Beyond Happily Ever After: Blank Canvas (Beyond #6.6) (3 page)

Control.

Ace ground his teeth together and reminded himself
not
to come.

Challenge enough, and it got even harder when Cruz flexed his arm and twisted his fingers, sending a shock through Rachel's whole body. Ace thrust up again, deeper, shuddering as she swallowed him, and held her there until her fingers trembled over his.

Overwhelmed, that's how she'd feel. That's how they
needed
her to feel. He met Cruz's eyes and caught his rhythm, hauling Rachel's head up so she could gasp in a breath just as Cruz thrust his fingers forward again.

She bit off a sharp cry, her eyes shut tight against the pleasure that rocked her. It was always this way on the nights when she came the hardest—a sudden, clenching orgasm followed by hours and hours of sensitivity, the kind where she could come again in a heartbeat if you breathed on her just right.

Oh yeah, Cruz was methodical. And fucking brilliant.

Rachel was still shaking, and Ace gave her hair one last tug as he urged her up his body. Cruz helped, maneuvering her smoothly as Ace coaxed her to rest her cheek against his chest.

She ended up with her knees on either side of his hips and her ass in the air, giving Ace a breathtaking view of Cruz. He'd discarded his shirt at some point, and the candlelight loved him. Bronzed skin, vivid ink, endless flexing muscles for the shadows to flirt with—he was a fucking god. Vengeful with everyone else, but never with them.

He retrieved the bottle of lube and spilled more of it on his fingers while Ace stroked a soothing path down Rachel's spine. “Hold on to me, angel, because he's gonna make you fly.”

She was still panting, and her fingers bit into his arms a second before her teeth scored his chest. “It's never enough. Twenty-four fucking hours a day, and it wouldn't be
enough
.”

Truer fucking words.

Cruz held Rachel's hip as his fingers pressed against her again—three this time. “If it's too much, you tell us you need to slow down, all right?”

“Don't,” she begged.

Ace caught her hand and twined their fingers together. “He won't, Rae, not unless you ask him to. But if you want him to keep going, you have to promise him this.”

“I know.” She took a shuddering breath. “I promise.”

“Good girl,” Ace murmured, stroking her spine again. She had flowers there, tattoos he'd designed and etched into her skin and had traced with his mouth and fingertips so many times he could do it without looking.

He calmed her as Cruz resumed his slow, purposeful thrusts, and when that wasn't enough, he wrapped both arms around her to hold her still as she came again. Hot, fast,
hard
. Even if she hadn't been bucking against him, Ace would have known it from the way Cruz hissed, from the way his jaw clenched and his eyes darkened.

When Cruz worked a fourth finger into her, Rachel went tense and lifted her head. Her eyes were glazed with pleasure, and her perfect, swollen lips formed a word she couldn't quite manage to voice.

Please
.

Ace framed her face with her hands. She was ready, but Cruz would take no chances. “Stay with me, angel. Look at me. You're so close.”

She focused on him, but only for a moment before another wave swept her away. Her choked noise was one of ecstasy shot through with pure, absolute submission, a wordless cry that meant they'd pushed her beyond all her limits...and she still craved whatever they'd give her next.

“Cruz—”

“I know.”

Cruz reached for Ace's dick, his slick fingers stroking up the shaft until it was his turn choke on a groan. Just as quickly, the delicious caress vanished, and Ace pressed a thumb to Rachel's parted lips as Cruz moved her hips into place. “Come on, sweetheart.”

She rocked down before the words had all left his mouth. Seeking and desperate and
wet
, so wet that she took him in one endless, driving jolt.

“
Fuck
—” It was all Ace could do to stay still, not to meet her thrust, fuck up into her until the pleasure already blazing through him ignited. And
she
sure as hell wasn't waiting. Her hips twisted over his, fighting Cruz's grip.

Ace grabbed her ass and pinned her in place, her hips snug against his, his cock as deep as it could go. “Steady, angel. Almost there.”

She stilled against him. Ace kept murmuring to her, soothing, encouraging, promises he could barely remember because he knew what was coming.

It was heaven when it did. And hell. Cruz positioned the head of his cock as Ace lifted Rachel's hips. She whimpered when Cruz pressed forward, and Ace shut his eyes and told himself to be a rock, to be firm and in control, to ignore how fucking hot it was to feel Cruz's cock rubbing against his as he worked deeper—

And he
definitely
couldn't imagine how it looked. How
Rachel
looked, sprawled out in blissful pleasure, her ass in the air, her skin flushed, her pussy eagerly taking both of them because there was no fucking way they didn't fit together.

If he imagined that, he'd come before Cruz got all the way inside her.

