Chapter 256: Madeline
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We barely hit the last step when I feel cool air kiss damp skin and Reid groans like I just committed a crime. His gaze tracks the line of my throat to the band of my panties and back up, hunger and something softer wrestling in his eyes.
“Why didn’t you put a shirt on her?” he asks Jake without looking away from me.
Jake only shrugs, unapologetic. “I like to torture myself a little.”
Heat licks low in my belly. Whatever I think about the bruises shadowing me, they clearly don’t see damage; they look at me like I’m the point of the night.
I slide onto a stool at the counter and Reid nudges a bowl toward me, huge strawberries washed and beading with cold. I pop one in my mouth and close my eyes. “Oh my God. It’s so good.”
“Another.” Reid’s voice roughens, like he’s saying open for me, like last night’s vow to go slow is hanging by a thread. He watches my mouth as I bite, watches my tongue catch a red drip at the corner, and I swear the temperature in the kitchen jumps ten degrees. Jake leans his hip against the island, arms folded, pretending to be fine while his jaw flexes.
“We’ve got a surprise for you tomorrow,” he says at last, like a man remembering how to speak. “On one condition.”
I arch a brow around another berry. “Name it.”
“Rest the whole day prior to,” Reid says. “Really rest. No ‘just a walk’ and no ‘only a few stairs.’ We’re not negotiating, Trouble.”
I narrow my eyes, already curious—and doomed, because I’m terrible at waiting. “Fine,” I manage, trying not to bounce. “I’ll rest.”
“Good girl,” Jake murmurs, and the words slide between my ribs and find a nerve I didn’t know was still alive.
They shepherd me upstairs when the bowl is empty, Reid’s palm warm at the small of my back, Jake carrying water and switching on lamps to low. The bed looks like heaven. The nightstand looks like a small bookstore. I actually squeal when I see the stack. Ten new titles, the spines crisp; they smell like ink and promise. “You cleared out the romance aisle,” I accuse, delighted. They know I love to read, and it's clearly a very good way to keep me sitting in one place.
“Consider it research,” Jake says, dropping a kiss to my hair. “Purely academic.”
I grab the Navy SEALs sequel from the book I read a few weeks ago and burrow under the quilt. Boomer, the side character from the previous book. Traumatic past, girl he can’t have, chapters that make my throat ache three pages in. It’s ridiculous how fast I’m invested; the world funnels to print and breath and the steady press of two giant men near my feet.
Eventually the words blur. I blink hard, slide in the bookmark, and catch two pairs of eyes watching me like they’ve been counting my blinks. “You should sleep,” Jake says softly.
“Or,” I say, and tilt my chin, “you could kiss me.”
They exchange one of their no-sound conversations. I read the promise in it: we stop at kissing. No detours, no extra credit. Reid reaches first.
The book is gone before I can set it down; his hands are at my hips, careful, then I’m weightless and settled on his lap, their favorite seat in the house. The first press of his mouth is barely there, a ghost, a reverent hello. The second breaks me open. His tongue brushes my bottom lip, a question he’s already answered, and I sigh for him, let him in. He tilts my head with his fingers at my jaw, deepens, tastes—slow, then not slow at all—until a sound leaves him that I feel all the way through the mattress. I love when he groans like that.
“Switch,” Jake says, rough and laughing under his breath, like he’s rescuing both of us from Reid’s ruin. Strong hands lift; I’m passed gently, reverently, and then I’m on Jake, knees bracketing his thighs, his palm spread warm at my spine. He kisses like he talks when he wants to make me calm—steady, sure, threaded with heat he could unleash but doesn’t. When my fingers curl in his shirt he nips gently, breathes me in like he’s memorizing oxygen. “I want to be a good man,” he murmurs against my mouth, forehead pressed to mine. “So I’m going to stop. In—” he kisses me, helpless—“one second.”
“One,” Reid deadpans from the other side, voice not even close to calm.
I laugh and then swallow my laugh when Reid claims me again, a quick, hungry kiss that tastes like berries and restraint snapping, and then—Jake. It turns into a rhythm, a tide. Sometimes minutes-long kisses that build and build until my toes curl in the sheets; sometimes quick, greedy brushes—Reid, then Jake, then Reid again—like they’re trading sips of something they both can’t stop drinking. Big hands hold me in place and keep me safe; big bodies stay iron-still where it matters, proof of promises kept. Though I know from how hard they are beneath the covers that if I was healed just a little more, they wouldn't stop at kissing. And I know I'll be able to convince them that I'm fine enough for that within the next few days. Because seeing them here, hungry and hot and hard, is absolute torture.
By the time they ease me back against the pillows, my mouth is warm and tingling, lips swollen in the best, most wicked way. Reid traces the curve with his thumb, triumphant and tender. “Look what you did to us,” he says, voice a rasp.
“Look what you did to me,” I whisper back, tasting them both. “Tomorrow’s surprise had better be good.”
Jake’s smile is trouble and home. “It will be,” he says, tucking the quilt to my waist, brushing a last strawberry-soft kiss to the corner of my mouth. “Sleep, baby. We’ll be right here.”