Total pages in book: 218
Estimated words: 215412 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1077(@200wpm)___ 862(@250wpm)___ 718(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 215412 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1077(@200wpm)___ 862(@250wpm)___ 718(@300wpm)
“I love you.”
We both freeze as the words leave him, our gazes intertwined and searching.
I clap a hand over his mouth and put my face in his. “You can’t take it back.”
He pries my fingers away and releases a labored breath. “I love you, Wolfson Strakh.”
“That’s convenient, because I’m utterly in love with you. It’s a healthy obsession. Yours. Not mine.”
We both look at Dove.
Propped on an elbow, she presses her fingers to her mouth as her eyes fill with shiny, happy tears.
“I love you, Little Bird.” Jag strokes her thigh.
“Yes. We all love one another. Group hug.” I gather them into my arms and tackle them to the bed in a shower of kisses and laughter.
We clean up in the bathroom, and I take longer than needed, lingering at the vanity, hands braced on the marble.
Sounds of movement drift from the other room, the bed creaking as the guys settle back in. Deep voices. Sated murmurs. Familiar rhythms.
Jag and Wolf.
They’re devastating together. Heartbreakingly divine in their love for each other. Captivating and utterly torrid in the way their bodies fit and move together. I can’t unsee it. I never want to let it go.
And Jag? He’s everything I idolized as a child. Every myth I told myself about him is true. Guardian, superhero, protector, family… He’s all those things and more. More human. More resilient. More damaged and real.
I still haven’t recovered from the shocking, mind-blowing intimacy.
He ate my pussy.
Twice.
Jag, my stepbrother, the man I’ve been fantasizing about for seventeen years, shoved his tongue up inside me and made me come.
The truth lands in pieces, struggling to stick. Reality far exceeds every version I dreamed, every safe fantasy, every impossible hope. The real Jag isn’t cleaner or easier. He’s filthy, messy, and beautifully, disarmingly complicated.
What he did for me when we had nothing, what he endured so I could eat, breathe, and go to school, it cuts even deeper now that I understand it.
I was a nightmare. An angry brat with a chip on her shoulder and an inappropriate infatuation with her stepbrother. I made everything harder on him without meaning to, without knowing what he was carrying.
I didn’t know any of it. Not a damn thing about Adrian Crowe or my mother or the promise Jag made to her. I need to give myself grace for that ignorance. I was a kid.
But guilt doesn’t listen to reason. It festers and bleeds inside me. I want to rewind and redo every moment where I failed him.
I can’t.
So I breathe and accept that this reckoning in my heart will take time. Love doesn’t erase the past. It asks me to sit with the consequences and learn how to live differently going forward.
In the mirror, I meet my own eyes and push my shoulders back.
This isn’t something to rush.
The best part? I don’t have to sort through it alone.
I scoop Jag’s discarded shirt off the floor, the one he wore on the flight here. It smells like him and travel and the familiarity of home, making my chest ache.
As a child, I didn’t always have a roof over my head. But I was never homeless. Not until I lost the warmth of his arms around me.
Tears burn behind my eyes as I pull the shirt over my head. The hem slips past my thighs, settling on me the way his shirts always did.
When I was fifteen, I made a promise to myself and never spent another night with Jag Rath. It hardened me when I needed to learn how to be independent. It protected my heart when he rescued me from harm. It did its job.
Now it’s time to let it go.
I leave the bathroom and cross the room toward the bed, toward the love and promise waiting there.
Jag and Wolf sprawl on their backs, heads on pillows, and sheets tangled around their legs. They’re both naked, their cocks lying limp across their stomachs, languid and assuaged.
Wolf’s fingers relax on Jag’s dick, his thumb absently stroking the soft, fat length. Jag’s head rests on his bent arm behind him, his eyes half-mast, reflecting his lazy pleasure. His other hand traces the scars on Wolf’s chest, wordlessly acknowledging them.
They watch me approach the bed with rapt attention. Two pairs of eyes. Arctic wolf blue. Molten jaguar amber. All predatory focus.
Wolf slips his hand from Jag and shifts, opening a space between them. A pocket made just for me.
I set a knee on the bed.
“Stop.” He points at me. “You’re violating the dress code. No shirts allowed. Or clothes, in general.”
Heat flushes my skin, and a soft laugh escapes me. I tug off the shirt and crawl into the space they made for me.
Wolf crowds in, his chest flush against my back. I curl forward into Jag, and his arms close around me, protective and familiar, just like I remember.