🔥 The First Morning 🔥

An Exclusive Bonus Chapter from Engine 8, Heart 1

Thank You for Reading! 💜

You made it to the bonus content — which means you’ve experienced Jace, Drew, and Marek’s journey from crewmates to forever. Thank you for giving their story a chance. This exclusive scene is our gift to dedicated readers like you.

The First Morning

Three months after the hearing. The new apartment. A Sunday.

Jace made pancakes the way he made everything: precisely, methodically, with an attention to detail that bordered on the devotional.

The batter was from scratch — buttermilk, which he’d bought specifically for this morning, eggs cracked one-handed into the bowl, flour measured by weight because “volume measurements are inconsistent, Drew, that’s why your cookies are flat.” The griddle was preheated to exactly 375 degrees. The first pancake — the test pancake, the one you always threw away — had been perfect, which meant Jace’s griddle calibration was flawless, which meant Jace was in a good mood, which was confirmed by the fact that he was humming.

Jace Vance was humming.

Drew, sitting on the kitchen island in boxers and nothing else, his legs swinging, a coffee mug balanced on his thigh, was memorizing this moment with the fierce attention of a man who understood that some things were too good to trust to memory alone.

“You’re humming,” Drew said.

“I’m not humming.”

“You’re humming ‘Brown Eyed Girl.’ Your dad’s song.”

Jace’s spatula paused over the griddle. A beat. Then the corner of his mouth did the thing — the not-quite-smile that had become, over the past three months, a more-than-smile more often than not. “Maybe I’m humming.”

“You’re humming and making pancakes on a Sunday morning in our apartment and you’re happy and I need everyone to know that this is happening because historically—”

“Drew.”

“Historically, Jace Vance does not hum.”

“Drew. Drink your coffee.”

Drew drank his coffee and watched Jace flip a pancake — the practiced flick of the wrist, the arc, the perfect landing — and felt the specific warmth that came from Sunday mornings in a kitchen that had three stools and fresh herbs on the windowsill and the sound of a man who’d been silent for seventeen years learning to make noise.

Then Marek walked out of the bedroom.

He was wearing Jace’s henley. Just the henley. The gray one, the one Jace had worn the first night he’d cooked at Marek’s apartment, the one that was two sizes too big on Marek and hung to mid-thigh, the collar sliding off one brown shoulder, the sleeves past his fingertips. His curls were a catastrophe. His eyes were half-closed. His legs were bare.

Drew’s coffee mug stopped halfway to his mouth.

Jace’s spatula stopped over the griddle.

The pancake burned. Neither of them noticed.

“Morning,” Marek mumbled. He shuffled to the coffee maker, poured a mug, took a sip, and leaned against the counter with the boneless grace of a man who was not yet aware of the effect he was having on the room.

Drew looked at Jace. Jace looked at Drew. The look lasted two seconds and contained an entire conversation:

Are you seeing what I’m seeing?

I’m seeing it.

That’s your henley.

I know it’s my henley.

He’s not wearing anything under your henley.

I know, Drew.

The pancake is burning.

I don’t care about the pancake.

Marek took another sip of coffee. Looked up. Found two men staring at him with expressions that were, in different ways, extremely focused.

“What?” Marek said.

“Nothing,” Drew said.

“The pancake,” Jace said, and then did not turn around to address the pancake, because his eyes were occupied.

Marek looked down at himself. At the henley. At his bare legs. At the two men who were looking at him like he’d walked into the kitchen holding a live grenade, except the grenade was his body and it had already detonated.

“Oh,” Marek said. The syllable carried the weight of a man who’d finally registered his own effect and was not sorry about it. “I was cold.”

“You are the opposite of cold,” Drew said. “You are thermal. You are a heat event. Jace, tell him.”

Jace turned off the griddle. The pancake was beyond saving. He didn’t care. He was crossing the kitchen with the deliberate, focused stride of a man who’d identified an objective and was moving toward it with zero deviation.

He reached Marek. Stood in front of him. His hand came up and hooked into the collar of the henley — his henley, on Marek’s body, the possessive significance of which was doing things to Jace’s brain that he didn’t have the vocabulary for — and pulled. Gently. Inexorably. Pulling Marek toward him by the fabric until their mouths were an inch apart.

“You’re wearing my shirt,” Jace said. Low. The voice. The one that directed crews and also, in recent months, directed the two men in his bed with equal authority.

“I was cold,” Marek repeated. But his eyes were dark. His coffee mug was set on the counter. His free hand was sliding up Jace’s stomach under his T-shirt, palm flat against abs, and the touch was not the touch of a man who was cold.

Jace kissed him.

Not the morning kiss — not the gentle, coffee-flavored, good morning I love you kiss. The other one. The one with teeth. The one where Jace’s hand tightened in the collar and pulled Marek flush against him and his mouth opened and his tongue pushed in and Marek’s back hit the counter and a sound came out of Marek that was muffled by Jace’s mouth but audible to Drew, who was still on the island, coffee forgotten, watching this happen with pupils the size of dinner plates.

