Page 25

Eden

Work for peace.

War works for no one.

Every inch of Jayk’s scorching, damp chest is pressed to my back. His kiss is everywhere, his stubble abrading my chin, his tongue in my mouth, and I’m chasing shivers all through my body.

But that word .

I shove him back, breaking the kiss, and he slips out of me.

He immediately scowls at the loss, his eyes still whirlpools of hunger, oversexed and glassy and focused on my mouth.

His brows crash down, and he reaches for me again, but I put a restraining hand against his chest, stopping him in his tracks.

My head spins, but I ignore it. “ Queen ?” Jayk starts to smirk, still watching my mouth, and I poke his chest, right between his pecs. “You’re taking this all a little far, don’t you think?”

He leans down to kiss me again, and my legs quiver with the effort of holding myself up. I’ve been walking all day—all week—and my orgasms are still quaking me at my foundations.

“You want a throne too, sugar?” he asks, his breath fanning over my lips. He shrugs one shoulder. “I’ll make you a pretty one. With sparkles and shit.”

“I—” I can’t help but splutter a laugh, torn between cringing at the awful, garish image of a sparkly scrap metal throne.. .and being oddly endeared by the offer. All of this—the violent claiming, the room, the possessiveness—is a statement. It’s sweet .

His cum slips down my thigh, and I wince.

For Jayk, it’s sweet.

Sweat is dewed across our skin, and he’s scored with nail marks and new-blossoming bruises. They mark my skin too, in indented pink bites and purpling sucks and possessive red finger marks I want to examine with interest.

I raise my brows at him. “Fine.” My hand still on his chest, I start nudging him back onto the bed. “If I’m the queen, then you can obey me for a change. Sit down.”

“Not even a please.” He snorts as he lounges back against the headboard. He sprawls out in the center of the messy sheets, his massive body obnoxiously making a mockery of the king-size bed. “Bossy.”

Rolling my eyes, I crawl on top of him until I’m hovering over his lap.

There, I hesitate.

He’s still naked. And... soft. My thighs are turning sticky, but I’m still soaking wet between my legs, and this already feels like a mistake. Is there some etiquette around sitting on a naked man’s... appendage? Do I move it? Bat it out of the way?

Jayk yanks me down, and I slam my hands against his chest to stop myself from overbalancing. Avoiding his amused expression, I shift, realizing I can feel him under my ass. Okay. Not a direct crush. Got it.

More hot cum trickles out of me, pooling into the dusting of hair on his thigh, and I close my eyes in embarrassment.

I really should have cleaned up first.

“You good?” he asks lazily.

“Yep, I’m just, ah...” I wince, peeking at him. He has to be able to feel that. “ Leaking .”

The smug curve of his lips widens into a wide, self-satisfied grin. “No shit.”

My face scalds with heat, but my eyes linger on that grin.

It’s relaxed and real, and, even dripping with cockiness, he’s unarmed.

There is no defensiveness in the pretty crease of his cheek, or snarky daggers hidden in the stubble along his lips.

There’s not a single bitter curl or wary tuck to be found.

It’s unbearably lovely on him.

More moisture trickles out of me, and he hums, rolling my hips over him a little, smearing it. I squeak as I slide in our mess, my hands spreading over his pecs.

“Um. Maybe we should have a shower.. .”

He squeezes my ass with both hands, watching the slick join of our skin. “Or you could give me five minutes and we can go again.”

“Aren’t you the optimist,” I say tartly, and his gaze flicks up with a scowl. Sweetly, I smile at him. “Maybe in the hour you’ll need to recover, we can talk about whatever fit of madness inspired you to tell the others that I’m yours?”

Jayk grabs my hand, yanking me in close to his face. “Thirty minutes, and you are mine. I have it in writing, sugar.”

Ah, my note .

“I’m not only yours!” I exclaim.

Oh, he is maddening !

His grin turns, his brows edging down again, and I narrow my gaze on him, trying to work out the best way to wrangle his stubborn butt into this conversation. My head is still spinning, and I’m starting to think it’s not just the sex. I haven’t eaten much today—and Jayk is a workout.

Taking a calming breath, my gaze skims over his chest. His ruined shoulders.

My fingers trace them. “Do you have anything to clean these with?”

He leans back against the headboard again. “It doesn’t matter.”

Pushing my glasses up the bridge of my nose, I look at him and wait.

It’s his turn to roll his eyes, then he leans over, twisting across the bed.

Yelping, I cling to him to stop myself from falling off.

He opens the drawer of the remaining bedside table, and rummages in the untidy clutter inside.

