Ruled

by Elle Kennedy

  “That’s not going to take long,” she said ruefully.

  “Look how hot you are, sweetheart,” Sloan whispered in her ear as Rylan bent forward. “Do you like this? My hands squeezing your tits while Rylan sucks those pretty nipples into his mouth?”

  “Yes.” It was incredibly decadent.

  Sloan’s cock sat at the base of her spine, big and ready. “I’m going to fuck your ass while our man gets your pussy.” He licked a line of heat up her exposed neck. “It’s gonna be a tight fit. You’re gonna be sore tomorrow. Every time you take a step, you’ll feel it and you’ll remember what it felt like to have both of us taking you at once.”

  She shuddered.

  He tipped her forward, one hand at the center of her back. Rylan caught her around her waist and held her over Sloan’s dick, and Reese moaned when she felt the blunt head nudge at her opening.

  “Take a deep breath, sweetheart,” Sloan instructed, running a hand down her spine. He curled an arm over her thigh to catch her clit between his thumb and forefinger.

  She closed her eyes and concentrated on that sweet touch as the invasion of her body began in tiny, slow increments.

  Rylan held her flush against his body as he looked over her shoulder. “Christ, baby, your ass is tight. Sloan’s barely got the head in. Ease up, baby.”

  His encouraging words were accompanied by long sweeps of his hands along the tops of her thighs. Between Sloan and Rylan’s petting, she stretched enough for Sloan to slide in completely. They both hissed—him from the tight fit, her from the burn. Her body felt like one exposed nerve. Everything was turning her on. The scratch of Sloan’s wiry chest hair against her shoulder blades. The muscles of Rylan’s chest flexing against her sensitive nipples. The harsh sounds of their breathing.

  “Feels good, doesn’t it?” Rylan murmured.

  She couldn’t even nod. Her mind was a swirling vortex of pain, need, and pleasure.

  Sloan suddenly surged to his feet, driving hard into her tight passage, and Reese cried out as the swift stroke triggered an orgasm. His arm clamped around her waist while the other lifted one of her legs and draped it along Rylan’s hip.

  Rylan pushed her head to the side and held her chin in place so Sloan could kiss her.

  Holy fucking hell. She’d asked for more, and boy, were they giving it to her.

  Sloan’s tongue slid into her mouth as Rylan reached between her legs to palm her core. “Fuck, I need another taste,” he mumbled, and then he dropped to his knees and slung both her legs over his shoulders. His mouth between her legs while Sloan pulsed in her ass was the most incredible feeling in the world.

  And clearly she wasn’t the only one on the edge, because Sloan abruptly broke away from her mouth. “Get up here, you asshole. I’m going to shoot my load if you keep tonguing me.”

  Reese choked on a laugh.

  Rylan slowly rose to his feet. That feral smile was back—the one that promised a dose of heaven and hell at the same time.

  “Ease out,” he ordered.

  Sloan backed away, and Reese moaned at the loss.

  “Don’t worry, gorgeous,” Rylan reassured her. “We’re gonna fill you up again.” Then he bent his legs and fit the broad tip of his cock against what felt like an impossibly tiny entrance.

  He pushed, and it was painful at first, making her whimper.

  “Keep going,” Sloan ordered.

  And Rylan, who’d held back for so long, couldn’t anymore. Sloan’s command jerked his hips forward and he powered into her so hard, she would’ve been thrown on the bed if Sloan hadn’t been at her back.

  The three of them stood there, quivering with emotion and lust and feeling until Sloan began to move. He dipped his legs, shifted Reese slightly and then powered in.

  Her grasp on reality thinned. The room, her worries, the victories behind her, the battles to come . . . it all became a blur as the two men worked her in hard, relentless strokes. Her body opened as if she’d been made for two men. Not any two, though. These two.

  The intense sensations were exhilarating and frightening, like the time she’d walked to the edge of the earth and looked down a jagged cliff to see the ocean eat away at the land. For an infinitesimal moment she’d allowed her toes to hang over the edge, while bits of soil and tiny rocks skipped down to land soundlessly on the shore where they were immediately gobbled up by the water.

