I moaned and spread my legs wider, inviting Alec inside me again. I’d had him already, but I was ravenous for more of both of them.
Monroe groaned. “I’m happy to watch, but I’m gonna need more time than that to participate. My refractory period isn’t what it used to be.”
“I don’t think I can get it up either,” Alec bemoaned, then tugged me closer. I fell forward, bracing myself on the headboard. He propped himself up on his elbow and licked me, cleaning the remainder of the cum off my chest.
Monroe shifted back and eased himself off the bed, then moved to the bathroom. The water ran, and less than a minute later, he was back with us. He wiped us down with wet facecloths before he raided the mini bar and brought two bottles of water to us.
I closed my eyes, bliss filling me. It wasn’t the high from the orgasms that was doing it. It was them. It was the way that Alec opened up and confessed his fears to us and the way Monroe cared for us. There wasn’t a shadow of a doubt in my mind anymore that I was in love with them. We hadn’t said it yet, but I knew their feelings ran deep, too, and that turned it from terrifying to thrilling.
twenty-three
Hux
We napped for a few hours, only waking up when the rain began pelting against the windows. Water streamed down the glass, and the chill in the air had us curling into each other. Roe ordered hot chocolates, and we hiked the blankets up.
“The rumours were partially true,” I said. Cara stopped moving, the mug halfway to her lips. “There was no cheating. But I did sleep with Minns’s wife—just not that night.”
“Oh,” Cara murmured.
I licked my lips and steeled myself to break the promise I’d made to Minns. “I was with Minns that night. I’d needed to get out of my head.” I shook my head, hating myself for going there that night. “It was Kamirah who’d arrived home, not him. But I didn’t leave because she was coming home. I’d been seeing them—both of them—for nearly two years.”
“They didn’t deny the rumours. They didn’t stick up for you,” Roe growled.
I huffed out a laugh that held no humour. “No. I knew the score—I was their piece on the side. I’d just deluded myself intothinking that we meant something more to one another than me being a convenient third when they wanted to get kinky.”
The memories of the weight sitting heavy on my chest were overwhelming at the time. I’d needed to sort through them, a low-key panic simmering inside me. I’d needed to get out of my head because I’d been overthinking everything—how did I tell them I wanted more? How did I move us to the next stage in our relationship? Turned out all I needed to do was get caught. Now, the residual feeling was disappointment—not that things didn’t work out with them, but that I’d trusted them.
The pressure on my chest had lessened in the few weeks we’d been apart. It wasn’t heartbreak that plagued me—I didn’t think it ever was—but betrayal. I was hurt. I’d been cast aside and left to the vultures. I understood that Minns didn’t want to come out. He had his reasons. I didn’t know what they were, but they definitely existed. I just wish I hadn’t been the scapegoat.
If I looked back without the rose-coloured glasses I always seemed to don whenever I thought about Chris and Kam, I could see that Gauthier was right. He’d accused them of doing a number on my confidence. In fairness to them, they weren’t the first ones who’d tossed me aside.
They were just the most recent.
Mom and Dad had done it years before Chris and Kam had. And Nan dying—even though she couldn’t help it—had only reinforced that people didn’t stick around for me.
Chris and Kam had never misled me. They’d never promised me anything other than orgasms. Minns and I were teammates and fuck buddies. He was a closeted bisexual man. I was safe. Until I wasn’t.
That was it.
I was a sex toy to them.
They weren’t emotionally entangled with me. I was the one who’d wanted more. I was the one who believed that if I stuckaround long enough, they might change their minds. I’d begun leaving hints about moving our relationship forward. They’d resisted, letting me down gently. But I hadn’t heard them. I’d been living in make-believe land where we were happy and in love.
Except they weren’t.
And I was coming to realize that I hadn’t been in love with them either.
I’d settled for being treated like a possession, like a toy to be discarded when they didn’t want me anymore. The effect was insidious, but they’d never been underhanded about what I was to them.
I’d forgotten what it was to be important to someone.
But I was starting to remember. I looked across at the two people lying in bed with me, and my heart thumped hard in my chest. In the couple of weeks we’d been together, Roe and Cara had healed much of the hurt from Chris’s and Kamirah’s actions.
“Minns doesn’t want to come out,” Cara surmised.
“Not even in the slightest.”
Cara interlaced our fingers, holding my hand tight, and Monroe slipped his arm around Cara’s shoulder to squeeze mine. My throat closed and my gut flip-flopped. I was important to them. They were showing me with the smallest of gestures that I mattered. They’d dragged me onto their life raft right when my lungs had given out and darkness was clouding the edge of my vision.
