Chapter 355: Dream Threesome 2 [Kelly Vs Elena]

Kelly sat back on her heels and looked at Liam.

Then she stood up from the floor with the specific ease of someone moving in their own space, which she was, and she crossed to the bed and sat on the edge of it and patted the surface beside her.

“Come here,” she said. To Liam. Not to Elena.

Liam looked at Elena.

Elena was already standing, her posture doing everything it always did, her expression carrying the composed quality it carried when she had decided to let something happen rather than direct it and was not entirely comfortable with that decision.

Liam moved to the bed and sat where Kelly had indicated.

Kelly shifted behind him immediately, her knees finding the mattress on either side of him, and she put both hands on his shoulders and started working the tension out of them with the practiced certainty of someone who had done this enough times to know exactly where it lived.

Her thumbs pressed into the muscle at the base of his neck and he exhaled.

“You’re carrying a lot,” she said, her voice quiet and directed at him rather than the room.

Elena looked at this from where she was standing.

She looked at Kelly’s hands on his shoulders.

At the way his body was responding to them, the visible release of tension in his frame.

At the specific quality of comfort that Kelly was producing without apparent effort, the ease of it, the warmth of it.

Elena crossed to the bed from the other side.

She sat facing him, her legs folding beneath her, and she reached forward and took both his hands in hers and held them, her thumbs pressing into the center of each palm slowly, feeling the tension in his hands that the shoulders had not covered.

Liam looked at her hands on his.

He looked at Kelly’s hands on his shoulders.

He said nothing.

Kelly’s hands moved from his shoulders down either side of his spine, her fingers pressing in at intervals, finding the specific points that carried the most and staying on each one long enough to matter before moving to the next.

She was not rushing toward anything.

Just working through it systematically, her attention entirely on what her hands were telling her.

Elena pressed her thumbs deeper into his palms.

She turned his hands over and worked the backs of them, her fingers moving across his knuckles, across the specific places that carried what training left behind.

“These have been through a lot recently,” she said. Quietly. Just observing.

“They have,” he said.

Kelly’s hands reached the lower back and she pressed both palms flat there, the heel of each hand finding the compressed muscle on either side of his spine and applying slow steady pressure that was different from what she had been doing above, more direct, less exploratory.

He made a sound that was not planned.

Kelly noted it and stayed exactly where she was.

Elena looked at his face when the sound arrived and then looked at Kelly’s hands and then looked back at his face.

She leaned forward slightly and pressed her lips to his forehead.

He looked at her.

She looked back at him with the gold eyes doing what they did in low light.

Kelly’s hands moved from his lower back around to his sides, her fingers spreading across his ribs from behind, pressing in gently along each one, feeling the structure of him beneath her hands.

She leaned forward slightly as she worked, her chest coming closer to his back, the warmth of her present without contact, just the proximity of it sitting in the air between them.

Elena felt the shift in the room that produced and her eyes moved briefly to where Kelly was behind him and then came back to his face.

She moved her hands from his and reached up and pressed both palms against his chest instead, flat and warm, feeling his heartbeat beneath them. She looked at her own hands on his chest and then up at his face.

“Lie back,” she said.

He looked at her.

She held his gaze with the specific quality she had when she had said a thing and meant it.

He lay back.

Kelly moved with him, her hands staying at his sides, adjusting as he went back, her position shifting to accommodate, until he was lying flat and she was beside him and Elena was moving from where she had been to kneel beside him on the other side.

They were on either side of him now.

The lamp on the nightstand throwing its warm light across the bed and all three of them.

Kelly put one hand flat on his stomach, not moving it, just resting there, feeling his breathing rise and fall beneath it. She looked at the side of his face with the expression she had when she was simply present somewhere rather than performing anything.

Elena put her hand on his chest, mirror position to Kelly’s on his stomach, her palm pressing lightly.

He looked at the ceiling.

Neither of them said anything.

His breathing slowed by degrees, the specific slowing of a body that had been carrying significant things for a significant amount of time and had found somewhere that was asking it to stop.

Kelly moved her hand in a slow circle across his stomach, the motion barely there, just the warmth of her palm moving across his skin.

Elena felt the motion from the other side and looked at Kelly’s hand doing it.

She pressed her own palm slightly firmer against his chest, not the circular motion, something more direct, more grounding, the specific pressure of someone who wanted him to feel that they were there.

He turned his head and looked at Elena.

She looked back at him.

He turned his head the other way and looked at Kelly.

She was already looking at him, her expression carrying the warmth it always carried when the professional version of her was entirely absent.

He looked at the ceiling again.

“How are you,” Kelly said. Not how are you as a greeting. How are you as an actual question directed at a specific person about a specific thing.

He thought about how to answer that.

“Tired,” he said. “In a way that sleeping doesn’t fix.”

Kelly looked at her hand on his stomach.

Elena looked at her hand on his chest.

Neither of them said anything for a moment.

“When did you last eat properly,” Elena said.

He thought about it.

“Define properly,” he said.

“Sit-down meal,” she said. “Something someone prepared with actual ingredients.”

He thought about it more.

“Elena,” Kelly said, her voice carrying no edge, just the sentence. “He doesn’t need a schedule right now.”

Elena looked at her across him.

Kelly looked back.

The exchange lasted about two seconds and covered a significant amount of ground without any of it being said.

Elena looked back at Liam.

“She’s right,” she said. Which cost her something to say, and the costing of it was visible in a small way, and she said it anyway.

Liam looked at her.

Kelly moved her hand from his stomach to his forearm, her fingers wrapping loosely around it, not gripping, just holding. The warmth of her hand sitting around his arm with the specific quality of contact that was not asking for anything.

Elena moved her hand from his chest to the side of his face, her palm pressing against his jaw, her thumb moving slowly across his cheekbone.

He closed his eyes.

Both of them looked at him lying there between them with his eyes closed, and they looked at each other across him, and what passed between them in that look was not warmth and was not hostility but was something more complicated and more honest than either of those things, the look of two people who had arrived at the same place from very different directions and had not yet decided what to do about sharing it.

Kelly looked at her hand on his arm.

Elena looked at her hand on his face.

He lay between them and breathed.

The lamp kept its warm light across all of it and the night outside the window kept being the night and the room was quiet in the specific way a room was quiet when the people in it had stopped performing anything and were just there.

After a while Kelly looked at Elena again.

Elena looked at her.

“He needs to sleep,” Kelly said.

Elena looked at Liam.

His breathing had found the long slow rhythm of someone whose body had finally been given enough stillness to decide what to do with it.

“I know,” Elena said.

They both looked at him.

Then they looked at each other again, and this time the look was slightly different from the previous one, carrying something that had shifted by a small but specific degree.

“The right side is more comfortable,” Kelly said. She was not looking at Elena when she said it. She was looking at Liam. “The left side of the mattress dips slightly. Has for months.”

Elena looked at the mattress.

Then at Kelly.

“Thank you,” she said.

Kelly said nothing.

She moved her hand from his arm and settled it loosely on the bed beside him instead, close enough that the warmth of it was present without requiring anything from him.

Elena moved her hand from his face slowly, setting it in her own lap, and sat back slightly on her side of the bed and looked at him sleeping between them and looked at the ceiling above him and looked at the lamp on the nightstand and stayed there.

The room held all three of them.

The night held the room.