Chapter 19
“Is there a doctor nearby?”
JJ looked at him. They were jogging side by side on one of the wider trails, as they had been doing twice daily since Robbie and Nadja had arrived at the commune.
“I told you, you’ll feel like a million bucks once you shift.”
Robbie stopped, lacing his fingers behind his head, arms spread wide, chest rising and falling with his breath.
“I’m not the one who needs one.”
JJ kicked a small branch that had fallen near the trail, pushing it further from the path.
“Nadja?”
“It’s not good, man. All she does is sleep. I haven’t seen her out of that bed in three days. Maybe it’s a flu or something. She says she’s fine. She says that a doctor won’t be able to help her, but that’s got to be bullshit, JJ.”
Robbie’s voice grew louder and louder with each word until he was nearly shouting at the end. Overhead, the ravens cawed their disapproval.
“I can’t—” He stopped short. What could he say? That it physically hurt him to see her like that, to be unable to help, to be refused at every chance. She was so many things, but okay—no matter how many times she insisted it—was not one of them.
“I can’t stand to see her like that, JJ. It’s like she’s dying or something.”
JJ stood in front of him, his arms crossed over his chest, looking as if he were wrestling with something in his mind.
“What?” Robbie asked.
“How much has Nadja told you about herself?”
Robbie thought about that. The truth was, she hadn’t told him much at all.
He knew that she’d gotten her master’s degree in social work somewhere out east. Virginia?
He couldn’t remember. But he didn’t know what her childhood had been like.
He didn’t know about her current friends.
He didn’t know her favorite color or whether she liked salty or sweet.
He didn’t know her favorite flower or season or when her birthday was.
It struck Robbie as funny in that moment that he felt like he knew her on a soul-deep level, that he would recognize her anywhere in any timeline, that he could find her blindfolded in a dark room by his senses alone, that he missed her when he wasn’t sitting next to her, but didn’t know how she took her coffee.
“Next to nothing,” he answered honestly, his cheeks heating with emotion that straddled somewhere between embarrassment and hurt.
“Fucking hell,” JJ said under his breath before walking away.
He didn’t get far before wheeling on his heel and stalking back toward Robbie, muttering quietly.
He did that a few more times, pacing, working through something in his mind.
Robbie leaned against a tree and waited, the rough bark scratchy on his bare skin.
After six or seven laps, JJ stopped in front of Robbie.
“I shouldn’t do this. She’ll kill me when she finds out.”
Robbie’s stomach lurched as if he’d been thrown off a cliff. “What is it?”
“She’ll never tell you herself. Stubborn-ass woman,” JJ said, scrubbing his hands over his face roughly. “And I shouldn’t. But goddamnit, someone needs to step in and save her from herself and her goddamn principles.”
Robbie forced his voice not to shake. “What the fuck are you talking about, JJ?”
“She’s starving to death.”
“That’s impossible,” Robbie protested. “I bring her food back from the mess hall. It’s always gone later. I’ve seen her eat. She’s—”
“A succubus,” JJ interrupted.
Robbie tripped sideways, landing hard on his ass on a boulder beside the trail.
“A what?”
“A succubus. A demon that feeds on sexual energy. Without it…” JJ let the sentence drop.
“Explain it to me like I’m five. People are fucking all over this commune. I hear it.”
“Right. But she won’t let herself feed without permission.”
“What?”
“Nadja has ethics,” JJ said, sitting next to Robbie, their shoulders touching, hot and damp from sweat.
“An ethical demon,” Robbie said, and JJ snorted a humorless laugh. “So she’s starving because…”
“She won’t feed from anyone she doesn’t have permission from. She can’t get permission without telling them what she is, which would go about as well as you might think.”
“But she’s alive now.”
“Right. She’s been feeding herself the past few years as a cam girl. Before that it was Chatroulette. Phone sex lines before that.”
Realization dawned. “Because people log on soliciting her.”
“Yeah. Their very presence in the situation feels like consent, or enough like it. And she doesn’t actually have to touch anyone.
She doesn’t enjoy sex without a personal connection.
But there’s not enough internet up here for streaming.
She asked me if I could help her out, like I used to, but I had to turn her down. ”
The hot rush of jealousy surprised Robbie. She’d asked JJ to help her? When Robbie was in the bed right next to her, smelling her hair and feeling like a creep for it? When he was so attracted to her that he’d had to stop reading to go rub one out in the bathroom like a teenager?”
“It was a long time ago,” JJ said, reaching across his body to squeeze Robbie’s arm tightly.
