Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
JUPITER
I woke to screaming. Not my own. It was coming through the bond.
I sat up in the dark, one hand pressed flat against my sternum where the thread was pulled taut, and I didn’t have to reach for it to know whose it was.
Jamie’s thread was the one that always felt like an abyss of grief.
Right now it was a riptide. A current dragging him under.
I was out of bed before my brain had fully caught up.
My feet hit the cold stone floor, and I didn’t bother with slippers, didn’t bother with a robe.
I was already moving through the door, down the narrow corridor, past the landing where Percy’s door stood shut and silent.
The bond was screaming in my chest, and I let it pull me, following the thread like a lifeline.
I didn’t knock. I just pushed the door open and let myself inside.
He wasn’t screaming out loud, his mouth was clamped shut, his jaw locked so tight the tendons in his neck stood out, but the sound coming through the bond was deafening.
A boy’s voice. A sixteen-year-old’s voice, screaming for someone who wasn’t coming.
He was thrashing, his body was caught in the sheets, tangled and fighting desperately, his fists clenched so hard his knuckles were white even in the dim light filtering through his window.
I knew this nightmare. It was the one he had over and over again, sometimes potent and sometimes just barely manageable. The night his parents died in front of him, and he couldn’t do a single goddamn thing to stop it.
I crossed the room in three steps and climbed onto the bed.
The mattress dipped under my weight as I slid in behind him, pressed my chest against his back and wrapped my arms around his torso.
I pulled him tight against me. He was shaking, every muscle in his body rigid, vibrating with the effort of fighting something that wasn’t there.
“Shh,” I whispered against the back of his neck. “Jamie. I’m here. You’re here. You’re safe.”
His breathing was ragged and broken by hitches that sounded like sobs he was choking back even in his sleep.
I held him tighter, one hand flat against his chest, feeling his heartbeat hammering against my palm.
I pressed my forehead between his shoulder blades and let the bond hum between us, feeding calm into the thread the way Tala had taught us.
It took a long time. Long enough that my arms started to ache, and my cheek went numb against his spine. But slowly, the rigid tension in his body began to ease. The thrashing stopped. The screaming in the bond faded to a whimper, then a whisper, then nothing at all.
He went still for a moment, and then he breathed in a long, shuddering inhale that filled his lungs for what felt like the first time in minutes, and his hand came up and covered mine where it rested against his chest. His fingers were cold and still trembling.
“Jupiter?”
“Yeah, Jamie.” I didn’t move. Didn’t loosen my grip. “I’m here.”
He turned in my arms, and I saw that tears had tracked down both cheeks, catching the faint light from the window, and his green eyes were red-rimmed and glassy.
He closed his eyes. “I’m sorry. I try to keep it contained. I—”
“Don’t.” I shifted closer, until there was no space left between us, and pressed my palm against his cheek. His skin was hot under my hand, feverish almost, and damp with tears. “Don’t apologize. Not for that. Never for that.”
His eyes found mine in the dark, and something in them shifted.
He kissed me. It was soft. So soft it barely qualified as a kiss.
Just the press of his mouth against mine, his lips still wet with tears.
I could taste the salt of them, the heat of his breath.
My hand was still on his cheek, and I felt his jaw work under my palm as he kissed me again, a little harder this time, a little less careful.
I kissed him back. I couldn’t not. His mouth was warm and so goddamn careful, like he was afraid I’d pull away, and the thought of him being afraid of anything after what he’d just lived through made something in my chest ache.
When he pulled back, his eyes were still wet, still red, but the grief had been pushed aside by something hungrier.
I brushed my thumb across his cheekbone, catching a tear before it could fall. “Let me make you feel better.”
His breath stuttered and his eyes went dark, not with grief this time.
I moved before he could answer. I swung my leg over his hips and settled on top of him, straddling his waist, and the sound he made, almost a groan, went straight through me.
His hands found my hips, fingers digging into the fabric of my pajama pants, and I could feel him hard already, pressing against me through the thin cotton.
I reached down and pulled my nightshirt over my head in one motion. The cold air hit my skin and I heard his breath leave him in a rush. His eyes dropped to my chest, and the look on his face was reverent and hungry.
Jamie was a virgin. In the waking world, at least. Months ago, in the dream world, I’d had him in my mouth, had felt him come apart under my hands, had watched his face as pleasure obliterated everything else.
But that was a dream. This was real. This was his body under mine, his hands on my skin, his eyes looking up at me like I was the only thing in the universe that mattered.
“Are you ready?” I asked. I needed him to know this was his choice, that he could stop this at any second, and I’d climb off him and hold him until the sun came up and never mention it again.
He laughed, his green eyes flaring bright in the darkness, and the sound was so deep and raspy that my belly flipped several times. “I’ve been ready since the moment I laid eyes on you.” His hands tightened on my hips.
My hands found his, and I guided them to my breasts, and the sound he made when his palms met my skin was enough to make me wetter than ever.
