Page 48 of Monster Queen Rising

His hand turns under mine and holds on. Hard. The shift climbs, crests, and drains back down because he makes it.

He taps the valve twice. He folds the schematic and pushes it across to me.

I read it back to him twice, out loud, so he knows I have it. He stands, kisses me at the table, slow, and walks out.

The night before we leave. Daron comes back from the east end at dusk, Dean with him, both smelling of wind and gravel and sweat. I'm at the counter with a glass of water.

Daron sees me, and his face sports a half-grin. Dean's behind him, steel-gray eyes finding mine.

"Tonight, you’re ours," Daron says. "If you say yes," says Dean.

"Hell yes."

We go up to the room at the end of the hall. Daron closes the door.

What I want from them tonight isn't the storm. It's the calm — the two of them choosing me on the last night before the worst thing we've done. They seem to know it. Daron, who always comes at me hot, is unhurried. Dean, who's always careful, is close.

They undress me between them, no rush. Daron takes my mouth first, kissing me deep while Dean works my flannel off my shoulders from behind and sets his mouth to the back of my neck. I get passed between them like that — Daron's kiss, then Dean turning my chin to take his own, traded back and forth while their hands map me, and there's something in being kissed by both of them, in never once being let go of, that has me coming apart at the seams before they've even got me bare.

By the time the last of my clothes is gone they've got me caged warm between their bodies, Daron's chest against mine and Dean's against my back.

Daron drags his nose up the side of my throat, breathing me in.

"God, she smells good tonight. Dean. Smell her."

Dean's already got his face in the back of my neck, and I feel his answer against my spine more than hear it. "I know. Barely started and she's already there."

"That's just you two in a room." My breath's already short.

My hands find them. Daron first — hard already, thick in my palm, and he groans into my throat when I stroke him. Then Dean at my back, just as hard against the base of my spine, and when I reach behind me and wrap my hand around him he drops his forehead to my shoulder and swears soft.

"Look at you," Daron says against my jaw. "Both hands full. Greedy."

"I've got two of you. I'm allowed."

His mouth starts to travel — down my throat, over my collarbone, and then he's at my breasts, taking his time, dragging his tongue over one nipple until it's tight, closing his lips around it and pulling while his thumb works the other. When his teeth graze me I arch into it, and he does it again, a nip that stings and goes straight down through me.

"You like a little teeth," he murmurs.

Behind me Dean's hands come around and take the breast Daron isn't working, and I can't do anything but hold on. He scrapes his teeth up my shoulder to the mark he left at the barn and closes his mouth over it, worrying his own mark, and it lights up hot down the side of my throat.

"Mine," he says against it. Not to me. A fact.

Daron comes around to his own mark on the other side of my throat and does the same, teeth set over the place he sealed me, a growl in it. Both of them with their mouths on their marks at once, and I go loose between them.

Dean's palm slides down my stomach from behind, and when his fingers find how wet I am he stills, and I feel it go through him — the discovery of it, rough against my spine.

Then both their hands are on me at once, one from the front and one from behind, and I'm rocking into Daron's fingers and back onto Dean's with nowhere to go that isn't one of them.

They work me like that — hands, mouths, the murmur passing back and forth, one of them always at my throat — until I'mshaking and the first one rolls up out of me long and deep, Daron catching the sound off my mouth, Dean holding me steady from behind.

Then they lay me down.

They take me to the middle of the bed, Daron settling over me, Dean settling behind me and I know what they mean to do before either says it — settled between them without a word.

"You'll take both of us," Dean says, low, over Daron's shoulder. "Right here. Not fast. We're going to open you up nice and easy."

"Yes."