“That’s fine,” I tell her. “That’s totally fine. Very normal.”
“I think she’s hot as fuck,” Orion says behind me but I’m not even surprised by that. I could cover myself in ketchup and it would excite him.
“I was talking to myself,” I snark.
“I know,” he says around a laugh.
Rolling my eyes, I slide into the water, letting the heat envelop me and ease the soreness from my muscles.
Heat swallows me to the collarbone. The sound I make is involuntary and undignified and I don’t care. My muscles unlock one by one, like they’ve been clenched since birth.
“That sounded pornographic.” Orion.
“Get in the water, Orion.” I swim out to the center, going under and letting the heat and water wash away the last few days.
When I surface I see all three men watching me swim. Three Fae males. All that attention on little ole me.
Orion strips first and I treat it as my own little show. My own strip tease. He peels the layers of sweaty clothing off. Bit by agonizing bit. Tattoos now spread across his entire body.
They’ve creep across his chest and up his neck and onto his jaw. Dark ink mapping devotion and failure in a language I’m only beginning to read. They hide the scars of the Cauldron the Dagda still holds. The guardian marks that started as a band on his forearm now cover half his torso. Still moving at the edges like they haven’t decided where to stop.
I wonder what they mean. I want to ask but a heat begins in my core that is the start of a different kind of demand. And when he frees his cock—proud, hard, throbbing—the heat intensifies inside of me.
He slides into the water across from me, hiding what I really want to put my tongue on.
Kieran moves next. His shirt comes off carefully, slowly, as his eyes watch me. The Spear scars are worse than I remembered. Layered on top of each other, a map of every time he bled alone.
He’s never been shirtless in front of all three of us. I register it the moment his jaw tightens. Kieran without armor. Without shadows. Without the cold prince architecture he built so carefully.
All of it stripped away.
He isn’t completely hard yet, the ridges of his cock just starting to smooth out.
He gets in front of me, going under, turning his inky hair into an oil slick.
But it’s not the steam I’m thinking about.
It’s Orion watching Kieran lower himself into the water. Finnian tracks the layered scars. It’s a shared secret among them. The Treasures. The life they lived before me. Holding a shared pain.
I don’t know why that’s the thing that makes my throat tight.
Finnian still hasn’t moved. His eyes heavy and his pupils blown.
Still standing at the edge. He remains clothed. Still covered in dried blood gone brown and stiff. The golden light from his chest is dimmer now. Banked. But it’s there.
The other two don’t push.
I hold out my hand.
Not a declaration. Just a wet hand extended over the edge of a hot spring by a woman who’s too tired to be anything other than honest.
He looks at my hand like he’s checking it for traps.
It isn’t one.
It’s the opposite of a trap. It’s a door left open.
He stares at the bond mark on my wrist. The gold thread glowing in the steam. At the thorn patterns that are new since the last time he saw me naked.
