He looks at Kieran. At Finnian. And the three of them hold a weird meeting right then, right now.
With the next heartbeat they’re shuffling. Kieran pulls out and I whimper at the loss and the cold leaves me empty enough that I’m shaking. Finnian slides out, too, and I’m hollow and reaching and starting to fall apart in a way that has nothing to do with sex.
“Easy.” Orion catches my hands. “We’ve got you. We’re not going anywhere.”
“Then why did you stop?—”
“Because.” Finnian sits up and pulls me into his lap. I straddle him, his cock pressed against me but not in, and his hands are shaking where they grip my hips.Shaking.The man who never trembles. “We need to tell you something.”
My heart stops.
The old wound screams. Here it comes. The end. They’re going to —
“I love you,” he whispers, quiet and certain as he presses a soft kiss to my lips.
“I love you,” he says again, this time swiping at the tears under my eyes. “I have loved you for one year, four months, and eleven days. I started counting the night you walked into my life. I kept counting through everything. And I will keep counting until the count outlives the stars and probably after that.”
I can’t breathe.
“I love you,” Kieran’s voice rumbles from behind me. “I have loved you since the moment we sparred in the middle of the night. I didn’t know I was capable of it until you. I don’t want to go back to who I was before. I don’tfitin him anymore. I want you. I want this. Forever, troublesome thing.”
The tears come and I can’t stop them and I don’t try.
“I love you.” Orion presses his forehead to mine, his breath hot, his hand cupping the back of my skull like he’s been holding it forever. “I loved you before I knew the word for it. I’ve waited lifetimes for you.”
“You do.”
The words crack out of me.
“You all do. I?—”
Say it. They said it first. Say it back.
“I love you.” It comes out broken and ugly and nothing like I imagined. My nose is running. “All of you. I love you so much I can’tbreatheand I spent twenty-eight years learning that love means losing people and you…you stupid, stubborn, impossible men. You made me unlearn all of it.”
“Say it again,” Finnian breathes.
He pulls me down onto his cock with a groan and I sob through it, full of him again, my body remembering what it just lost.
“I love you.”
“Again.”
“I love you—fuck—I love you both.”
Kieran pushes Finnian down to the bed with a palm on his shoulder. “Trust me?” he asks of Finn.
“Undecided,” he replies but lies down anyway.
“Focus on him, Ash.” Kieran kisses my shoulder.
Then he stretches out beside Finn on the bed. Their hips touching, butt cheek to butt cheek, legs tangling, both of them flat on their backs. Their cocks press together, pointing up. I slide off Finn long enough to look down.
Understanding dawning on my face. I grip them both and slide down slowly. It’s the most delicious stretch. Burning for a moment before I rise and fall, listening to their chorus of moans.
Orion moves behind me. His hand smooths down my spine to my ass, slow, patient, as he presses me forward onto Finn’s chest. Then he climbs onto the bed and straddles Kieran—knees by Kieran’s ears, groin right above his face. Hovering.
I feel his fingers part my ass and the cool slick of something—magic or oil or both, his magic is both—eases the way before he presses his fingers in.
