Page 68 of Hell Gate

“Any longer and I was about to come out there,” he grumbles. “I shouldn’t have agreed to your plan. You just wanted her to yourself all day.”

“It’s what she needed. I’ll put her needs first above any of ours every time.” Matthias takes me by the shoulders from behind and brings his lips to my ear. “Go to him.”

My breath comes in short bursts. Each inch of distance between us is unfair.Mine. The rough, feral tone he used last night crashes over me, knocking the wind from me.

“Alder.” He shoots to his feet at my strained murmur. I rush him when he opens his arms, squeezing my eyes shut when he catches me and lifts me off the ground. “Mate.”

“Yes, sweet blossom,” he rumbles into my neck. “You’re mine.”

“And mine.” Matthias makes no move to intervene in our moment. “Ours.”

“Ours.” Alder’s embrace tightens.

It feels so right, the tender light in my chest brilliant, more settled. When he lifts his head, I kiss him, my heart opening for him. His chest reverberates with a deep, gratified rumble and he braces my back against the wall. The ardent, claiming kiss is full of smoldering heat that burns me with the sweetest passion.

I pull back with a gasp. “Can we go upstairs?”

Alder grabs me beneath my thighs and hauls me higher, wrapping my legs around his ripped torso. His strength leaves me lightheaded. I rest my hot cheek against his shoulder. Matthias follows as Alder carries me upstairs, kneading my ass the entire way.

In the bedroom, I glance between them, then strip until nothing separates me from them. The burn of their gazes on my body fills me with confidence and makes me feel incredibly beautiful. Alder reaches back to tug off his shirt first, then Matthias does the same. They leave their boxer briefs on while I’m bare.

It’s not that I want to have sex with both of them right now. The bond is making me crave skin on skin contact. The intimacy of feeling their heartbeats directly against mine.

“Whatever you want,” Matthias reminds me.

I nod and take both their hands, inviting them to get in bed. They sandwich me between them, their arms draped over my waist and stomach. I face Alder and Matthias drags my hips back, my ass snug against his erection. Neither of them push me, allowing me to take this bond with them both at my own pace.

Tucked between them, I feel like I’ve found my place for the first time in my life.

I’m at a loss for what to do next, reluctant to end this blissful moment wrapped in their arms. It could’ve been like this from the first moment we felt the bond if I hadn’t resisted what I was too scared to hope was real.

Part of me is glad we could take it slow. If I’d realized they were my fated mates in the abandoned graveyard, before I knew I’m really a demon, it would have freaked me the hell out. I wouldn’t have believed it, too broken to think the demons who threatened to kill me were destined to love me, the unlovable, troubled orphan.

“What’s going through your head?” Alder cups my cheek with his big hand.

A soft sigh leaves me at the touch and I rub my face against his palm. “Imagining how this would’ve gone down between us if we realized the night we met in Brim Hills.” I smile wryly. “Not only would I not have believed for a second you wanted me, but the whole we’re here to kill you thing would’ve made it awkward.”

Matthias snickers. “We resisted the pull, too. None of us understood why it was happening. It was hard to focus because you smelled so fucking good.”

I marvel at how easy this is now, to be free to map the hard planes of Alder’s chest while Matthias traces teasing circles on my stomach. “When did you realize what it meant?”

“For me, the moment we were attacked. When the demon was going for you, I couldn’t bear it. I needed to protect you without regard for my life or my brothers’,” Alder says.

“At the rest stop when I saw Vale all over you.” Matthias huffs. “Vale’s probably known this whole time. I bet it’s why he was so resistant to letting us seek you out alone.”

A comfortable lull stretches. I bask in their soft touches and indulge the urge to touch my mates. Each exploratory caress opens a bottomless well of hunger in me, leaving me starved for this to stretch on forever, to always feel the profound joy that glows in me at their touch.

“God, this all had me so stressed.” I press my face into Alder’s chest. “I’m sorry I didn’t say something sooner. We could’ve had this instead of me keeping us apart because I was afraid.”

He pets my hair. “As long as you know you’re ours now. You’ll always be ours, sweet blossom.”

“I’m not used to having anyone to rely on. I don’t know how to do—this. Love. Relationships, magically ordained or otherwise. Even friendship is foreign to me.”

The vitriol people have directed at me my entire life runs across my mind. Perhaps it’s because they sensed the demon hidden in me that instinctively terrified them, but I endured it all, focusing on making myself less and less to keep my emotions from lashing out at their hatred.

My teeth sink into my lip and I push myself to be open with them. “I’ve spent a long time keeping my thoughts and emotions to myself. Trust in others doesn’t come easily for me when I’ve been feared and rejected all my life by the people who believed I was different. That girl couldn’t dream of finding one person fate chose to love her, let alone more than one.”

When my choked words break off, Alder growls, holding me closer. Matthias echoes the fierce sound. Both of them show me with their embraces that I’ll never face that kind of cruelty again.

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