Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
Mia
Time stops being a straight line.
It becomes a soup. A warm, heavy, sticky loop of sleeping and waking and needing.
When I open my eyes, the room is dark. The blackout curtains are drawn tight, blocking out the world, but a sliver of moonlight bleeds through the gap, painting a thin silver line across the duvet.
It must be the middle of the night. Or maybe early morning.
I try to sit up, but my body feels like it’s made of lead and marshmallows. My limbs are heavy, weighed down by an exhaustion so deep it feels like sedation. My inner thighs ache with a dull, stretching throb that is both sore and obscenely satisfying.
“Steady.”
A hand settles on my shoulder. Big. Warm.
I turn my head into the pillow. Eli is there, sitting with his back resting against the bed frame, a book in his lap illuminated by a tiny clip light. He looks tired. There’s a shadow of stubble on his jaw, his hair messy in a way Eli’s hair never is.
He clicks the light off, sets the book aside, and rises to his knees, his face coming level with mine in the gloom.
I open my mouth to ask what time it is, but my throat is too dry. A croak comes out instead.
“Shh,” he murmurs. “Don’t talk.”
He reaches for a bottle on the nightstand. It’s got a straw. He brings it to my lips, and I drink greedily, the cool water hitting my empty stomach like a shock.
He pulls it away before I can chug it all. “Slow.”
I whimper at the loss.
“Food first,” he says softly.
He signals someone in the doorway.
Declan appears from the shadows of the hall. He’s holding a plate. He climbs into the nest without hesitation, the mattress dipping under his weight, and settles cross-legged in front of me.
He doesn’t say a word. He just scoops a spoonful of broth, blows on it gently, and holds it to my lips.
I should be embarrassed. I’m a grown woman being fed like a baby. But my brain is wrapped in cotton wool, and the smell of the savory broth makes my mouth water so hard it hurts.
I open. He feeds me.
It’s intimate in a way that feels heavier than the sex.
Knox and Rhys are asleep on the other side of the massive nest, sprawled on top of the covers, dead to the world. It hits me dimly: they’re taking shifts. Watching me. Guarding me. Taking care of me.
I eat until the bowl is empty. When I’m done, Declan sets the plate aside and pulls me against his chest. I collapse into him, my face burying in the crook of his neck. He smells like chocolate and fatigue.
He runs a hand down my spine, over and over.
“Sleep,” he commands softly into my hair.
I drift. I drift. Hours pass. Maybe a whole day. The light changes from gray to gold and back to gray outside the sliver in the curtains.
I wake up again when the light has changed. The room is blue-tinted and quiet. Pre-dawn.
I’m sticky.
My skin feels sensitive, coated in dried sweat and slick and the remnants of the pack’s claim.
I shift, kicking the blanket off, and a low whine escapes my throat.
There’s movement instantly.
Knox is there.
“Hot?” he asks, his voice gravel-rough from sleep.
I nod, writhing on the sheets, but there is no relief.
“Come on.” He scoops me up, one arm under my knees, the other around my back. I curl into him instinctively, nose pressing into his shoulder.
The air outside of the nest is cooler. Then tiles under us. Steam.
The bathroom.
He sets me down on the closed toilet lid. The shower is already running, filling the small room with white mist. Knox scans me, checking the bruises on my hips, the bite mark on my shoulder, the redness between my legs.
There’s no lust in his eyes right now. But what I see there is worse. A fierce protectiveness that makes something inside me tighten and melt.
“Rhys marks hard,” he mutters, tracing the mark on my neck with a fingertip.
I lean into the touch. It stings, but in a good way. A grounding way.
He helps me stand and guides me into the shower.
The water is heaven. I groan as it hits my back, sluicing away the heaviness. Knox steps in with me, clad only in his boxers. He’s instantly soaked, fabric clinging to his skin, but he doesn’t seem to care.
He grabs a washcloth and soaps it up. Then, before I can say a word, he’s washing me.
Shoulders. Back. Arms. He’s gentle, avoiding the sensitive parts, focusing on the sweat and the dried slick on my thighs.
He washes my hair, fingers massaging my scalp until my eyes roll back in my head and my knees buckle.
He catches me. Holds me up against the wet wall.
“Let go,” he murmurs against my ear, water streaming over us. “You don’t have to hold yourself up.”
He turns the water off and wraps me in a towel so big and fluffy it feels like a hug. I lean on him as he dries me, patting my skin rather than rubbing, careful of the soreness. Then he picks me up again.
I bury my face in his wet neck, breathing him in.
But the heat isn’t done.
It wakes up as soon as my skin touches the sheets.
A low, insidious throb starts behind my navel. My skin starts to prickle again. That thick, masculine soup of alphas, stops being comforting and starts being a trigger.
I shift as the restlessness starts, my hips rolling against the mattress.
The ache sharpens. It’s not the crashing wave of yesterday. It’s a steady, gnawing need that feels like it’s scraping me hollow, and I release a whimper without meaning to.
Rhys wakes up instantly. He’s across the bed before I can even take a full breath, hovering over me, shadow blocking out the dim light. Declan stirs on the far side of the nest, blinking awake.
“What?” Rhys’ voice, though sleep-rough, is sharp. “Pain?”
I shake my head, reaching for him. My hands tangle in his hair, pulling him down.
“Need,” I gasp. “Rhys. Please.”
His hand lands on my hip, testing the temperature of my skin.
“No,” Eli says from the foot of the nest. He sits up, stretching his back, a dark silhouette in the gloom. “Not yet. She’s too raw.”
“I don’t care,” I cry out, the ache sharpening into agony. “It hurts. I’m empty.”
My hips buck up, seeking friction, seeking weight.
“I know,” Rhys soothes, though he looks like it’s killing him to deny me. He lowers his weight onto the bed, pinning my legs with his heavy thighs so I can’t thrash. “I know, sweetheart. You’re too sensitive right now. We need to let you come down.”
“Then fix it,” I beg, a tear leaking out. “Please fix it.”
“We will.”
Rhys settles between my legs, his broad shoulders pushing my knees apart. A keening cry goes from my lips as he lowers his mouth and laps at me, broad, flat strokes of his tongue that soothe the swollen flesh.
It’s cooling. It’s rhythmic.
I sob with relief, my head falling back into the pillows.
Declan moves to the head of the bed. He takes my hands, interlacing our fingers, pinning my wrists gently to the mattress so I don’t claw at them. He leans down, kissing my forehead, my eyelids, the tip of my nose.
“Focus on me,” he whispers. “Just breathe.”
Knox presses along my side, a solid wall of heat, holding me, murmuring nonsense into my hair.
It goes on for what feels like forever. A haze of pleasure that hovers just on the edge of too much.
Rhys drinks me down. He finds the spot that makes my nerves sing and stays there. Then he hums against me, the vibration traveling straight to my spine.
When I finally unravel, it’s soft. A long, shuddering release that drains the tension from my muscles and leaves me boneless.
But they don’t stop. They keep touching me. Kneading the cramps out of my calves. Stroking my hair. Kissing my shoulders.
There is no time. There is only this.
Soft mouths. Rough hands. And the smell of them. I float in the sensation, untethered from reality.
And sometime in the gray light of dawn, wrapped in Declan’s arms with Rhys’s hand heavy on my hip and Eli watching over us from the foot of the bed, I finally fall into a sleep that doesn’t hurt.
The world outside can wait one more day.