Page 84 of Filled

“Daddy.”

Eli lifts his head from my collarbone. His eyes are heavy, fucked-out, but they sharpen at the tone.

“Yeah.”

“Come here.” Dante tips his chin toward Dakota. “Clean her up.”

For a second Eli doesn’t move. Then his eyes go dark and he’s sliding off me, leaving cooling stripes across my stomach, crawling on his hands and knees to where Dakota is bent and waiting.

“Daddy,” she whispers into the rug.

“I got you, princess.”

He bends to her. I prop myself up on my elbows because I’m not missing this, not for anything. His mouth meets her, and his groan when he tastes Dante on her is the filthiest sound I have ever heard a forty-year-old man make.

She moans, broken. Her hands fist in the rug.

Eli eats her like he’s been waiting his whole life to do it. Like Dante’s cum on his tongue is something he’s been afraid to want until now. His big hands grip her hips, hold her steady, and his green eyes flick up to find Dante’s while he works.

Dante watches, palm flat on his own chest, breathing hard.

“That’s it, Coach. Good. So fucking good.”

She comes again, smaller this time, a tremor that runs the length of her spine, and Eli works her through it gently, only lifting his face when she’s gone limp.

His mouth is wet. His chin is wet. He looks at me, at Dante, at Dakota’s flushed face turned sideways on the rug, and he looks more himself than I have ever seen him.

I sit up. “Come here. All of you.”

We collapse into a loose tangle in the middle of the rug. Dakota in the center because she always ends up in the center, Dante curled behind her, me half on top of Eli, Eli’s arm around all of us somehow. I lean across her and kiss Dante first. Then I turn and kiss Eli, deeper, longer, tasting Dakota on him too. He shudders into it.

Dakota lifts her head and kisses me, then turns and kisses Dante, then Eli. We end up in a knot of mouths, all four of us, lips and tongues and breath, no one in charge, no one keeping count. Her hand on my jaw. Eli’s hand on the back of my neck. Dante’s fingers threading through Dakota’s hair. A four-mouth kiss, slow and filthy and tender all at once.

When we finally break apart, we’re laughing. Quietly. The way you laugh when you can’t believe what just happened to you.

Dakota lays her head on Eli’s chest. Strokes my arm. Reaches behind her to find Dante’s hand and pull it over her ribs.

“I can’t wait,” she says, into the quiet, “to add Brady to this.”

Eli makes a sound that’s half a groan, half a laugh. Dante’s fingers tighten on her ribs.

I close my eyes and press my forehead to her shoulder.

“Friday,” I murmur.

“Friday,” she echoes.

Four of us on Dante’s rug, tangled and breathing in time, with a fifth-shaped space already waiting in the middle of us.

18

BRADY

The bottle of wine is too expensive. I knew it when I bought it, and I know it now, standing on her porch with the label sweating in my palm.

7:55. Five minutes early. I made myself sit in the truck for ten so I wouldn’t be a full fifteen early like some desperate kid showing up for prom.

The whole week has been a blur of her. Her hand on my forearm correcting my guard. Her palm flat between my shoulder blades, saying,Here, keep this tight.Her laugh in my ear at something stupid I said about Cruz’s protein shakes.