Chapter 22 Roderick
She fucking played me.
Jade opened the door to the guest bedroom on purpose to throw me off.
She purposefully let me hear it, so I would assume she was in a room with an open door.
I wouldn’t put it past her to have been standing in Zander’s room with the doorknob still twisted while she held it shut so that I didn’t hear it.
No wonder Kratos gives her credit for Vengeance and insists she’s in charge.
I fly down the stairs, hardly even touching the steps as I go, and for as quick as she can move, she can’t help that my legs are just longer than hers.
I’m gaining on her, but if I don’t find a way to get her down, she’ll easily slip away again.
She runs through the living room, around the armchair to circle the room, and cuts into the kitchen, and I know what I have to do.
I don’t stop; I can’t.
I’ll only have one chance to pull this off. If I don’t, she won’t let herself be put in this kind of position again. It’s now or never.
Lunging at her, I grip both of her shoulders as I keep moving forward, pushing both of us over the back of the couch with enough force that we flip off and onto the floor in front of it.
By a pure stroke of luck, I maneuver so that I’m on top of her, pinning her beneath me. I’ve seen what she can do on the mat, and I’ll be damned if she’s going to pin me and get away again.
I gather both of her wrists in one of my hands and pin them over her head while I sit straddling her waist. I move both of my feet down her thighs so that my ankles sit over her knees to keep her from bucking up to create leverage.
She thrashes from side to side and can wiggle some, but it’s not enough for her to break my hold. After a moment of struggling, she stills with a huff. Her chest rises and falls quickly as she attempts to get her breathing under control, but a smile plays at her lips as she looks up at me.
“I told you I’d win,” I say, leaning forward into her face with a smile of my own as I gloat.
“You also said you’d tell me why you called me Firefly.” She wiggles around a bit more as if she thought I would let my guard down so quickly.
That may have worked earlier in the library, but I like to think I learn pretty quickly, and I would be dumb to assume she wouldn’t try that again.
What I didn’t account for was our position, and the more she thrashes around, the more I regret putting her under me like this.
She huffs in frustration again when she doesn’t get free, and I wait until she stills.
She lets her head fall with a thump against the floor, and while I’m sure it wasn’t pleasant, she doesn’t so much as flinch.
The moment she collapses, I pull back to sit straighter, trying to keep the evidence of how my body is reacting to hers to myself.
“I’m waiting,” she says, watching me as I struggle with my body.
I did tell her I would explain, but now that I have her, I can’t force the words out. It’s a stupid nickname that she never should’ve heard. I don’t even know why I thought about it. The idea of explaining it is bad enough that I almost wish I had let her get away, so I didn't have to.
If only that would work. No, I doubt she would drop it even then.
I huff a sigh and try to think of a way to explain without it sounding ridiculous, but I can’t. No matter what I say, it is ridiculous.
Before I can answer, she doubles down on breaking free.
One moment she's still, and the next she's like a fuckin fish out of water. Her hips buck, and she damn near throws me off. Had I not been leaning forward slightly over her, she would’ve.
I still have to steady myself, using my unoccupied hand as a brace on the floor next to her head, and while my attention is split, she pulls one of her hands free and bucks again.
I just barely grab hold of her hand and pin it back to the floor before I drop my chest to hers, moving from straddling her to damn near lying on top of her.
Fuck, this just keeps getting worse.
“Are you finished now?” I ask when she stops moving, working to keep my tone level. I can’t let her know she’s affecting me.
“Ughhh!” She lets out a frustrated cry before she huffs and falls still again.
“Fine. You win.” She looks up at me, and I can see the challenge shining in her eyes. “This time.” She smiles at me, and I can’t stop myself from smiling down at her even as I shake my head in disbelief at her.
“I’ll win every time, Little Firefly,” I tell her, and she rolls her eyes, but her smile lets me know she’s still in good spirits even after losing.
The space between us is nonexistent at this point. Our faces are only a few inches from one another, and by using my body to hold her down, we're smashed together from the chest down. With every breath she takes, her breasts push into me, and I struggle to keep my focus where it belongs.
