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Brandon glanced at me for a second, an eyebrow raised, and then slipped a finger under the collar of my shirt.

He held my gaze as it slid slowly south.

Not towards anything, not even close to anything significant, yet somehow that small caress had a weight to it.

As he continued to stare, his eyes told me long, explicit, filthy stories about what he’d like to be doing to me right now, would do to me right now, in front of everyone to my shame.

But it wasn’t just shame, was it? That would make it a horrible thing.

Rather it was the war between the pleasure I knew he could pull from my body, the low burning need for it, and the social inhibitions that made me feel like stripping off and riding his face in front of company would be a bad idea.

As if in counterpoint to this subtle caress, there was Aaron.

I sat with my back against a tree trunk that had been dragged over to the fire, my knees bent, and his hand resting on my inner thigh.

Not the sweet, ‘I’m here and I love you’ touch on your knee thing.

Nope, I watched him take a plate and balance it on his lap, eating very competently with one hand as the other snuck up, up, up, until he was just about able to high five my vagina.

Both of them managed to occupy all of my attention, as my own plate was sitting uneaten on the grass.

I wanted Brandon to stop fucking around and reach out and touch me where I ached.

I wished I’d been able to wear a dress or a skirt so Aaron’s fingers could graze the elastic at the leg opening, tease the fabric from my skin, and slip under.

I watched Aaron fork food into his mouth and wanted to knock it away, put my pussy where the plate was, and watch him eat that from a whole other angle.

“I need to…” I couldn’t get the words out, they clogged, choked in my throat.

“We know what you need,” Brandon said, glancing out at the crowd, looking for all the world like we were having a conversation about the weather.

“Why? Why is it so intense? Is this another heat?” I asked.

Brandon grinned when he removed his hand, and it felt like a cool breeze washed over me, removing some of the cloud of lust. I blinked, then said, “It’s you. Both of you.”

“And you. We can’t force you to feel desire, but when all of ours combine…”

Oh yeah, I knew exactly how that felt. My eyes closed as Brandon’s hand landed back on my skin.

“I told Aaron how I wanted tonight to go, in explicit detail. We both have a very clear mental image that’s making it very uncomfortable to sit here.” He waited until I was watching him to grab his rigid cock and adjust it in his jeans.

“And that makes me want to strip off and let you fuck me by the fire,” I replied.

Aaron choked on the mouthful he was chewing, spitting out the food and putting his plate down. His eyes were wide when he checked me out, as if to gauge whether or not I was serious. I wasn’t, was I?

“Jules…” he rumbled, turning to me.

“Stick to the plan.”

Both of us started at the iron in Brandon’s voice.

He’d never really shown alpha tendencies outside the bedroom, but we both felt that instinctive need to follow his instructions.

I pushed back against it, shifting to face him.

He grinned in the face of my insolent stare, picking up his food and eating it with a nonchalance that had my Tirian pacing inside me.

You humans and your monkey games , she said dismissively.

You are bonded to a creature with a whole lotta higher order brain function. We’ve got to do something with our time.

Perhaps considering what to do once we reach the home of the Great Wolf could be a worthy enterprise for that brain of yours.

Of ours, I corrected her. And if you have any information on that, now would be a good time to share it.

It felt like she shuddered at that, and then did something I’d never really felt before. She…faded away.

“Jules.”

I was jerked back into the here and now by Brandon’s command. His eyes searched mine for a second before he nodded.

“You want to touch your mate, don’t you?” he asked Aaron.

“God, yes…” Aaron’s voice was a low moan.

“Pull her onto your lap and kiss her. Kiss her with everything you have. Make her cunt drip and her heart ache. Make her feel like she’s the most precious thing in the world.”

Why would a man Aaron’s size follow Brandon’s orders?

It was hard to say. There was this terrible intensity to his words that just made disagreement seem like a ridiculous option.

Aaron’s hands closed around my wrists, and he hauled me to him, much to the delight of his men.

There were a whole lot of suggestions coming from the peanut gallery, some I’m not even sure were anatomically possible, but they fell away as soon as I was seated, his long hard length pressing up against my cunt through the seam of my jeans.

