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In truth, it’s perfect.

I feel his cock thickening, the muscles against me coiling together, and I get a sudden sense of responsibility. Taking his face in my hands, I tug his head back, urging, “Look at me.”

Lex always makes me look at him when he fills me with the syringes. I’ve never understood why, and though a part of me might have once suspected it was to humiliate me, the thought seems wrong now. Something about this is important to him. More important than his pride or hatred or distrust. He won’t remember this in the morning, but it seems abominable for me to deprive him of it.

“Lagan, look at me,” I order, guiding his head up. The moment his dazed amber eyes lock on mine, I whisper, “Come for me.”

His lips part on a sharp, abrupt inhale, brows crashing together at the same time our hips do. The last thrust is as hard as the first ones, slamming me into the bed with enough force to knock a gasp from my lungs.

The groan that rips through him is followed by the hot rush of him filling me, and I resolutely keep my wide eyes fixed to his. It’s nothing like Wicker, who comes aggressively, like it’s a weapon. And it’s nothing like Pace, who comes and never really goes. Lex comes like a slowly rolling wave, his body rippling with every warm surge.

“Good,” I tell him, never breaking his gaze as my thumb sweeps across his cheekbone. “You’re so good.”

I know when his eyelids flutter closed that it’s over, and I have the foresight to guide him just before he collapses, his spent cock slipping wetly from me as he furls to the mattress at my side. I take a moment to arrange him, brushing the hair from his face as he stills with a long, oddly troubled sigh. There’s a crevice in his brow that never really goes away, not even when I soothe it with my thumb. He looks weirdly both strong and vulnerable, his fingers clutching the pillow even when he’s returned to slumber.

There’s a weight to the moment that sits heavily in the pit of my chest, and I remember back to the morning I started my period.

“This is all so fucking easy for you.”

If I knew then what I know now, I would have told Lex that every step of the way has been nothing but pure agony for me, but that I also understand. I see now hownoteasy it is for him. And for reasons I doubt he deserves, I feel accountable for respecting what happened here tonight.

It’s why I roll to my back, grab the pillow beneath my head, and tuck it beneath my hips.

That’s when I realize Wicker is in the doorway again.

I freeze, wondering how long he’s had the door open like that, watching as I coaxed his brother to fill me up.

His voice is almost too quiet–too soft–to hear. I still make out the words, whispered on a slow, shaky inhale. “Thank you.”

“Get out.” The demand is more of a surprise to me than him. I don’t mean to say it, even though it’s what I feel.

This is ours.

Not yours.

Wicker doesn’t look at me, though. His gaze is glued to his sleeping brother as he stands there, shoulders slumped into a tired curve. “I’ll come for him in the morning,” he says, finally looking away.

My jaw clenches. “Get–the fuck–out.”

But he’s already closing the door behind him, leaving me to stare at the gilded ceiling, hips tipped upward. I use my fingers to push the sticky fluid back in as I send up a silent, grim prayer.

Let this be the one.

I wake up slowly,drifting to the surface of a dreamless void with heavy eyes that squint against the sun pouring in through the windows. Everything seems brighter against the gilded surfaces. My first attempt at a stretch ends on a wince before it ever really begins, and when I turn my head, I’m startled to find someone else there.

Lex, I remember, the events of the previous night coming back to me in a flood of images. He’s awake but eerily motionless, perched on the furthest side of the bed, his back to me as his head hangs low. He hasn’t looked at me yet, and it takes a few blinks, but the broad expanse of his back finally comes into focus.

When it does, my breath hitches.

The late morning light illuminates the scars, throwing the depth of them into sharp, shocking relief. But worse than that are the raw slashes that look to be newer.

Remembering my hands sliding through blood last night, I look down, seeing dark brown stains beneath my fingernails.

Did I make those, digging my nails into his back?

But no, that’s not right. Most of the wounds are well scabbed over. Only a couple seem to have reopened over the night.

I watch his back for a long time as I lay there–the rise and fall of it, even and measured, and the texture of it, gnarled and disturbing. The longer I stare, the more wrong it feels, as if I’m indulging in the sight of something I shouldn’t. Something–no, someone–made those marks, and it only adds to the feeling that there are secrets in the Palace I don’t understand.