by Lina Jubilee
But I wouldn’t let him force the guy into anything he didn’t want to do—whatever it was that was apparently in his mind. Jayden was right. It was a man’s words and actions that mattered, not some repressed feelings.
Standing, I made my way to the door, but Zander shot away from the bookshelf and got there first, slamming it closed and resting his back against the knob, embracing himself and narrowing his eyes over my shoulder.
I looked to Jayden for help, for him to tell Zander to fuck off already, but Jayden just sighed and pushed away from the table, his eyes meeting mine just briefly—long enough to send shivers down my spine. He tucked his hands in his pockets and walked around the desk, staring out the window. It was twilight—and I wondered if it was dusk or dawn at this point, if the meal out there was dinner or breakfast.
My stomach rumbled and Zander laughed, destroying some of the tension hanging in there.
“Sorry, darlin’,” he said, stepping away from the door to slide his arms around me and yank me closer to him. He kissed the top of my head. “I’ll get you something to eat.”
“I’ll just go with you,” I said, placing my hands on his chest, so fucking broad and fine even through his T-shirt.
There was laughter over the bond, an amused smirk on his face in front of me. “Nope,” he said. “You two”—he backed up some to send a glare at Jayden, even if his back was to us—“are getting over this hang-up now and you’re going to boost Jayden—fully boost him—because I’ve spent the last hour or so explaining to him that a super-boosted earth power will prove invaluable in a fight against mostly plant-users. That, and he’s dreamed of fucking you almost as soon as he saw you anyway.”
Jayden cradled his forehead in one hand. “Zander, please. Just stop.”
I noticed he didn’t deny it, though.
Zander leaned in my ear. “I fucking mean it. I’m going to leave the food outside the door for when you’re done.”
Tittering, I shook my head. “I’m too tired to even think, Zander, let alone—”
“Then I will fucking walk in here and hand-feed you grapes until you get your engine started,” he said, a little louder this time. “I mean it, Jayden. Get your fucking act together already.”
He gave me another kiss atop my head—not even breaking his tightened expression—and pushed me lightly in Jayden’s direction, slapping my ass and making me let out a little chirp of surprise at the action—even if he’d immediately revved up my engine.
“Noted,” said Zander over the bond, chuckling. “I’ll make use of that in future lovemaking sessions.”
Face reddening, my mind tried to go as blank as possible while he kept mentally laughing as he opened the door behind me and slammed it closed.
The room went quiet without him, and for once, he wasn’t bugging me in my head, either.
“That’s a relief,” said Jayden, still staring outside. The bird’s nest on the tree outside his window showed three little slimy baby bird heads straining to call for their mother.
“What?” I asked, my voice catching on the dryness of my throat.
“The quiet,” he said, tapping a finger to his head. “He left me alone. You?”
“Yeah,” I said, tucking my hands inside the pockets in the jacket over my abdomen. “But I don’t… He’s not boosted,” I said. “The only time he can talk to us is when we’re thinking about him.”
Jayden turned, a weak smile attempting to break onto his lips. “You don’t think I do? I think about him. And I often think about you—which almost always makes me think about him more.”
It took a solid moment for my brain to catch up with what he’d said.
“What?” I stupidly asked.
Sighing, Jayden turned back around and took a seat in the squeaky chair behind the desk—just another meeting with one of his subordinates, a teacher with his student. I sat numbly in the chair across from him, ready for a lecture I hadn’t been expecting.
“Do you ever wonder why his telepathy only works on you and me?” He threaded his fingers together and rested his elbows on the desk.
“He has to… feel an emotional bond with someone,” I said, trying to remember what Wade had said once.
“And yet he leads a team devoted to him and he doesn’t feel close enough to them to be able to use what would be a very convenient power relaying instructions to his team?” Jayden leaned back and gestured to either side of him.
“We don’t know if he can’t communicate with any of them—”
Jayden shook his head. “Zander may be many things, but he’s not a liar. I know it’s just you and me—unless he’s boosted, of course.”
Biting my lip, I picked at the cotton in my jacket pocket. “He loves… us,” I said.
Jayden nodded, and there was a slight tremble to his fingers as he pushed his glasses up, a slight twitch in his jaw.
“He, but—he wants to have sex with you too?” I asked.
That actually made Jayden crack a smile. “I don’t… I don’t think so,” he said. “Though I’ve wondered if he has certain… wishes.”
Well, that was about as clear as a fogged-up mirror in the middle of a dust storm. I shook my head. “You’ll have to be more specific than that.”
“He wouldn’t be against observing us copulating,” he said, making the sentence as unromantic as humanly possible. “Though he wouldn’t even have to be in the room, considering he could project himself into it. Or simply rewatch the scene in one of our minds later.”
My jaw dropped open and I struggled to speak—but I had no business getting embarrassed or even, damn it, aroused just then. Especially not when I had three ungodly handsome men who wanted to fuck me and were all—in their own ways, though I did have to have a talk with Nash again—willing to share me.