  She had felt weightless and insignificant but so alive. She’d been tempted to throw herself off the cliff for the sheer exhilaration of it. She hadn’t, of course. That was madness.

  But wasn’t this some kind of madness too? Reese felt like she was on the verge of something that would engulf her. That would change her completely.

  Their cocks shuttled in and out of her, separated by only the tiniest membrane. She knew they could feel each other. She heard their heightened lust in their raspy breaths, the concaves of their chests as they gulped for air.

  Pleasure thudded inside her skull.

  More.

  “There is nothing we won’t give you,” Sloan said softly. “Nothing you could want that we can’t deliver.”

  Their bodies thrust and hammered against hers to enforce his vow. The rough pads of Rylan’s fingers scraped along her thighs. Sloan had an arm around her middle and his other hand splayed right under her neck, his thumb pressed against the pulse point.

  The thump of Sloan’s heart at her back and Rylan’s at her chest drove through the center of her body to meet at hers, until the three of them moved as one, breathed as one, beat as one.

  Reese gave into it. She hung on to her men as they drove her over the edge, knowing that she couldn’t fall with the two of them holding her up.

  Sloan, the one with the iron control, broke first. He broadened his stance and jacked into her with quick, uncoordinated movements. Rylan followed close behind. Fingers dug into her skin hard enough to bruise. Teeth bit into her shoulder.

  Rylan threw his head back and cursed up a blue streak as he came. Sloan laughed in her ear, and that unexpected sound shattered her. The orgasm seized her body, wave after wave of sensation surging through her, leaving her shaking and weak.

  Good thing she didn’t need to stand.

  She felt her body being pressed forward as Sloan slowly withdrew. Then Rylan slipped free, and Sloan laid her on the bed and covered her with a blanket.

  She closed her eyes, still feeling the echoes of that intense orgasm. Beyond the bed, she heard sounds of water splashing and the deep murmur of satisfied male voices. Footsteps neared the bed and a washcloth was pressed gently between her legs. Sloan’s hand, she thought dimly. And that was Rylan’s in her hair, brushing the strands away from her sweaty forehead.

  “That was fucking amazing,” Rylan said as he curled his body around hers.

  Sloan’s footsteps took him away from the bed. Was he leaving? Dismayed, Reese stretched out an arm.

  Rylan grabbed it and tucked it back under the covers. “He’s not going anywhere, baby. Just putting the washcloth away.”

  A moment later, Sloan returned to take up his place on the other side of her.

  Wait. His place?

  They had places in her bed now?

  “Stop thinking,” Sloan ordered.

  “I can’t,” she admitted. She’d always wanted more, but she hadn’t realized that more existed in Sloan and Rylan. In the perfect rhythm of their bodies. In the press between the hard slabs of their chests. In the thick penetration of their cocks.

  For the first time in her life, she felt completely and totally satisfied. She felt . . . whole.

  And that scared her to death.

  20

  “This mattress sucks.”

  Reese rolled her eyes when Rylan shifted his ass for the millionth time in ten minutes.

  “You got better at Con’s camp?” Sloa
n challenged.

  “Nah, but this is Foxworth, man. You’ve got the best of everything. You couldn’t find one of those plump white things on one of your raids?”

  “This is the best there is. And if it’s good enough for Reese, it’s good enough for your hard ass.”

  “Reese is fierce, though. I’m just a good ol’ boy. I came to Foxworth for the finer things in life.”

  “And the fighting,” Reese interjected wryly, grateful for Rylan’s lighthearted postcoital talk. There was a heavier one coming and she wasn’t ready for it.

  “That’s a given.” She felt, rather than saw, Rylan’s cheeks move as he broke out in a large smile. “And the fucking. No better fucking on earth than at Foxworth.”

  Sloan’s big hand crossed over Reese’s head to slap the side of Rylan’s skull. A love tap, really, because she knew he was too spent from the sex to put any power behind it.

