Page 80 of Heat Unscripted

He didn’t step in.

TWENTY-NINE

Isobel

“I don’t know where to—” Bram started and then stopped. His jaw worked. The admission cost him what it always cost him. The man had never in his life walked into a room without knowing exactly where he stood in it. “In production I have staging. Blocking. I know the spatial relationships. This?—”

“Isn’t a production.” I reached out, got my hand around his wrist, and drew him forward, over the line, into the circle. His peppercorn flooded the space where cedar and sandalwood already lived. Three alpha scents in the same air around the same Omega, for the first time with no sealed booth or living room or kitchen table holding them apart.

My stomach swooped low, like the floor had tipped. Everything in me that had spent years keeping these three men in separate rooms went quiet at once.

Bram’s forehead came down against mine. His cool skin against my heat. His breath unsteady where it crossed my lips.

“Tell me what to do,” he whispered. Not asking for blocking. Surrendering. Forty-three years of running rooms, and he was asking someone else to lead.

“Feel.”

I kissed him, and let the low hum carry into it, a sound he could taste off my mouth instead of hear. Behind me, Tuck’s hands slid under the hem of my shirt and lay flat against my stomach, skin on skin for the first time since that morning with him. At my throat, Cillian’s fingers pressed along the tendons of my neck like he was reading something written in the muscle.

Bram made a sound against my mouth. Low. Wrecked. I’d heard it once in the reading nook, and here it was again, in this room, with two other men’s hands on the woman he was kissing.

His eyes opened and found mine, gray-green and bright and asking.

“It’s okay,” I said, hand on his cheek, thumb on the line of his jaw the way he’d done to me in the library. “They’re yours too. You’re theirs. This isn’t a competition.”

“Different instruments.” Cillian’s voice came quiet from my throat. “Same song.”

Tuck’s laugh rumbled through my back. “He’s been saying that for days.”

“Because it’s true.”

Something changed in Bram’s face. The uncertainty didn’t leave. It just shifted over to make room for something next to it, something that looked, from inches away, like the start of trust.

His hands came up and found the one part of me Tuck’s arms and Cillian’s fingers hadn’t claimed. My face, cupped in both palms. He needed to hold the part that made the voice.

“I want to hear you,” he said. “All of you. While they—” A breath. The tremor came through his palms into my cheeks. “While we?—”

“Yes.”

That was enough.

The air in the bedroom was thick with the scent of us, cedar and peppercorn and sandalwood and my own chamomile-honey warmth, all tangled together in a way that made my head spin.Bram’s hands were still on my face, his thumbs tracing my cheekbones like he was memorizing the shape of me. Tuck’s breath was warm against the back of my neck, his arms wrapped around my waist, holding me steady, or maybe just holding me, period. Cillian’s fingers rested at my throat, his touch precise, like he was tuning me.

I could feel them. All of them. Not just their hands, but their scents, their heat, the way their bodies responded to mine like instruments in the same orchestra. Bram’s careful control was fraying at the edges, his usual composure replaced by something raw and hungry. Tuck’s cedar scent was dark and rich, the bourbon note deeper than I’d ever smelled it, like he was already half-drunk on the idea of touching me. Cillian’s sandalwood was steady, but there was a green edge of sage to it now as well.

My skin was too warm. My pulse was too fast. And my voice, my real voice, the one I’d spent years locking away, was humming in my chest, a low, resonant whine that wasn’t for an audience, wasn’t for a script. It was just for them.

Bram’s mouth found mine again, and this time, there was no hesitation. His kiss was deep, demanding, the kind of kiss that didn’t ask permission. It just took.

His hands slid down to my shoulders, then lower, mapping the curve of my waist before gripping my hips. I gasped into his mouth, and the sound was all me, no character, no performance, just the raw, unfiltered noise of a woman who’d been wanted for years and was finally being taken.

Tuck’s growl vibrated against my back. His hands tightened on my waist, pulling me flush against him, and I could feel the hard line of him through his jeans, the way his body was already responding to mine. His lips found the sensitive spot beneath my ear, and when he bit down, just enough to sting, and I arched into him with a broken little whine.

Cillian’s fingers trailed down my throat, over my collarbone, then lower, slipping beneath the hem of my shirt. His touch was clinical in its precision, but the way his breath hitched when he found my bare skin was anything but. “Tell me what you need,” he murmured, his voice rough in a way I’d never heard before.

I didn’t have words. Not the right ones, not the ones that could explain the way my body was burning, the way my skin felt too tight, the way I needed all of them at once. So I did the only thing I could, I reached for them.

My hands found Bram’s chest, gripping the fabric of his shirt. Tuck’s arms banded tighter around me, his mouth hot on my neck. Cillian’s fingers traced the waistband of my jeans, waiting.