Page 178 of Theirs to Tempt: The Marriage Claim

Lucian kisses each place his commands once made rigid, transforming memory through the slow worship of his mouth, while Caleb anchors me with broad hands and murmured praise. Every time pleasure becomes too sharp, one of them catches me; every time I begin to retreat into thought, the other pulls me back with my name.

I open beneath them because I want to.

Because the wanting is mine.

Because nothing has ever felt as terrifying or as true as the moment they stop taking and wait for me to reach.

“Please,” I whisper.

Lucian’s gaze lifts to mine. “Please what?”

I should resent the demand for precision, but desire has made honesty easier than pride.

“Don’t leave me.”

His expression changes.

Caleb’s grip tightens.

“We’re here,” Caleb says, the promise rough against my skin.

Lucian covers my hand with his, pressing my palm flat against his chest so I can feel the hard, unwavering beat beneath it. “We are not going anywhere.”

The certainty in his voice opens something inside me.

Pleasure gathers, tightening through every place they have touched, until the room seems to contract around the three of us. I cling to Caleb with one hand while reaching for Lucian with the other, needing the proof of them on both sides of me as the first shudder breaks through my body.

My fingers close on cold cotton.

The heat disappears.

My eyes open into darkness.

For several bewildered seconds, I can’t understand the bed beneath me. My body remains drawn tight from the dream, my breathing ragged and my skin damp beneath the thin sheet, but there is no Lucian above me, no Caleb beside me, and no hand waiting to close around mine.

The apartment is silent except for the uneven hum of the air conditioner struggling against another Houston morning.

I reach farther across the mattress, as though either man might be lying just beyond the darkness where I cannot see him.

My palm meets nothing.

The bed is empty.

The truth moves through me slowly, colder than the sheets. I am in my apartment.

It has been four days since I removed their rings and ran away from them. I’ve awakened every morning to a cold and lonely bed without Caleb’s steady weight near my back or Lucian’s hand possessively settled on my hip.

I told them to stay away.

And they have.

That should feel like victory, or at least evidence that something I said finally carried more authority than what Lucian believed was best for me.

Instead, my throat closes around the memory of his face as the elevator doors moved between us, the polished mask gone and the naked devastation beneath it more frightening than anger would have been.

A tear slides into my hair.

I wipe it away before another can follow, then drag the sheet from my body and sit upright. The digital clock on the nightstand reads 5:42 a.m., early enough that dawn has not fully reached the window but late enough that returning to sleep would be irresponsible, even if the dream had not made the idea impossible.