  They all were. Like little children at naptime, they all lay in a sweaty, happy row staring at the ceiling.

  “Baby, get your hunter to find us a better mattress,” Rylan told her. “We’re going to destroy this thing in a week.”

  Her heart leapt in excitement before the fear inside her grabbed her and pulled her back to earth. She felt Sloan’s eyes fix on her, and when she turned her head slightly, she saw the unspoken questions. Are you all right? Was this good for you?

  She and Sloan had crossed a line tonight. As good as it had been, and as much as she wanted to do it again and again and again, there was as much apprehension as there was satisfaction swirling in her blood.

  Sloan’s arm was still extended, and Rylan tipped his head into Sloan’s palm as if neither of them wanted to lose the connection they’d built tonight. Reese, meanwhile, lay cocooned between their two big bodies. If she turned her head to the right or left, she could place a kiss on the side of either man’s broad chest.

  The mattress might not be thick or white, but it was big. Sloan had hauled it back with him shortly after Jake died. Her old one had been covered in a pool of blood, and Sloan had removed it immediately after killing Jake. He’d taken the body, the mattress, the clothes, and burned it all outside of Foxworth. And the next night, he’d left. Gone for more than a day, and when he’d returned, he’d had this futon frame in the back of his truck.

  But even though Sloan had done his best to erase Jake from Foxworth, the ghost of the dead man still haunted Reese.

  Some things couldn’t be burned away.

  Rylan must’ve felt the growing tenseness of her body, because the good ol’ boy, the one with the ready smile and equally ready erection, rolled his head to the side and frowned deeply. “You thinking about Bethany?” he asked cautiously.

  She didn’t know why she turned to Sloan for direction. She just did.

  Sloan searched her face and murmured, “Tell us what happened back there.”

  She blinked, surprised he was encouraging her to talk in front of Rylan. It felt almost like . . . an invitation to something even more intimate than sex.

  One of the best things about fighting and fucking, as she was sure Rylan would attest to, was that those were straightforward activities with straightforward rewards. Fuck and fight and get a burst of adrenaline that carried you to the next round of physical exertions.

  Lying in bed and cozying up to a partner wasn’t something Reese was used to, at least not since Jake. Even with Sloan, her trusted advisor, the one who knew all of her secrets, she kept part of herself closed off.

  Now they both wanted to flay her open, and Reese felt suffocated. She felt—

  “It’s okay, sweetheart. If you don’t want to talk about it, don’t.” Sloan’s free hand came over to stroke down her arm as if she was a child in need of comfort.

  That raised her hackles. With thin lips and a glare at Sloan, she said, “I want one. A baby. But I can’t have one.”

  She waited for their pity with fisted hands. When both men continued to stare at the ceiling, as if her admission was no big deal, some of her tension began to fade.

  Reese forced her fingers open. “The council never allows the firstborns to breed. They don’t want any of the commoners to have a strong lineage.” She took a deep breath, and added, “They sterilized me.”

  “That sucks,” Rylan said.

  Those two simple words leeched away the last of her anger. She wasn’t sure why she’d expected some sort of judgment, but the fact that Rylan didn’t think less of her for wanting a kid or falling apart brought a rush of warmth to her chest. Like Sloan, this man just . . . accepted her.

  “I never thought about having kids,” he admitted.

  “Me neither,” Sloan spoke up.

  “You already had one. You were practically Jake’s parent.” The thought popped in Reese’s head and out her mouth before she realized it.

  “Yeah, and look how good that turned out. I don’t want that responsibility again.” Sloan rolled on his side and placed a hand on her hip.

  The meaningful pressure from that touch told her he didn’t want to bring Jake into this bed or this room, and sure enough, he was quick to change the subject.

  “Rylan, you were pretty good back there,” he said gruffly. “With Bethany.”

  “I told you, I grew up on a farm. We didn’t have a lot of animals, but I witnessed a birth or four.” Rylan caught the edge of his lower lip in his mouth and shifted closer to Reese. “The council sucks, no doubt, but people outside of it aren’t so great either.”

