Lyot pulls off the road between two sandstone monoliths inside the Valley of Fire. The air is cold and still and so clear that the stars hang low and bloated in the night sky. He leans against the still-ticking hood of the car like a phantom or a shadow, dark and enchanting against the velvet night. His energy is different, like he’s taking up more space since Gale sucked him off in his bedroom. The edges of something languid and predatory, that I’ve seen only glimpses of, rising to the surface.
Gale can feel it too.
“What are you thinking, pretty boy?” he asks, drawing me back against his warm chest.
“Shadow wanted something new,” Lyot replies. “I’m trying to decide what we should give her.”
I thrill in the circle of Gale’s arms, and he slides his hands under the hem of my jacket. His cold fingers trace the soft skin at my waist, and I shiver as he chuckles in my ear.
“Regretting dragging us away from Lyot’s warm bed, Smalls?”
“No.” Slipping from his grip, I approach Lyot. “Something new?” I tilt my head and study his face, catching the barestflicker of starlight reflected in his eyes. While I wait for him to close the space between us, Gale steps up behind me, drawn to Lyot’s current through the conduit of my body.
“No pain,” Lyot says, and his eyes flick to Gale’s, laden with warning.
“No pain,” I acquiesce, and still, he doesn’t touch me. My nerve endings are on fire, sparking against the winter air that presses all around us. The need for hands on my skin seethes through me, making my legs tremble and my hands clench at my sides, longing to caress him.
Teasing, tantalizing, he reaches past me, hooking his fingers into Gale’s belt loops and drawing us in together. The hard ridge of Gale’s erection presses against my ass as Lyot’s meets the junction of my thighs, and then I’m crushed between them, all my body’s craving lines met in a rush that almost undoes me right there. Sparks flare along the boundaries of my skin, before rushing to my core and flooding it with wet heat.
“Please,” I whimper, grasping for the dark timbre that will make him give me what I want and finding only cold, clean air.
“You beg so prettily, sweetheart,” Gale says, his voice intoxicating in my ear. “I think he likes it.”
In answer, Lyot drops his head to mine and runs his tongue along my jaw. I arch my neck to one side, fighting the urge to turn and claim his mouth. When Gale drags his mouth up the line of my throat, and the two meet in the hollow where my pulse thunders below my ear, I can’t keep a breathy moan from escaping. Their hot tangle of tongues, the suck and the graze of teeth, swirl against the delicate skin like they’re letting meinsidetheir kiss. My hands fly to Lyot’s chest, threading into the thick weave of his sweater and digging for purchase in the skin beneath.
“Are you cold, Shadow?” he asks as Gale continues his slow corruption of my neck.
“God no. I’m burning up.”
“Good. I want to see your bare skin glowing in the starlight when we make you come.”
It’s Gale who strips me under Lyot’s heavy gaze, and I love every minute of it. My alpha making room for my omega to stretch his claws. I wonder, though, remembering.You think I sub for other guys?Is it Gale who makes him different, or me? Lyot has always been a part of us. A part of my pain. A part of Gale’s obsession.
And Gale letting him take the lead.Lyot makes people feel safe.If they put me between the two of them tonight, will I explode?
Gale peels back the layers of my winter clothes with deliberate care, laying scorching kisses across each newly exposed landscape of flesh. The backs of my knees, the silky flush of my inner thighs, the crest of my hip bones as I step out of my jeans. He takes off my jacket, sucking on the pulse points at my wrists, and removes my shirt and sweatshirt together. Then it’s the insides of my elbows under his mouth, the dip of my collarbone as he unhooks my bra, the undersides of my breasts, heavy in his palms. Everywhere the wet heat of his mouth caresses, the cold rushes in to claim when he moves on, until I’m awash with fire and ice, tipping ever closer to the brink.
Lyot is a solid constant at my back, his fingers teasing through my tousled curls with seductive care. Their touch is a silent chorus, exalting me to a new place where worship meets communion, and it’s no longer a question; when we all come together, I’m going to combust.
There’s a moment when I’m finally bare, lost in Gale’s glimmering eyes as he drinks me in, when I hear Lyot’s breath hitch. The sound of my nakedness reflected in our lover’s gaze.
“Taste her,” Lyot husks, and his hands slide beneath my thighs, opening and offering.
All the wickedness is stripped from Gale’s face. In the faint shadows under the stars, he looks like an angel, newly restored to his place on this side of heaven, and when he brings his mouth to my swollen center, he does it like a sacrament. It hurts to watch him, and my head falls back on Lyot’s shoulder, my eyes filling with sky. The dark god at my back watches for me and whispers in my ear.
“Do you know what you taste like, Shadow? You taste like whiskey, warm on the tongue. Your sweet pussy is like satin, and when he rolls your clit between his teeth like that, the sounds you make—those sounds—are like a song wrapping its chords around his cock. He can’t get enough. He wants to fucking swallow you whole. And when he slides his fingers inside you—like that—and you grip him with that tight cunt of yours, he’d sell his soul to feel you fluttering around his hand. Just. Like. That.”
He locks his arms around me and swallows my cry as I fracture, keeping all the blazing pieces of me from scattering into the night with the force of my ecstasy. Gale’s fingers slow but don’t stop, twisting so that he grinds the heel of his palm against the bulge of Lyot’s cock with every stroke. Lyot releases my mouth with a grunt, rocking his hips into the pressure.
“Cheating,” he gasps. Gale stands, and his teeth flash as he sheds his jacket and unbuttons his jeans.
“You did good, pretty boy. You deserved a reward.”
“A reward, or a tease?”
“It’s a fine line.”
“Are you taking over, then?” The growl in Lyot’s voice sends a wave of aftershock through me, echoed in Gale’s low laughter.