I did not need a fourth man in this mix, but fuck me, I would never stop wanting Jayden.
My fingers had left one of the pockets and were tracing my lips then, the memory of our too-brief kiss taking over my mind.
“I love him, too,” said Jayden, sighing.
That bolted me back upright.
“What?” I thought I was breaking a record for saying that word at this point.
A tear trickled down Jayden’s cheek, and he ripped his glasses off his face, wiping his eye with his forearm as his other hand held on to the temple of his rims.
“Jayden,” I said, surprised at the huge crack in the façade. I leaped to my feet and crossed around the table, putting a hesitant hand on his shoulder.
Oh my god, was he gay? What the fuck was all that stuff Zander had teased me about then?
Emitting a weak laugh, Jayden removed his arm from his eyes and went to put his glasses back on, but I took careful hold of them and put them down between a photo frame and a pencil holder. Damn, he looked hot in and out of those glasses, his green eyes wider and more vulnerable right now.
My hand clanked against the photo frame and I picked it up, looking at it. It was a house in a suburb, a little ostentatious, but not obscenely so. Two boys were running in the background, a toy plane in the dark-haired one’s hand as the blond boy chased after him.
“He was my best friend,” said Jayden, his voice wobbling at the past tense. “And I… We… I lost him.”
A shadow passed over his face then, his Adam’s apple swallowing as he seemed to summon the power to shove the tears down. Only I knew that must have caused a headache—the straining, the trying to shove it all down.
And for the first time, I really understood what Zander meant. Jayden was hurting himself keeping this all inside.
Gently, I laid the photo frame on the desk and took a seat on the edge, my knee unintentionally knocking into his hand as it gripped the armrest of his chair.
“We all thought…” I tried to think of how to word this. “We knew Zander walking out on the team hurt you, Jayden. You don’t know how bad I felt—”
“It wasn’t your fault,” he said. “He was never mad at you. Never f
rustrated that you couldn’t agree with him.”
Ouch. But yeah, I knew what he meant. Whatever was between the two of them, it was older and stronger than whatever role I played.
“We thought maybe you weren’t interested in sex,” I said. “Not just because… I mean, I didn’t want to force you to be with me, I knew you weren’t interested—”
“I was,” said Jayden, a wry laugh escaping his lips. “Hasn’t he told you half a million times already? I always have been.”
Swallowing, I went to speak but found no words escaping my mouth. “Are you…?”
“I don’t know,” said Jayden, shaking his head. “I’ve always had other things on my mind—except for you. For the both of you. I love you, Aurora.” The chair let out a groan as he swiveled it to be closer, to take my hand between both of his. “I have since the moment I saw you, but you were a kid, and I was taking you under my wing, and I…” He chewed his lip as his gaze dropped to my hand. “I was angry Zander felt no qualms about pursuing you. Jealous. Even when he backed off just a bit because he knew how I felt, he got annoyed that I didn’t disregard my principles and pursue you myself, so he… He ran out of patience and then I lost… I lost you both.”
Pulling my hand from his, I took his face between my palms, tired of his wandering eyes looking anywhere but at me. “You never lost me,” I said. “Never.”
“But Nash…” he said. “And Zander… And now that, that elf…” He shook his head. “I know you’re with me. I know you’re with the team when you could be out there with Zander or even with these Nelians apparently, but…”
I jumped down from the desk and put my lips to his. The surge of my power flowing between us, soaring from my core to his, made me forget all about the emptiness in my stomach, the promises I’d made to myself not to force anything on him.
I pulled away, never once focusing on anything but his deep green eyes. “I love you, too,” I said. “I love… In a way, I love all of you.” I didn’t know whether or not to count Alarik in that number, even though I had to chomp down on my bottom lip to stop myself from thinking about our wild night in that cold cavern. “And I understand if you don’t want to be with me, knowing that—”
With a loud, grating squeak of the chair, he jumped to his feet, slamming my chest against his, his lips hard on mine again, his tongue grazing over my teeth like he was savoring every centimeter of me.
He took a deep breath. “I need you,” he said, peppering my forehead with kisses, moving down to my cheeks, his tall, muscled form hunched over as he tried to reach me. “I’ve always needed you.”
This barely felt real, but I wasn’t going to let reality ruin the moment I’d been dreaming of. I laid my own lips against his jaw, his neck, moving my hands to the top of his button-down shirt, ready to rip it off—
His hands grabbed hold of mine and flung my arms tightly behind my back. It didn’t hurt, but it was clear he was exerting pressure—that I’d struggle to break free unless he decided to let me go.
“What…?” I numbly said again, but he swallowed, holding his eyes tight to mine as his delicious lips parted and he panted.
“I’ve imagined this for so long,” he said. “Taking you over my desk, bending you over backward…”
Zander hadn’t been kidding that Jayden was hiding some filthy thoughts about me.
“Okay,” I said quietly, suddenly feeling meek. Now it was my turn to find my eyes roving wildly, unable to hold his gaze, my knees instinctively locking together.
