Page 90 of Filled

“It’s okay.” She kisses the corner of my mouth. “Tell me, there’s no one who can hear you but me.”

I close my eyes. “I’ve thought about it. All of you. Together. With me.” I open my eyes and look at her, and there’s no judgment in those pretty hazel eyes, just patience. “I didn’t even know I wanted that until I started watching you all interact at the gym. Cruz with Eli. The way Dante touches Cruz when he thinks nobody’s looking. You in the middle of all of it. I’m not?—”

“You don’t have to put a label on it.”

“I don’t know what I am.”

“You don’t have to know,” she insists.

I drop my forehead against hers and breathe. “I can’t,” I say.

“Why not?”

“Because I’m not.” I pull back enough to look at her. “Dakota. You don’t know me. Not like this. What you just got? That’s nothing.”

Her eyebrow raises. “That didn’t feel like nothing.”

“That was me holding back.”

Her expression shifts to curious, hungry almost.

“That,” I say, “was the tamest version of my impulses. When I let go, I get mean. Rough. I want to own whoever I’m with. I want to wreck them, put them back together, only to do it allagain. I don’t trust myself with that. I never have. That’s why I… ” My throat closes. I swallow it down. “That’s why I keep my hands to myself.”

She doesn’t say anything for a moment. Then she sits up. Pushes me onto my back on the couch and swings one leg over me until she’s straddling me again, naked, hair a mess, my mess still on her thighs.

She reaches between us and wraps her hand around my cock, which is already hard again, traitor that it is. Dakota moans as she sinks down onto me with a slow, deliberate roll of her hips that makes my eyes roll back.

“Dakota!”

“You haven’t seen me yet either, Brady.” She braces her hands flat on my chest, looking down at me. “I think you’re going to fit in just right.”

“But you don’t know what I get like,” I protest.

“I love it.” She rolls her hips again, taking me deeper. “How dominant you are. The hand. The hair. The voice.” She leans down, mouth at mine. “It’s so fucking sexy.”

I groan into her mouth, hands coming up to her hips on reflex.

“Let me in,” she whispers against my lips. “Let all of us in.”

I kiss her, knowing that there’s no going back now. Screw the consequences; I want to own them. All of them.

19

ELI

The booth at Rocco’s is the only one tucked far enough from the bar that I can hear myself think.

Dakota slides in first, sweater sleeves pulled down past her knuckles, the way she does when she’s nervous. Cruz drops in next to her, grinning, his thigh against hers like it belongs there. Dante takes the chair on the end so he can watch the door.

Brady’s the last one in. Hovers a second at the edge of the booth like he’s not sure if there’s space for him.

“Sit your ass down, Williams,” Cruz says, kicking the seat out. “You’re making me twitchy.”

Brady sits. His knee knocks mine under the table, and he jerks it back like I’m on fire.

“Relax.” I keep my voice low, the one I use when a fighter’s hyperventilating between rounds. “Nobody’s looking at us.”

“Everyone’s looking at us.” Brady’s hand goes to the back of his neck. “Cruz, why’d you wear that fucking shirt.”