Page 78 of Craving Consequences

EVERLY

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They’re on me before I can even speak.

I’m dragged down on the bed with them taking their places on either side.

Their heat and strength envelop me in a cocoon of safety.

Of want and longing. They hold me like we’d been apart for hours rather than a few minutes.

Their eyes sift over and through me in desperate sweeps like they’re checking for injuries, and where their eyes don’t reach, their hands drift over.

They are so engrossed in me, so caught in my wants and needs, I momentarily have no idea how I’m supposed to accept it. Bron never put me first for anything. After my parents died, it was just me. No one ever worried about me.

“Please talk to us, sweetheart.” Lachlan touches my face, strokes the same hand back over my hair. “You’re killing me.”

He’s so close, so anxious. His entire face is a mask of worry that only makes the knot in my stomach worse.

“What if you hate me after?” I whisper, heart lodging in my throat when he kisses the fears off my lips with a tenderness that only heightens my uncertainties .

“I don’t think you understand just how deeply in love I am with you, Everly. Not loving you isn’t even an option for me anymore.”

Even with his words a warm balm soothing the gash in my chest, I falter in my answer. I look up into their faces looming over mine, both mirroring expressions of concern and fear.

I hate that I’ve scared them.

I hate that I’m this person who can’t hold her shit together when it matters most. I try to justify my collapse, the unraveling of everything I’ve been trying to keep together the last week, and I feel weak.

Defeated. Embarrassed. But oddly lighter.

Like unloading the weight lifted the pressure on my shoulders.

Still, even through the new clarity, I’m not strong enough to withstand the loss of them if they turn away from me.

“I...” I begin, wishing they’d stop looking at me with such unblinking focus, like they’re just waiting for the chance to jump in and right all the wrongs in my life. “I made a mistake.”

Van skims a kiss to my brow. “That’s okay. We’ll fix it.”

“I don’t think you can,” I whisper, unable to stop my fingertips from ghosting the side of his stubbled face with my unwrapped hand. “It’s not something you can fix.”

He captures it, brings the knuckles to his lips without ever breaking eye contact.

“Try us,” Lachlan insists, “We’re very good with our hands. ”

Despite the iron weight on my chest, I laugh.

It brings a lopsided grin to his face that only adds to unbelievable charm of him.

But the amusement dims when he settles his palm across the soft muscles of my stomach like he already knows.

Like he can already feel the possibility, even though I know that’s not possible.

“I’m sorry about earlier,” I begin. “It’s been such a long week and it seems like it will never end.” I run a dry tongue over my equally dry lips. “Yesterday was just so much.”

Van lifts my hand to kiss again. Tickles the skin with the soft bristle darkening his jaw.

“You have no reason to apologize,” he murmurs. “You’ve gone through a lot in a very short amount of time. Sometimes it helps to just let it all out.”

He makes it sound so rational. Logical even. But I’ve been dealing with everything on my own for so long that it seems ridiculous that this was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

But even still, I am not comforted by the excuses. A bad week is not going to rationalize my oversight.

“It’s more than that. With everything that happened, I...” I suck in a breath. A deep one. “I didn’t mean to forget. I’m usually on top of it. I don’t think I’ve ever missed a day in years. I only realized this morning that I...”

“Forgot what, sweetheart?” Lachlan urges, brushing his fingers along the curve of my cheek .

I feel the thundering collision of organ against bone exploding in my chest. The violent taste of copper filling my mouth. I stare up into his soft focus and wonder if this is the last time I’m going to see him look at me like this.

“My birth control.”

I shred the confession through my lungs and past my lips. It hits the air and plumes wide like oil in the ocean. Not even the immediate latch of my teeth over my bottom lip can save me now.

Both men go still. Silent. Their eyes abandon me for a single heartbeat to exchange glances, fleeting flicks as if to ask the other if they heard the same thing before they return, weighted pools pulling me in. Under.

I try to hold my breath, but it’s all consuming and their silence is infinite.

“I didn’t mean for it to happen,” I babble, frantic. “I promise it wasn’t intentional.” I search Lachlan’s brown eyes, begging him not to get angry. “I don’t expect anything if I am. It’s my fault. I’ll—”

“What?” Lachlan murmurs so quietly I almost don’t hear him over the pounding of terror between my ears. “What will you do if you are?”

I swallow. Try to. There’s no spit in my mouth.

I wish they would move so I can get up. Every bone in my body wants to run, to get as far away from them as possible before the gravity of my confession catches up to them.

