Page 29

I hold still against the tiny jostles. Watch the careful way he hangs my kit, then his own. He starts unbuttoning my uniform, and each inaudible pop slowly reveals my chest.

When he eventually looks up at me, there’s an unsettled pensiveness to his dark gaze. A hint of frustrated vulnerability I’m not used to seeing there. “Jaykob’s words are... bothering me.”

A humorless laugh slips out of me. “Yeah, they pissed me off, too.”

Jasper’s brows lift, and my eyes skip away as that inexplicable panic clouds my throat again. It didn’t just make me angry.

The throne, I was into. The Reapers, I can roll with.

But Jayk took her.

In hindsight, that probably shouldn’t have surprised me. He is known for his whole “don’t touch my shit or I’ll clobber your skull into a bloody pulp” thing. We should have prepared something to ease him into it. A heartfelt slam poem, or a “Welcome to the Orgy” card, maybe.

But it did surprise me.

I can feel the sting of my broken nails where I raked at his door.

The bruises on my fists from pounding on it.

Seeing him take her away just.. . wrecked me.

And it keeps happening. Every time I let her go, someone steals her away.

Sam. Alastair. Fucking Jayk . I can’t shake this feeling that the next time I leave her, I’m never going to get her back.

The ugly image of bullets bursting into trees around Beau comes back to haunt me. I can still feel the weight on my chest as I let him get shot at so I could cover Eden and Jasper. Dom’s disappointment in me.

Fuck, I almost got Beau killed today.

Jasper unhooks the last button, and his hand pauses on my collarbone. I focus on his touch. The room. What’s about to happen. I don’t need to think of how bad I’m messing everything up right now.

My uniform falls open, and I shiver.

But his eyes stay on my face.

“You’re anxious being apart from her. It’s understandable, given our recent history,” he tells me calmly. I grimace at his first, gentle lash, but he continues, “Are you concerned for her safety?”

“With Jayk?” I ask, surprised. “No. I just.. . I don’t know. Lately I’ve been...” I stop, then give him a look. “We were talking about you. How did Jayk upset you?”

Jasper trails his fingers down my chest, over the ridges of my pecs and the valleys of my abs. He eases my shirt and jacket off me, then has me return to Inspection. My head falls forward, and I breathe out hard as my body comes alive. Every cell focused on the lightest points of contact.

He’s always softest right before he hurts me the worst.

Jasper gives me a scolding look, but he allows the change of subject.

“Eden loves Jaykob. She loves him dearly.” His fingers trail over my abdomen.

“Dominic is right that what he’s done here is incredible, and this bold statement Jaykob has made.

.. perhaps I’m a little concerned that she’ll be swayed by it.

It’s vulgar, for my taste, but Eden...

” The mystified expression on his face almost makes me grin. “Eden seems to find him charming.”

An adorable, puzzled frown appears between his brows, and I stick my tongue in my cheek. He’s upset. I can be sympathetic. A good, doting submissive.

I just didn’t expect him to be so... cute.

His fingers absently trail over my abdomen.

When I’m sure I can keep the teasing out of my voice, I ask, “I mean, can you blame her?”

Jasper flashes me a filthy look. In one swift move, he unsnaps my belt.

“Oh, come on. Dom is busy falling on his sword or whatever, and Beau’s all up in his feelings.

Coming back to Jayk wanting to toss her into a cave and go to town has got to feel good.

” I shrug. The wild sparkle in Eden’s eyes as he carted her off wasn’t lost on me.

I get the same feeling when Jasper pulls out his cane.

“He has a thing. I get why she’s into it. ”

Jasper’s hands get harsher as he rids me of my pants, my boots.. . my briefs. Delicate, sable strands of his hair slip against my legs as he works, and I try not to think about how close his mouth is to my cock.

Or how he might punish me if I dragged his mouth to it.

“I’m not tossing you over my shoulder, Lucien,” he mutters, looking up.

“Safety first. I like it,” I reply glibly. “Don’t want you throwing your back out.”

Jasper doesn’t react, just nods to that, like he’s collecting strikes.

It knocks a few rungs out of my confidence.

I’m naked in front of him as he stands. His cool hand flattens on my heated abdomen, right above my stiff cock. It aches, begging for attention, and I shift my hips a little, chasing his touch.

He ignores me, that pinched crease worrying his brow again. “Eden and I are still finding our way.”

He walks around me again as he talks, letting his skin slide over mine. Over my side, over my ass. He draws a finger up my back, slowly enough to send gooseflesh down my spine, then around my bicep...

“We’ve had much less time together—which is my fault, I know—but I don’t know if I’ve made enough of an impression. If she might choose Jayk’s idea of forever after all.” Jasper’s voice becomes soft as his touch lingers on my chest, right over my heart. “One without me in it.”

It’s murder.

When he finally stops, I’m breathing fast and shallow, and color slashes his cheekbones. But when he meets my gaze again, the naked concern melts me.

“Jasper, anyone who has the chance to have you in their life is going to fight like hell to keep you. Eden isn’t going to give you up,” I tell him huskily. “I don’t care how many ways Jayk can helicopter her on his dick.”

Jasper blinks at the image, then the color deepens in his cheeks.

“You were concerned about him storming off with her too,” he says defensively. “I believe there was some talk of sledgehammers?”

I let out an exasperated snort. “I’m not worried about Eden . The woman’s all over me. And you.”

