“What I meant to say was: we are all sleeping in the same room. Go get the other bed and drag it in there.” I turn on my heel and head down the hallway as laughter rings out behind me.

But guess what?

They do it.

They put the other bed in there, wedging it in between the wall of windows and the original bed.

It should be awkward, right? All six of us lying there in the dark together. Only … it’s fucking not. Because underneath the claws and teeth, the guns and knives, the blood and pain, we’re all seventeen and eighteen and lonely and desperate for connections that we can count on, love that only hurts in the best possible way, and companionship.

Family.

We find it there, in that room, in the shadows with the curtains parted and the city sparkling beyond the ring of dark woods that surrounds the school.

“Question,” Hael whispers, taking up the side of the giant bed that’s closest to the windows. “How do we broach the subject of sex?”

“Jesus,” Aaron murmurs, but not like he isn’t curious himself. He’s lying on my right side, one arm banded over my stomach. Oscar is on my left, lying on his back, his profile the only part of him that I can see. Cal lies between him and Hael while Vic is on Aaron’s other side, a nightstand between him and the wall.

And I love it here.

I love this.

Does it make me selfish that I want to keep this arrangement forever and ever? I can’t decide. The only thing I know is that even if it does, I want it. I want it more than anything.

“The one thing about royalty,” I start, quoting a song by Bohnes called “Middle Finger”, “is that we love to feast.”

I turn toward Aaron and then gently encourage him onto his back with a palm to the chest. He whispers something that I can’t quite hear but that I’m pretty sure is thank fucking god before I start to slide that palm down his ripped abs, brushing across the thin trail of hair below his belly button. It’s a delicious sensation, an anticipatory moment, before I dip beneath his waistband altogether. Even though it’s dark, and I can barely see him, I’ve got the image of him in my mind’s eye, tousling his wet hair with the towel earlier, pants clinging to his slender hips.

And oh, the sounds he makes when I wrap my fingers around the base of him and squeeze. That’s poetry enough. My lips part as I scoot closer, searching out the hardened points of his nipples with my tongue.

“Oh, I see how it goes,” Hael starts, but then there’s the sound of rustling fabric and a groan from him that speaks to self-pleasure. “Hey Vicki?”

“Swear to fuck, if you call me that again …” Victor starts, and then he lets out a long, tired-sounding sigh. But not in a bad way. More like … he finally feels like he’s allowed to have a moment of rest? “What do you want, Hael?”

“Lube. I put like, four or five bottles in the drawer over there.”

I laugh, even as Aaron moans and bucks his hips up against my hand. Behind me, I can feel the tension in Oscar’s body. He isn’t sure what to do, and he doesn’t like that. Fuck, it’s a state the man doesn’t find himself in often. He always knows what to do. Just … not here, not tonight.

“Rules for sex are,” I continue as the bottle of lube makes its way from Vic’s hand to mine. Our fingers tangle in the dark, driving lust and heat and fire into my body even from such a simple touch. I briefly withdraw my hand from Aaron’s pajama pants, filling my palm with a generous amount of lube before passing it behind me. It goes right over Oscar and into Callum’s hand. “Whatever the fuck we want. Anything. As long as it stays within this group and we use a safe word for any situation that makes us uncomfortable. I think mare’s nest would be an appropriate one, if you guys are in agreement.”

Vic gives me a saucy look, likely because he remembers offering me that same safe word during our threesome with Aaron.

“There could never be another safe word,” Cal agrees, his voice as much a part of the shadows as the darkness itself. Husky, full of depth, crafted of violence but wielded with rough pleasure.

Aaron shoves his pants down his hips, giving me better access to the velvet heat of his cock. My slick fingers find purchase around the base, my hand tightening until he finally lets out a sharp gasp, his own hand lifting up to tangle in the loose blond hair at the back of my head.

Oscar shifts again, and I realize that he’s sat up behind me. When I glance back, I see that he’s leaning against the headboard, shirtless and limned in the faintest bit of moonlight from outside the window. As soon as he sees that I’m looking at him, he puts his hand down his own pants and my breathing gets a little quicker, a little more erratic.

I turn back to Aaron, my fist turning in a corkscrew motion as his own grip tightens in my hair.

“Harder,” he says, and I feel my nipples tighten into diamond points. For someone that’s so sweet to me outside the bedroom, he definitely knows what he wants when we’re in it. I oblige him, tightening my inked left hand even more and then pumping him with a ferocity that should have him crying out in pain but instead only makes him suck in a sharp breath.

Victor adjusts himself on Aaron’s other side, turning to look at us. As my eyes adjust to the darkness, I can better make out the expression on his full lips: amusement. Which, knowing Vic as I do, is something I most definitely did not expect.

“Are you sure you want this? All of us sleeping in here with you every night?” he asks with a harsh laugh, stripping his own pants off and tossing them to the floor. I see that’s he pulled out one of the other lube bottles from the drawer. “You’ll be attending Oak Valley with a perpetually sore and swollen cunt, and I doubt you’ll get a whole hell of a lot of sleep.”

“If I don’t like it, I have my safe word,” I say, and then I drop my mouth down to Aaron’s dick, tongue swirling around the head as he hisses and uses his hold on my hair to push his cock even deeper into my throat.

“Play with my balls,” he murmurs, and my body flushes with heat. I love hearing him tell me what he wants, and I extra fucking love that he’s not afraid to do it in front of all four of the other Havoc Boys. I slide my mouth up his cock and then adjust my attention to the tight heat of his sack, licking the silky skin and sucking it into my mouth. Behind me, I hear one of Cal’s beautifully broken groans and a sound of pleasure escapes my own throat, fluttering against Aaron’s balls as they tighten against the onslaught of my mouth.

He massages my scalp as I slide my tongue up toward the base of his shaft, tasting the lube there and finding it fruity and sweet, like peaches. A smirk takes over my mouth as I sit up and snag the discarded bottle that’s lying next to Vic. He’s just sitting there, playing with his monster cock and watching me pleasure another man with an expression akin to a king on his throne. This is all for his pleasure, his entertainment. Dickhead.

I steal the lube and sit up, tearing my shirt over my head and chucking it aside before squeezing a generous amount of lubricant on my breasts. Oscar’s staring at me with a hunger that’s so sharp that I wonder if it isn’t cutting me, if he isn’t making me bleed without my even knowing it.

Cal and Hael are both lying back beside him, doing their own thing, listening more so than watching.