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She shakes her head in disagreement. “I believe I’d enjoy it. I want to be taken. To feel everything all at once.”

I peer around at my brother, who is wearing a devilish grin and stalking closer toward us.

Lazarus is biting his fist, looking as if he may internally combust. “Darling, you’re going to beat me. But I dare say I knew I was enthralled with you from the moment I laid eyes on you, I am hopelessly, soul-bonded in love with you. If you leave me, please kill me. I’d die a happy man.”

Alcott snorts at Lazarus’s remark and shakes his head slightly in annoyance. “You really must take everything to the extreme?” he asks.

“Life is too bloody short not too, darling.” Lazarus leans in and places a tiny kiss to Alcott’s nose, causing him to swat back at Lazarus’s face.

Lazarus smiles triumphantly for pissing off my brother and retorts, “You better cease your banter, you know it arouses me.”

Alcott glares at him, but a small lift at the corner of his mouth becomes a faint smile.

“Now. Where do we begin?” I ask, trailing my nose up Olive’s collar bone, inhaling her intoxicating perfume.

We descend on her, kissing along her shoulders and smoothing our hands over her soft, exposed skin.

Sinking to my knees, I hoist her legs over my shoulders and begin performing as much pleasure and attention to my favorite place on her body, while Alcott and Lazarus both tease her breasts. Kneading them between their palms and delicately licking across her chest. I can feel her thighs trembling as I suck her between my lips, rolling her sensitive area around my tongue. Coaxing her moans of passion and pleasure to echo across the vaulted ceiling. Euphoria dances around us, building and building, until we begin stripping off our clothing. We each are intoxicated by one another’s arousal and begin taking turns with her. Drawing out her pleasure as we each, enter all of her.

It seems like hours have passed, and I do not wish it to ever cease. I want us to stay in this scene forever.

Gripping the silks, I take my turn once more, pulling her body toward mine, but this time I dive into her with such passion, such fervor. She grips me, pulling me into her.

“You take me so well, love. Do you feel your arousal dripping down and all over our laps?” I snake one hand under her, gripping her backside as I go further down this pleasurable madness.

She nods her head as Alcott is slowly drawing out his pleasure from her throat. His hands are wrapped around the rope as she caresses his thighs. Working him deeper and deeper, all while Lazarus is kneeling by her ear, whispering sweet praise, causing her to climax even harder on us.

“Open up that mouth of yours,” Alcott orders to Lazarus, who peers up at my brother, a wicked grin on his face.

“Would you like to witness me lick your saliva off him, darling? Coat him in both of us before he takes you?” Lazarus gently places his hand through her hair, bringing her face nose to nose with him.

“Yes,” she pants out. “I want to watch him take you, as you take my mouth.”

26. Happiness is Suspicious - Alcott

Even

Happiness is a suspicious thing. I have always found it best approached with caution, like an unfamiliar chemical, an unmarked wire, or a corpse discovered in a room one does not remember entering. And yet, by some unfortunate miracle, happiness appears to have found us. It sits in Lazarus Graves’s breakfast room wearing morning light and the scent of strong coffee.

It lingers in the ridiculous sprawl of his manor, in the black silk robe Olive has not yet returned, in the half-eaten sugared fruits scattered across a silver tray, and in the way my brother has not stopped looking at her as though she is the answer to a question he has been too afraid to ask. Edward smiles, enough that it makes something in my chest bloom with warmth. There is a faint curve at the corner of his mouth as Olive threatens to stab Lazarus with a butter knife for stealing the last honeyed fig.

Pathetic, really, that something so simple should affect me. But I stare at him across the table and feel an ache open in my chest that has nothing to do with injury. Edward smiles. My poor, insufferable, self-sacrificing brother, who has mistaken suffering for duty since we were boys. Who carries guilt like a second spine and assesses every ounce of joy as though it were a trap laid carefully at his feet.

He is smiling, because of her, Olive. Because, somehow, the four of us have ended up in a breakfast room after a night and a full day of debauchery could have ended in jealous ruin and instead seems to have stitched something together.

“Alcott,” Olive says.

I blink. She is watching me over the rim of her teacup.

“Yes?” I answer.

“You are staring.” She nods her head toward my brother. “At Edward.”

Edward’s smile immediately dies. A shame she has called me out and erased his perfect smile.

“Why?” Edward asks suspiciously.

“Because you appeared almost pleasant for several seconds.” My answer has a slight tone of sarcasm for defense.