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“With us?” My thumb brushes over her knuckles. “Always.”

The word does not frighten me when I say it. That is how I know I am already lost. Lazarus lowers her slightly, guiding the ropes so she drifts toward me. I catch her carefully at the waist, not taking her weight, only steadying her as she turns in the air.

She giggles, it is small and quaint. The sound breaks something open inside me. Alcott moves in next, touching her shoulder with reverence rare enough to feel like another miracle. He studies her face, then the rope, then Lazarus. “Your tension is uneven on the left.”

Lazarus glares. “Do not critique my devotion.”

“I critique everything.”

“You are unbearable.” Lazarus rolls his eyes.

“And yet correct.”

Olive laughs again. This time, all three of us fall silent for it. There are men who would hear that sound and want to bottle it, entirely possess it and lock it away. I want to protect the conditions that allow it to exist. That, I think, is the difference.

Lazarus guides her gently from one side of the room to the other, the ropes and rigging allowing her to drift between us like some dark, impossible constellation. Each of us touches only when she reaches. Caressing her breasts, tongues laving across her supple skin. Each of us waits for her pleasured gasps.

It should be strange. Perhaps it is, but there is comfort here too. A rhythm. A pack. Our own little collection of ruined things finding arrangement around her. Not because she is weak, never that, but because even a blade deserves a sheath. Even a queen deserves a court that would bleed before allowing her crown to fall.

Eventually, Lazarus lowers her into my arms. Her weight settles against me, warm and real, rope still wrapped around her body, her blushing cheek near my shoulder.

I hold her. God, I love holding her.

And for once, I do not think of The Collector. I do not think of debt nor do not think of blood on my hands. I think only of Olive’s breathing and of the way her fingers curl in my shirt.

Alcott and Lazarus come to stand beside us. For a moment, the four of us have no jokes, no threats, no theatrical banter. Just the four of us breathing. The heat, arousal and trust encircling our spirits, causing a blanket of euphoria to fall upon us.

Then Olive lifts her head and looks at me panting, “what are you thinking?”

I should lie. I have survived on lies, but instead, I tell her the truth. “I am thinking that I have dreamed of being near you again.”

Her expression changes at my words.

“I am thinking that I have wasted years being afraid of what would happen if I let myself want you.”

Her hand rises to my cheek as she asks, “And now?”

My voice is rough when I answer. “Now I am afraid I will never be able to let you go.”

There is no teasing from Alcott. Lazarus grows very still. Olive studies me with eyes similar to my own. Eyes that have seen too much death.

She says, “Then do not.”

Everything I have ever wanted. I close my eyes. Her hand remains against my face. Lazarus’s fingers rest lightly at the small of her back. Alcott’s shoulder brushes mine and for the first time in my life, I wonder if love does not have to be leverage. Perhaps love can be a locked door opened from the inside. It can be three monsters and one widow in a room full of candlelight, choosing one another despite every reason not to.

I spent most of my life believing desire was a liability. A weakness. A door left unlocked for men like the Collector to enter with blood on their hands and ownership on their tongues. Then Olive looked at me from across Lazarus Graves’s ludicrous manor, wrapped in candlelight and crimson rope, and I understood I had been wrong. Desire was not the danger. Loneliness was.

Loneliness made me obedient, it taught me to endure, and loneliness convinced me that love could only ever be used against me, because I had never once seen it used as a shield.

But here, in this room, surrounded by three people who should not have fit together and somehow did, I feel something shift. Lazarus gives Olive wonder. Alcott gives her challenge. And I— God help me. I want to give her rest. Not peace, women like Olive are not made for peace, but rest? Yet, I could give her somewhere to lay the blade down. I can be this, a promise and a dangerous little sanctuary before the war begins.

“I want to try something, but I do not want any judgment,” Olive asks cautiously, assessing our faces.

“Anything, love. All you need is to ask,” Lazarus entertains with a cocked eyebrow.

Her legs wrap around my torso as her arms cling to my shoulders. She gazes at us with lust-filled glory, as she states, “I want to feel consumed by all three of you.”

“Will that not be overwhelming?” I ask softly into her ear.