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Dakota sees it too. Her eyes meet mine and a whole conversation happens silently in two seconds.

We migrate to the living room. Brady drops onto the couch and Dakota folds herself into his side immediately, her head on his shoulder, her hand flat on his chest over his heartbeat. Cruz sprawls on his other side, one heavy arm across the back cushions. Dante takes the chair, ankle over knee, watching everything. I stand at the edge of it for a moment, just watching.

“You’re hovering, Coach,” Cruz says.

“I’m watching.”

“Watch from a chair. You’re making the kid nervous.”

Brady huffs. “The kid is already nervous. The kid has been nervous since Monday.”

“The kid needs to stop referring to himself in the third person,” Dante says. “That’s a Cruz habit. It spreads. Like fungus.”

Dakota’s hand has started moving on Brady’s thigh, slow circles through the denim, and I watch his breathing hitch and then lengthen. Watch his shoulders drop a quarter inch. Her fingers trace up, unhurried, and the air changes.

Cruz leans in close to Brady’s ear and whispers too low for me to catch. Brady’s eyes go dark. His throat works. Then Cruz’s hand joins Dakota’s on his other thigh, bolder, deliberate, and when Brady turns his head Cruz kisses him. Brady makes a sound into his mouth and grips Cruz’s forearm hard.

I know what they’re offering him. A way out of his own skull. Every combat sport carries the old myth about abstaining before a fight, and it’s exactly that, a myth, folklore from men who confused suffering with discipline. Sex tonight won’t cost Brady a thing tomorrow. Walking into that cage strung like piano wire will.

Dakota pulls back from Brady’s neck, where she’s been working slow kisses under his jaw, and finds my eyes. The question sits there in the hazel, asked out of respect rather than need.

I nod once.

Her smile could power the building.

“Bedroom,” I command. “We’re doing this right.”

There’s a quality to tonight that our other nights haven’t had. No desperation. No dam breaking. We undress Brady like unwrapping a gift wouldn’t return for all the money on earth. Cruz peels his shirt over his head; Dante’s patient hands loosen his belt; Dakota kisses every inch of skin as it appears. Brady stands in the middle of it, trembling.

“Lie back,” Dakota tells him, and he goes, stretching out on my bed.

She straddles him, and the sight steals my breath all over again. She’s already bare, her clothes a trail behind her, and she takes Brady’s face in both hands.

“You’re here. With us. Tomorrow doesn’t exist right now.”

“Angel—”

“Nowhere else. Just here.” She sinks down onto him and Brady’s whole body arches, a sound tearing out of him that has nothing to do with weight cuts or game plans.

Dakota sets the pace slow. Her hips roll like the tide coming in, and I watch the anxiety drain from Brady’s face with every movement, replaced by that stunned reverence he still gets, like he can’t believe he’s worthy.

Cruz kneels up by the headboard, and Brady turns his head without being asked, opens his mouth, takes him in. The moan Cruz lets out fills the room, and I watch Brady’s hands, one gripping Dakota’s hip, one wrapping Cruz’s thigh, anchoring himself to two bodies at once.

Dante moves in behind Dakota with the lube from my nightstand, and heat rolls through me at what that means. We’ve done this before, Dakota stretched between two of us, and the memory alone tightens my gut. Dante works with the patience he brings to everything, one slick finger, then two, and Dakota’s rhythm on Brady stutters, her spine bowing.

“Okay, baby?” Dante asks against her shoulder.

“More. I’m ready, I’m—Dante,please.”

“There she is.” He kisses the back of her neck. “How could anyone deny you when you beg so beautifully…”

When he pushes into her, seated deep alongside Brady’s cock with only that thin wall between them, the sound the three of them make together raises the hair on my arms. Dakota’s cry, Brady’s groan around Cruz, Dante’s long exhale like a man setting down a weight he’s carried for miles.

I stand at the foot of my own bed, hand around myself, and I direct. Because that’s what I’m good at.

“Slow, Dante. Let her adjust. Brady, don’t move yet, let her have the stretch. Good. That’s good.”

Dakota’s eyes find me, glassy. Her lips are parted, and she’s taking little panting breaths, fighting to gain control.