“So, are you going to tell me or not?” she asks, cocking her head to the side as she regards me with curiosity.
“When we were kids, we used to play outside, and Zander always wanted to catch fireflies. He was great at it. He would grab a jar and fill it up before he let them all go, only to catch them again. Spencer would catch one or two before he got bored and had better things to do, but I never really excelled at it. No matter how often we were out there, I couldn’t get the little fuckers.
They would be right there, lit up like a beacon, and by the time I got to them, they were gone.
They would go dark and disappear, only to light up again just out of reach.
” I explain while looking up at where my hands cage her much smaller wrists, unable to look her in the eye.
I wait for a moment, expecting her to laugh at me. Hell, I would laugh at myself if I were her. I probably would laugh at myself if I weren’t feeling so fucking stupid right now.
But the laughter never comes, and after a few stretched moments of silence, I can’t stand it anymore. I look back down and find a soft smile on her face.
“What?” I ask, needing to know what she’s thinking. Jade is hard to read most of the time. She’s so capable, so strong, but also na?ve at the same time that which often makes her confusing in most situations.
“I’ve never seen a firefly. I was just picturing you guys running around the yard as kids and how frustrated you must’ve been while a little Zander snatched them up so easily.
” She gives a soft chuckle, and I frown at her because she’s right.
It was frustrating, but also, how has she never seen fireflies before?
“Don’t look at me like that. It’s funny, and you know it, Mr. I want to be in control of everything and can’t catch a bug, and now I get to be that bug,” she says, hardly containing her laughter.
“No, you don’t. Unlike fireflies, I’ve caught you,” I say, squeezing her wrists as if to remind her of who exactly won this round.
Me. I won.
Now she does laugh, and just like last time, it catches me off guard, the pure delight in the sound so unlike what I’m used to with her. I want to be upset because I’m pretty sure she’s laughing at me, but as I look down at her, I can’t muster any anger.
Quicker than I can process, she surges forward, and I’m so caught off guard that I don’t react quickly enough to stop whatever she’s about to do. All I can do is brace and hope for a chance to turn the tide again.
What I couldn’t do was predict her next move. I would have put money on her flipping me, or maybe even head-butting me. Either tactic would’ve worked.
Instead, when she surges up, her lips land on mine, and I freeze.
It’s as if I’ve short-circuited. My mind goes blank, and that's all she needs. Without pulling her lips from mine, she flips us. I end up on my back with her straddling me in almost the exact same position we were in a moment ago.
She pulls back slowly, and I watch as a smile takes over her features once again.
That’s the second time today she's played me, and just like last time, I can’t even find it in myself to be mad.
Jade sits up, not even attempting to restrain me as I had her.
Her ass falls back onto my lap, and I have to bite back a groan.
All her wiggling underneath me wasn’t something my dick ignored.
When I was on top of her, I could distance myself enough to keep it from being obvious.
That’s no longer an option in this position, and I have to fight against a cringe. There's no way she won’t notice.
“Looks like I win this round, which makes it one-to-one,” she gloats, and I almost sigh in relief that she’s focused more on that than anything else right now.
“You played dirty,” I tell her as I push up on my elbows.
I expect her to make a move to keep me down, but she doesn’t.
Instead, she leans back into my space, and for a moment, I worry she’s going to kiss me again.
After realizing I want her to stick around just to find out how important she is and attempting to keep my distance, I’m not sure my brain can handle another kiss.
The first one was enough to take me down, and right now her sitting on my lap isn’t far off from having the same effect.
Jade brings her hand up and boops my nose before she leans in and whispers in my ear.
“I only used what I knew would work. Your body reacted to me,” she says, grinding down on my cock with her ass as if to prove a point, and I damn near bite through my cheek to stop myself from reacting.
“It might have been dirty, but it was also effective.” And yeah, she’s not wrong.