I spot lube, condoms, piles of fresh-cut cloth that looks much cleaner than what he stuffed into my mouth earlier. . .

Twisting back, he tosses a few of the cloths down on the bed, along with a small bottle of iodine. I go to reach for them, but instead I’m smacked in the face with a wrapped bar.

“Ow!” I pick it up, realizing it’s some kind of energy bar.

“Eat something. I don’t deal with swooning broads, okay?”

Despite the callus words, Jayk’s eyeing me worriedly, a stubborn-set scowl settling into his face. I know my ribs are sticking out more than they did two weeks ago, and I know that it isn’t great , but so are his. So are everyone’s. This isn’t a choice.

It’s survival.

Hating the way he’s looking at me, I examine the ingredients on the packaging instead, reluctantly impressed. It’s incredible. Packed full of sugar and preservatives, it’ll last years and years. The calories in that one bar alone...

Ignoring the sunken, needy void of my stomach, I raise my eyebrows. “How many of these do we have left?”

“Who the fuck cares? Queens don’t starve.” He takes it out of my hands and rips open the packaging.

“Queens who eat more than their fair share are pretty awful?—”

I choke as Jayk shoves the bar into my mouth. Crumbs spraying from my lips, I pull it back enough to haul in air.

“Stop gagging me,” I growl, and he smirks.

Unguided by me, my tongue finds a crumb on my lip and sucks it into my mouth. My eyes flutter closed. It’s grainy and a little stale, but the sweetness rolls through my mouth and—not to insult Jayk or any of my brutes—but it’s the most delicious thing I’ve tasted in weeks.

Surreptitiously, I swipe for more crumbs and find at least three of the gracefully aged, wonderful specks beside my mouth.

The bar in my hand glistens, a little wet from my saliva.

It is already open. It’s not like it will last long now. It would be rude, even, to give it to someone else when it’s already been halfway buried in my throat.

Jayk tucks one arm behind his head, his bicep thick and darkly patterned in those beautiful, unnerving tattoos. He watches me arrogantly. “Just shut up and eat. You can give me this cute little lecture when you’re done.”

Giving in, I take an unladylike chomp and crumble half the bar over my tongue with an erotic shiver. As I eat, Jayk’s eyes linger on my disheveled bun, then he pulls at my hair tie. A moment later, my hair tumbles around me, falling around my hips.

A low breath rumbles from his chest.

I eat slowly as his eyes drink me in, sexed but sated, running over my glasses and hair, lingering on my breasts and the wet mess I’ve made on his abdomen.

The small space between us warms. It’s not the exhilarated inferno of earlier, now.

He’s already scorched me clean of all the hot, sparking frustration that had been weighing on me like residue, and the possessive fire in him seems to have been soothed to a simmer.

The warmth here now is cozy, gently crackling in a way that reminds me of the day I spent working with him in his barn.

It’s home.

I’m back at Bristlebrook. I’m with Jayk. He still wants me, and everyone is alive. Everything else can be managed.

I take another bite, looking at the haphazard pile of furniture barricading us inside with mild bemusement.

When I woke up after my nightmare a few weeks ago, it took me twenty minutes of huffing and puffing to push that stupid side table over to the door—it was a miracle I didn’t wake Beau up with all the heaving.

Luckily for me, Beau tends to sleep like he’s been drugged into a coma, his mouth a little parted like he’s waiting to be kissed awake.

I haven’t seen him sleep for more than a week now.

The energy bar starts to lose some of its sweetness.

There are holes in the room. Gaping, gauged spaces where Beau’s things used to be.

His medical bag isn’t on the couch, and his socks aren’t carelessly and offensively piled beside the hamper.

Without his armchair and the revolting lamp, all the furniture matches.

And of course there’s Jayk, stretched out across the bed, right where Beau used to sleep.

It doesn’t smell like Beau anymore.

Now the room smells like cleaning products, and sex, and Jayk. And I like having Jayk’s scent here, I do.

I just... wasn’t ready for Beau’s to be scoured away.

My throat stings.

The last time I arrived back at Bristlebrook, it was Beau who took me to this room and fed and fucked me.

Like this, and not at all like this. He set the fire up and fed me cheese by hand and soothed every hurt, inside and out, like it was his duty to cure each one of them.

He handled me like I was fragile—and that day, I was.

Beau’s confused, wounded expression as Jayk carried me away stamps itself in the center of my mind.

I crumple the empty wrapper in my hand and blink rapidly as I set it on the side table, casting about for something to say that won’t reduce me to tears.

At least the food has settled comfortably.