Chapter 14

CHAPTER 14

Eros

“ H e went inside,” Zeppelin muttered, a sour note to his voice as he stared at the chair Jaxon had been sitting in. I sighed, pressing a kiss to my husband’s cheek, hoping to settle him.

Waking up in bed alone when I’d gone to sleep with two men was a little alarming, especially when I’d found their spots cooling, which meant they’d been up for a good minute. When I noticed it was dark outside, I knew without a shred of a doubt that Zeppelin had a nightmare or a flashback.

I was glad Jaxon had woken up with him because Zeppelin really didn’t need to be alone after he had a flashback. And Zep never woke me up. In fact, he did his best to let me keep sleeping, and I hated it. I wanted to be there for him, but the man was fucking stubborn. And I was a deep sleeper for the most part. The only reason I’d woken up was because I’d gotten cool and wanted to cuddle into Jaxon, who’d been sleeping sandwiched between us.

“I’ll go talk to him in a minute,” I assured him. Leaning back, I gripped Zeppelin’s chin and forced him to look away from Jaxon’s empty chair and back at me. I hated the pain in his eyes. It made my gut twist uncomfortably. Zep had suffered enough, hadn’t he? Why did he have to suffer flashbacks, too? “Talk to me about your flashback.”

His lips twisted into a wry smirk before he lifted the blunt to his lips. I waited patiently as he let the smoke settle in his lungs before slowly blowing it out, aiming his face away from me. I ran my fingers through his dark, wavy hair, scraping my fingernails along his scalp. His hand slid down to settle over my ass—not squeezing, just resting there.

“It was just another man,” Zep muttered. “One of the very many who’d been allowed to touch me and use me.” I barely bit back a flinch. “Nothing terrible happened in the flashback itself. I was just in chains, naked, and he used his foot to get me hard. That’s what woke me up.”

Nausea churned in my stomach and rose up my esophagus, but I swallowed it down. “Baby—” I rasped.

He shook his head, peering up at me with those damn beautiful dark eyes. “Don’t,” he begged. “I’m begging you, Eros—don’t. Please. I can’t… I can’t take it when you hurt for me. Not over this.”

I swallowed thickly. I always hurt for him. Didn’t he know that? Couldn’t he fucking see that? But instead of arguing with him, I just nodded and leaned down to brush my lips over his. “Okay,” I said softly. “But just know, I won’t ever let anyone hurt you again. I fucking swear it. They’ll have to get through me first.”

His lips tipped up the tiniest bit at the corners. “I love you so goddamn much, Eros.”

My eyes burned with tears, and my throat tightened, but I still managed to rasp, “I love you, too, Zep. With every fiber of my being.”

I could hear Jaxon in the kitchen when I stepped inside, leaving Zeppelin on the porch to soak in the start of a new day and sort out his head. The sky was beginning to lighten, and he had finished his blunt, leaving him mellowed out and content, his mind no longer in that dark space it went to after a flashback.

Something clinked—a spoon against a coffee mug, maybe? I paused. “Logan, I just… I’m struggling. I don’t know how to navigate… whatever this is. I like them both, but they’re married, and they have something so damn good together. They know each other, and I feel like I’m intruding.”

I paused, staying still as I listened to the only side of the conversation I could hear. “Yes, I know I should just go with the flow,” Jaxon growled, sounding irritated, “but I spent twenty years of my life married to a woman— one person —and you expect me to just be able to navigate being with two married men ?”

I sighed. Jaxon was trying. I could tell he was trying. But he was also a forty-three-year-old man who was having a bi-awakening moment or maybe even just a gay-for-you moment. He was a man still recovering from the loss of his wife, even if he thought he was completely over her, which I knew he’d never be. No one just moved on from a woman they’d spent twenty years with and raised a child with. But Zeppelin and I were ready to guide him. We wanted him with us so badly, it felt like a living, breathing thing inside of us—something pulsing and alive, urging us to claim this beautiful man as ours.

“Okay. I’m sorry I called you with my shit… No, it’s… Okay, Logan. Okay. Don’t go blabbing this to Spencer, yeah? He worries enough as it is… Okay. Have a good day at work. Love you, kid.”

Blowing out a soft breath, my heart aching for him just as fiercely as it ached for Zep, I stepped into the kitchen and cleared my throat, dragging Jaxon’s eyes from his mug of coffee to me.

“Who were you talking to?” I asked casually as I leaned my hip against the kitchen counter, pretending I wasn’t eavesdropping.

Jaxon heaved a tired sigh. “Logan,” he muttered.

Well… at least he was honest. The true question was, would he open up to me the way he’d just opened up to Logan so we could work through this together?

Zeppelin and I weren’t going anywhere, and the faster he came to terms with that, the more content he’d be.