Mag-log inKael’s POVI woke up hard and already thinking about her.The house was quiet in that deep way it only got after midnight. Riven was still asleep in the bed across from mine, one arm thrown over his face. I sat up slow, elbows on my knees, and stared at the strip of hallway light under our door.Maxine was two rooms away.I could still feel the way she had clenched around me on the kitchen counter earlier. Tight. Hot. Shaking. The sound she made when I first pushed inside her had stayed in my head for hours. I had watched my brother take her right after, watched her body accept him the same way it accepted me, and something in my chest had settled into place like a lock clicking shut.We were keeping her.I stood, pulled on a pair of black sweatpants, and left the room without waking Riven. The hallway floor was cool under my feet. Her door was cracked open. I pushed it wider with two fingers.She was on her side, facing the window, the sheet twisted around her bare legs. The tank top
Morning light cut across my bed like it had no right to feel normal.My body still hummed from the night before. Every shift of the sheets reminded me of the stretch in my jaw, the ache between my legs where Riven’s fingers had worked me open, the taste that still clung faintly to the back of my tongue. I lay there staring at the ceiling for a long time, thighs pressed together, pulse already too fast for a quiet house.I could hear them moving downstairs.Kael’s footsteps were heavier, deliberate. Riven’s had that restless energy, like he never fully settled. The sound of the coffee maker. Low voices that didn’t carry words, only the shape of them. My stomach flipped hard.I forced myself up, pulled on clean shorts and a loose shirt, and went down like nothing had happened.They were both in the kitchen again.Kael leaned against the counter in a black T-shirt, coffee in hand, watching me the second I appeared. Riven sat on the island edge, bare feet swinging, orange juice in one ha
SLOANE I want to tell you I was fine.I want to tell you I closed my door, took a breath, got into bed like a reasonable person and went straight to sleep. That Reid's hands on my waist and his mouth on mine were already fading, already filing themselves away into the category of *things that happened and won't happen again.*But my hands were still shaking when I sat on the edge of my bed.My lips were still warm.And somewhere above me, in this big quiet house, Callum was awake.I knew he was awake. Didn't have a single logical reason to know that — no sound, no light under my door, nothing. Just that feeling you get sometimes when someone is near. That low hum in the air that your body picks up before your brain does.I changed into my sleep shirt. Washed my face. Stood at my window for a while looking at nothing. Told myself to get into bed.Didn't get into bed.I was standing in the middle of my room doing absolutely nothing useful when I heard it.Footsteps in the hall.Not Rei
Not hard. Not the way I expected from him — not fast or hungry or any of the things his energy had promised. He kissed me soft and slow and deliberate, like he was making a point, like he wanted me to feel every single millimeter of it. His lips moved against mine carefully, learning the shape of them, his thumb still at my jaw holding me right where he wanted me.My hands found his chest.I meant to push. I know that's what I meant. My palms landed against him and my fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt and I absolutely meant to push — but his mouth moved and every coherent thought I'd been holding onto went quiet. He kissed me like he had something to prove and all the time in the world to prove it, deep and slow and so thorough that my knees actually softened.I felt him smile against my mouth.He knew. Of course he knew.His hands moved to my waist — both of them, firm and warm through the thin fabric of my shirt, pulling me closer until there was no space left between us.
SLOANE I want to tell you I kept my composure at dinner.I want to tell you I sat across from both of them, ate my food, made polite conversation, and felt absolutely nothing. That the morning had been an accident and I'd filed it away neatly and moved on like a functional adult human being.But I'd be lying.Because the truth is I spent the entire day in my room replaying it. The steam. The mirror. His eyes finding mine before either of us was ready. The way my name sounded in his mouth like something he hadn't meant to say out loud. I'd made three separate attempts to read the same chapter of the same book and retained nothing. I'd stared at my ceiling for an embarrassing amount of time doing absolutely nothing except thinking about water tracking down collarbones and a towel hanging catastrophically low.And then Reid in the hallway. That slow curl of a smile. You're very red, Sloane.By the time dinner came around I was already wound tight as a watch spring.That was my first mis
"Close the door."I closed the door.From the outside. Which meant I was in the hallway. Which was the correct outcome. This was good. This was the right result.I stood there with my back against the wall and my heart trying to exit my chest and my brain doing something useless and unhelpful — replaying it. The water on his collarbones. The way he'd looked at me. The way he'd said my name like it was a warning he hadn't quite decided to give yet.Wrong bathroom.Wrong bathroom" like the only thing wrong about any of it was geography."Interesting morning?"I spun around.Reid was leaning in his bedroom doorway six feet down the hall. Arms crossed, hair disheveled, wearing a grey t-shirt and sweats, looking at me with that expression he had — the one that said he found the world faintly amusing and was in no hurry to pretend otherwise.He looked at my face. At the closed bathroom door. Back at my face.The corner of his mouth pulled up slow."Callum's bathroom is the one on the east e







