Page 22 of Grimoire Girls Expulsion

"Everyone's winning," Felix corrects me, and wriggles his head deeper into my lap. "Some of us are just winning harder."

"So the dog turns to the groundskeeper," Felix starts again, "and he says, in a very deep voice, Gerald, I have seen things on that wall—" He stops in the middle of the sentence.

Atlas lifts his head. "What?"

"Nothing." Felix's hand has gone still on my knee, and he tips his head back on my thigh to look up at me. "Ev's thinking very loudly."

I am. I've been thinking about having all four of them ever since the threads came back strong and warm on the hill and I could feel them in my chest at once, alive and whole. I thought about it in the motel, lying awake between Callum's elbows and Felix's. For days they were dying in front of me, and I couldn't do a thing to stop it. Now I can touch them, and they're warm.

The bond has changed since the hill, too. It's stronger, and it's gentler at the same time, so full of them loving me and wanting to keep me safe that some mornings it makes my throat ache. They can control it now, though, in a way they never could before. In the motel, when Callum needed to be alone, I felt him go quiet on his end of the bond. He was still there, but he'd shut me out, gently, the way you'd close a door. They can do it to each other too. Felix says that's going to come in very handy when one of them has me to himself, and he waggled his eyebrows at Atlas until Atlas threw a shoe at him.

"I want all of you." It comes out steadier than I expect. "Tonight. I don't want to pick, and no one's taking a number like this is the deli counter."

Behind me, Atlas's chest goes still, and Ren's hand tightens on my ankle. Over by the door, Callum's feet come down off the footstool.

"Thank God," Felix breathes, and sits up and kisses me.

He kisses like he talks, fast and clever, grinning into my mouth. His hand comes up to cup my jaw, his thumb stroking the corner of my lips. He tastes of chicken soup and the cherry cough drops he's been eating all week, which really should not be sexy, but it is. Then he slows down to kiss me properly, deep and wet and unhurried, until I forget about the cough drops.

Atlas's hand slides up under my shirt and spreads across my stomach.

It's hot. Static jumps off the tips of his fingers, every hair on my body stands up at once, and I gasp into Felix's mouth. Felix pulls back just far enough to watch my face, his pupils gone huge.

"Take your shirt off." Atlas's voice is low and rough in my ear, and I feel it rumble through his chest into my back. "I've wanted it off you since the motel."

I pull it over my head. Felix gets my bra, after a short fight with the clasp that he loses and then wins, and tosses it over his shoulder in the general direction of Callum, who doesn't catch it. Ren sits up and puts his mouth on the side of my neck.

His heartbeat lands in me, heavy, right behind my breastbone, and then I feel my own go back into him, quicker, until the two of them fall into step. It's never been this loud. I can feel his pulse in my lips and in my wrists and between my legs, a steady knocking, as if he's already inside me.

"I can feel you." Ren's voice cracks against my skin. "Ev. I can feel all of you again."

I reach back, grab a fistful of his hair, and hold his mouth there.

They take their time, which kind of surprises me. After the wall and the quad and the dog, I expected fast. Instead they kiss me over and over, and they keep kissing me until I lose track of whose mouth is where.

Atlas's is on my shoulder, open and hot, his teeth grazing the muscle. Felix kisses his way down my chest, takes my nipple into his mouth and sucks, and I arch so hard Atlas has to grab the bedpost. Ren's mouth is on my throat, then my jaw, then my mouth, kissing me slow and deep while Felix's tongue circles my other nipple. Atlas's hands slide down to my hips and hold on.

I'm squirming and can't stop. When I push back against Atlas, who's hard against my spine through his jeans, he groans and hauls me tighter against him.

"Keep doing that," he growls into my hair, "and this is going to be very short."

"Liar," Felix mumbles around my nipple.

"I'm not lying." Atlas's teeth graze the edge of my ear. "I've been hard since you took my hand and walked me into a building I couldn't see."

"That was before the soup," Felix says.

"Yeah," Atlas agrees. "It was kind of a long soup."

Felix gets my jeans open. Atlas lifts me with an arm under my hips so Felix can drag them down and off, underwear and all. Then I'm naked on the blankets in the lamplight with the guys all around me, every one of them still dressed, which feels deeply unfair.

Across the room, Callum is sitting forward in the armchair with his elbows on his knees. He hasn't looked away once, and his shadow has come up off the floor to pool around his boots, curling and uncurling.

I meet his eyes. He doesn't look away from that either.

"You're allowed on the bed, you know," I tell him. "No one's grading you."

"I know." He doesn't move. The shadow at his feet stretches towards the bed and he pulls it back, and it stretches out again. "My shadows go wherever they want now. I don't know what they'd do to you if I came over there, so I'm staying in this chair until I know."