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Nat blinked, his expression going completely blank in a sort of ‘brain rebooting, please stand by’reaction.
“Wh... what?” he asked.
“Gay sex between two good-looking men?” I offered. “Totally hot, right?”
Nat continued to stare at me.
Crap, had I just broken my husband’s brain?
“Umm,” he said, his cheeks going bright red in a way which definitely didn’t complement his fading brownish-yellowbruising. “Well, I guess the fact that I went crawling back to him three times probably tells you all you need to know.”
“He’s really good in bed,” I agreed, despite the utter strangeness of having this conversation. “Like,reallygood.”
“I cannotbelievewe’re talking about this,” Nat muttered, still blushing like a schoolboy.
“I thought you were the one whowantedto talk about this,” I shot back, unrepentant. “But, uh, maybe we shouldn’t tell Byron how good we think he is at sex. He’ll get a swelled head.”
“I... will... keep that in mind,” Nat said, before becoming extremely interested in his coffee.
That night, Byron pulled the same trick of being sound asleep in his room when we got home. Or maybe it wasn’t a trick. Not everyone was an insomniac, and he was still recovering. Nat let out the kind of sigh that said he was only going to let this situation continue for so long.
After he wished me a good night and headed to bed, I went back to Luca’s nest. He, at least, was still up—lying on a pile of blankets and cushions, turning a cardboard box over and over in his hands.
“Hi,” I said. “Looks like Byron dodged us again. What’ve you got there?”
Luca sat up. “Heya. It’s the gift I got for Emiel. I was going to take it up to him, but I got caught up in my own head.”
“The gift?” I began, before a memory popped into my head. The night Luca had woken up screaming from nightmares of Blaze and SSG. Emiel had stayed with us to watch over the nest, and Luca had promised to buy him something when we woke up the following morning, tangled together in a haze of pheromones. “What did you get him?”
“It’s a knotting sleeve,” he said. “You fill the outside with hot water, and an alpha can stick his dick in it after he comes, so his knot stays warm and snug until it goes down.”
That... wasn’t what I’d been expecting, to put it mildly.
“You think he’d use it?” I couldn’t help asking.
Most alphas hated orgasming outside of a warm body. By all accounts, popping an unseated knot was a miserable experience—one that could last for up to an hour.
Luca shrugged. “No idea. But I don’t think it’s the kind of thing he’d buy for himself, and he should have the choice. Like I told him, just because other people fucked us up when we were young, it doesn’t mean we have to live like monks for the rest of our lives.”
The thoughtfulness of the gift, combined with Luca’s fearlessness in getting it for Emiel, made something warm swell in my chest.
“Would it be all right if I took it up to him?” I asked impulsively. “I’ll tell him it’s from you, obviously.”
A faint smile played at the corners of Luca’s mouth. “Only if I get to give him whatever cheeseball alphomic romance novel you pick out for him.”
I stifled a snort. “Deal. Just be aware that I’m going to get the raunchiest one I can find.”
“Well,yeah... what would be the point otherwise?” He sobered, holding my gaze. “Mia, I know I’ve been... holding myself back, with everything else that’s been going on. But you need to know that Idostill want you. I miss the kind of sex we had before—with Byron, and just between ourselves. I think I’m nearly ready to, um, do that kind of thing again. If you’re still interested, I mean.”
I thought about Nat downstairs in the guest bedroom. I thought of my revelation from earlier—I could ask them for what I wanted, and the worst that would happen is they’d say no.
“I wouldlovethat,” I told him. “You just say the word when you feel ready.”
The tension flowed out of his shoulders. “I will. I was also thinking, we should go out and do something fun. All of us, I mean. Like, I dunno, going dancing or something.”
I thought about the constant stress and lurching from crisis to crisis that had been my life for longer than I cared to think about.
“You know,” I said, “that actually sounds amazing. We are so totally doing that, even if we have to drag the others along by force.”