Just as she was falling asleep, something registered in the back of her mind, something that her consciousness refused to release.
“Why did you wish I didn’t have to stop feeding?” she murmured just before she fell asleep. “Not safe.”
“Hmm?” he said in a groggy way.
“Why didn’t you want me to stop?”
For the life of her, she didn’t know why she was pressing the issue. What a weird thing to say.
As if he agreed with that, it was a while before he answered, and when he did, she wasn’t sure whether she was dreaming or not: “If I could, I would bleed out in your arms. I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather be when I die.”
Nyx’s eyes flared open.
“Shh,” he soothed. “We have some time. Let’s just enjoy this for a little longer. Before we have to leave this all behind.”
Come into the pool with me?”
Jack wasn’t sure exactly how long he let his female rest. But when the same internal clock that had always helped him keep track of the guards’ schedules started to ring, he felt compelled into action.
And he really needed her to take a bath before they left here.
She already had a target on her back. If the Command scented him on her? Fuck.
Nyx stirred against him, her dark lashes lifting, her eyes unfocused and contented. Smiling down at her, he brushed her lips with his own. Then he couldn’t resist. He licked his way into her mouth. Their bodies had separated, but his was quick to want a return, and given the way her hand snuck onto the nape of his neck and pulled him on top of her, the feeling was mutual.
“Come,” he repeated. “Into the bath with us.”
He lifted her up and carried her over to the pool. As she rested in his arms, her weight was not a burden, it was a gift, and he was content to continue to hold her as she stripped her shirt and her bra—
The sight of her bare breasts shorted out his thinking, and he let her feet down so she could reveal herself in all her naked glory to his captivated eyes. Then there was nothing but glorious flesh, from the cleft of her sex to the flat plane of her abdomen to her beautiful breasts.
She smiled in an ancient way as she stepped into the pool. First one foot. Then the other.
And as she sank down into the burbling warm water, she removed the banding on her hair.
Jack was not so graceful. He ditched his pants like they had insulted his moral code, and as he straightened, his arousal was so erect, it stuck out from his hips at a right angle. Before he joined her, he tucked his hand behind one of the stones that rimmed the pool and took out the bar of herbal soap he left here.
As he jumped in and ducked under the water, he had to ignore a grim urgency. He didn’t know how much time they had left—no, he knew that answer and he hated it. Therefore, when he came up out of the pool with his hair smoothed to his skull, he refused to allow himself to waste even a moment on remembering how he’d used this particular bar of soap before.
The memories came anyway. Here was where he washed himself when the Command was done with him. Here was where he cleaned himself of the smells and residue after he was used.
He would have preferred to put something, anything, else on Nyx’s skin. But he had to clean her of him.
“Let me wash you,” he said as he palmed the bar and called up suds from the packed lye-and-herb combination.
He was gentle with her, worshipping her with his hands, cleaning her hair, her neck, her shoulders, the familiar tangy scent of the spices rising up between them. And then he continued below her waist, reaching between her thighs, his fingers through the waves within the water—
And that was when he got sidetracked.
As he caressed her sex, his fingers entered her, and the next thing he knew, he was lifting her out of the pool and propping her up on the smooth rocks of the rim. Spreading her thighs, he nestled himself in and brought his mouth to her collarbone, her sternum . . . the side of her breast. He sucked on her while he stroked her sex with both his thumbs, and as she ran wet at her core for a reason other than the water that dripped off of her, he licked at her nipple, nibbled at it.
He did the same to the other breast.
And then he kept going with his mouth. Lower . . . lower . . .
“Jack!” she cried out.
Her fingers speared into his hair, and she pulled him tight to where he wanted to go, his lips to her sex, his tongue replacing his fingers. Plying at her, sucking at her, putting one of her legs over his shoulder, he pleasured her with his mouth until she orgasmed on his face—and then he kept right on going.
Jack had not intended to take things where they were, but he was glad—
For a moment, he paused.
He hadn’t realized that he’d begun thinking of himself with the name she used for him. It was a shift, like so many, that she created within him.
Something else to keep after she was gone.
Well, that happened, Nyx thought some time later as she sat alone on the sofa rock and twiddled her thumbs.
