"He can stay," I say.
Something moves through the thread. Bigger than relief.
"Tell me what you need," Thaw says, low, close to my ear. "Out loud. I'm not deciding this for you. I won't. You tell me, and it happens, and nothing happens that you don't tell me."
That is what he is doing. He could decide right now. He is not doing that. Instead he is asking me.
My body needs him. My mind wants him. He is mine.
"You," I say. "And Crull. I want — " the word shakes coming out — "both of you."
"Okay." No surprise. A hand sliding into my hair. "Okay, Jen."
Crull’s huge hand settles on my hip, careful, asking, and when I push into it he takes it for the yes it is.
The need surges.
Fast. It comes up through me in a wave, and the room goes small and hot and close, and the only things in it that matter are the hand in my hair and the hand on my hip and the pulse between my legs that will not, will not stop.
I press into Crull's palm. I turn my face into Thaw's wrist.
Heat. Skin. The drag of my own breath. Their warmth on both sides of me and the bond wide open at my sternum and my body reaching —
— and it reaches for Harek.
He has not moved from the door. He has not touched me. But the forming thread under my ribs is live in a way it has never been, and my body — running hot, running open, every bond lit — sends want down that thread too. Toward the steady one in the doorway.
I want him.
I make a sound that is half his name.
Harek goes very still in the door and his three-note purr starts up in his chest.
He felt me. The thread runs both ways, and whatever just came down it, he caught. His green eyes are wide. His hand has closed on the jamb. He does not come in. He does not take a step.
Thaw's hand stills in my hair.
He felt where the heat went.
Thaw turns his head and looks at Harek in the doorway, then back at me, and there is no anger anywhere in him — not in his face, not in the bond. Only a steady understanding.
"That's allowed too," he says, quiet, for me. "When you're ready. When he's ready." His thumb moves against my temple. "Wanting him isn't something you have to be ashamed of in front of me. It isn't a betrayal. It's just true."
The heat rolls up over me.
Thaw's hand finds my jaw. Crull's hand on my hip slides under the hem of the sweatshirt and the heat of his palm on my bare skin pulls a sound out of me that is almost a whine.
Chapter seven
Jen
"You," I say. "And Crull. Both of you."
The room goes quiet.
In the cell, there was always a reason to doubt myself. A drug. Somebody else messing with me and my body's responses.
There is none of that here.
