Page 58 of The Illusion of Power (Passion and Politics #1)

CAL

T here have been so many times in my life when peace has eluded me.

The months of my childhood leading up to my dad leaving, when the soundtrack of every day was a fight, harsh words that found me through the walls of our small apartment.

The summer weeks spent under the roof of my estranged father and his resentful new wife and son.

The years spent investigating heinous crimes, delving into the depraved depths of the human mind.

But right now, in the pale dawning of a brand new day, with Selene next to me and Beck on her other side. I am at peace. My heart is full. My mind is quiet. My body is still, and my soul, my soul is the bright, sweet hum of satisfaction that only comes with the joy of completion.

I am complete.

I don’t think I’ve ever been that before.

I’ve come as close as I thought I possibly could with Beck, but I think we both know Selene has changed us.

The way we move. The way we work. The way we love each other.

We haven’t spent a night apart since the first time we had her because Beck hasn’t wanted to.

The wall he’s been keeping between us has come down, and Selene is the force that sent it crumbling. I’m so grateful for the fall.

For her. For him. For this unlikely thing we’ve found in each other.

“Hey,” Beck rasps softly from his side of the bed. He’s been awake for a while now. I noticed the change in his breathing almost instantly, but thought he deserved a moment to contemplate our reality on his own before we dived into it together.

Rolling onto my side, I hold a hand out, gratitude bubbling up in my chest when he takes it without a moment’s hesitation. “Morning, love.”

Our fingers tangle together in the air above Selene’s sleeping form, then come to rest on her back. Neither of us speaks. We just stare at each other and then at her, trading thoughts in the form of a conversation that needs no words. Serenity lines his features as he tucks an arm under his head.

“What time is it?”

“Not even five yet.”

“We should wake her.”

He’s right. Selene has a day full of press appearances and then a rally with Aubrey this evening, which means it won’t be long before the clock on the freedom Monique bought her runs out.

“I’m up,” she mutters, stretching with a groan before rolling over onto her back, blessing us with the gift of witnessing her in the vulnerable state of fresh consciousness.

She’s so fucking beautiful. Her lips swollen from our kisses, midnight strands mussed and hugging one side of her head, the tiniest bit of dried drool at the corner of her mouth.

I want her all over again, and I can see the hunger building behind Beck’s eyes.

Before I can tell him we don’t have time, that she’s probably too sore, he’s leaning in to kiss her.

We should all be exhausted and past the point of sated, but the moment their lips connect, the air is thick with lust I’m not immune to.

My lips find Selene’s neck and travel over her collarbone down to her chest, closing over a nipple while Beck reaches for her parted legs.

She pulls in a sharp breath that holds an unmistakable note of pain, and everything stops. Beck and I both pull away, and his face twists with concern. “What’s wrong? Are you sore?”

The tops of her cheeks take on a red undertone. “I think so, but it’s fine. I can?—”

“No, you can’t, pet.”

I don’t even know what the rest of her statement was going to be, but I know I don’t want to hear it. There’s no reality where we touch her when there’s even a chance it won’t be completely pleasurable.

She looks between the two of us, and Beck’s expression is even more severe than mine. It doesn’t stop her from trying to argue, though. “But I want you,” she says, running a hand down his chest with her eyes on me. “ Please .”

He wraps his fingers around her wrist, pulling her hand up to his mouth, and laying a kiss in the center of her palm. “You have us, gorgeous.”

“Mind, body, and soul,” I murmur, which takes the fight out of her. Something about that surrender forces words I’ve been keeping at bay to the surface. “I love you, Selene.”

I’ll admit that I haven’t spent much time thinking about how Selene would react to receiving those three little words from me, but even if I had, I don’t think I would have come up with a single scenario that captures this.

This, being her still expression and matter-of-fact tone when she says, “I know. I love you, too.”

It’s almost amusing, the level of nonchalance on display. The absolute confidence she has in my affection that keeps me from fully appreciating the fact that it’s mutual.

“You know?” I ask, incredulously.

“Yes, of course, I know. Beck and I had this conversation the other night.”

My eyes fly to Beck’s face. “You did?”

