8. Chapter 8
Chapter eight
Jessica
Bergstrom changed the dressing yesterday, examined the wound, and said good twice. I have never been so happy to toss that sling in the trash.
I can get my own shirt over my head as long as I do it in the right order and don't get overconfident. This afternoon I carried my own bag across the whole courtyard and only regretted it a little, which I'm choosing to call a victory.
What I still can’t do is train. Bergstrom has put that in writing, so now everyone responsible for me can quote her whenever I start testing the limits.
Before the valley, being excused from training would have felt like a gift. Now I keep remembering what it felt like when those darts took me down. I don’t miss running drills, but I sure as hell want to kick the ass of anyone who tries to take me again.
“Stop,” Sophia says.
“I’m not doing anything.”
“You’re thinking about it.”
“You don’t even know what I’m thinking.”
“Oh, I absolutely do. You’re figuring out how much medical advice you can ignore before the rest of us have to tackle you.”
“Nobody is tackling me. My shoulder is injured.”
“Then stop looking like you’re planning an escape.”
“I already escaped somewhere this month. I’ve met my quota.”
Sophia points at me from the couch, where she’s lying upside down with her feet against the wall. “Voss said your brief was usable, by the way. Renzo heard him.”
“I heard her say usable,” Renzo confirms from the floor. “That’s her word for brilliant. She said my footwork was usable once, and I thought about it for a week.”
“She meant your feet existed,” Declan says.
“You weren’t there.”
“I was standing next to you.”
The suite is warm, loud, and smells like whatever Declan has on the stove. Everyone is writing except me. My delayed essay is the only useful thing to come out of being kidnapped, and I’m taking full advantage of it.
Luke is at the table with his laptop open and his sleeves rolled, arguing with somebody over the wording of an email. He looks up. Our eyes catch, and I lose the thread of what Sophia is saying.
"—and then she said the whole class had to resubmit, which is insane, so I said—"
"Mm."
"You're not listening."
"I'm listening."
"You're not, you've gone pink." Sophia rolls over to look at me properly. "Oh my god."
Torres is on the arm of my chair where he's been all evening, and his hand has migrated from my knee to my thigh and has been drawing small absent circles there through my jeans. He isn't even looking at me. He's arguing with Renzo about somebody's block work.
And Soren is standing by the window with a cup of tea, close enough that I keep catching the edge of him — the shape of his shoulders against the dark glass, the way he tips his head when he's listening. I want him closer, and I'm tired of pretending I don't.
There's a whole conversation happening around me that I've stopped following.
"Right," I say, and stand up.
The room looks at me.
"I want the three of you," I say, "and I'd like everybody else to have a really lovely evening somewhere that isn't here."
Renzo puts both hands over his face.
"Finally," Sophia says, and swings her feet off the wall.
Declan is already turning off the stove. "There's bread and the rest of the pasta if anybody needs feeding later. I'm in the library till eleven."
"I'm going to Sophia's," Renzo says, gathering his notes with enormous dignity, "and I'd like it noted that I've been extremely mature about this."
"You put your hands over your face."
"I've been extremely mature," he says again, and shuts the door behind him.
“Hell yes,” Torres says as soon as the door closes.
“You were waiting for them to leave?”
“Jessica, I’ve been waiting for them to leave all night. I was one Renzo joke away from carrying him into the corridor.”
He catches the back of my neck and kisses me in the middle of the room. God, I’ve missed this. His mouth, his hands, the way he holds nothing back once he knows I want him.
Luke closes his laptop, sets his phone facedown on top of it, and comes toward us. Soren puts his tea aside without taking his eyes off me.
We make it to my bedroom before I pull away long enough to speak.
“My shoulder’s fine as long as I don’t put weight on that arm or lift it over my head. If anything hurts, I’ll tell you.”
“You’d better,” Soren says.
“I will.”
He gives me a look.
“I mean it.”
“We heard you,” Luke says. He touches my jaw with the backs of his fingers. “You don’t have to convince us.”
“I’ve spent two weeks being extremely sensible.”
“You have,” Torres says. “We’re all very proud. Take your shirt off.”
I laugh. “You take it off.”
“Even better.”
He eases it over my head, careful with my left arm, then drops it on the floor.
This is my room. My bed. Nobody is waiting outside the door. Two weeks of walking past all three of them in daylight and being careful, and now the door is shut, and there is nowhere any of us has to be.
“I’ve missed this,” I say. “I’ve missed having time.”
Torres presses his mouth to my throat. “Then we’d better make up for it.”
