Page 21

Eden

Cavemen are not hot.

Cavemen are not hot.

Cavemen are not hot.

(Even if they are wonderfully decisive.)

I shriek as the ground rushes up toward my face, then jerk hard as his arm clamps around my waist. Not trusting it, I scramble to balance myself, and my hands land on the firm curve of his ass. My heart clatters around my chest as my fingers flex involuntarily.

Well. Perhaps it’s not all bad.

“Honeymoon suite?” Lucky asks.

My glasses swing from the chain around my neck and the ground moves dizzyingly under my face as Jayk walks to the stairs.

Nope . I hate it again.

“I thought we were full up on rooms,” Beau says, puzzled.

Jayk steps around the edge of Beau’s gaudy green armchair and... My brain pings on the memory of the last place I saw that chair, and my stomach drops with a sudden, nervous flip.

“Ah.” Jasper’s silky voice is thick with mirth, and I cringe. “Oh dear.”

“Oh dear? Why oh dear?” Lucky asks.

There’s a beat of silence. Jayk makes it to the stairs.

“You moved me out ?”

Beau’s roar has the propellant ripple effect of a drone strike, and Jayk finally speeds up.

Crap, crap, crap . I cringe into his back, clinging to his belt for my life as I jolt with each step.

The jerk did move all of Beau’s things out of our room—and if “honeymoon suite” is anything to go by, he moved himself in .

Lucky howls with laughter from some faraway, unhelpful distance, and Jasper’s amused snort makes me want to strangle them both. Oh God, I’m dead—or Jayk is. It’s one of the two and, quite frankly, it had better be him because I do not deserve this.

My whole body bounces as Jayk moves, my stomach bobbling against his solid shoulder as he slams rapidly up every stair.

I’m going to be sick.

“You son of a bitch,” Beau shouts, and I manage to push myself up off Jayk’s butt enough to see all of them standing at the base of the staircase.

.. in front of all Beau’s things. The lamp.

The chair. All his clothes. One set of boxer briefs dangles obnoxiously from the ear of a marble bust in the hall.

Jasper picks it off with two pinched fingers and an equally pinched expression.

Jayk makes it to the top of the stairs, and he turns to look down at them over the balustrade like a bull-headed emperor over his subjects. My heart is thundering with a different kind of panic as the room swirls, and I lose sight of them again.

I’m woozy.

I’m caught.

He’s holding me like I’m barely an annoyance—a sack of grain he’s hauling off to the mart.

Damn it. Why are the others not helping me ?

“Let me down ,” I hiss, and his snort tells me that’s not going to happen.

Squirming, I try to twist out of his hold, but it’s like trying to scrape free of a bear trap. I’m going to need to chew off my own waist and claw my way along the floor to escape him—or use my safeword.

I consider it, briefly, but decide against it. I’d much prefer to blister his hide over this as soon as I get him alone.

There may be a teensy, tiny part of me that’s looking forward to the battle.

I’ve been restrained and careful all week. I’ve missed fighting with Jayk.

Even if he is being a particularly enormous brand of jerk right now.

“You don’t seem to be getting the picture here—so let me clear it up for you.

” Jayk leans one arm on the polished railing, lazy with that same insufferable arrogance from earlier, and I tilt precariously against his neck.

If he drops me over the edge to my death, I am coming back as a zombie and taking him with me.

“I’m the king of the castle,” he drawls. “All of this is mine now. The civilians, your stuffy house.. . and this one, too.”

He jostles his shoulder in a shrug, and I jangle about like a rag doll.

This one ?!

Asshole !

I beat at his steely ass with both fists. He doesn’t flinch, so I try to throw a kick, but the angle is all wrong. My legs just flail about like a pathetic inflatable car wash man, dancing in the wind.

“Jayk!” I shriek, but he just wriggles me into a more comfortable position.

A more comfortable position for him .

“I told you I wasn’t choosing,” I snap.

He shrugs, and I flop again.

“You don’t have to choose,” he tells me casually. “I’m choosing for you.”

Oh, we are definitely fighting about that .

Lucky’s laughter starts to peter out. “Wait. Hold on. Wait, what?”

“Jaykob, put Eden down,” Jasper demands, his voice sharp with alarm. “ Now .”

“He’s claiming her.”

I stop wriggling when I hear Dom... but there’s absolutely no inflection in his voice. No hint at all to say how he feels about that.

