Page 128 of Double Down

The next smack lands lower, a lightning-bolt jolt I ride rather than run from. He doesn’t lift away—his touch shifts, deliberate, coaxing, the kind of measured pressure that says he could do thisfor hours and never lose count. I arch into his pace and refuse the sound clawing up my throat.

Atticus brings me to the edge and steals the building orgasm, then trades that sensation for another and builds again. It’s maddening and precise—like he’s debugging me, line by line. When he finally pushes deeper, he doesn’t lose the count. I’m shaking before I realize it, sweat slicking my spine, the line between release and ache narrowing to a wire.

“Yellow,” I grit—clear, not panicked.

Everything stops. His hands lift.

“Good girl,” he murmurs against my temple, pressing a bottle to my lips. “That’s a sliver of trust. Drink.”

I do. The water is cold enough to sting. I breathe and feel the tremor ease.

Maverick steps in behind the quiet. His palm skims my cheek, not soft, but present. He guides me on my knees to the couch and sits, waiting until I’m settled, until my breathing is his breathing.

“You scared me,” he says into the shell of my ear. There’s no accusation in it. It’s him, pressing the truth like a bruise touched once to prove it’s there. “Don’t go dark on me again.”

“I know.” The words are low, level. “I won’t.”

“Show me.”

I move to give him what he asks but he stops me with a curl of fingers in my hair and turns me—back to his chest, knees spread over his thighs. The chill from the vent raises gooseflesh. He kisses my shoulder once and drags his knuckles down my stomach, lower, where I’m already too aware. He edges methe way he edges fear—patiently, relentlessly—until my apology lives in how I hold still for him, how I take each small denial without begging to skip to the end.

“Say it,” he breathes.

So I do, quiet and direct.

“I’m afraid you’ll decide I’m not worth the risk. I should have trusted you.” No sobbing, no scrambling—just the sharp, necessary truth.

His answer is a kiss to the hinge of my jaw and a low, wrecked, “There you are.” He lifts me off his lap and helps me back to my knees, tipping the bottle to my mouth again.

Storm doesn’t hurry. He gathers me up like I weigh nothing, lays me along the coffee table, and stays at my eye line. There’s no performance in him, only intent. His thumb anchors at my sternum when I start to float.

“Stay,” he says, voice a dark ribbon. “Your head runs when it’s calm. Fight that. Stay with us.”

I hold his gaze and feel the feral thing in me bristle, then settle. The magnitude of what I hid hits hard—what it would’ve done to him. My bound hands loop around his neck. I keep him close because I need the gravity.

“Say it,” he prompts, forehead to mine.

“I’ll stay. I won’t hide again.” It shakes out of me, but it stands.

He takes the promise like a man receiving a weapon he intends to use carefully, then helps me back to the floor.

Conrad is last. He sets me kneeling on the table again and circles once, twice—cataloging. Not taunting—assessing. I feelthe question humming under his footfalls:will she stay if I press?

“This is strike two,” he says, almost conversational. The old scar in me flares, but I don’t flinch from it.

“What does that mean?”

He crouches and tilts my chin, his eyes cool and exacting. “It means I should know better than to believe you’ll be honest with me.”

A dozen retorts crowd my tongue—the bet, the way they shut me out—but none of them are an excuse. I choose the only thing that means anything. “You want accountability. So do I.”

“Then stop doing things in the dark,” he replies. “You’re with us, or not at all.”

“Understood.”

“Prove it.”

He moves behind me. The first pinch is sharp but the stroke after it soothes. He works me methodically, and every time I climb too fast he drags me back—by my hair, by my breath, by a low order I can’t ignore. He makes me name what I did, why I did it, how I will do it differently—specifics, not pretty vows.