Her nails raked Ace's shoulders as she tried to brace herself, not against Cruz's careful, gentle movements, but against ravenous sensation. “Oh, God.
God
—”

Fucking
hell
. She was coming again, coming around both of them, and Ace slammed his head back, as if even a goddamn concussion could delay the inevitable at this point. “Christ, Rae, you feel—”

Words failed him. The filthy ones always did when he needed them most. But Cruz curled his fingers around Rachel's shoulder, lifting and steadying her as he began his slow, rocking thrusts, and he said the only word that mattered. “Perfect.”

She whimpered, trapped by the position, by Cruz's control—and set free by the care he took with her.

With
both
of them.

The muscles in Cruz's arm flexed, making the inked dragons writhe in the candlelight, and Ace would have laughed with the joy of it if only he could have stopped moaning.
A dragon to keep us safe—and fuck our everloving brains out.

It couldn't last forever. Rachel was swaying above him and even Cruz's stamina wasn't limitless. But if there was ever a moment to wallow in forever it was right now, when they were so close that every shift, every squirm, every breath shuddered through all three of them.

Then Rachel's pussy clenched again, and Ace didn't care about moments. He cared about tight, irresistible heat and the slide of Cruz's dick against his, and getting Rachel off one last time so they could join her. “Come on, angel. Come all over us.”

She cried out. Nothing as piercing as a scream, but something lower. More visceral. Her body quaked above his,
around
his, and Ace had mere seconds to gloat that Cruz lost it first. He shuddered and drove into her with a growl hot enough to bring a weaker man to his knees.

Ace was already flat on his back. So he clutched Rachel close and lost himself in her.

It was good. Teeth-grinding, toe-curling, knees-don't-fucking-work-anymore good. But the pleasure wasn't the part that had him groaning into her hair as he came inside her with a shudder.

As they
both
came inside her.

It would happen, and soon. Ace didn't care which of them knocked Rachel up because the baby would be theirs, their own personal fucking miracle. The three of them were good at miracles. They were the rock stars of miracles. Crashing together, staying together, loving hard enough to make it work even when life sucked.

But as they panted together, Rachel a sweet, boneless weight against his chest and Cruz leaning over them both, Ace thought it had to be tonight.

It felt like a night for miracles.

Rachel pushed against his chest. “We'll crush you.”

Ace laughed hoarsely. “Sounds good to me. I'm not moving anyway.”

“Lazy,” Cruz grumbled, but he was already easing back. They all hissed as he slipped away, and Ace knew Rachel had to be sore—or would be when the endorphins faded.

When Cruz was gone, Ace rolled to his side and settled Rachel in the nest of blankets. “Doing okay?”

“Mmm.” She smiled slowly, then opened her eyes the same way. “Do you have to ask?”

“Always,” he answered solemnly. And he did, for the same reason Cruz was making one last check of the doors before returning to their bed with a gun to set within reach. Because they took of each other in the ways they knew best.

Rachel's smile widened. “I feel...like I could stay right here forever.”

Cruz settled in on her other side and dragged a blanket over them. “Careful what you wish for, darling. Ace hasn't made it to the gift shop yet. Once he does, he may never leave.”

“Wait a minute.” Ace propped himself up on his elbow and frowned. “What's in the gift shop?”

“See?” Cruz murmured, curling closer to her.

“Cruz, what the hell. What's in the fucking gift shop?”

Cruz reached over Rachel to tug him back down. “Art supplies. Starter kits full of paint and brushes, some sketch pads and pencils. Lots of stuff no one bothered to loot and everyone else forgot about.”

If his knees had been a little steadier, he'd already be crawling out from under the covers. Paint,
real
pre-Flare paint, was hard as shit to come by and cost a ton to import. The factories in Eight made paint, but it wasn't the same. The colors were off, muted and lacking in range, like the end of the world had narrowed the acceptable palette.

Cruz laughed softly. “Settle down, Ace. That's why I brought a car with a big trunk. We'll loot tomorrow.”

Rachel threaded her fingers through Cruz's and pulled his hand to her lips for a soft kiss. “Is there anything you won't give us?”

He smiled. “Not so far.”

And it was true. Ace relaxed against them, high on satisfaction, anticipation, and the sheer fucking impossibility of mattering so much to Cruz that he'd planned this. All of this—lost artwork and looting and the kind of sweetly obscene sex no one wrote poetry about because when it was that fucking good, you didn't want to share it.

They'd filled his world with shades of emotion he'd never seen. With colors that shouldn't exist. He'd been like his pilfered Monet, all angry oranges and reds burning fast and hot, burning out. Life had run him down until those were the only colors he could even see anymore.

They'd given him a goddamn rainbow, and he was going to paint a new world with it. For them.

And for their miracle, whenever it happened.

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Kit Rocha is the pseudonym for co-writing team Donna Herren and Bree Bridges. After penning dozens of paranormal novels, novellas and stories as
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Blank Canvas

Copyright © 2016 by Kit Rocha

This novella is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical articles and reviews.