Drew set down his mug. Slid off the island. Crossed the kitchen in four steps.

He pressed against Marek from behind — chest to Marek’s back, hips to Marek’s ass, his mouth finding the side of Marek’s neck, the spot below his ear that made Marek’s knees buckle every single time. His hands slid under the henley and up Marek’s thighs — bare skin, warm, the muscle tensing under his palms — and confirmed what the henley had suggested: Marek was wearing nothing underneath.

“Nothing,” Drew said against Marek’s neck. “You walked out here wearing nothing under this.”

“I was—”

“If you say ‘cold’ one more time I’m going to lose my mind.”

Marek grinned against Jace’s mouth. The grin of a man who knew exactly what he’d done and was enjoying the consequences.

“Cold,” Marek said.

Drew growled — an actual, literal growl, low in his throat — and bit the tendon in Marek’s neck hard enough to leave a mark. Marek gasped and arched back against Drew, which pressed his hips forward against Jace, and the chain reaction — Marek sandwiched between them, friction at both ends, the henley riding up as hands pushed it higher — was immediate and devastating.

Jace’s hands found Marek’s hips. Lifted. Marek’s legs wrapped around Jace’s waist on instinct — the strength required to hold him there was nothing for Jace, who’d been carrying two hundred pounds of equipment up staircases for fifteen years. Marek was lighter than a hose pack and significantly more rewarding.

Jace set Marek on the kitchen counter. The motion was smooth, efficient, the same practical competence Jace brought to everything, deployed for an entirely different purpose. Marek sat on the granite with his legs around Jace’s waist and the henley rucked up to his stomach and his cock hard and visible and Jace looked down at him and said, with absolute certainty: “The pancakes are done.”

“The pancakes have been done since he walked out in that henley,” Drew said, pulling his own shirt off. “New plan. Counter sex. Then shower. Then more pancakes.”

“That’s not a plan. That’s a sequence.”

“Jace. Shut up and take off your pants.”

Jace took off his pants.

The counter was cold against Marek’s bare ass for approximately three seconds before the heat of two bodies obliterated any awareness of temperature.

Jace was between his legs. Shirtless now — Drew had pulled it off him with an impatience that had ripped the collar slightly, which would have bothered the old Jace and which the new Jace filed under acceptable losses. Jace’s hands were on Marek’s thighs, spreading them wider, pulling Marek to the edge of the counter so their bodies were flush. Jace’s cock was hard against Marek’s — the contact through Jace’s boxers, the only remaining fabric between them, was maddening.

Drew was beside them — naked already, because Drew stripped with the efficiency of a man who considered clothing a temporary and largely unnecessary social convention. His hand was on the back of Jace’s neck, pulling him into a kiss over Marek’s shoulder, and his other hand was between Marek’s legs, wrapping around Marek’s cock with a grip that was firm and slow and exactly right.

“Fuck,” Marek breathed. His head dropped back. The henley — still on, pushed up to his chest, the last remnant of the outfit that had started this — was bunched under his arms, and Jace’s mouth found his chest, his nipple, and sucked, and Marek’s hips bucked into Drew’s hand.

“I want you,” Marek said. Not to one of them — to both of them. The words he’d learned to say without apologizing. The words that had taken a lifetime to earn. “Both of you. Right here. I don’t want to wait.”

Drew reached behind the toaster — because Drew Liu kept lube behind the toaster, because Drew Liu believed in strategic supply placement, and Marek had given up questioning this — and produced a bottle and a condom with the smooth confidence of a man who’d been planning for exactly this scenario since the apartment had been furnished.

“Behind the toaster,” Jace said flatly.

“Also in the bathroom cabinet, the nightstand, and the hall closet. I believe in redundancy. You should appreciate that, Lieutenant.”

Jace did not dignify this with a response. Instead he slicked his fingers, lifted Marek’s hips, and pressed one inside him with the patient, thorough precision that made Marek’s eyes roll back.

Jace prepped Marek with the same methodical attention he brought to everything — one finger, then two, reading Marek’s body, adjusting angle and pace. Drew knelt beside the counter and took Marek’s cock in his mouth while Jace worked him open, and the dual sensation — Drew’s hot, wet mouth on his cock and Jace’s thick fingers inside him — had Marek gripping the edge of the counter hard enough that his knuckles went white.

“Now,” Marek gasped. “Jace — now.”

Jace rolled the condom on. Positioned himself. Pushed in — slow, deep, the stretch enormous and perfect — and Marek wrapped his legs around Jace’s waist and pulled him deeper and made a sound that echoed off the kitchen tiles.

The counter was the perfect height. Jace didn’t have to bend or crouch — just stand and drive and hold Marek’s hips and fuck him with the controlled, devastating rhythm that Marek craved from Jace specifically: steady, deep, relentless, the rhythm of a man who treated his partner’s pleasure like a structural problem he was committed to solving.

