Page 26 of We Steal The Flight

I don’t mind the walk when I’m with my mates. I’ll take any moment to just be with them, never apart, whether it’s movie nights or days we spend renovating the castle. We have merged five rooms into one on the left side of the castle, creating our own personal space. Wini, Aster and Luke have built a house just outside of the academy for themselves, spelled with high walls to keep students out. Aster even went to Earth and brought Wini a kitten back.

I glance up through the sky, sensing Minnie nearby, seeing a flicker of gold before she disappears into the trees. She doesn’t come back very often. I think she prefers to fly around out here in the forest and be free, but I suspect she is the guardian of the academy and this world now. We stop when we come to a clearing, one I know very well, but it’s different. It’s been cleaned up. The old stone has all been fixed with gold woven all the way through it, and in the middle is a pergola, and there’s a plaque right at the front.

It says our names on it. I grin at them as I turn around. “It’s where we all began. Where we bonded.”

“It’s our place,” Maz agrees, leading me into the pergola, where they have placed thick blankets on the floor, candles all around the edges, and baskets of food for us to eat, with drinks too. “And it is spelled for only us to come here. We have a lot of new people who’ve just come into the academy and will do so for years, but we wanted somewhere that is just ours.”

“I love it,” I admit, sitting down. They all sit with me, handing me food and talking about the supposed powers we will see from the new students and what our plans are to help. By the time the food is nearly gone, all of us are sharing several bottles of wine and laughing as the sun finally sets into darkness. Fireflies hover around the forest, and the candles give us plenty of light. The pergola is open on all sides, the forest pressing close around it, dark but beautiful, with the leaves shifting in a low wind. Somewhere distant is the call of some shifter howl, and the trees creak above us.

We have been lying tangled together for the better part of an hour with our wine—Vale at my back, warm and solid, his hand moving idly through my hair; Kane sitting close, one hand resting at my ankle; Maz beside me, his shoulder pressed against mine, his eyes on the canopy of branches above us. Black sits apart from the others, his back against one of the pergola’s posts, long legs stretched before him, watching us all with those dark, unreadable eyes. Always watching me, and I love him for it. The candlelight catches the sharp lines of his face, and I find myself looking at him longer than I intend to. How his hair is shaved shorter than usual and he has grown out a slight beard, which only adds to his rugged appearance.

He notices. He always notices when I’m looking. When all I want is to look at my mates.

“Juniper,” Vale murmurs against my hair. Just my name. Just a question wrapped in a single word.

I look at Maz first. Then Kane. Then Vale. Then Black, who holds my gaze from across the pergola with an expression that is carefully composed. We have been together in groups of one or two before, but all of us? Never. I can feel when they want me, and right now? They do.

“I know where I want to be,” I quietly whisper, squirming a little. “Here. With all of you.” I hold Black’s eyes when I say it. “All of you.”

His eyes darken. “I’m here,” he says. Low and certain. Black can’t join in, not when the risk of touching anyone but me is so high. I hate leaving him out, but I don’t have a choice. “That doesn’t change.”

“I know.” I hold his gaze a moment longer, letting him see that I mean it—that his being here, just here, watching over us, is not less. It has never been less. “I want you to see this. All of it.”

Something moves through his expression, and he gives me a single nod, and it is enough.

It is Maz who moves first. He turns towards me on the blankets and cups my face in both hands and kisses me in that way he has—thorough and deep and completely certain, like he has been waiting for precisely this moment and intends to make it count. I feel Kane’s hand tighten at my ankle at the same moment Vale’s arm wraps around my waist from behind, and I moan into Maz’s mouth because I am already surrounded by them and we have barely started.

Vale’s lips find the back of my neck, slow and deliberate, tracing down the curve of my shoulder. The night air is cool where he isn’t touching me, which makes every place he is touching me feel like fire by comparison. Kane moves up alongside me, his hands sliding up my calves, my thighs, unhurried, reading every hitch in my breathing before deciding where to go next.

Maz breaks the kiss only long enough to ease my shirt over my head, and then for a moment, all of them still. I blush under their gazes.

I feel Black’s gaze like his hands are on me—like when we first mated. I look at him across the pergola, and he looks back at me, and his expression does something complicated and beautiful, and I feel more seen in this moment than I have ever felt in my life.

“You are extraordinary and stunning.” Black can always somehow make me love him more with his true words, stated the way he states most things—like a fact he has sat with long enough to be certain of.

“Don’t look away,” I tell him softly.

“I couldn’t,” he says, “even if I wanted to.”

Kane’s hands push my thighs apart, and his mouth finds me, making me incapable of holding eye contact with anyone. My head tips back against Vale’s chest, fingers curling into the blanket beneath me as Kane works his tongue against my core with that focused, devastating patience of his. Maz catches my mouth again, his hand finding my breast, thumb rolling over my nipple until I gasp against his lips. Vale’s arm tightens around me, his mouth at my ear, his voice low and steady, quiet, grounding things that anchor me even as the pleasure starts pulling me loose from myself.

The three of them work together like they have an understanding that needs no words. Kane reads every sound I make and responds to each one. Maz keeps me present with his mouth, his hands, the warmth of him pressed against my side. Vale holds me together when I start to shake.

“I’ve got you,” Maz murmurs against my lips. “All of us have you.”

From across the pergola, I hear Black shift in his seat. I open my eyes just enough to find him leaning forward now, elbows on his knees, watching with an intensity that sends heat flooding through me all over again.

The orgasm builds faster than I expect—Kane relentless and certain below, Maz and Vale surrounding me completely—and when it breaks, it crashes through me all at once, my back arching up off the blankets, a cry tearing out of my throat that disappears into the dark trees above.

For a moment, I can only lie there, trembling, Vale’s arms keeping me from dissolving entirely.

“Still with us?” Kane asks, pressing a kiss to the inside of my thigh, his voice low and amused.

“Barely,” I manage.

His smile against my skin is answer enough.

They give me only a breath to recover before the blankets shift around me—Kane stretching out beside me, drawing me towards him, his hands warm at my waist. I go willingly, turning into him, and when he pulls me onto his lap and I feel the hard length of him against me, I let out a long, unsteady breath.