Page 115 of Chasing Shelter

My hand moved as if it had a mind of its own. Sliding in, feeling that hint of stretch. My body moved as if Trace’s hands were guiding it through a symphony, different instruments flaring to life at his command.

“Feel good?” Trace rasped.

“Too good. I—I?—”

Trace turned up the intensity on the toy, and I cried out.

“Don’t come,” he ordered. “Hold it back for me. Hold it back so it’s so much better. So we can make it more. So you can break.”

My fingers moved in and out as Trace brought the toy back down and then up again. Taking me to the brink and then easing off. “Please,” I begged.

“Those moans on your lips. Add a third finger, Ellie. Feel that stretch.”

My body obeyed as the toy flared again. I whimpered, my walls clamping around my fingers as the first wave hit. One after another until it took me over the edge. I didn’t just break.

I shattered.

More than anything I’d felt before because, even though he wasn’t in the room with me, he somehow was. It was Trace who allowed me to fully let go for the first time. My body bent and bowed as he wrung me dry, and I let go. I felt true freedom. Found it with him.

Slowly, the toy eased, and my fingers slid out. My ears rang, and my lungs heaved.

“How do you feel?”

My whole body hummed. “Like a butterfly.”

The words were barely audible, but Trace still caught them.

“A butterfly?”

“Light. Flying. Free.”

“Love you finding that, Blaze. Love you giving it back to me.”

34

TRACE

It was official.I was addicted to Ellie Pierce. Her laugh, her scent, her moans. The way she fit so perfectly into our lives. It wasn’t effortless, exactly. It took a hell of a lot of effort to find alone time with her. But the way we came together when we did, or how she folded in with me and Keely when we were all together, something about it felt…right.

More than right, it felt different. But in the best way. As if all three of us were finding parts of ourselves we hadn’t before because of each other. For Keely and me, it was all because of Ellie.

I forced my gaze away from the scene taking place at my kitchen island. The breakfast mess had been swept away in favor of hair tools, accessories, and things I didn’t even know how to classify. I feared my kitchen would never be the same. Ellie had come over at half past six with a full rolling suitcase. She’d even purchased one of those cape things people wore in salons that was covered in unicorns.

Checking the time on my phone, I grimaced. “Ten minutes.”

“I am just putting on the finishing touches,” Ellie promised. She reached for a spray bottle. “Every unicorn deserves a little glitter.”

I pinned her with a stare. “Is that stuff going to get all over my kitchen?”

Ellie’s lips tipped up. “Watch out. Maybe I’ll sneak over here and paint your walls with a glitter finish.”

“Oooooh,” Keely awed. “That would be sooooo pretty.”

“Don’t you dare, Blaze.”

Ellie just laughed and sprayed the glitter in Keely’s hair. She’d done pigtails in a style like I’d learned the other day but ended the inside-out braids in ponytails that she’d curled and then added spray color to, promising me it would wash out. She’d placed unicorn and rainbow barrettes throughout the braids and completed the look with a unicorn horn headband that had rainbow ribbons twirling off it.

Ellie pulled the cape off Keely with a flourish. “You are done.”

---