Squirming against him, I try to shift my thighs together to relieve the hollow ache, but he pushes them farther apart. Not used to asking for what I want, I try to steer him in that direction. “No need to waste time finding a condom, if you don’t want to.” I tap my inner arm. “Birth control implant, so we’re good on that front.”
Kodiak’s pupils flash to vertical slits, a low rumble escaping his chest as his fingers dig almost painfully into my thighs. “You want everything, don’t you?” He bends down to gently bite the side of my neck. “To feel how much I love being inside of you, touching you? Fuck, justthinkingabout you does it for me.” He moves down to my shoulder, biting hard enough to leave a mark and grips my wrist, bringing it between his legs to feel how hard he is, hissing in a sharp breath when I curl my fingers around his cock. “You like seeing how dangerous you are to our control? How much power you have over us?”
He dips a hand between my legs again, crooking his fingers to stroke me until I’m trembling with need, and whispers in my ear, “All any of us will be able to think about now is our cum sliding down your throat, dripping down your thighs, and knowing you want to be claimed as thoroughly as we want to claim you. To fuck you so hard and deep, you’ll always feel the ache when we’re not inside of you and beg us to put you out of your misery.”
He adds a third finger and I clench around him, arching my back, seeking more. “So many promises,” I moan, rolling my hips. “Yet you’re wearing too many clothes to fulfill any of them.”
Twin dark chuckles surround me as Kodi pulls away, reaching a hand behind his back to strip off his shirt in a fluid, graceful motion that has me both envious, and greedily appreciative of. Each muscle is clearly defined without being overkill, leading down to a small happy trail disappearing beneath his pajama pants. Hooking his thumbs in his waistband, he drags out the strip show, and even with as turned on as I am right now, I can’t be mad. Kodiak Garrison is a work of art, and one that I intend to appreciate... thoroughly.
But I choke on my own spit when he’s fully naked in front of me.
“Fucking hell, how’ve you been hiding a damnbattering ramin your pants this entire time?”
The seductive air dissipates a little as he throws his head back and laughs, but holy hell, someone could have warned me. Maybe I should have expected it from a metal dragon, but I don’t think any amount of forewarning would have prepared me for Kodiak Garrison’s dick. The Jacob’s ladder piercings on the underside, sure, I could see that. But it looks like he embedded small, metal balls beneath his skin running down the length of the top and sides. With that much metal, he wouldn’t even have to be hard to give a girl a good time.
Stone lounges beside me, trailing his fingertips over my arm, my jaw, my hair; almost as if he can’t stop touching me. “Anything that’s off the table, tell us now,mo stór. The last thing we want is to hurt you.”
Kodi pauses, studying my face.
“At this point, I’m pretty sure as long as one of you puts me out of my misery and actually fucks me, I’ll take anything you throw at me with a smile.” The previous orgasm hasn't done anything more than make the hollow ache more pronounced than ever, and I’m about two seconds away from taking matters into my own hands.
Still, Kodiak doesn’t move. A few seconds later, he hisses out a slew of foreign curses, scrubbing a hand over his face and sitting back on his heels. When he finally locks eyes with me again, there’s no trace of his dragon in sight, only dark blue eyes shining with regret. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Raiden’s right. We can’t -” he sighs “-Ican’t do this. It wouldn't be right.”
I push up onto my elbows, gaping at him. “Are you kidding me? You've been trying to get in my pants for weeks, and now that I'm finally on board with this whole mate thing, you sayno? Why are you cockblocking yourself?”
He tosses his head back with an exaggerated groan, rolling away from me and flopping onto the bed, slinging an arm over his eyes. “I knoooooow. Trust me, I'm kicking my own ass over it enough for the both of us. But think about it. You‘d accepted us as mates already, but it never went any farther than some hot and heavy make out sessions. Then that son of a bitch scares the hell out of you, and you’re practically throwing yourself at us.”
A low growl comes from Stone, but rather than smack some sense into him, he thumps his head back on the pillow on my other side. “Shit, I’m an asshole. I should have recognized the signs, but I was so caught up with claiming her, I,” he trails off, scrubbing a hand over his jaw with another rumble. “It’s a typical trauma response. You’ve losteverything. Now that danger’s circling and you’re scared, you’re latching onto the nearest sense of security, willing to do whatever’s necessary to hold onto it.”
My cheeks heat, but it’s from anger this time. “Last I checked, you weren’t that kind of doctor, Stone. And I don’t particularly appreciate you rattling off your assessment of whatI’mfeeling at me instead of talkingtome about it”
He sighs. “Amara, you had to take a few shots just for me to be able to pierce your belly button. Which is completely understandable; you were tortured and went through hell. But you’re going to tell me that after that, you don’t haveanyboundaries or sexual preferences?” Caressing my jaw, he forces me to face him when I try to turn away, staring down at me with concern. “You told me once you had a skewed idea of sex because of everything you went through, and just now, you were willing to go along with whatever we wanted. Look me in the eye and say that a part of you wasn’t worried about making sure we enjoyed ourselves so we’d still want to keep you after?”
I open my mouth to snap back, but nothing comes out. Pressing my lips together in a furious line, I replay the last half hour in my head, trying to look at the situation objectively. When I get to the part about Stone asking about my boundaries, I cringe realizing that he might have a little bit of a point. It was nothing intentional on my part, but subconsciously?
Everyone that I’ve slept with has either left shortly after they got off, or I did. Coming face to face with Malcolmwasa wake up call that made me realize the three of them were my safe space and led me here, where the last of my reservations about their intentions fell away.
Sonofabitch.
“It’s not because I’m trying to honeytrap you into protecting me,” I attempt to explain. “I’ve been holding back because I knew you guys have this whole happily ever after built up in your heads, and I wanted to be one hundred percent certain that I was all in before we added sex into the mix. Last night put things into perspective, and helped me get past that final mental block.”
The two of them share a look over my head, and I place a hand on each of their stomachs, pushing myself up. This time, I don’t feel bad for zapping Stone, and by Kodi’s soft moan, it may as well have been foreplay.
“If you guys don’t want to have sex, that’s fine. I have enough self-esteem left that begging sure as shit isn’t going to happen. But at least own up to the fact it’s your own reservations instead of trying to pin the blame on me, and make yourselves out to be martyrs caring about your broken mess of a mate. You don’t get to decide how I’m feeling, or ask me to be honest with you, only to ignore what I say and decide what I need like I don’t know any better.”
My fingers wrap around the bathroom doorknob, but before I can lock myself inside, Kodi snatches my free hand and tugs me back into his chest. Palming my cheek, he stares down at me with an intensity that steals the breath from my lungs. “I’ve fucked up a lot of things in my life, Amara. But the way you look at me, like you trust me completely? I don't ever want to lose that. If there’s even achancethat you might regret sleeping with me, I’m not going to take that risk, because it would fucking destroy me, and I’d never be able to live with myself.”
He kisses me reverently. “You are, and always will be, the most important thing in my life. My reason for living. But I’m only human-adjacent, and am going to fuck up sometimes. So I need you to promise me something.”
Leaning into his palm, I sigh, my anger deflating as rapidly as it always does under Kodiak’s earnest attention. “What’s that?”
Resting his forehead against mine, he whispers, “Don’t shut me out anymore. If you need space, say so, but you promised; no more running.”
Releasing the handle, I let him guide me back to bed, rearranging me into the secure heat of the blistering inferno between them. “No more running.”
