Page 181 of Filled

Cruz’s laugh rumbles through the mattress. “Round one was for missing each other.” He stretches, joints popping, and reaches for the lube again. “Round two’s for keeping each other.”

I look at them—my fighters, my family, the people who dismantled every wall I spent forty years building—and feel the want rise in me again, endless, bottomless, finally free.

We’re just getting started.

44

DANTE

“Round two's for keeping each other.”

Cruz’s words are still settling over the bed as I look down at Dakota and file every detail away, the way I file everything. The tear tracks drying on her cheeks. Her thigh sliding over Eli’s. Cruz’s hand still splayed across Eli’s hip even as he stretches for the lube—keeping contact, like he’s afraid Eli might evaporate if he lets go. Brady’s fingers tracing loops on her stomach that aren’t lazy anymore, his face alive in a way I haven’t seen in two weeks.

Two weeks of silence. Two weeks of drilling combinations that meant nothing, of lying in beds that stayed cold no matter how many bodies filled them. Eli’s absence hollowed us out. We circled each other like planets that lost their sun, orbits decaying, waiting to spin off into the dark.

But he’s here. In Cruz’s bed with Dakota in his arms, and the relief lands in my body like a physical thing. A weight lifting off my sternum. Breath reaching the bottom of my lungs for the first time since he walked out believing he’d never come back.

Dakota’s eyes find mine across the tangle of limbs, holding the promise I just made her. No question in them anymore. Justan invitation, and a hunger the first round didn’t touch. She reaches for me over Cruz’s bulk without saying a word.

I take her hand. Let her pull me in.

She tastes like salt when I kiss her. Tears and sweat and the faint trace of Brady and Eli still on her lips. I go slow, savoring her the way I’ve been starving to for fourteen days. She melts, her palm coming up to cup my jaw. Behind her, Eli shifts to make room, his hand brushing my forearm. Permission. Acknowledgment. Welcome.

“Hi,” she whispers against my mouth.

“Hi, baby.”

“I need more.”

“I know. I’ve got you.”

We’ve learned each other over these months. Learned the rhythms, the tells, the small confessions bodies make when words fail. Dakota needs to be built up slowly before she’s overwhelmed. Eli needs eye contact, needs the tether of being seen. Cruz needs to be needed. Brady blooms under praise and falls apart beautifully when you tell him he’s good.

That knowledge isn’t power over them. It’s power for them. The kind that lets me give each one exactly what they’re too proud or too scared to ask for.

I roll Dakota off Eli’s chest and onto her back, settling between her thighs. She’s still soaked from before, and when I slide two fingers into her she arches with a moan that pulls every nerve in my body tight.

“Easy.” I press my free arm across her hips. “We’re not rushing this.”

“Dante—”

“Fourteen days, baby. I’m going to take my time.”

Eli props himself on one elbow beside her, watching. His hand finds her breast, thumb circling until her breath stutters. Cruz mirrors him on the other side, mouth latching onto herneck, sucking marks she’ll wear tomorrow under her collar like proof of claim. Brady slides up to the headboard and lifts her head into his lap, stroking her hair back from her damp forehead.

Four men and one woman at the center of everything. But she’s no trophy. She takes what she wants, gives what she chooses, commands the whole room without raising her voice above a whisper. She built this. We just showed up and refused to leave.

I add a third finger and curl them.

“Oh, God—” Her hips buck. I hold her down.

She whines, fighting the arm across her stomach for half a second before she surrenders to it, and the surrender is the whole point. She trusts me to control her pleasure. Trusts me not to waste it.

“Look at her,” Brady murmurs, thumb tracing her cheekbone. “Look how good you are, angel.”

She flushes at the praise the same way he does. I catch Eli’s small smile.

When I finally replace my fingers with my cock, we both exhale like we’ve been holding the same breath. I sink into her inch by inch and stop, buried deep, letting the connection settle. Her heat wraps around me and I have to close my eyes, count my heartbeats, remind myself patience is a discipline like any other.