw set, keys in hand. Bane behind him in dark clothes, the navy sweater traded for something he didn't mind getting dirty. They looked at each other and they looked at me and I nodded once and let them go.
The guards. The ones from the facility. The ones who brought a bag of tools and looped the cameras and put their hands on Max–as Bane told us.
I don't ask Zero for details. He doesn't offer them. That's how it works between us—he does the things I authorize but don't want documented, and I maintain the fiction that my hands are clean. They're not. They never have been. But the machine requires plausible distance, and Zero has always been willing to be the distance.
So the house is empty except for me and Max. And I should be in my office. Should be reviewing the file Richard dropped on my desk this afternoon—Jerry's preliminary findings, the offshore routing irregularities that aren't irregular at all but are in fact the precise structure I built to funnel Kline's revenue share through untraceable shells.
The structure Richard is now dismantling thread by thread with the patient curiosity of a man who built empires by pulling at loose ends.
Semi-restired my fucking ass.
I should be handlingthat.
Instead I'm in the kitchen at midnight making coffee I don't need because Max is upstairs and I can't stop thinking about him.
His tortured eyes when he thinks no one is looking. His slim, lanky body that looks like a pup who hasn’t grown into his paws yet. His timidness.
His lips.
