Page 31 of Eternal Light (Fated in the Stars #5)

Love’s Soothing Balm (Jay)

They are almost to the car—Grayson’s magic still buzzing under Jay’s skin—when the burner phone rings.

Lauren had promised she would call back as soon as she could with news about his mates, but Jay hadn’t been able to wait.

He’d left Ansel’s room—Leo and Gideon all that’s keeping him on his feet—with a one-track mind; the fear that Carnell and Withers had their claws sunk into Nix and Luca for even a single minute was one minute too long.

No matter that it meant driving around, waiting for Gideon’s soul bond to ping or their phone to ring—at least Jay would be doing something.

He’s grateful for whatever Grayson had done to speed his healing along, and going off the mid-grade pain and stiffness, it’s shaved five days off his recovery. It might make all the difference in Jay being ready to take Carnell on sooner rather than later.

It can’t have been easy to watch them leave on what could be a jailbreak situation, but Jay is proud of his mate for choosing to save a life and for trusting them to keep Nix and Luca safe. He only hopes his faith isn’t in vain this time.

“Unknown number,” Gideon grunts as he buckles Jay in behind Leo’s driver’s seat before sliding into the passenger seat.

“Speak.” The CR-V door is still wide open.

“Sugar, it’s me. Can you come get us?” Luca sounds tired but relieved, which is a good sign—he wouldn’t sound that way if Nix weren’t there, too.

Jay uses his good hand to rub over his heart. He tries to send love along the bond, even though he’s never sure if Nix can feel it like Jay does.

The car fills with Gideon’s thunderstorm scent, relief palpable in the air. “On our way, baby. Are you okay?”

“We’re okay, but I need you. Is Jay…okay, too?”

Gideon pulls his door closed, and Leo starts the CR-V as Gideon points him in the right direction on the app, where tiny purple and yellow lights are blinking not twenty minutes out.

“He’s being his usual clingy self.”

“Hey! Don’t kick a man when he’s down,” Jay mutters weakly.

Luca sucks in a hitching breath, and Jay can hear Nix’s comforting baritone whispering, “We’re okay. We’re okay.”

“We will see you in twenty minutes, kittens.”

Sooner, if Leo can manage it.

“Will you stay with me, Gideon?”

“Always. So…how do you feel about another dog in the family?”

“Another dog?” Nix asks. “When did you have time to find another dog?”

Jay chuckles, because that was not a no.

He focuses on Gideon’s careful explanation of how Rowan is now a Wolf—sometimes without his express consent—but he’s exhausted and worried about seeing Nix and Luca after the debacle of a day.

He can’t believe they’ve been this lucky: Jay making it to the hospital in time, Nix and Luca escaping undetected by Carnell.

Jay’s starting to think it’s not luck at all, but more like divine intervention.

“Fucking cool,” Luca whistles, and then it turns into a whine on the next breath. “I want to be a wolf, too.”

It’s so typical of Luca that Jay has to laugh under his breath, thankful that his mates are happy and safe enough to be ridiculous.

“Is Rowan okay with it?” Nix asks after they’ve calmed down.

“Surprisingly…Or maybe, unsurprisingly. He’s always been…” Gideon breaks off, unsure how to express Rowan’s more animalistic tendencies.

“He’ll be happy to see you,” Leo says as he brings the CR-V to a stop outside the gas station, and Gideon finally hangs up. “We’re here.”

Jay can see Luca through his rear-door window, and he just lets the receiver drop so he can run toward Gideon in the passenger seat.

The second the SUV stops, Nix has the rear driver’s side door open—almost taking the thing off its hinges.

In the next instant, Jay has a lapful of growling omega, who’s blasting out a burnt-cookie-vanilla-baked-bread scent.

It’s a complete surprise when Nix sinks his fangs deep into Jay’s throat, high on the left side. The pleasure-pain makes Jay’s eyes roll back in his head, and his cock kicks hard in his pants for the second time that evening.

Holding Jay’s head still as he moves his jaw—biting and releasing—he’s claiming him again, making sure Jay can’t forget who he belongs to.

Bearing down hard, he rides the ridge of Jay’s sudden hardness.

His left hand trails down Jay’s chest, over the scrub top, and finally tugs at the waistband of his pants with unbridled desperation.

