Page 83 of Fated Exile

Decades ago, this factory churned out textiles. It was briefly an eccentric gentleman's club, then a place of worship for a small cult, before a series of electrical fires took it out of commission permanently. Now it's rumored to be haunted, and no business wants to set up here, which is why it became the perfect place for young adventurous werewolves to screw around.

There are three floors, connected by stairs that lead up from an open front room, which is blackened and scorched from corner to corner. Concrete flooring remains, and rusting metal balconies stretch towards the broken skylights in the ceiling. Sunlight pours down on us as we walk into the center of the factory floor, gazing around at the memories this place holds.

Over there is the staircase railing that fell when Kieran chased Roarke down it at full-speed, yelling at him for stealing his illicit half-finished can of beer. On the other side of the room is a wall that used to hold soft porn posters, the women beaming from glossy surfaces and barely holding on to their tops. Above us, one of the rooms past a staircase held a baby grand piano in mint condition, and another was full of half-finished paintings by a painter who was either a mad genius or just plain mad.

Roarke turns to me with a glint in his eyes. "Race you to the piano."

"You're on."

"Already there!" Kieran runs off before either of us can make it into motion. Laughing, we rush towards the remaining unbroken staircase and peel up it, bumping each other out of the way and collecting momentary bruises on our way up.

As we skid down the hallway, I reach out to grab the back of Kieran's shirt and pull him behind me. The white cotton splits beneath my grip and parts wide open, mere tatters hanging from his arms. I leave him behind without regret and leap the last few feet into the piano room.

It's just like I remember it, if a little more faded from the sun than before. A light coating of dust has settled on the surface of the baby grand, and sunbeams from the broken windows have peeled the finish off half the wood. But it's still intact, and when I stretch out to press down on the keys, a tinny off-key note peels out.

"Roarke let you win," Kieran complains, huffing out a breath and cutting his eyes at his best friend. "He's too soft. It's all that crushing on you for years. It's made him weak."

"I was distracted by your torn shirt," Roarke shoots back, laughing and shaking his head. "You've been working out a lot, haven't you? Guess you want to show off forsomeone."

Kieran's cheeks heat at this, and he grows quiet and flustered, running a hand through his brown hair as he joins me near the piano. Something funny flutters in my stomach at the odd look in his eyes, but I can't quite identify it. Maybe he really is crushing on Roarke, or maybe he's just adjusting to sharing me with more than one man.

"I wonder if this thing could be tuned." Sliding onto the piano bench, I run through a few notes, and wince at the sound. "Probably not. It's seen more sun and water damage than it could ever come back from."

Roarke walks over and strokes the surface of the piano with a broad palm. "You never know. It has good bones."

Glancing up at him, I smile at the way his sun-bleached hair flops into his forehead. It slides into one of his summer blue eyes. He huffs a little, pushing it back with long fingers and flicking it out of his face.

"You need a haircut." I slip off the piano bench and pace over to him, reaching up to push my fingers in his soft, fine hair and press it back from his face. "If it gets any longer, you'll have to part it in the middle like one of those members of a nineties' boy band."

He snags me around the waist, his fingers brushing up against my skin as he slides them beneath my shirt. "The nineties are coming back, you know."

"Oh?"

"They are. Middle parts are a thing with all the humans," he murmurs, leaning down to press his mouth to mine. "And you're going to pay for beating me in that race."

The press of Roarke's fingers against my skin suddenly turns ticklish and silly. I bark out a laugh, squirming away from him only to find myself caught more fiercely. He runs his dancing fingers up and down my ribcage, pulling helpless, breathless laughs from me.

I look over at a pair of warm brown eyes and beg, "Kieran! Help!"

"Me?" Grinning, Kieran slides around behind me and puts his hands on my neck. "Oh, I'd love too."

Then I'm getting tickled there too, and I swear I nearly buck out of their arms. Laughing, I twist and squirm, elbowing and pinching them until they pull back enough to let me breathe. But despite my breathlessness, I'm happier than I've been in a long time, the world around me narrowed to two joyful points of uncomplicated happiness.

Kieran snags me by the waist and pulls me back against him, sliding around to dip his mouth to mine. I answer him with a hungry kiss, twisting around while Roarke grabs my free hand and pulls it up against his crotch. Heat stokes between us, his arousal pushing up against the confines of his jeans.

In a low voice, Roarke asks, "Could we both..."

Pulling back, Kieran swallows and licks his lips. I feel a tug of emotion from him, bright with wary hope, and I know he's wondering if he should slide sideways into something more complicated with his best friend. "I wouldn't mind if we—if we shared her."

"I wouldn't either," I add quickly, reaching down to twine my fingers with Kieran's.

He shoots me a grateful look, panic sliding across his face, and I know he's trying to decide how much of his attraction to Roarke is real, how much is just friendship, and whether he should act on it.

"I don't have a condom," Roarke says, reaching down to unbuckle his pants. He slides them off, his tight boxer-briefs beneath holding an increasingly harder erection pinned to his thigh. "Do you have one, K? Or preferably two?"

"No." A frown crosses his face, his eyes trained very studiously upwards, like he's scared to look down at Roarke's crotch. "We'd need them though, wouldn't we, now that we're not in the Mating Circle? Unless Delilah is on birth control."

"No hormones here." I shake my head, swallowing. "Even before, when I thought I was shiftless, I never took them. The side effects for female wolves are too severe."

---