It catches me short, blunting some of my thrilled frustration.

I scramble to pull my glasses back on, and I twist, trying uselessly to see from this humiliating angle.

Jayk knows how I feel about the others. My love letter to him was never supposed to be an invitation for him to just take me. His hold on me is possessive, though—the definition of caveman. So something has definitely been lost in translation.

Something I plan to correct very shortly.

But.

Fear pricks me.

Is Dom really going to just... let me go?

“You can get pissed off, fight me, I don’t care.” Jayk pushes off the railing, and I can hear his smirk. “She’s mine—and you’re going to lose.”

“Fuck off, Jayk,” Lucky snaps, and there’s no humor in him anymore. Every word is edgy and tense. “This isn’t a joke. We’re doing this together. All of us.”

“It’s okay, Lucky. I’ll fix it,” I call back.

But my thoughts are still on Dom. Dom... and that dull, empty voice.

Jasper is close behind Lucky, lethally unimpressed. “Jaykob, taking charge of the civilians is one thing, but this isn’t what Eden wants. You’re making a fool of yourself.”

Jayk ignores them, turning back toward my room—our room—and he pauses. “Say goodbye, sugar.”

Not. A. Chance.

I lift my head, realizing he’s positioned me so I can see them.

Dom is standing away from the others, a shadow in the back. All the rawness, all the combative emotion that was exploding out of him moments ago has been packed away so neatly, it might never have been there.

My adrenaline starts to slow, turning nauseating, like a heart frantically fighting off poison, only to recognize it’s pumping the decay everywhere.

He meets my eyes, and his look has the same sad-sweet nostalgia in it that it had when he was watching Jayk and the civilians earlier. He rubs his chest and walks away.

His steps echo like empty gun chambers.

Beau is holding up two of his favorite shirts, but his hands drop as he looks after Dom, all his stunned fury swirling away like water down a drain. Confusion and panic and uncertainty paint his face, the cracks their earlier fight left in him splintering open further.

He looks back at me and Jayk like he’s never seen us before.

“Fuck this,” Lucky snaps, and he pushes past some of the furniture.

Beau shakes his head. His brow is knotted, creased with distress.

“You can’t just.. .” His clothes drop from his fingers, but he doesn’t seem to notice. “You can’t just take everything! That’s my room, that’s my . . .”

He falters.

I wait, imploring him with my eyes to finish that, to assure me and everyone that I am still his. That he wants me. That all of this wasn’t just a romance of convenience—a silly infatuation with the first woman he’d seen in years, come and gone like a rainstorm rainbow.

I need him to tell me we’re stronger than one awful mistake.

“I’ve been waiting my whole life to fall in love with you,” I choke out, and his eyes slam closed like I’ve struck him. His head turns, his Adam’s apple bobbing.

The poison in me becomes distressing. Corrosive. It burns my throat.

Jayk’s arm tightens painfully around me, and Lucky begins taking the stairs two at a time. Jasper isn’t far behind.

Apparently unhurried, Jayk yanks me over his shoulder and into his arms so he can look down into my face, and I squeeze my eyes closed too, because I know he doesn’t want to see this, how much I’m aching for his friends. I know he doesn’t get it, and maybe never will.

“I told you they’re no good for you,” Jayk says gruffly, almost soft. “You don’t need them. We don’t need any of them.”

I shake my head, knowing in every cell that he’s wrong, but I’m embarrassed to keep fighting for Beau when he so clearly can’t fight for me.

Jayk looks up as Lucky nears the top of the stairs, then starts storming down the hall.

“No,” Beau says suddenly, sounding panicked. “No. Eden, wait— Jayk, stop.”

But Jayk is already almost at my door.

Fast, furious footsteps echo off the towering walls, chasing us, and he wrenches the door open.

Jasper and Lucky appear at the end of the hall, silhouetted like twin shadow wraiths.

Lucky takes a few steps forward. The light catches him differently, haloing his hair. “She’s not just yours, Jayk.”

The just squeezes me like a hug after Dom, Beau, and Jayk. Lucky gets it. He always has.

“Shut that door and I will lock you in the prison under my bed and throw away the key, Jaykob.” Jasper’s voice is like the crack of a whip—and upset enough that I squint to try and see his face. “I will put you in a cock cage that will make you weep blood. I will?—”

Jayk just smirks. “Try it.”

With zero ceremony, he throws me into the room.

Then he slams the door closed behind us.