“Years. I was passing through, and we became friends. I told her about my shifting, and she told me about her predicament. It was sex. I needed comfort, and she needed food. It was never anything more than that.”
Robbie relaxed, realizing that he hadn’t been jealous about JJ sleeping with Nadja but of the possibility that there had been feelings for one another.
“I would help her,” Robbie said. “I would—”
He would what? He was nearly breathless with the possibilities.
A hundred pictures flashed through his brain.
Him coming back to the cabin, ripping off the quilt, and diving headfirst like Scrooge McDuck into the treasure between her legs.
But that wasn’t right. Because as much as she demanded consent, so did he.
“She would never ask you. My guess is that she’s holding out until you shift, and then she’s going to bolt.”
“She shouldn’t wait. She should go back. She should eat.” Robbie was panicking, he knew it. The familiar threat of a panic attack hovered over his head like a thundercloud.
JJ crouched down in front of him, his hands on Robbie’s.
“Robbie. Buddy. Look at me.”
He did.
“Good. Breathe. In for three. Hold for three. Out for three. Hold for three.”
“I can’t—” Robbie gasped.
“You’ve got to. Come on. Do it with me.”
Robbie gripped JJ’s hands and held his gaze as they breathed together. The branches rustled in a breeze and the ravens chattered overhead.
“I didn’t tell you to send you spiraling,” JJ said. “I told you so you could figure out a way to help her. You’re the only one who can.”
“You could—”
“No, I can’t. The pack would smell me on her, and you’d be out on your ass faster than you’d believe. Also, I’m in the middle of something.”
“But—”
“It’s gotta be you, pup,” JJ said, grabbing Robbie behind the neck and pressing their foreheads together. “By the time you shift, it might be too late.”
Robbie felt like he was going to be sick, but JJ squeezed the back of his neck again and the wave of nausea passed.
He felt his heartbeat slow, felt his breathing stabilize.
He felt almost calm, all from JJ’s presence and handling.
JJ was the pack leader, whether or not he wanted to admit it.
And if Robbie had ever wondered how he would know when he became pack, that question had just been answered.
He was pack. And JJ was his as much as he was JJ’s.
And so was Nadja, whether she knew it or not. Pack looked after pack, even when they didn’t want to ask for it.
“I gotta go,” Robbie said, and JJ released him.
“Go get her, pup,” JJ said, but Robbie was already gone, his feet light and fast as he sprinted back up the trail. His heart pounded and his blood pulsed and his skin felt alive as he ran toward something that felt every bit like possibility.
The cabin appeared in the distance, and Robbie ran even faster, his feet flying over the soft earth. He leapt from the ground onto the porch, skipping the steps entirely, and threw open the door.
The bedroom door was shut. He tried the knob and found that it was locked. She’d locked him out. She’d never locked him out.
He pounded on the door. “Open up, Nadja.”
“Go away, Robbie,” she answered, her voice weak.
“Please, can I come in?”
“I’m not feeling well. I’m too sick for company.”
“I need to check on you. You could have a fever. Please can I at least make sure you’re okay?”
“Please, Robbie,” she said, her voice hitching on what sounded like a sob. “Please don’t make this harder than it already is.”
He looked around the cabin. On the coffee table by the couch was the romance novel that he’d been reading to her.
An idea formed in his head. He grabbed the novel and flipped the pages, his eyes moving rapidly over the words, searching for a scene that would scorch.
He’d once done that with his mama’s romance collection, sneaking into her closet and skimming the books for the “naughty parts,” as he’d thought of them then.
“Bingo,” he whispered to the empty room.
He went back to the door and, without preamble, started reading.
Briar didn’t know what was happening. One moment, Rafe had been towering over her, the next he had dropped to his knees, burying his face in her most secret place.
She should stop him. Ladies didn’t let anyone near that place, let alone with their faces.
And yet as he licked a long stripe with his tongue, from her opening to the little bud at the top of her sex that she had discovered a few years before, she found herself clutching his head instead.
She drew her legs up, knees by her armpits, clinging to his head like salvation as he nibbled and sucked and laved.
The familiar warming and tingling began, faster than it ever had before, and crested over her like a wave, leaving her gasping, gaping, breathless.
Through the door, he heard Nadja panting, heard her shallow gasps.
“I’ve got to take care of this, sweetheart,” he said, his voice rough. “If you don’t want me to, say it now.”
He waited, but there was no reply.
He took his cock in his hand and groaned at the feel of his rough palm against his sensitive, sensitized skin.
“Here we go, Doc. I hope you’re ready.”