My skin stings in the best way. I crane my head back, goad him with a moan I don’t bother to muffle, and he rewards me with a hand buried in my hair, fixing me tight, keeping me right there while he searches the borderland between pain and pleasure.
I grab at his shoulders, claw my way up the hard, tense line of his back, desperate for purchase, for control. He’s a fucking tank.
“Hey.” Damn, Julian’s voice again. Always at the worst moments. “It’s definitely my turn.”
Xander’s whole body goes taut, his hands rooting into the mattress on either side of my hips. There’s a flicker in him, animal and pleased, but also deeply, perversely competitive.
He lets the threat of release hang heavy between us, and I can feel the thud of my own heartbeat against his chest, wild and unfettered.
When he finally does look toward Julian, it’s with a predator shift, neck and jaw tense, tongue running over the edge of his teeth like he’s taste-testing violence.
Julian’s leaning against the doorframe, arms folded. His shirt’s already off, belt already unbuckled, pants barely hanging onto his hips. His eyes are mud-dark and bottomless, and he’s watching us with the kind of focus that makes my inner scaffolding collapse and rebuild itself, becoming stronger and much, much hungrier.
Xander doesn’t bother to move for me, or even glance away from my face. He just bares his teeth, dips to my throat for a hard, claiming bite, and then releases me like he’s making a point.
Julian’s approach is measured, not a single wasted motion. The way he looks at me is less like prey and more like a puzzle. Something to be solved, dismantled, and maybe, if I’m lucky, built into more.
He plants a knee on the side of the mattress and leans over, eyes flicking from my mouth to my collarbone to the crescent moons Xander just carved into my skin.
“You’re bleeding,” he says, and touches the spot with this clinical, almost sweet concern that makes my chest seize.
“Good,” I tell him, and spit a smile back at Xander just to play it both ways.
Xander’s face is flushed, a red splotch across his cheekbones.
Julian drags a thumb through the wet and wipes it away on the flat of his tongue, not breaking eye contact. I taste the blood a second after.
“Xander,” he says. “Move.”
Another time that would’ve turned into a pissing match, but tonight the rules are different and we all know it.
Xander gives a grunt, then drops onto the mattress next to me, one hand still latched on my hip, staking his territory.
Julian settles between my knees. There’s nothing soft in it. My legs are pried open, his hands running up the outsides of my thighs to my waist, and the first brush of his mouth at the inside of my knee is so hot it singes off the top of my brain, I swear.
He looks up at me over the barest hint of a smirk, and I could throttle him for it except it makes heat puddle inside me, an instant, liquid want. Everything after that’s simple physics and bad behavior.
Julian mouths at the inside of my knee, ghosting higher, then runs his tongue along the ridge of my thigh, where the skin goes paler and thinner and I’m most likely to bruise. He uses teeth, but not for spectacle; it’s gentle, an intermittent pressure, leaving heat and a pulse behind. He’s methodical.
I try to arch up, to grind myself against the first available surface, but he’s already planned for that. Xander’s grip is still there too, thumb digging a bruise into the edge of my hipbone, a silent reminder that no matter which of them is in control, I’m not.
I want to scream, or argue, or bite someone, but all I can do is pant and gasp while Julian parts me with two fingers and taps just the edge of his tongue to the spot, teasing, not entering, just tasting.
I let out a sound that’s pure want, pinned and helpless, straining for more and getting nothing. I claw at the sheet, at the shirt barely hanging from Xander’s frame, at air. I’m a frantic, greedy thing.
I close my eyes, trying to find the edge of what I can stand, and open them when I feel the heat of his breath, so close to me it’s a hallucination. Julian smiles and finally, mercifully, slides his mouth against me.
He eats me out with the same ruthless attention he gives anything that matters, the kind of focus that strips me for parts.
At first, I try to stay quiet, let the building pleasure break in respectful increments, but Julian doesn’t allow it. He works me like an equation, tongue and fingers solving every resistance down to decimals.
“Gabe,” I just about manage to call out. “He needs to be here too. I want all of you.”
It’s a command. It’s a plea inside a dare inside a threat.
Xander doesn’t waste a second. He’s up and off the bed, already hauling his phone from the holster on his jeans, and I can hear the rough, ragged edge to his voice as he dials.
“Bedroom,” he barks into the speaker, and I swear I can hear every particle of Gabe’s molecules rearranging to get to me faster.