Page 122 of Renegade Kingdom
“Is this okay?” His voice was low, from somewhere above me. The shadows were doing things that had my back arching off the bed.
“Yes.” It came out as a moan. “Yes, Damon, please.”
Ryder laughed, soft and dark, his mouth at my throat. “She likes your shadows.”
“I noticed.”
The shadows grew bolder. One of them traced the underside of my breast and then circled my nipple with a pressure that made me gasp. Another slid between my thighs, parted me,and found the spot that was still oversensitive from Maddox’s mouth.
I came again, fast and sudden, just from the shadows and Ryder’s mouth on my neck. The Shadow bond snapped into place alongside Summer and Spring, and three threads started to twist.
“Fuck.” Ryder’s forehead dropped to mine. “Watching that was. I can’t.”
“Don’t wait.”
He didn’t.
He pushed into me on a single smooth thrust and I arched under him with a cry. Autumn power poured through the bond, wild and changeable, like the wind that turned the leaves. Ryder’s hips set a rhythm that wasn’t steady like Tank’s or intense like Maddox’s. It was playful and sudden and aching. My toes curled and my eyes rolled back in my head as I just let myself sink into the sensations of everything that was Ryder.
Damon’s shadows didn’t leave. They were on my skin everywhere, and I realised with a jolt that one of them had wrapped around Ryder’s wrist, binding him to the post of the bed in a loose coil that Ryder clearly noticed and very clearly didn’t mind.
Damon was watching us with eyes gone solid dark. He was kneeling beside the bed, patient, and when I reached out my hand towards him, his shadows lifted him into place as though the dark itself carried him.
“You’re beautiful.” His voice was hoarse. “Both of you.”
Four threads hummed with power inside me now. Braided halfway up.
The only one missing was ice.
I turned my head and looked for him.
Dean was standing by the bed.
He hadn’t moved. He’d shed the rest of his clothes but he hadn’t come to us, and his face was a mask of control that was starting to crack around the edges. The Winter bond wasrunning so cold I could feel frost forming on the inside of my ribs, and underneath the cold there was something else, something I couldn’t name, something he was holding back from me.
Ryder saw me looking. He slowed his pace.
“Dean.” Ryder’s voice was calm. “Come here, brother.”
Dean’s jaw worked. His hand flexed at his side.
“Dean.” I said it this time. I held out my hand to him, the one that wasn’t tangled in Ryder’s hair. “Please.”
He came.
He knelt on the edge of the bed and took my hand and pressed my palm to his chest, and I felt the ice pull back, just enough to let me in. His heart was hammering underneath my hand like it was trying to break through the frost from the inside.
“I love you.” I said it looking him right in the eyes. “Whatever you’re carrying, I love you.”
Something in his face broke. He closed his eyes against it, hard, and when he opened them again, the control was back, but less. He’d let me past one wall. Maybe only one. But it was enough.
He lowered his mouth to mine.
The kiss was different from the others. Dean kissed like he was taking something he’d been denying himself for too long, like every second of restraint had built into this single release, and Winter magic surged through the bond with a force that made Ryder groan above me.
“Fuck,” Ryder managed. “I can feel that.”
“So can I.” Damon’s voice.
