Page 60 of Bite for Sore Eyes

Then he leaned in. His first taste of her was an electric shock to his system. Clean skin, warm water, and the intoxicating essence that was purely Lana. He groaned against her as his tongue traced her sensitive folds with deliberate, unhurried strokes, learning the shape and texture of her and memorizing the way her breath hitched as her fingers clenched in his wet hair.

"Torren," she gasped.

He didn't answer with words. He answered with his mouth, with the flat of his tongue and then the firm point, then with a suction that made her cry out sharply as her hips jerked against his face. Her legs began to tremble, her muscles quivering with the effort to stay upright. Through their bond, he felt the precise moment her pleasure crested from warm contentment to desperate need. It mirrored his own, a feedback loop of sensation that was dizzying in its intensity. Rath's pleasure was there too, a steady, burning ember in the background—not separate but woven into the same tapestry of feeling.

"Torren, I need you inside me," she pleaded, her voice raw and full of command.

He pulled back instantly, his own control fraying at the edges. The loss of her taste was a physical ache as he rose smoothly, and in one powerful motion, he lifted her up. She understood immediately, her legs wrapping around his waist instinctively and her arms looping around his neck. Then he pressed her back against the wet marble wall of the shower, her heat branding his chest.

Rath stepped back, giving them space, but his hand found Lana's and their fingers twined together, an anchor point as Torren positioned himself.

"Lana, you're my everything," Torren breathed.

Her brown eyes, dark with desire, locked onto his. Then he thrust home in one powerful surge, burying himself to the hilt inside her welcoming heat. Her sharp cry of pleasure echoed off the marble, a sound of pure possession that went straight to his core.

"Move," she breathed, her nails digging into his shoulder.

He obeyed, setting a driving rhythm that pushed them both toward the edge. The world narrowed to the feel of her tight heat around his cock, the sight of her ecstasy-glazed eyes, and the sound of her ragged moans mixing with the rush of water. Rath's presence was a steady pressure at the edge of his awareness, a pillar of shared strength.

Within minutes, he could feel it coming, the cataclysm building in her, coiling tight through their completed bond. Then her inner muscles began to flutter around his cock, a delicious, maddening pulse.

"Now," he growled against her ear. "Come for me."

Her release tore through her, and her body convulsed around him. The violent clenching of her inner walls was his undoing. His own orgasm ripped through him with brutal force, a white-hot detonation of pleasure that stole his breath as he drove into her one final, deep time, spilling himself inside her.

He was still pulsing within her when strong hands gripped Lana's waist. Rath, his patience spent, lifted her from Torren's grasp and Torren released her, his arms feeling suddenly empty. But there was no sting of loss. Only a deep, resonant satisfaction.

Lana transferred herself to Rath with fluid grace, her legs locking around his hips as he pinned her to the same wall. Torren watched, catching his breath, the water streaming down his face. He saw Rath's jaw tighten with strain as he entered her and heard Lana's gasp morph into a moan of welcome.

A lesser male might have felt jealousy. But Torren felt only a fierce, swelling pride. This was the heart of their bond—this unshakeable trust and this shared joy. Watching his brother, his other half for thirty years, love their mate was not a subtraction from his own claim. It was a multiplication. The pleasure radiating from both of them through the bond washed over him, a secondary wave of euphoria that was no less potent for being indirect. He was not a spectator; he was a vital circuit in this loop of sensation and emotion.

"Torren," Lana gasped, reaching for him as Rath moved within her.

He stepped forward, closing the distance, and captured her mouth with his. Her kiss was desperate and hungry, her tongue tangling with his as Rath's thrusts rocked her body between them. Torren cupped her face, drinking in her taste, sharing her breath, feeling the vibrations of her moans against his lips. He was the connection, the bridge, the tangible proof that her pleasure belonged to them all.

He felt the exact moment her second climax seized her. A tremor, a sharp intake of breath against his mouth, then her cry was swallowed by their kiss as she shattered. A heartbeat later, Rath's control broke, and a raw, guttural groan tore from his throat as he found his own release. His big body shuddered, and his face buried in the curve of Lana's neck.

Torren stepped back, giving them their moment, and his chest ached with a fierce joy. This—this was the truth he'd been waiting his whole life to understand. He wasn't standing in anyone's shadow. He was standing with them, an equal pillar in this triad they were building.

He was not second best. He was essential.

Rath gently lowered Lana until her feet found the shower floor. She was breathless, trembling, and radiant. Without a word, the three of them moved together, wrapping arms around each other in a dripping, sated huddle under the warm cascade. Lana's head rested on Rath's chest and her hand splayed on Torren's chest, over his pounding heart.

But no one spoke as the water beat a soothing rhythm on their skin and the steam held them in a private world. Torren rested his cheek against Lana's wet back and felt a peace so profound it threatened to undo him.

This was where his life had been heading all along—to this circle of warmth, to this perfect, unbreakable triad.

TWENTY-FOUR

LANA

Three months had transformed Lana's understanding of what living meant. As she stood beside Rath's rugged jeep in the mountain parking area, adjusting the straps of her hiking backpack, she marveled at how profoundly her world had expanded since that terrifying prognosis had once threatened to shrink it to nothing.

Three months since their public mating ceremony, where she'd stood before the entire Varkesh sleuth and spoken vows that still made her heart race when she remembered them. Three months since her last episode from the progressive neural synchronization disorder that had once ruled every aspect of her existence. Some mornings, she still woke with that familiar spike of anxiety—waiting for the telltale tingling in her hands, the sudden dizziness, the reminder that her body might betray her at any moment.

But then the suns would rise fully over Nova Aurora's purple forests, and the day would unfold without incident as Rath and Torren reminded her, through gentle touches and patient words, that fear was a choice she no longer had to make. And Kelly and Emry had confirmed what her own body was telling her—the illness that had terrorized her for two years was truly gone.

Focus on the beautiful life you have, she reminded herself, echoing Torren's words from that morning. Not on shadows that no longer exist.