Luke unbuttons his shirt while Soren pulls his over his head. I stop and stare.
Luke catches me. “Problem?”
“Not even slightly.”
“Take your time looking at me.”
“That’s very generous of you.”
“I thought so.” He lets his shirt fall, steps close, and kisses my collarbone.
Torres backs me toward the bed, and I sit when my legs hit the mattress. Soren gets in behind me and takes my weight so nothing pulls on my left side, palm flat and enormous across my stomach.
Torres takes my right breast in his hand and puts his mouth on the other, and he does not go gently about it. He sucks, then uses his teeth, and when I arch he rolls my nipple between finger and thumb and pinches, hard enough that the sound I make isn't a word. He does it again, watching my face.
"Do that again."
He does. And again, when I ask, mouth moving between them, until both ache and my thighs have come apart on their own.
Luke kisses me through it, one hand in my hair holding my head where he wants it.
Torres's hand goes down.
He takes his time getting there — over my ribs, my hip, the inside of my thigh — and then he cups me and groans out loud.
"Christ, baby."
"Torres—"
"I know." He strokes through me once, slowly, opening me with two fingers, and I'm so wet the sound of it is obscene in a quiet room. "I know. Hold on."
Then he pushes two fingers into me, and my back arches against Soren.
He works them deep and curls them and finds the place that makes my hips come up off the bed, and then stays there and does it over and over, the heel of his hand grinding against my clit on every stroke.
"More."
"Yeah?"
"More, Torres—"
He gives me a third and it's a stretch and it's perfect, and he starts to fuck me with his hand properly, wrist working, and I'm loud now, and Luke swallows it out of my mouth.
I get my right hand between Luke's legs and close it around him through his pants, and he breaks the kiss to swear into my hair.
"Take these off."
He does, fast, and then I've got him bare in my hand — hot and heavy and already slick at the tip — and I grip him properly and stroke, and Luke Draeven puts his forehead against my temple and makes a sound I have heard exactly twice before.
"Don't stop," he says. "God. Don't—"
"Then don't be quiet."
Torres laughs against my breast and pushes deeper, and Soren's hand slides up and closes over the breast Torres isn't using, rolling the nipple slowly between two fingers with no hurry at all.
I come with Luke's mouth on mine and Torres's hand working between my thighs, hard enough that I hear myself shout into him.
Torres works me through it and doesn't pull out until I stop shaking. Then he lifts his hand, holds my eyes, and licks his fingers clean.
"Oh, fuck you," I say, and he grins at me with his mouth wet, and my whole body clenches again.
He goes down between my legs a moment later, because apparently that was a warm-up.
Soren moves me — lifts me into his lap and opens my thighs with a hand under each knee. He holds them open careful of my shoulder, and somehow that makes it hotter.
And Torres puts his mouth on me.
He licks into me first, slow and flat and greedy, then finds my clit and settles there and doesn't move off it. Two fingers back inside. The other hand helping Soren hold open a thigh, because I've stopped being able to keep still.
"Baby," he says against me, "you taste—"
"Don't talk."
"Mm-mm." He does it anyway, muffled and filthy, telling me exactly what he's been thinking about for two weeks, and the vibration of it nearly finishes me on its own.
Luke's got my face in his hands, kissing me through all of it, and my hand is still working him, and his hips have started moving into my grip.
"Slower," I say, and Torres goes slower. "There — no, there—"
And then I can't talk at all.
The second one breaks harder than the first. I hear myself sob through it, and my heels come off the mattress, and Soren holds me tight with an arm across my hips.
Afterwards I'm shaking, my face is wet, and somehow I'm laughing.
"She's crying," Torres says, coming up my body fast. "Luke, she's—"
"Give her a second," Luke says.
"I'm fine." I get my good hand into Torres's hair. "You three are looking at me like an alarm went off. It's just—"
"Yeah," Torres says, and puts his forehead on my sternum. "I know."
Luke doesn't move until I say his name.
"Are you sure," he says. His jaw is tight and his breathing isn't steady anymore, and he's wet in my hand and still asking.
"Luke. Yes. I want you inside me." I get my hand around the back of his neck and pull. "I don't want gentle. I want you."
He lifts me off Soren, lays me down and crawls between my thighs. But when he pushes into me he stops halfway with his eyes shut and shudders.
"Jessica—"
"I'm here."
"Say it again."
"I'm here. I'm right here. All of me."
He sinks the rest of the way in and we both make a noise.
His first strokes are slow and controlled. Then I arch into him and tell him how good he feels.