He was tentative at first, careful, almost, like he was mapping me.
But when I rolled my hips against him, and he felt how slick I was through the thin fabric, something shifted.
His grip tightened. His thumbs found my nipples and pressed, and the bolt of pleasure that shot through me made me gasp.
I reached between us and pushed his pants down, freeing him, and then maneuvered out of my own.
The first touch of skin against skin made us both freeze.
He was hot and hard and thick in my hand, and the way his hips jerked at the contact told me everything I needed to know about how long he’d been waiting for this.
I positioned myself over him, one hand braced on his chest, the other guiding him to where I needed him. His eyes were locked on mine, and when I sank down onto him, the sound he made was the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard.
His head fell back against the pillow, throat working, his jaw clenched. His hands gripped my hips hard enough to bruise, and I felt him shaking beneath me, probably with restraint. I held still. Let him feel me all around him. Let him adjust to the sensation, to the heat and the tightness.
“Jupiter—” His voice cracked. “Fuck. Fuck.”
I smiled down at him. “Well you don’t have to be so demanding about it.”
I started to move, rolling my hips in a circle that dragged him against every sensitive spot inside me, and the sound he made lit me up from the inside. I set a rhythm, taking my time with every stroke, and watched his face the entire time.
His eyes never left mine. His hands never left my hips. Every gasp, every groan, every broken whisper of my name built until he was writhing beneath me, his hips lifting to meet mine, his fingers digging into my skin.
The bond was wide open between us. I could feel everything.
Every spike of pleasure, every shudder, every moment of oh god this is real that flashed through his mind.
I could feel the grief still there, still present, but pushed to the side by something brighter and hotter.
I could feel the moment he started to lose control.
“Jupiter—I’m—I can’t—” His hips were stuttering, rhythm falling apart, and his hands were everywhere. On my hips, my waist, my breasts, my face, like he couldn’t decide which part of me he needed to touch most.
“Come inside me, James,” I whispered. I leaned down and kissed him, and rolled my hips hard, grinding down and pressing him as deep as he could go, and that was it. He shattered.
His whole body went rigid, back arching off the mattress, his mouth breaking away from mine to gasp for air, and I felt him come inside me in long, pulsing waves that made the bond scream with white-hot pleasure.
One second I was on top, riding the last pulses of his orgasm, and the next his hands were on my waist and the world flipped. He rolled me beneath him so fast my head spun, and then he was above me, his weight pressing me into the mattress, his arms braced on either side of my head.
He pulled out just enough and then slammed back in, and the sound I made wasn’t quiet. It wasn’t dignified in the slightest. “That’s right, love, moan for me,” he breathed against my ear, but he was grinning wickedly.
He fucked me hard, his hips driving into mine with a force that had the headboard hitting the stone wall behind it. His hand found my hip, fingers digging in, tilting me up to meet him, and the angle changed and I saw stars.
I couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe. Every nerve in my body was screaming, pleasure building so fast it was dizzying.
His pace never faltered, never slowed, and I was clawing at his shoulders, his back, my nails dragging across skin and scar tissue alike, and he didn’t flinch, didn’t stop, just kept driving into me.
How the hell did he know how to do this? He was supposed to be the damn virgin. He was supposed to be the one who needed guidance, who needed me to show him, and instead he was fucking me into his mattress like he’d been doing it his whole life, like his body had been waiting for this exact moment.
My orgasm tore through me so violently that my vision whited out, my back arching off the bed, and I bit down on his palm hard enough to taste blood just as he covered my scream.
He didn’t pull his hand away, just kept moving, kept thrusting, riding me through it, and I came apart in waves that seemed to go on forever.
Jamie followed a few seconds later, his rhythm breaking, his hips stuttering, and I felt him come again inside me, his forehead dropping to my shoulder, a groan vibrating through his chest and into mine.
For a long time, neither of us moved. The room was dark and quiet except for the sound of our breathing. The headboard had stopped knocking against the wall. The sheets were twisted around our legs.
Jamie shifted and pulled out carefully, and I hissed at the sensitivity.
He collapsed beside me, one arm thrown over his eyes, his chest heaving.
I turned my head on the pillow and looked at him.
His hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat, lips swollen.
His green eyes were half-lidded and dazed, staring at the ceiling like he was trying to figure out what planet he was on.
And then he rolled onto his side, propping himself up on one elbow, and his free hand came up to cup my face. His thumb traced the line of my cheekbone.
“I never thought I’d be able to love someone again. After everything… I thought that part of me was dead.” His thumb kept moving, tracing the curve of my jaw, the corner of my mouth. “I was wrong. Sometimes I feel fucking insane over you.”
He leaned down and kissed me. Slowly and deeply, like he had all the time in the world. Like he was memorizing the shape of my mouth with his own. When he pulled back, his forehead rested against mine, and his breath was warm on my lips.
“I love you too, James.” I whispered.
And I meant it. I really fucking meant it.