“Whoa, baby boy. Slow down for a minute.”

“No. Mine,” Nix growls, his teary eyes flashing blue; he’s got Jay’s blood on his chin, with their babies pressed hard against Jay’s belly.

Jay wants to ask what brought this on—but he knows. Of course he does. He’d heard it from every single one of his mates: Jay had died.

Nix must have felt their bond break, but surely he’d also felt it snap back into place.

His beloved finally gets his hardness out, then starts struggling with his own shorts. Jay can’t deny he would love to have Nix here as a reaffirmation of their bond, but Nix is crying in earnest now, and somehow, it seems less about pleasure and more about the cessation of pain.

“I’m sorry, baby. So sorry,” Jay whispers, trying to stay Nix’s desperate hands.

Sobbing, Nix shakes his head.

He’s finally got his pants down under his bum, but he’s frustrated by his position and the small confines of the back seat. “Please, help.”

So Jay does what he’s going to do every time he’s asked: he helps, lifting Nix straight up, heedless of his aching shoulder and Leo’s frown. Nix gets one leg out and, without further preamble, holds Jay’s cock up so he can slide down.

“Mine, mine, mine…” Nix is chanting between hitching cries.

Jay can’t deny the piercing pleasure he feels when he’s finally at home inside his beloved. Expecting a fierce, angry ride once he’s slid home, instead, Nix just collapses on his chest. “Baby boy.”

“I thought you d-died,” he stutters out, dropping his forehead onto Jay’s sore shoulder so he can rub his nose along the collar of Jay’s borrowed scrubs. They must smell of the hospital, the surgical sutures—maybe even the gunpowder or burnt flesh.

Leo’s raised eyebrow in the rearview mirror is another eloquent I told you so. Jay would be a lot more inclined to think Leo was angry all over again if he didn’t have tears in his eyes.

“You died. Goddess, you died. You told me you wouldn’t leave me, and you did,” he whispers, clenching down to hold Jay’s flagging erection deeper, like he wants to take as much of Jay inside as he can—to keep him there, safe forever.

The other back door opens, and Luca crawls across the seat, pulling Gideon in behind them. Gideon gets the rear door closed so that any passersby won’t see them. His first mate is crying, too, and when he picks up Jay’s hand, he pulls it up so Jay can cup his cheek.

“Hey, baby.”

“Don’t Hey, baby me.”

“I’m sorry.” He’ll say it every day for the rest of his life.

“We’re sorry,” Gideon says, running his hand over Nix’s hair, wiping away the tears still freely flowing down his cheek.

Bound in this like they are in everything these days, Luca takes Nix’s hand in his. “We don’t want apologies. We want you to never, ever die again.”

Leo huffs at the weird wording, even though the sentiment is clear. He wisely doesn’t point it out.

Nix takes Jay’s face between his palms.

Jay can’t look away.

“Jamie, you scared me.” He swallows harshly, his voice as deep as Jay has ever heard it. “I wanted to die, too. It hurt so bad.”

“Nix, you always have to live, no matter what—even if…” Jay says, because Nix has more to live for than just him.

But Nix shakes his head—that is to say, he shakes Jay’s head.

“You say that, and I know I do. I have so much, but if you aren’t here, then I can’t…I can’t face it. Okay? I don’t know how to make you understand, but I lived without you for a long time, and I didn’t like it. I don’t want to do it again. I won’t—you can’t make me!”

His voice rises at the end, as if he’s going to start up again. He’s shaking, and the vibrations are translating to where they’re still joined.

“Okay, okay. I won’t…it’ll be okay,” Jay soothes.

But Nix isn’t having it so easily. “Don’t you remember what it felt like to think I was gone forever?”

Jay certainly does. He still lives with the fear of that pain every single day; every minute Nix is out of his sight, Jay remembers what it was like to live without him.

The minutes in the middle of the night where he wakes in a cold sweat, fearing the past six months were a dream—and part of his heart is still gone forever.

Even now, the memories are so close to the surface that his heart pounds loudly in his ears.

He wants to tell them that he was protecting them—that he wanted to shift the danger Carnell represents away from the most important things in his life—but none of it makes good sense when Nix puts it like that.

Life is worth living, and as terrible as it sounds, it’s only worth it if they’re all together.

