West wakes up startled, half in his dream and half awake. “Shit. Again?”

It’s a question that doesn’t need an answer. Probably it will happen for a long time, but while he’s here, he has us. I feel him struggle to regain control, his tension palpable.

At least he isn’t pushing us away.

Blue strokes my hair from behind while West holds my hand, playing with my fingers. It’s a strange sensation, being between two men. I still feel the tension in West’s body, but I know he’s trying to act normal.

“You can talk about it,” I say softly. “It helps Blue.”

Blue chuckles. “She’s telling the truth. Not sure about talking in general but something about this girl makes it okay.”

He presses a kiss to the crown of my head, and I shiver. Some of the things he’s told me were violent, others just sad. All of it came from a deep well inside him, an experience I will never fully comprehend. All I can do is be here for him—sometimes by listening and other times by being a distraction.

West is silent a moment. “Maybe I’ll take you up on that someday. Right now I’m too wired. I really just want to forget, to not think about it for half a second.”

I understand that desire. That had been dancing onstage, the ability to forget, to transport myself into another body, one with power and confidence. During his darker memories, Blue sometimes needs to forget too. Of course, the way I usually distract him is with my body, and I can’t do that with West.

As if his thoughts went the same place, Blue’s hand smooths along my hip and up my side, his fingers resting against the lower curve of my breasts. My breath catches. It’s one thing to be close to West with Blue nearby.

Another thing entirely for me to be near West while Blue is touching me sexually.

Blue’s voice is somehow casual. “Lots of ways to forget where you’ll be working.”

The Grand, he means.

“Yeah?” West still sounds strained. “Not sure I can trust myself with that. With a woman. Woke up one night with the mattress half off the bed frame and the lamp on the floor in pieces.”

It’s my turn to tense up, imagining the scene. There have been plenty of broken things in my past, angry voices and fists. Blue’s hand tightens around me, reassuring me and marking me as his. “You want to leave?” he murmurs into my ear. “You can wait in bed until he’s chill.”

He’s giving me an out. I can hop out of bed, give both these boys a breezy wave, and drift off into a dreamless sleep. I don’t have to face their demons. Blue won’t make me.

Except I have demons of my own, ones I can’t quite shake, even here with him.

Demons that make me question everything, that put my future at risk. How can I turn my back on West? And Blue? He may not even know what he’s really asking, what’s really at stake. Are you okay with this? Can he touch you?

Will you be there for me too, when I’m sweating and panting from a nightmare?

This is what Blue wants to know.

I put my hand on West’s chest and feel the rapid thump of his heart. His words are still heavy in the air, wrapped around his body like chains. Not sure I can trust myself with that. “I trust you,” I tell him.

Because it’s true. I do trust him. I know what cruel men are, how they feel and laugh and hurt. Blue tried to do that to me, because he hated me. He hated himself. But in the end, he failed—because what we shared was deeper than what pushed us apart.

West’s dark gaze flickers from me to Blue. “Don’t let me fuck this up,” he mutters.

What is this? Their friendship? My relationship with Blue?

I don’t know, and I’m just as afraid. That’s what pricks me every day, the thorns to this beautiful rose. Don’t let me fuck this up.

We wait with held breath, the room in silent stillness. Heat courses through my body, from Blue to West and back again. I can feel every hard line of Blue’s body, familiar and feared and beloved. He molds around me, defining me, becoming my edges, so I can let go and become something more.

West is waiting for an answer, and I am too. How much am I worth to you? Do you love me enough to hold me tight? Do you trust me enough to share me too?

Blue makes a low sound in his throat, a rumble through his whole body. He’s the sky, and his assent, it’s the incoming storm. “You and me,” he says to West. “We’re rock solid. Nothing can change that. And as for her…”

I gasp as he squeezes my breast tight, and my hand fists against West’s chest.

“She’s mine,” Blue finishes softly. “No one can take her away from me. Not even you.”

West’s sigh sounds like defeat, and so it feels right when Blue pulls my tank top aside, revealing my breast to the night air. He’s the one directing this, controlling us, using one friend to help another. Though I’m not sure who’s helping who when West swears under his breath, his arousal a jolt to my own.

I got something out of being watched onstage, something that’s missing. And while I don’t really want to go back, I’m not ready to go forward either. Maybe Blue knows that about me.

He’s letting me be seen, be touched, and keeping me safe in the process.

“Tell him you like this,” Blue says, and I shake my head. I can’t. It’s too much.

Then his hand is smoothing down my stomach, slipping into my panties. I squirm as he thrusts his fingers between my folds, crude and possessive. “Tell him,” he warns, fingers dripping through wetness that already proves his point.

Chapter Nine

“Christ,” West mutters, brushing the backs of his fingers against my breast. “I’ve been dreaming of these since I saw them.”

“I get to touch them every day,” Blue says, casually secure in his possession of me. That’s how they’re talking about me, like I’m a possession—a thing.

“I know,” West says on a breath, and it doesn’t sound like envy. It sounds like awe.

He cups my breast and runs his thumb over the tip. My nipple is already hard, and he pushes it back and forth, teasing me until I whimper. Blue has his hand in my pussy, sliding in and out with a leisure I find maddening. I rock my hips, demanding, desperate, and Blue huffs a laugh.

“Want to come, beautiful?”

I nod, frantic. He always makes me this hot, this fast, but it’s somehow worse now. As if the sex we’ve had since West got here, as if every moment since that first night in the dining room has been foreplay leading to this.

West doesn’t laugh. He studies me from beneath heavy lids. “She always this needy?”

“Always,” Blue says like a vow.

“Fuck.”

“Let’s get her warmed up.” Blue’s fingers find my clit with skilled ease, immediately hitting a rhythm that has me panting. I’m already warm, already burning up.

West leans down and takes my nipple into his mouth, the suction a sweet ache.

It’s too much, and I squirm away. Blue keeps me in place, his leg holding mine open, his fingers steady on my clit. “You don’t control this,” he whispers in my ear. “You can’t do anything but let it happen.”

“Blue,” I moan. “I need… I need…”

“I know, beautiful. I know exactly what you need.”

And I think he does know. He knows how I need to be touched, how I need to be owned. He even knows how I need to be flaunted, desired by men other than him, bared both body and soul. He knows what I need, and he’s giving it to me—forcing me to take it.

I plead and pray, my body strung tight, held like a live wire between two power sources. Just like that, I snap. My chest thrusts forward, begging for more force, more suction, and my hips grind onto Blue’s hand. They ride me through my climax, a fierce pressure that drives me higher and leaves me collapsed in their arms.

As I lie there, replete, Blue licks my juices from his fingers.

West tracks his movements with narrowed eyes. “Am I gonna have to beg?”