  Sloan reached out and stroked Rylan’s hair away from his forehead. “Evil’s evil. It doesn’t need to be ugly or wear a council robe.”

  Reese was pretty sure it was Sloan’s touch that kept Rylan talking.

  “Bandits killed my parents,” he confessed. “Raped my mom and my dad and then killed them. Or hell, they could’ve killed them and then raped them. I only got there in time to bury the bodies after those bastards took off.”

  Reese swallowed the words of sympathy that she would’ve been pissed if Rylan had expressed before. She knew he wasn’t sharing these things because he wanted them to feel sorry for him. He was sharing for the same reason Reese had just admitted to her desperate desire to have a child. Because the explosive connection forming between the three of them was somehow summoning these confessions.

  “Hard to say,” Sloan agreed.

  “I wasn’t too broken up about it,” Rylan went on. “Mom probably welcomed death, and Dad? Well, in a few years, I would’ve put a knife in his belly anyway.”

  “He mistreat your mom?” Sloan asked.

  “Is whoring her out mistreating her? Is making his son do it too so that we could eat and have clean water all that bad?” Sarcasm colored Rylan’s words.

  “Yeah, that’s pretty bad.” Sloan tugged on Rylan’s head, turning it so the man could see the same thing he’d offered Reese earlier—acceptance with no judgment.

  Rylan closed his eyes briefly and shook his head. “First thing I remember thinking when I came back and saw the two of them dead was Good. Now she’s not hurting anymore.”

  “You get those bandits?” Sloan asked in a low voice.

  Rylan’s face took on a savage expression. “Took three years of tracking, but yeah, I did.”

  Silence fell over the bedroom. Reese ran her hand over Rylan’s bare chest, and then, for the first time since she’d met him, she actually took the time to study the tattoos inked on his golden skin. She traced her finger over one name in particular.

  “Is this your mother’s name? Julia?” It was the only woman’s name she saw, unless there were female versions of Connor and Pike she didn’t know about.

  “Yeah,” he said sadly.

  “I guess your dad’s name isn’t anywhere on here.”

  “Nope.”

  A wry smile touched her lips as she continued to read the random lines of
black text. “What do all these things mean?”

  He shrugged. “Just words of wisdom I picked up over the years. Names of people who saved my butt at one point or another. Some poetry I heard.”

  Sloan leaned over Reese’s body and dragged his thumb along Rylan’s left side. “I know this one. My ma read it to me once when I was a kid.”

  Reese peered in to take a closer look.

  Do not go gentle into that good night, it read.

  She laughed softly. “Suits you,” she told Rylan. “Nothing you do is gentle.”

  “I can be gentle when I want to be,” he protested.

  Then he rolled all the way over until the two men formed a wall on either side of her. He placed a fingertip at the hollow of her neck and began a slow trek down the center of her chest, stopping at the splayed fingers Sloan still rested on Reese’s pelvis.

  “I’m done with this talking but I’m not sleepy,” Rylan drawled. “Anyone got any ideas?”

  Sloan’s hand drifted between Reese’s legs. “I’ve got a few.”

  * * *

  Reese couldn’t get out of bed fast enough the next morning.

  She slipped out from underneath Sloan’s heavy arm and quickly pulled on a pair of stretchy pants and a long-sleeve T-shirt. Sloan’s eyes tracked her every move, but thankfully he stayed silent. Rylan, meanwhile, slept on, shifting restlessly as if he missed Reese’s body next to his. When Sloan reached over and placed a hand on Rylan’s shoulder, the blond man immediately settled.

  The two of them looking lazy and sated in her bed simultaneously made her want to break out in hives and rip her clothes off and go for round three. Or would it be round four? She’d lost track of all the orgasms they’d given each other last night.

  The memory of their hot touch rendered her clothes tight and uncomfortable. Her body urged her to return to the bed and crawl between the two men, but her racing mind wouldn’t let her.

  What was she actually doing?

  Why had she slept with both of them?

  How could she ever go back to the ordinary practice of sleeping with one man?