Page 72 of Regal Feather
“But I shouldn’t be the focus.”
“Ever.” That was Santos. Santos pushing me off the chair and turning me around until I was face-to-face with his chest. Cupping my face with both hands until I was staring into his eyes because he’d given me no other choice. “You are the focus.”
“But—” Fuck. I could feel my chin begin to wobble. I didn’t think it was the kind of wobbling that would lead to waterworks, but I still bunched my fingers around fistfuls of Santos’s shirt. The material was slippery because, unlike me, he hadn’t changed into outside clothes and was wearing the workout clothes he’d started to put on every morning in case he felt the itch to go for a run. His words. Not mine. “You have all this stuff going on. Things should be about you, not me and my?—”
“Stop.” It was the closest to a command Santos had ever given me. A bolt through my core wouldn’t have left me standing straighter. “This is going to be the mushiest thing I’m ever going to say, but… Don’t you get it’s always been about you? Everything. Everything I have ever done has been about you. From the second we were roomed together at boarding school to hell, enlisting, even. Because if I did what my parents wanted, the heat would be off you, and you’d be there, safe, on the other side, and I could come back and not be a burden. It’s always been about you. Nothing’s changed. Don’t make it change now. I couldn’t—I can’t do it any other way.”
There was a clock ticking in the background. Actually, it might just be my head needing to keep track of something. Something to ground me.
“You…” I gulped.
The words ricocheted in my brain. It couldn’t be true, could it? Except I knew Santos. I knew the way his eyes shone when he was being his most honest. When he was being vulnerable but pushing himself to do it. Because of me. Because what he said made sense. I could glance back at our life and see it might’ve been the way he described it now. I just… What the fuck did I do with that? That kind of devotion? It couldn’t be healthy, could it? It should be the kind of thing I put a stop to. No one could make their lives about another person. It was what everyone would say.
“Well, my job here is done. You may kiss the bride.”
I chortled.
Santos kissed me before I could come up with some sort of retort, some taunting because Tony wasn’t the type of Dom to say funny shit like that.
All those thoughts fled as Santos’s body crowded me against the kitchen counter. As the marble dug into my skin, but his mouth was the only thing I could focus on. His tongue swirling inside my mouth, reaching to the back of my throat as if there was a contest he was intent on winning.
I was, weirdly, not complaining. I just held on to his stupid, slippery shirt like nothing else existed.
“Get on your knees, Ever.”
Huh?
I’d barely had a second to catch my breath.
The words were like a current that flowed through me regardless, an invisible string pulling me to the floor.
“Will you not leave just yet?”
I frowned.
It said a lot about what that kiss had done to me, because it took me an embarrassing amount of time to realize the question was aimed at Tony and not me. Tony, who was still in the room, and I could’ve told Santos he was too much of a voyeur to have actually left without notice.
“Nowhere else I’d rather be.”
I sat on my ankles more properly while they exchanged a charged look I didn’t want to bother interpreting.
Fuck.
Not squirming was hard.
I hadn’t been on my knees in a while. Online dynamics meant I might pose on my knees, on top of a bed, but that had been about it. Being at the club had me on my knees sometimes, but I hadn’t been playing there as often lately.
It showed in how the discomfort quickly settled.
I supposed that was why Tony had wanted me somewhere more comfortable.
He wasn’t saying anything now that Santos seemed to be in control, though.
“Tell him what you want,” he instructed.
“What I want,” Santos repeated. He moved his hand to my hair, his fingers curling around the messy strands there. The softest tug followed. I pressed my mouth tight before I proven what a wanton mess I was to them. “Just like that?”
“With subs like Ev?” Tony teased. “Yeah, just like that.”