Drew watched. Stroked himself. His eyes dark and hungry, his lower lip caught between his teeth. Then he moved behind Jace — pressed against Jace’s back, his hard cock against Jace’s ass, his mouth on Jace’s ear.

“Harder,” Drew murmured. “He can take it. Give him more.”

Jace’s hips snapped forward. Harder. The counter rattled. Marek cried out — sharp, loud, the sound of a man being fucked exactly the way he needed — and his hand flew to Jace’s hair and pulled.

“There,” Marek gasped. “Right there — don’t stop — Jace, don’t stop—”

Drew’s hand reached around Jace and found Marek’s cock. Stroked in time with Jace’s thrusts. The three of them — Jace driving, Drew directing, Marek receiving — were a closed circuit, a system, a machine built for pleasure and running at peak efficiency.

Marek came first. Hard, sudden, with a cry that was both their names tangled together — “Jace — Drew — fuck” — his cock pulsing in Drew’s hand, his body clenching around Jace, the force of it pulling Jace over the edge. Jace came with a groan buried in Marek’s neck, his hips stuttering, his hands gripping Marek’s thighs hard enough to leave prints.

Drew hadn’t come. Was aching. Was vibrating with unspent need, his cock hard against Jace’s ass, his body rigid with want.

Marek, still shaking from his own orgasm, looked over Jace’s shoulder at Drew. “Shower,” Marek said. “Now. Your turn.”

The shower that fit three.

Drew’s non-negotiable. The walk-in with the rain head and the bench and the square footage that had cost them an extra two hundred dollars a month in rent and was worth every cent.

The water was hot. The steam was thick. Drew was against the tile wall and Marek was on his knees in front of him and Jace was behind Marek, his hand in Marek’s wet curls, guiding his head, controlling the pace.

Marek took Drew deep. Drew’s head hit the tile. His hands scrabbled for purchase on the wet wall, found nothing, and landed on Jace’s forearm instead — the forearm that was controlling Marek’s rhythm, the arm that was essentially driving Drew’s pleasure through Marek’s mouth, and the intimacy of that — Jace’s hand guiding Marek, Marek’s mouth on Drew, Drew’s hand on Jace’s arm — was the kind of three-body connection that still, three months in, made Drew’s vision blur.

“Fuck, Marek — your mouth—” Drew’s voice bounced off the shower tiles. His hips moved — shallow, restrained, not wanting to push too deep. Jace’s hand tightened in Marek’s hair. Set the pace. Drew surrendered to it — surrendered to Jace’s control and Marek’s mouth and the water pouring over all of them like a baptism.

Marek pulled off. Looked up at Drew through wet lashes. “I want you to come on me.”

Drew’s brain stopped functioning for a full second.

“Marek.”

“On me. Not in my mouth. I want to feel it.”

Jace’s hand moved from Marek’s hair to Drew’s cock. Wrapped around it. Stroked — firm, fast, the water slicking everything, and Marek knelt below with his face tipped up and his mouth open and his eyes locked on Drew’s, and Drew came with a shout that echoed off every surface in the bathroom, spilling across Marek’s chest, his throat, the collar of the henley that he was still somehow wearing even in the shower.

The water washed it away. Slowly. The three of them under the rain head, breathing, leaning on each other, the steam wrapping around them like a cocoon.

Drew slid down the wall. Sat on the shower bench. Marek climbed into his lap. Jace stood behind the spray, arms crossed, watching them with an expression that was ninety percent satisfaction and ten percent “we’re going to use all the hot water.”

“Get down here,” Drew said to Jace. “I’m not accepting spectators.”

Jace sat on the bench beside Drew. The bench was meant for one. It held three because everything in their life held three — the couch, the bed, the bench, the relationship. You just had to try hard enough.

Marek, in Drew’s lap, leaned sideways and kissed Jace. Slow. Wet. The water running over both their faces, their mouths sliding, tasting like steam and salt and morning. Jace’s hand came up and cupped Marek’s jaw, and Drew’s arms tightened around Marek’s waist, and the three of them sat in a shower in an apartment they’d chosen together and held on.

“The pancakes are definitely ruined,” Marek murmured against Jace’s mouth.

“I’ll make more,” Jace said.

“You don’t have to—”

“I want to. Let me.” The two sentences that had taken Jace thirty-six years to learn. I want to. Let me. Not I should. Not it’s my job. But I want to, freely, without obligation, because wanting things for the people he loved had become, finally, something Jace did without fear.

They stayed in the shower until the water turned cold. Then they got out, and Jace made more pancakes, and Drew put on music, and Marek sat on the counter — the counter that had just been thoroughly christened, which Marek was never going to be able to use without blushing again — and ate pancakes from Jace’s hand while Drew danced behind the island and Biscuit snored in his orthopedic bed by the window.

Sunday morning. Their kitchen. Their life.

Engine 8. Heart 1. All accounted for.

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