Page 80 of Zenith Court

I covered one of his hands at my waist. His fingers turned beneath mine and held.

Kieran kissed my knee. “Still want me?”

“Come here.”

He helped me off Caspian’s lap and eased me onto my side rather than moving me by the injured shoulder. Kieran fitted himself along my back. Jonah lay facing me, close enough that our foreheads touched, his hand warm on my hip.

Kieran entered me slowly from behind. His burned arm stretched above my head, wrist resting on the pillow clear of our weight, while his other hand spread across my stomach. Jonah’s fingers found me from the front and matched Kieran’s pace without either man speaking.

Jonah’s hand slowed until I met his eyes.

“Don’t stop,” I said.

He kissed me as the rhythm deepened. Kieran’s breath roughened at my ear. Pleasure gathered low and heavy, Jonah’s hand holding the pace while Kieran drove it through me. When I came again, Kieran said my name against my shoulder and followed half a breath later, his body shaking once behind mine.

We stayed tangled until his breathing slowed. Jonah smoothed his palm over Kieran’s forearm where it crossed my waist, then withdrew his hand when Kieran loosened his hold.

Jonah lay beside us, breathing hard and still watching my face. I turned in the rumpled sheets and put my hand flat on his chest. “I want you.”

His pulse struck hard beneath my palm. “Yes.”

I pushed him gently onto his back and took him into my mouth. He was already hard. I tasted salt as I drew him deeper. His hand came to my hair and stopped there, fingers spread rather than closing until I pressed my head deliberately into his palm.

Caspian rested a hand at the back of Jonah’s neck. Kieran leaned against Jonah’s shoulder and spoke low near his ear, too quiet for me to catch every word. Whatever he said made Jonah laugh. I took him deeper, and the laugh broke into a gasp.

“I notice everything,” Jonah managed, eyes shut. “Terrible habit.”

“Not everything,” Kieran said. “You missed Astra looking at you.”

Jonah opened his eyes and looked down at me. I held his gaze and moved my hand with my mouth. His breath caught. His hips lifted once before he checked the motion, and my name came rough from his throat when he came.

His fingers loosened immediately. His eyes dropped to the hand that had held my hair. I kissed the inside of his wrist before I moved back up the bed, and his shoulders eased.

We ended in a heap with no useful arrangement to it. My calf lay across Caspian’s thigh, Jonah’s arm had gone numb beneath Kieran’s shoulders, and one of the pillows had reached the floor. Nobody moved to retrieve it.

Kieran got up only when his stomach complained loudly enough for all of us to hear. He returned with a basin and cloth, then cleaned each of us in turn with his good hand. When his injured wrist made wringing out the cloth impossible, Caspian took it from him and twisted the water free without comment.

Kieran hummed while he worked.

“You’re humming,” I said.

“I’m celebrating.”

Jonah shifted to make room for him. “Does celebration need a melody?”

“Eventually it will have verses.”

“Then we should stop him now,” Caspian said.

Our laughter moved through the room and out the open window. Somewhere below, a hammer struck several times. No one in the bed went still at the sound.

My mother had carved Survive beneath a table in the Tower. For the first time, I could remember the word without obeying it.

A knock came when the smell of bread had grown impossible to ignore. Rev entered with a loaded tray, took in the four of us and the state of the sheets, and set breakfast on the writing desk.

“About time somebody in this building slept in,” she said.

Cosima’s voice carried up the stairwell behind her, arguing cheerfully about which kitchen had first claim on the remaining flour. Farther away, Delphine sang badly over some task and made no attempt to lower her voice.