“We might have touched on it briefly.” He shrugs, the beginnings of a smug grin on his face. He’s known for days that Selene was aware of how I felt about her, and yet, he said nothing.

The bastard.

“You didn’t tell him?”

He shakes his head. “I wanted this to be a conversation that happened between the two of you. Face to face. Not through me.”

“Oh. I guess that makes sense.” She turns back to me, frowning. “Did I ruin the moment? Should I have just said I love you back and left it at that?”

I run a thumb over her lips, smoothing out the frown. “You haven’t ruined anything. I am interested to hear how you’re so sure, though.”

The way her brain works is an endless source of fascination for me. I want to understand her, to speak her logic-based language with the ease that Beck does.

Selene pulls in a breath, setting her gaze on the ceiling as she explains.

“I’ve spent my whole life learning how to decode people.

Breaking them down into small pieces of information so I could understand them, so that I could turn myself into a mirror.

Reflecting their language, mannerisms, and displays of emotion back at them to make myself seem more… human.”

Her lips twist together, and my heart breaks for the little girl who spent her life performing normality while I marvel at the woman in front of me who no longer dedicates so much of her energy to masking even when the criticizes her for it.

“Every person is different, but most neurotypical people emote in the same way,” she says.

“Flared nostrils indicate anger or frustration. Furrowed brows mean confusion. I can name an emotion even if I don’t understand why I’m seeing it, why they’re feeling it.

” Her eyes find mine, and my chest swells, expands, damn near explodes with love for her.

“I didn’t understand why I kept seeing affection on your face, why your eyes would go soft even as your stare got more intense.

Why you would go out of your way to touch me, to comfort me, to be gentle with me.

I had an idea, of course, I mean I have been loved before, but never like this.

Never by anyone who sees me the way the two of you do. ”

Beck has been quiet this entire time, letting the focus be on Selene and me, but she doesn’t let him linger on the margins for long.

This thing is for the three of us. There’s space for one-on-one moments, but it’s never long before they expand to include the other person, ensuring they know they are an integral part of our connection.

Selene reaches for both of us, linking us together with her hands as she turns her attention to Beck.

“You were harder to read. I thought you disliked me, but then everything changed in the dressing room. You showed me how much you understood me. You fashioned yourself into a vessel vast enough to hold my pain, strong enough to contain it. You let me know it was safe to put it down, if only for a second so that it could live beside yours, and I love you for that.”

His eyes ripple with unchecked emotion as he leans in to give her a soft, chaste kiss. “I love you, too, gorgeous.”

“He fought it for so long,” I whisper, grinning when Beck glares at me. “It was such a relief when he finally admitted in Houston.”

“In Houston?”

She tips her head to the side as if she’s trying to figure out when we had time to have that conversation.

“It was on our last night there,” Beck tells her. “After I carried you to bed, I came back downstairs, saw Cal, and the words just came tumbling out of my mouth.”

“I told him I felt the same way.”

“Then you kissed,” Selene says, putting the last piece of the puzzle together. “And that kiss led us here.”

We sit in silent observation of those facts, touching, kissing, and cuddling, until we have no choice but to leave the bed. Selene steals away to the bathroom for a quick shower while Beck and I get dressed for our morning run.

“I still can’t believe they told Harris to fuck off for the night,” he muses, pulling on a moisture wicking workout shirt he stole from me. “I wouldn’t have gone for that shit.”

“Me either. I’m glad he did, though.”

“Me too, but at the same time, I’m kind of annoyed, you know?

” He spins around, standing over me as I kneel on the ground to tie my shoe.

I nod, already knowing where this conversation is going because I had the same thought when I saw Selene alone in the vending room.

It was quickly erased by the prospect of having a whole night with her, but now it’s back in full force.

“Yeah. I know.” I push to my feet. “She shouldn’t have been left alone for that amount of time. Anything could have happened.”

“Exactly. I mean, we’ve got Marsh popping up everywhere she is, and we don’t know what he wants or which of the bastards on our team is giving him information. We’ve got these trolls online who get off on typing out the sickest shit they can come up with in their twisted fucking minds.”

The water in the shower turns off, and I narrow my eyes at Beck. “Bring your voice down. She’ll hear you.”