“Okay, fine, we’re tied,” I relent, and she pulls back with a satisfied smirk before she pushes up off my chest to stand. Looking down at me, she offers me her hand. I highly doubt she’ll be much help, but I take her hand regardless, and of course, she helps haul me to my feet with little effort.
I make a mental note to stop underestimating her.
She walks away without so much as a word, headed back to the kitchen as if nothing had happened, and I watch her as she goes, unable to look away.
Zander, of course, chooses that moment to walk down the stairs. My head snaps in his direction as he pauses at the bottom step, looking around the living room with confusion written all over his face.
I take a moment to do the same and quickly understand. We flipped the couch from where we tumbled over it, and someone pushed the table that usually sits in front of it about five feet away with most of its usual clutter scattered across the floor.
Shit.
I look back at him as his eyes move between us.
Looking down at myself, I see my shorts are sideways, and I never got around to putting my shirt on before I chased Jade through the house.
One glance at Jade shows me she's not much better. Her hair is a little wild from tumbling around. The shirt she’s wearing must be Zander's because she’s swimming in it, but it’s also falling down her shoulder, exposing most of it.
“What are we up to?” Zander asks, amusement clear in his tone.
He raises a brow in question, but I don’t have a good explanation.
Especially not when he’s been hinting about how stupid it is for me to distance myself from her.
Yeah, he doesn’t need to know how badly I’ve just failed at that. He’ll never let it go.
A smile stretches across his face as I push my fingers through my hair, realizing it’s just as fucked and out of place as Jade's.
Shit.
Jade has no such issues with filling Zander in.
“Roderick was just trying to catch a firefly,” Jade says, barking a laugh before she disappears into the kitchen. The sound of her continued laughter has me shaking my head at her again.
Lesson learned. Next time, I’ll answer before she can. I don’t even need to look at Zander to know he’s probably bursting at the seams to know what that was about, but I do anyway.
“Fireflies, huh, Ricky?” he says, wiggling his brows at me in a way that makes him look ridiculous but also lets me know he understands exactly what just happened, at least the basics.
“And why would you want to do that? If I remember correctly, you were fucking trash at that when we were kids. I doubt you got any better now that you're huge,” Zander teases as he makes his way through the living room and heads toward the kitchen after Jade, like the lost puppy he always is when she’s around.
I know he’s antagonizing me, but I don’t care.
“Leave it alone, Zan,” I tell him as I move to right the couch.
Letting it drop back into place with a bang and wondering how the fuck we managed all of this without noticing.
“I don’t know, man. If I'm being honest, I’m pretty upset that I missed that. I can’t imagine you bumbling around after them nowadays. That explains the state of the living room, though.” He laughs at his own joke, and it’s enough to push me.
“Yeah, well, laugh it up because I caught her.” The words fly out of my mouth so fast that I don’t realize what I’ve said until his brows shoot up, eyes going wide at my admission.
Fuck.
“Her who, Ricky? I thought we were talking about fireflies,” Zan says, and I huff before turning my attention to the table and replacing everything that was thrown to the ground.
Ignore him, Rick. He wants a reaction. I tell myself over and over, but it doesn’t help. Zan knows exactly how to get under my skin.
“He did catch me, but in the end, we tied, which is more than you can say, Zan.” Jade’s voice carries across the living room and cuts off Zander’s laughter.
I hadn’t heard her come back in, but when I look up, I see her standing in the doorway with a fresh cup of coffee in her hand and a smile on her face. She’s looking at Zander, who's pouting now.
“Ouch, Doll, I was just trying to figure out what kind of fun I missed. No need to be mean.”
Walking over, he presses a kiss on her forehead, mumbling a ‘Good morning’ with his lips pressed to her skin.
“Morning, I made you coffee,” she says with a smile as he pulls back to look down at her.
“I knew you loved me, Doll,” he says with a smirk before disappearing to get his morning fix.
I keep picking things up as I go, but out of the corner of my eye, I can see Jade just well enough to catch the color light up her cheeks at his words.