“I ... I’ll ... keep it,” I squeak. “I want it. I’ll take full responsibility, and I won’t ask you for anything.” I try to suck in a breath. “Just please don’t hate me.”

Terror and panic are a jagged ball of glass lodged in my throat as I wait for their answer. As I wait for the longest second in history as the two look up at each other again. Maybe it’s the fog of numbing alarm, but I can’t read their expressions. I can’t tell what they’re thinking.

“Do you want our baby, Everly?” Van asks with the same even tone as his friend.

“Yes,” I breathe. “It’s mine. I know this might not be what you want, but I promise I didn’t do this to make you stay—”

Lachlan kisses me.

He tears into my lips with the feral hunger of a wolf. Early morning stubble scratches my skin. His hand slides beneath my head, cradles my skull and holds me prisoner as he devours me until I can’t breathe.

“Ours,” he growls, hot and savage. Possessive. “It’s our baby. Do you really think we wouldn’t want something made of you and us?” His lips are at my throat, teeth nipping down the curve .

Van’s palm slides down my belly, fingers splay. His eyes follow the path, bright with excitement.

“If there’s even a chance,” he says quietly, “I want it. I want you with our baby.”

Lachlan’s voice is lower, rougher as he reaches the underside of my chin. “You’re ours, Everly. Anything that comes from you ... from in you, is ours.”

All that doubt washes free with every sweep of their hands. Every whisper of their lips. Their words fill me with the sweetest honey. I am so lost in their love. Their joy. I’m crying even as a laugh escapes.

“You really mean it?” I choke out. “You want this?”

Lachlan growls against my jaw, hand tugging and yanking my top up over my waist. Bunching the material to bare my stomach and everything from the waist down.

“Do I want to see you full and round with the life we put in you?” he asks, hand back at the soft plain. His eyes meet mine, dark and wild through the thick fringes of sleep tousled locks. “If you let us, we’ll keep you pregnant year-round.”

“Was that everything?” Van urges, shifting higher, pushing up.

I nod, too dizzy with relief and happiness to speak.

“Our baby,” Lachlan breathes into my skin, the words a low, tortured growl. “Fuck, I never thought I’d want anything so badly. ”

“We definitely need to make sure it sticks,” Van decides on my other side, hand sliding down my naked thigh. “Now that we know your cunt is unprotected, nothing is stopping us from putting our baby in you.”

A strangled gasp slips from my throat as heat floods me. My thighs shift and Van smirks in response.

“Open,” Lachlan urges, hand already at my other knee, forcing it back over his hip, spreading me. “We haven’t filled you all day yesterday. We need to make up for it.”

Breathing hard, I nod obediently. “Yes, please.”

Both men smirk at my easy compliance. Their hands meet at my center in overlapping strokes moving over and between my folds. They seem in no hurry as they tease me.

“You know what I keep remembering?” Lachlan murmurs into my ear as he spreads my lips and lets his friend tease my clit. “That first night in the truck. You, letting us pump our cum in your virgin hole. What if we knocked you up and we had no idea?”

The low, snarling growl Van releases into the side of my neck is nothing to the slow, deliberate thrust of his finger sinking home. The sweet invasion arches my hips into his palm as I gasp into Lachlan’s mouth.

“Or the night we spent in this very bed, taking turns using you until dawn. Pumping you full. ”

“That was a good night,” Lachlan groans, flicking a tongue along the seam of my bottom lip. “It was just a puddle under your ass at one point.”

“We definitely put a baby in you,” Van decides with a gleam of triumph in his eyes.

“God, please,” I whimper, hips thrashing and grinding into Van’s unhurried thrusts.

“I think our little cumdump needs a dick, Lach.”

Lachlan breaks the kiss only to nuzzle his nose against mine, kissing me again.

“Well, don’t keep her waiting,” he murmurs in between soft, sweet pecks.

Between the stretch of Van’s fingers and Lachlan’s mouth, I’m floating in a blissful state of arousal. The kind that is unhurried and beautiful.

Until Van grabs Lachlan’s sweats at the knees and yanks.

“Jesus!” he yelps as he’s stripped.

The material bunches around his knees, baring him.

Van only smirks as he adjusts his position, moving onto his knees next to my hip, towering over us. He plants one hand on the mattress. The other dives between my legs.

Fists Lachlan’s cock.

“Fuck, Van...” Lachlan groans as he’s pumped, base to tip .

Not even gently. The grip alone chokes the head a deep purple as blood is restricted. Clear liquid oozes from the slit. It smears across my clit with the sharp smack of him against my mound.