“I do. I’m sorry, Nix. I’m so sorry,” Jay whispers, cupping Nix’s cheek. He hopes his sincerity and remorse are reflected in his face—that Nix can read his heart and his mind.

Nix hesitates, wiping his cheek with the back of his hand before giving a single, short nod.

Gideon pulls Luca into his lap so he can latch onto Gideon’s neck, licking and sucking at his mating bite.

“You were so brave, baby,” Gideon murmurs into his cheek and up into his ear. “You both were.”

“Luca was the bravest,” Nix says, and Jay almost misses what comes next as Nix begins to move in earnest, tilting his hips back and forth.

It’s the weirdest sensation—being sad, in pain, and simultaneously aroused to the point where he could come.

“You should have seen him, standing up to Withers and Carnell.”

That’s part of what scares Jay to his very core.

Leo cracks Jay’s window, as the scents in the car must be messing with the sensitive beta’s nose—scents of loss, fear, and arousal, and that’s just what Nix is pumping out. Add in Gideon’s anger and Jay’s pain…well, even Jay is grateful for the cool breeze across his face.

Mention of Carnell is almost enough to kill his hard-on, but Nix leans in to bite his ear and lick his bite.

“What did they want?” Leo asks, turning so he can face them, arm over the back of the seat, running his hand down Nix’s back.

Luca pulls Jay’s hand into his again so he can run Jay’s wrist along his throat, then lick at his palm before nipping at the tips of his fingers—all before answering.

“He thinks you’re still dea—er—gone, and he wants Gideon. He’s so delusional, it’s scary.”

“Mmm,” Nix hums his agreement, pulling Jay’s attention back to him. “We need a plan to kill that fucker, and soon. He wants Gideon to run his evil empire, and he plans to take our pack out at the knees to do it. For now, I want you to come in me, and then I have to get to Grayson. Can you do that?”

Can Jay mark his omega up from the inside and remind him he’s alive? That they’re together, and that Jay is never, ever going to be that stupid again?

Fuck yes, he can.

“I can do that. Like this?” Jay uses his free hand to pull up Nix’s T-shirt in the front so he can see his mate’s pretty dick. “You going to ride me, baby boy?”

Nix doesn’t answer; he just begins to move, bearing down as he uses his slim thighs to lift himself and let gravity bring him back down.

Luca pulls Jay’s index finger into his mouth and begins to suck, forcing it back far enough that he gags.

Jay has always had a weak spot for Luca gagging around his fingers (or his dick), and it ramps up the burning heat in his cock.

Leo reaches over the front seat to hold Nix’s T-shirt out of the way and get a look at where they’re joined. “Fuck, Nix. You are taking him so good.”

“I am, I am. Feels so good. Going to come, Jamie. Make me come.”

Jay thinks he’s hardly had to do anything, but Nix grabs his hair again to hold his head still.

Nix kisses him softly, and compared to the hard and fast grind in his lap, Jay feels that kiss in his heart—the dull pain he’d felt all day finally easing away.

Jay comes hard, with Nix right on his heels. His knot slips in as Nix gives one last push down. He finally gets both arms around his beloved, and they sit there, gasping into each other’s mouths, foreheads pressed together in the quiet of the car.

In no time, Nix gingerly goes to his knees over Jay’s lap so he can pull off Jay’s partially formed knot.

“We can go now,” Nix says. Jay’s knot pinches a bit, but his omega doesn’t flinch. “I think I made my point,” he says, with a pat to Jay’s cheek.

Dumbfounded, Jay has to ask, “Your point?”

Nix sits for a moment on Luca’s lap and lets Gideon help him pull up his shorts.

“You can’t do that if you’re dead. Keep that in mind,” he says before climbing over the seat, past where Leo is sitting with his mouth open and his dick hard—the scent of Jay’s come leaking out of his vanilla-slick hole.

“Well, he told you,” Leo laughs. “Couldn’t have said it better myself.”

It’s lighthearted, and Nix had meant to lighten the moment, so Jay chuckles, but he still catches Nix’s eyes in the makeup mirror, where he’s trying to fix his hair.

He has a few fresh tears in the corners of his eyes, but his beloved mouths I love you , and Jay mouths it back—and adds an always for good measure.