Jasper gives me a dry look, then walks over to press a button on the wall. The lights brighten, and a narrow spreader bar attached to a thick chain begins to descend from the ceiling above my head. Two wide, padded cuffs dangle from either side.

I eye them, nervous adrenaline kicking low in my stomach. “I.. . What was I saying?”

Jasper raises my wrist above my head. As he fastens the cuff around my wrist, he prompts, “Eden is all over me.”

He buckles it tight. “Right.” The leather swallows my other wrist. “Don’t even try to tell me you don’t notice how she stares at you. She gets all cute and stammers. She watches your hands a lot. Oh, and whenever you start on something extra boring, she does that dreamy little sway.”

“ Extra boring?” he asks mildly.

The chains start lifting again, higher... and higher.

A breathless grunt of effort escapes me as he stretches me out. I dangle from my toes for a moment, my arms straining, before he drops me a few inches.

Sadist.

He leaves me fully extended, but my feet are flat and stable. I grasp the chains above the cuffs, testing the give and finding none. It holds me in place, but it also lets me stabilize.

Jasper nods once as he looks me over.

We both know I can hold this position for a while. That he likes to deliver it soft. Then hard enough to make me stagger. He likes to wait for me to find my feet again, patient and hard and amused before he does it again.

He likes it when I shake.

We also know that when I inevitably collapse and can’t get up, he’ll lower me to my knees, and I pray quietly, fervently, that this time he’ll fuck me while I drown in the high of the pain.

Jasper unhooks the bullwhip from his belt as he considers me. “I make Eden nervous. That could explain the stammering.”

He uncoils the leather, running it between his fingers until the fall drapes over his hand.

“Nervous. Weird,” I agree.

A wry smile turns up his lips, and he moves into the empty space beside me, rolling his shoulders. “She is fond of me,” he concedes. “I do know that.”

He gives the whip a short, easy test swing. The crack snaps in the air like a gunshot. It’s deafening. Beautiful.

Terrifying .

“Eden’s made herself clear, Jasper. She’s not giving anyone up.” My restless anger bites at me again. Jayk’s smirk is smeared over my mind. The way he slammed the door in our face and Eden’s face winked out. “ Jayk is the problem here. He’s being selfish. He’s the one who took her.”

And I didn’t stop him in time.

I never stop them in time.

Jasper’s head is angled like he’s listening, but he just gives the whip another test swing.

Then another. I watch it slash the air again and again, slowly getting faster, testing different types of swing until it whistles through the air.

He taps the same hook on the wall three times in rapid succession.

A cruel, calm satisfaction curls over his features.

“Jaykob,” he muses.

The next swing is vicious, the black leather licking through the air like a serpent.

Crack.

I feel the breath of it, and fear snaps over me in delicious, horrible shivers. I know the mindless sting, and the awful, thudding depth of this whip.

It’s mesmerizing.

Jasper catches the fall in his hand again, then walks over to me.

There’s a ripe flush in his cheeks, and an unholy gleam in his eyes. His small smile is heartbreaking. “Jaykob is the problem.”

“Uhh.” I’m too turned on for this. “You’re not going to kill him, are you? Because as hot as I’m finding that idea right in this moment, I feel like that might put us in Eden’s naughty book.”

Jasper moves in close to me, close enough that his uniform grazes my naked, oversensitive skin in a dozen places, each touch as brutal as a knife. I’m so oversensitive, I worry what a single solid stroke from that whip is going to do to me.

He tilts my chin up, and my lips part, though I doubt I’m that lucky. Jasper is sparing with his kisses during a scene. He finds it amusing to make me beg for them.

My cock throbs, and the empty space between us pulls taut.

His eyes are onyx, heavy-lidded and hot on my face. “No, love, I’m not going to kill him. But he invited a fight—and if Eden craves a claiming, then who am I to deny her one?” The pad of his finger crushes my lips, and he brings his mouth close to mine to whisper, “A prettier one.”

I groan, my lids dropping closed at the image. At the millimeters between us.

Suddenly, I feel coiled leather trailing over my flushed, throbbing cock, and my chains rattle as I jerk.

“Jasper,” I gasp.

His lips brush over mine, then his tongue traces the inner rim. It’s delicate. Filthy. He knows what thoughts he’s dragging out of me.

“Jaykob is outnumbered. He won’t steal her away again.

I won’t let him.” He slips his tongue into my mouth, hot and silken, drinking my moan—and as his kiss takes hold, and his deadly leather wraps around my cock, so does the idea.

Me and Jasper taking Eden this time. Her buried between us, safe and squirming and mindlessly fucked.

Jasper pulls back, and my lips are wet with him.

Dazed, I murmur, “She’s ours.”

The idea settles into me. Taking her back. Keeping her. It’s violent and appealing after weeks of helplessness. Jayk doesn’t get to take her. He can’t cut us out. He doesn’t get to make that kind of decision for her when she loves us too—and we won’t let him.

Eden doesn’t belong to anyone but herself.

Seeing the change in me, Jasper nods, resolved. Lit and glowing with ruthless, ungodly anticipation.

“Jaykob needs to be taught a lesson in humility.” He steps back, pulling the whip wide. “And I have a few ideas on how to deliver that lesson.”

The first lash is warming, a kiss, and I close my eyes as my swollen cock slicks in need.

They become hotter, brighter with every stroke.

And even when the pain becomes dazzling, one thought remains.

Jaykob will get his fight after all.