He reaches for me, hand cupping my jaw with surprising gentleness given how destroyed he is. His thumb brushes my cheekbone, and I feel the tremor in his fingers.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers.
“Really,” I mock, raising my eyebrow.
“But I’d do it again.”
The honesty of it hangs between us—the acknowledgment that we’re both capable of terrible things in the name of survival. That neither of us can promise we won’t hurt each other again because in our world, hurt is currency.
Right now I need to feel something anything other than what’s circulating in my chest. And as I look into his eyes, I immediately know what he wants, so I lean in.
“Kiss me,” I say. “On my collarbone.”
Koa blinks, thrown by the shift. But he leans down, lips finding the hollow at the base of my throat. The touch is soft, and I feel it radiate through my entire body.
I look past him to where Revan is watching, phone forgotten in his hand. “You.”
Revan’s eyebrows raise. “Lexi—”
“Come here.”
He moves slowly, deliberately, crossing the room. Koa tenses but doesn’t pull away as Revan’s mouth finds my shoulder, kissing the bare skin where Atticus’s shirt has slipped down.
The sensation of both of them—Koa on my collarbone, Revan on my shoulder—makes something in my chest crack open. Not breaking, but blooming. Dark and desperate and alive.
Koa jerks back suddenly, shoving Revan away. “Fuck no, Rev.”
I slap Koa. Hard. The crack echoes through the room.
His head snaps to the side, and when he looks back at me there’s fury in his eyes.
I tackle him, using his injuries against him, and we go down hard. He falls onto the bed, and I end up straddling his hips, pinning his arms with my knees, feeling his cock already hard beneath me.
I lean down, my face inches from his. “You think I only belong to you?”
“Yes.” The word comes out as a growl.
“He’s my stepbrother,” Koa seethes, trying to buck me off. “I’m not fucking taking turns with him.”
I observe his face and whisper, “Fine. Then you can just watch.”
Something snaps in him. He flips us with a strength that shouldn’t be possible given his injuries, reversing our positions until I’m on my back and he’s caging me in.
“Fuck that, Tiger.” The nickname comes out like a curse and a prayer. “They can watch. How about that?”
His mouth crashes against mine. I kiss him back just as hard, tasting blood.
He pulls back just enough to reach for his wallet, pulling out a condom. His hands are shaking as he tears it open, rolling it on his dick. Then he’s yanking my pants down, not gentle, not asking permission because we’re past that now.
When he pushes inside me, it’s hard and fast and absolutely what I need. The stretch burns in the best way, and I arch into it, nails digging into his shoulders.
“Fuck,” he hisses against my neck.
I wrap my legs around his waist, pulling him deeper.
He sets a brutal rhythm, each thrust driving me into the mattress. The bed frame creaks in protest, and somewhere in the background I hear Atticus sigh and Revan’s sharp intake of breath.
But I don’t care about them right now. Right now it’s just Koa and me and the desperate need to feel something other than the weight of what I’ve done.