On a reflex that served no purpose, she lifted her wrist and pulled back the sleeve of the fresh tunic she’d put on. But there was no watch there. In fact, she never wore watches.
It was just one more tic she’d picked up since Jack had left her by the pool: Likewise, her left eye was twitching as if someone was flashing a strobe in it, and her foot was a metronome keeping a beat only her ankle could hear.
She wasn’t sure how long Jack had been gone. It felt like ten years, but it was probably only about twenty, twenty-five minutes. In the candlelight, by herself, she was jumping at shadows, a gun in her palm and her backpack strapped on under the full set of prison clothes Jack had insisted she wear—
With a gasp, she wrenched around, heart pounding in her ears.
Except it was nothing.
Every sound was a cause for alarm. Each subtle drip of wax or groundwater, all the variations of the rushing of the waterfall, even her own breath whistling in and out of her nose, was a call to attention. And in between those spikes of high alert, she retreated into her memories of the feeding and then what happened later, in the pool.
When all of that just made her chest hurt until she could barely stand it, she switched places in her head.
To imagining Janelle dying down here, under the earth, alone.
Yeah, because that was such an improvement.
Rubbing her eyes, she recalled the last clear memory of her sister. It had been two nights before the Council had met concerning the death of that older male, but after the accusation had been formally served on Janelle by a representative of the ruling body.
Last Meal. In their little farmhouse kitchen, at the four-top where they had eaten together all their lives. Janelle had been across from her, that red hair loose and drying in curls from the shower she’d just taken. Cornflakes . . . yes, they were having cornflakes, a bowl full in front of each of them. The only sound in the room, in the house . . . in the whole world, had been spoons knocking against the cheap china.
Janelle had been very calm. Which was what you were when you were innocent of the charges against you, and had faith that justice would prevail and the truth would come out in the end. You were at ease because you believed everything would be okay—because it was crazy for anyone to think you would ever kill anybody, much less an old male you worked for and had been fond of.
Nyx could remember drawing strength from that calm.
Everything was going to be all right. No matter how scary the formal accusation was, it was all going to be okay.
That was what she’d thought at the time.
From that memory, she went further back in time, recalling Janelle laughing out by the barn, and running wild in the rain as thunder had clapped and lightning sparked the night sky.
All of that was gone now, never to happen again, even though it hadn’t been happening since Janelle had been taken away, anyway. But the reality of that name listed on the Wall here in the prison was a hard stop, and as the loss truly sank in for the first time, Nyx realized that even though Janelle had been gone from the family, the fact that she had been alive somewhere had meant that there was a future. Somehow, somewhere . . . there had been a future, no matter how impossible it seemed.
Nyx’s baseless hope and characteristic determination had made tangible that which she could not touch, had brought home, at least in her mind, the one who had been lost. The number of days she had lain in her bed believing she would find Janelle, knowing she would, had been legion. Ultimately, however, the prophecy she had spun had not been self-fulfilling. And she had the picture of Janelle’s name from the Wall to prove it.
A shroud of mourning settled on Nyx’s shoulders, heavy and dark, and tied up in its choking weave was the fact that she would be leaving the prison with two losses.
It was that reality that rode her hard as the males finally arrived. Jack was leading the way, with Kane behind him in a set of black robes, and Lucan, Mayhem, and Apex bringing up the rear. Getting to her feet, she did what she could to throw off her mood—and as she faced off at the group, she had a thought she was glad she wasn’t meeting them in a dark alley.
Especially Apex with those obsidian eyes.
“Fancy meeting you all here,” she said hoarsely.
Fancy getting my heart broken while I endangered my life to find out my sister was dead. What a BOGO, she thought.
Kane spoke up. “The Jackal told us of your bravery in evading the guards.” The gentlemale bowed. “You are a female of worth.”
“She’s a fighter, all right,” Lucan agreed. “That’s for sure.”
Cue a round of blushing, which in Nyx’s opinion was a total waste of her time. Come on, like she was the little sister asked to play ball with the big team?
“So what’s our plan?” She looked at them, and then focused on Jack. “Where are we going?”
“Kane did some investigation.” Jack came over and stood by her. “The prison is still locked down, but they’re calling a double shift to catch up, just like I thought, and the workers are eating. Mess should be finishing up shortly. We’ll fall in line with them as they report for duty, and go into the production area.”