I hovered above him, looking down at my newest mate, and one part of Brandon’s order was already fulfilled.

My chest did ache as my fingers trailed along the close crop of his hair, a bright echo of what we’d created together before swelling inside me.

“I love you,” I said.

He stopped mid move towards me, eyes flickering for a second. His head cocked to one side, as if he hadn’t heard me right the first time, so I said it again. “I love you, love both of you. I thank whatever deity you want that I came to Sanctuary and met you guys. I’m proud to call you my mates.”

We glanced over at Brandon, whose expression had transformed. The icy demeanour that had us jumping at his orders had thawed, and the muscles around his eyes had tensed, as if my words hurt him physically. His smile was tremulous, but he said, “Do it. Show our mate how much we love her.”

It was the same order, and I felt the same compulsion, but somehow, seeing Brandon come undone made it all the better.

I placed a hand on Aaron’s cheek as his went to the back of my head and tugged me down.

His breath came in sharply when our lips collided, parting almost instantly.

It had none of the slow sweetness of before.

This was hunger, pure and simple. His hips bucked underneath me, grinding along my seam, making my clit throb dully.

He was nipping, sucking, kissing me, his movements so fast, I could barely register them.

He swept me up in this swirling morass of need, and it provoked one inside me too.

I leaned forward, not wanting the kiss to end when he pulled back, but Aaron held me in place.

“Jules, Jules…” he murmured as I whined.

He turned me in his lap, so my back leant against his chest. I could feel the tension in my hips in this position, my legs splayed.

“Look at him, our mate, our beautiful mate. He’s holding himself back by a thread, wanting to touch you but wanting to stay in control just as much.

Take it from him, Jules. Break him down. ”

I was dimly aware of the cheers when I crawled over to Brandon. Perhaps Aaron’s guys really did think they were going to get a show tonight. Brandon didn’t move an inch, just growled, “This wasn’t what we had planned.”

“No?” Aaron said from behind me. “Maybe we all need to be driven out of our minds tonight.”

“And you think I’m not?” Brandon grated out the words, but when I pulled myself onto his lap, he softened underneath me. His arms went around me, his mouth tilted up as if waiting for me to kiss him. He pushed a strand of hair behind my ear. “You’ve ruined my plans. You always do.”

“Does that make things better or worse?” I asked.

“Better,” he growled as he pulled me down. “So much better.”

Brandon kissed me, until I was dizzy with it, until my head swam and my heart pounded.

I fought the urge to shove my hand down his pants or mine.

He’d gotten what he wanted, anyway. My chest ached, my undies were drenched, and I seriously needed to find some kind of laundry solution, or everyone was going to smell me and not in the sexy way.

“No, more,” he said when I drew back.

“You want more? Go and get it,” I said, then jerked my head to Aaron, who watched us with burning eyes. I disentangled myself, going back to my place by the log, watching them consider my command.

“This…this will make a statement,” Brandon said.

“It’s who we are, isn’t it?” I asked.

I gazed at the two of them, waiting for an indication of what they wanted to do.

“You have the most to lose,” Brandon said to Aaron.

The other man nodded. There was some tightness in his shoulders, but he reached out one arm and gestured for him to approach.

It was weird, listening to the exclamations of the crowd as Brandon straddled Aaron, sitting where I had just sat, kissing the lips I still felt the imprint of.

I watched them kiss with a kind of brutality I never got to experience.

They clawed at each other so violently, I was expecting to hear fabric rip.

Everyone would get used to this—that the two of them were together as well as with me.

They would be free to touch each other as well as me, stroke each other’s hair, hold each other’s hand, show in the million ways I took for granted that they loved each other.

But for some reason, I didn’t want to become accustomed to it.

The ego-driven sting that came from being excluded for just a second heightened things somehow.

Brandon’s insistence on this theatrical element to sex was all about creating controlled drama to what would otherwise become a humdrum thing as our relationship evolved.

He would be forever orchestrating new ways to keep us on that edge, to keep us craving it, to keep us together.