Page 54 of Cold Ignition

He understood it now.

Rangi moved first.

He had a feeling that he always did when it came to this—bridging distance, making the first contact feel inevitable instead of risky. His hand slid up Keanu’s arm, slow enough to be read, firm enough to be felt, fingers curling around muscle like he’d already decided this belonged to him.

“Still thinking?” Rangi murmured, voice low, warm, threaded with something that wasn’t quite teasing and wasn’t quite serious either.

Keanu huffed a quiet breath, something close to a laugh catching in it. “Trying not to.”

“Good,” Rangi said, leaning in just enough that his mouth brushed the space beside Keanu’s. “You’re better when you don’t.”

Alexios stepped in then, closing the distance with a different kind of certainty—less heat, more precision. He reached past Keanu to the wall panel and dimmed the lights another fraction.

The room shifted. Shadows deepened. Edges softened.

Everything narrowed to breath and touch and the space between three bodies that had stopped pretending this wasn’t going to happen.

“Look at me,” Alexios said.

Keanu did.

There was no hesitation now.

Alexios’s hand came to his waist, steady and grounding, while the other slid up the center of his chest—measured, deliberate, mapping him as if committing the terrain to memory. He didn’t rush. He didn’t take more than was given.

He read.

“Last chance,” Alexios said quietly. “You walk away now, and we stop.”

The words weren’t a challenge.

They were an anchor.

Choice, laid out clean and undeniable.

Keanu felt it land and settle, something in him aligning with it instead of resisting.

“I’m not walking away.”

Rangi’s grin flickered—sharp, satisfied, a flash of teeth that spoke of something more primal. “Yeah,” he murmured. “We know.”

Alexios’s thumb pressed lightly into Keanu’s sternum, feeling the rhythm there—fast, steady, real.

“Then stay with us,” he said.

Not a command.

An invitation that carried weight.

Keanu answered by moving.

He stepped in, closing what little space remained, hands coming up almost instinctively—one finding Rangi, the other Alexios—pulling them both in as if the choice had been sitting in him all along, waiting for permission to surface.

The first kiss broke whatever control he had left.

Rangi’s mouth found his fast, certain, the contact hot and immediate, a low, approving sound vibrating through his chest as Keanu met him with equal force. There was nothing careful about it—no testing, no hesitation—just the collision of want that had been building for two long, deliberate days.

Keanu felt it everywhere.