Chapter 209
Kara
I sank down until the water reached my collarbones, and the sigh that escaped me was pure relief. My muscles unclenched for the first time in what felt like days. The constant tension I'd been carrying since Diana's people had drugged me in the tower finally, finally started to ease.
Through our bond, I felt their reaction to that sound—the way it shot straight through all three of them, bypassing rational thought and hitting something much more primitive. Blake's eyes flashed gold. Cole's breathing went shallow. Even Asher's careful control slipped, his gaze tracking the water droplets sliding down my throat with predatory focus.
"Just bathing," Asher reminded them—reminded himself—his voice strained. "We're just helping her bathe."
But when Blake picked up the bottle of body wash and started working it into a lather between his hands, I knew we were in trouble.
His palms slid over my shoulders, down my arms, across my collarbones. The touch was ostensibly practical—washing away the grime and blood and fear—but there was nothing clinical about the way his hands lingered on my skin, or the way his fingers pressed just a little too firmly against sensitive places.
The curve where my neck met my shoulder. The hollow of my throat. The soft swell of my breasts just above the waterline.
My breath hitched, and I felt the answering surge of satisfaction through our bond. They liked that I was responding. Liked that despite everything, despite the trauma and exhaustion and very reasonable decision not to have sex tonight, my body still wanted them.
"Sorry," Blake muttered, not sounding sorry at all. "Just trying to be thorough."
Behind me, Asher had taken over washing my hair, his long fingers working shampoo through the tangled strands with surprising gentleness. He massaged my scalp in slow, deliberate circles, and I couldn't stop the soft hum of pleasure that escaped me.
Big mistake.
All three of them went very, very still. The air in the bathroom thickened with pheromones—their combined scents of ebony, gunpowder, and mint mixing with my own magnolia-and-snow until I felt drunk on it.
"Kara," Cole said carefully, and I opened my eyes to find him kneeling beside the tub, his mint-green gaze dark with barely restrained hunger. "You need to stop making sounds like that."
"Like what?" I asked innocently, even as my wolf preened at having all their attention focused so intently on me.
"Like you're enjoying this a little too much," Asher rumbled from behind me, his voice gone rough. "Like you want us to do more than just wash you."
Did I? God, I didn't even know anymore. My body was screaming yes, drowning in the sensation of their hands on my skin, in the safety of being surrounded by them. But my mind kept throwing up warning flares—too soon, too fast, you're not ready, this is a bad idea.
"I'm just... relaxing," I managed, but it came out breathier than I'd intended.
Blake made a sound that was half-laugh, half-growl. "Right. Relaxing." His hands had migrated to my feet now, lifting one out of the water to massage the arch with his thumbs. "Is this relaxing, baby?"
It absolutely was not. It was the opposite of relaxing. It was making every nerve ending in my body light up like the aurora dancing outside the window.
Cole leaned in closer, his breath warm against my ear. "You know what I think? I think you're wound so tight you're about to snap. And I think you need to let go."
"We agreed—" Asher started, but Cole cut him off with a look.
"We agreed no sex," Cole said firmly. "But we didn't say anything about not taking care of our mate. About not helping her release some of this tension before it eats her alive."
Through our bond, I felt the silent conversation happening between them—Asher's resistance warring with his desire to give me what I needed, Blake's barely controlled wolf demanding they claim what was theirs, Cole's gentle insistence that this was about my comfort, not their gratification.
"What do you want, Kara?" Asher asked finally, his hands stilling in my hair. "Tell us what you need, and we'll give it to you. But you have to say it."
What did I want? I wanted to stop thinking. Wanted to stop being afraid. Wanted to feel something other than the lingering terror of Diana's compound and the crushing weight of all the revelations about my parents and Victoria and the decade of lies.
I wanted to feel alive.
"Touch me," I whispered. "Please. I need—I need to feel you. Need to know this is real."
Blake's hand slid up my calf, over my knee, higher. "Like this?"
"Yes," I breathed, and felt them all relax slightly, reassured by my explicit consent.
Asher's lips found the mark on my shoulder—his mark, the one he'd put there in Maui when I'd been brave enough to ask for all three of them at once. He kissed it softly, reverently, and I felt the bond between us pulse with warmth.
Cole's fingers traced the other two marks on my neck, Blake's and his own, with the same careful attention. "You're ours," he murmured. "And we're yours. Nothing Diana did, nothing anyone did, can change that."
Blake's hand finally reached its destination, and I gasped as his fingers found my clit with unerring accuracy. He circled it slowly, testing my response, and I felt my hips lift involuntarily toward the pressure.
"That's it," he encouraged, his voice gone rough with desire. "Let us make you feel good, baby. You deserve to feel good."
I wanted to argue—wanted to say I didn't deserve anything, that I'd failed to escape, that I'd needed them to rescue me like some helpless damsel. But then Asher's teeth scraped over his mark and Cole's fingers joined Blake's between my legs and rational thought became impossible.
They worked me with the kind of coordinated precision that only came from being able to sense each other's thoughts, feel each other's desires through our bond. Blake's fingers circled and pressed while Cole's slid lower, testing my entrance with gentle pressure. Asher kept his mouth on my mark, using teeth and tongue in ways that made my whole body sing.
The water sloshed around us as my movements became less controlled, more desperate. I gripped the edge of the tub with one hand, the other reaching back to tangle in Asher's hair, needing the anchor of his solid presence behind me.
"You're so beautiful like this," Cole breathed against my ear. "So perfect. Our perfect mate."
"Ours," Blake agreed, his thumb pressing harder against my clit. "Say it, Kara. Tell us you're ours."
"I'm yours," I gasped out, because in that moment it was the truest thing I'd ever said. "I'm yours, I'm yours, I'm—"
The orgasm hit me like a tidal wave, crashing through my body with an intensity that made me cry out. My back arched, water splashing over the side of the tub as I convulsed with pleasure. Through our bond, I felt their satisfaction—their wolves howling with triumph at having pleased their mate, at having wrung such a response from my body.
Blake and Cole caught me as I went limp, preventing me from sliding under the water. Asher's hands gentled in my hair, stroking soothingly as aftershocks rolled through me in gentle waves.
"Good girl," Blake murmured, pressing a kiss to my temple. "Such a good girl for us."
I wanted to stay awake, wanted to luxuriate in this feeling of safety and satisfaction and being exactly where I belonged. But exhaustion pulled at me with irresistible force, my eyelids growing impossibly heavy.
"Sleep," Asher commanded softly, and I felt the subtle push of Alpha authority in the word—not forcing, but permitting, giving me permission to let go. "We've got you."
The last thing I felt before consciousness slipped away was Blake lifting me from the water, Asher wrapping me in a towel heated from the warming drawer I hadn't even noticed him preparing, and Cole's gentle hands drying my hair with careful attention.