Total pages in book: 165
Estimated words: 159487 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 797(@200wpm)___ 638(@250wpm)___ 532(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 159487 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 797(@200wpm)___ 638(@250wpm)___ 532(@300wpm)
“Don’t just look,” she breathed, her gaze flicking between them. “Taste. Kiss him—I want to see it.”
A jolt, sharp as a live wire, went through Ravik. He froze, his blood roaring in his ears, every muscle locked. He stared at Severin, whose pale eyes were no longer just hungry, but wide with a shock that mirrored his own. The air in the room, already thick with scent and heat, seemed to crystallize.
It was Severin who moved first—a barely perceptible shift, a tilt of his head that was neither refusal nor acceptance, but a question…an invitation.
Ravik’s resistance had crumbled—not in a surrender, but in a surge of something darker—more compelling than denial. The ale, the night, the woman between them—it all narrowed to the scant inches between his mouth and Severin’s.
And then he closed the distance.
The kiss was nothing like Lirana’s. There was no practiced cleverness, no perfumed sweetness. It was a clash—a hard, desperate press of lips that was more collision than caress.
Severin’s mouth was cool, but it heated instantly under his, tasting of alien spice and the faint, metallic hint of the wine they’d shared.
Ravik’s hand, now tangled in the cushions, fisted tightly, while his other arm braced him, trapping Lirana beneath them, though she didn’t seem to mind.
He felt Severin’s sharp inhale, then the hesitant, then urgent, part of his lips. Ravik’s tongue swept in through his friend’s sharp fangs, not seeking, but claiming, and Severin met him with a low, bitten-off groan that vibrated directly into Ravik’s soul. It was rough, awkward, and devastatingly honest—a five-second eternity that shattered every unspoken rule between them.
He had pulled back first, his breathing ragged and his world tilted off its axis. Lirana’s satisfied hum was a distant echo.
Severin’s lips were parted and swollen, the sharp points of his fangs showing beneath his upper lip. His usually impeccable Blood Kindred composure had been shattered, leaving raw, unmasked need in its place.
They didn’t speak…they just stared, the ghost of the kiss hanging in the air—a new, terrifying thread now woven into their shared memories.
Then Ravik had turned away, ashamed and desperate. He’d taken his turn with Lirana first—filling her pussy almost savagely, as though to prove to himself this was what he wanted. But when she asked if Severin could join in, he reminded her that Beast Kindred didn’t share.
The worst thing of all was that he remembered coming harder than he ever had—his release ripped from him in a blinding, violent rush—because Sev was close. Because he could feel the tension coiling in his best friend’s frame—could hear the hitch in his breath, could still taste him on his tongue, and could sense the precise moment his control frayed.
Afterwards, Sev had taken a turn himself and Ravik—still hard—had stroked himself as he watched his friend with Lirana. He’d come a second time when Sev came, looking not at the woman they were sharing but at Ravik—holding his eyes as he shot his seed deep inside her, a ragged moan torn from his throat.
The next morning, Ravik had woken with a pounding head and Lirana gone from the bed, with only the indentation in the cushions and the scent of sex remaining. Severin had been on the other side of the room, already dressed, fastening his cuffs with careful, precise fingers, his face a mask of cool detachment. Neither of them had looked the other in the eyes.
“Too much Goldsheill ale,” Ravik had muttered, the words tasting like ashes in his mouth.
“Clearly,” Sev had said, his voice flat and final.
And that had been the end of it.
Only it hadn’t been, because here they were again.
There was no ale this time—no Tenebrian pleasure house. No easy excuse to blame for the way his body had responded when Cassie pressed his shaft to Sev’s and tasted them both together.
And no excuse for the way his chest had felt when Sev said he cared for him more than anyone else in the universe.
Ravik went to the sleeping platform and sat heavily on the edge.
He was not a lover of males, he told himself. He had never wanted males.
Except Sev wasn’t just any male—Sev was Sev.
His friend. His partner. His shield-brother. The male who had dragged him out of firefights, stitched his wounds, argued with him over rations, sat beside his Med-Center bed for three nights after the Karridian ambush, and fought the Hunger Virus for months while Ravik disappeared into the fog. The male who had injected himself with an untested cure and then bitten Ravik even though he knew Ravik might hate him for it.
Sev was the male who had saved his life—the male he could not stop wanting to punish because he had made Ravik feel something he didn’t fucking know how to deal with.
Ravik bowed his head, elbows on his knees, hands hanging between them.