Page 73 of Knot Your Sugar Rush (Starling Grove #2)

Chapter seventy-three

Cam

T he coals have settled into a low red glow, a quiet galaxy in the pit. The night leans close around us—pine-cool, star-bright—and the blanket has become a small universe where it’s just breath and warmth and the slow rise and fall of three chests around me.

It starts like a tide turning.

A curl of heat wakes under my skin, nothing sharp at first—just awareness.

The brush of Dane’s sleeve at my shoulder is suddenly the only thing I can feel.

Jamie shifts the blanket higher and the back of his knuckles skims my thigh, and my breath hitches.

Across the embers, Theo is a long line of shadow and gold, watching the coals like he’s reading a story there, and when his gaze lifts to me, the ember inside brightens.

“Are you alright?” Jamie asks, voice thick with sleep.

I swallow. “Warm. Too warm,” I admit, and the word means more than temperature.

Jamie’s smile tilts, soft with understanding. “Alright,” he murmurs. “Tell us what helps.”

Dane’s hand doesn’t quite touch mine under the blanket; he offers it, palm up, waiting.

I lay my fingers in his and feel the gentle press of his thumb at my pulse, counting my heartbeat for a breath, then two.

Theo eases around the fire, slow and unhurried, until he’s kneeling where the light can catch his eyes.

“No rushing,” he says, voice low. “We follow you.”

The night hears that promise and seems to hush.

I tip forward first, toward Jamie. He meets me halfway, and the kiss is voltage and relief: the familiar rasp of his stubble, the way he tastes like tea and smoke, the small sound he swallows when I open for him.

The blanket slips and his palm finds my waist, steadying, asking.

I answer by leaning in closer, letting the heat slide brighter through me.

When we part, he rests his forehead to mine for a second, breath mingling, and something in me unwinds.

Dane’s fingers tighten around mine, a question.

I turn and he draws our joined hands up, kisses the inside of my wrist where my pulse is wild.

It’s a careful, reverent press of mouth to skin that sends a ribbon of fire up my arm.

“Cam,” he says my name like a vow, and then he kisses me.

Dane kisses like steadiness turning molten: patient, thorough, making sure I feel every inch of being wanted.

The world narrows to the slide of his mouth and the way his other hand fits at the small of my back like it was made to live there.

By the time he lifts his head, I’m breathing like I’ve run and the stars seem closer.

Theo waits until my eyes find his. He doesn’t reach; he lets me go to him. I do—kneeling up so the blanket spills around our laps—and his hands come to my face like he’s holding a rare thing. “Still good?” he asks.

“Yes,” I say, and it’s not a whisper.

He kisses me he’s memorized every inch of me—confident, precise, a promise folded into each pass of his mouth.

When I sigh against him he follows the sound, deepening, one hand sliding into my hair, the other anchoring at my hip.

The kiss burns slow and bright; my heat answers, a wave cresting, and I clutch at his shoulders to ride it out.

When we break, the three of them are close enough that our knees touch under the blanket, close enough that their scents—smoke, pine, earth—tangle into something that feels like home. The fire pops and a spark spirals up and fades.

“More?” Jamie asks gently. “Or do we keep it here?”

The question is a touch in itself. I scan my own edges and find them shimmering and sweet, not frayed. “More… like this,” I say. “Kisses. Hands. Slow.”

“Slow we can do,” Dane says, and the relief in his voice makes me ache.

It becomes a current we pass back and forth, never overwhelming—Jamie’s mouth at my jaw while Theo’s palm strokes down my spine; Dane’s lips at the hollow of my throat while Jamie kisses the corner of my smile; Theo’s thumbs sweeping my cheekbones as I kiss him again and again until I’m smiling into his mouth.

The blanket turns into weather—too hot, then not enough, then perfect again as they tuck it around me, around us, keeping night’s chill at the edge of our little world.

Heat hums through me like a song I finally remember the words to.

I let myself be arranged and gathered, never handled, always held.

Every time my breath hitches, someone breathes with me; every time my fingers curl, someone laces theirs through.

When I tilt, Jamie is a wall at my back; when I lean, Dane is gravity; when I reach, Theo is exactly there.

And then—it shifts.

The moment grows taut, unspoken understanding weaving tight between us.

One by one, they claim me more deeply, knotting me, anchoring me in place not with urgency but devotion.

Waiting for each knot to shrink slows everything as we all lie together, stretching the night into something timeless.

While one fills me, the others hold, kiss, murmur.

While one anchors me, the others ground me with touch and scent and words that aren’t words at all but hums of belonging.

My body, once tight with fear of what heat might demand, softens into it.

My heat sings now, purring into a glow that feels like home.

I can’t tell where I end and they begin.

Every crest of pleasure folds into another hand holding mine, another mouth pressing reverence into my skin, another chest to lean against.

At some impossible peak, laughter bursts from me—raw, bubbling, grateful. They freeze, startled, then melt into it with me. I feel them all melt, and the forest exhales like it was holding its breath until that moment.

Later, we collapse into a nest of blankets, tangled together.

I’m nestled between Dane and Jamie, Theo curved behind me with his arm warm across my waist. The trees bore witness as their knots kept me tethered to them, one-by-one, as the stars shifted overhead.

Instead of discomfort, it feels like being sewn into place, like belonging made flesh.

The world narrows to their bodies around me: Jamie’s heartbeat ticking steady beneath my palm, Dane’s breath warming my knuckles, Theo’s chest a steady tide at my back. I breathe them in—pine, earth, smoke, male—and my heat, once an ache, is now banked embers, glowing but calm.

Above us, the sky spills stars so bright I imagine plucking one and tucking it under the blanket with us.

“Tomorrow we look,” Theo murmurs against my hair.

“Together,” Dane says, grip tightening on my hand.

“Always,” Jamie finishes, voice husky with something that feels like prayer.

I kiss Dane’s knuckles, kiss Jamie’s shoulder, tip back far enough to find Theo’s mouth for one last goodnight. Each of them hums against me, different notes in the same chord.

The fire sighs lower, the forest holds steady, and I drift in the glow of them all, thinking one impossible, undeniable truth:

At last, under the stars, I belong.