He thrust forward, using one of his own knees to pry my legs apart.
Even with my clothes still on, my legs turned to jelly and I stumbled back against the desk.
He dropped my hands from his and went immediately to the zipper on my jacket, pulling it down before I could so much as blink. I took my arms out of the sleeves, and then his lips were on mine again, his fingers crawling up under my sports bra as he tugged that up over my breasts and paused, pulling back with bated breath as I wiggled my arms out of that, too.
“Perfection,” he said, taking hold of my breasts in his hands.
My legs really did lose all control then and I stumbled back against the desk, trying to take a seat, but Jayden quickly dropped hold of my breasts to maneuver his hands beneath the elastic waist band of my sweats, beneath the boy shorts to the skin of my ass.
I mewled as his hands went exploring to the front and as I gasped, he yanked down on my pants and underwear both, dropping them to my ankles as I stumbled back onto the desk.
He dropped to the floor then and started pulling one pants cuff off my foot, pausing to lay a kiss on my inner calf as he did. He repeated the motion with the other foot and I collapsed back onto the desk, my butt digging into the photo frame and my mouth making noises I tried to stifle, lest the whole place heard.
Jayden stood again, and I felt vulnerable before him, naked, bare—especially with him still fully clothed. I ran my hands over his shoulders, teasing my fingers into the collar of his shirt, feeling the hot sensation of his skin on mine. He stood back and ripped his own shirt off, quickly chucking his white tank top beneath over his head. He kissed me again, hardly leaving me time to drink in his form, my hands wandering over his back, one of his hands on my own back, the other roving over my front, over my breasts, teasing my nipples.
I gasped, and then his mouth was moving down my neck to take a nipple between his teeth as his fingers traveled down between my folds, causing my thighs to squeeze together.
“Jayden,” I whispered, my voice cracking. If this was a dream, I didn’t want to wake up. He stepped back and put firm palms on either side of me, pulling me away from the desk.
I opened my mouth to speak, but he surprised me by sweeping an arm across the surface of the desk, sending a mug, a pencil cup, the photo, his glasses, a paper weight, a lamp—everything to the ground in a huge crash.
“Jayden! What if someone heard that?” I hoped he hadn’t shattered his glasses while he’d been at it.
“I don’t care,” he said, breathing hard. He took hold of my sides again and spun me hard, fast, making me cry out in giddy surprise as he bent me over the desk, laying my front gently onto the hard surface. His hand squeezed my breast again once more before I heard him fumbling with his zipper, saw him flinging off his pants and underwear as I turned to look over my shoulder.
God, he was thick and long—glorious.
He shook his head and laid a hand over one of my shoulders. It was forceful but not painfully so. He leaned his form over mine, spooning me, sending tingles from my crotch to my toes. “Let me take you,” he whispered in my ear.
I nodded numbly, my cheek flat against the cold, hard surface of the desk.
He backed up and his hand went to work between my ass cheeks, traveling frontward to my clit and rubbing in gentle, teasing motions until I cried out, my toes curling as my feet flung out behind me.
His cock slid between my ass cheeks—not penetrating, but like they were meant to fit it like a glove, his long, thick girth teasing across my entrance, and I screamed. Happily, achingly, but I screamed. “Please!” I said, my voice hoarse.
He took hold of each of my butt cheeks and pushed them tighter against his penis, massaging the cheeks and grinding, his cock growing harder and harder with each strike until it felt so hard, I couldn’t take it anymore, its teasing presence gliding the length of my labia. “Please!” I begged again, a shower of moisture coating us both and demanding he come inside.
He released some of the pressure on my ass to back up and then slide inside my pussy, the friction almost non-existent. I cried out, groaning, an orgasm already nearly at its apex as he pushed all the way in—slowly, forcefully, but reveling in every second of it.
Then he pulled out a little again, his breath so hot and heavy, I could feel it across the length between his head and my back, and he plunged in once more.
I shrieked in ecstasy, my feet completely leaving the ground. “Yes! Please! Yes!”
>
Then he went faster, pulling out and then pushing in, the movement causing me to bounce and grind against the desk, the pressure on my breasts beneath me increasing, the only way I could keep from trembling to exhaustion by gripping the edge of the desk with both hands above my hand. The slap of his cock withdrawing and plunging into my insides, the rhythm of the motion, the surge of power pouring out from every fiber of my being into his every molecule… I was going to die. I couldn’t handle this much pleasure—couldn’t take the idea of this ever ending.
I moaned again, not even caring that the whole place was sure to hear it.
“That’s my girl,” said Zander—and at first I thought it had to be across the bond. But he was there—his projected form—in front of the door, a lascivious grin on his face as I shifted my face to watch him. My chin and throat were flat against the desk as Jayden kept pumping.
“Dinner’s outside the door,” he said, and Jayden didn’t even comment. “But it’ll keep until you’re ready.”
And with that, he vanished back into air.
Chapter Sixteen
Our bellies fed, we’d continued our dance, moving to Jayden’s bed. I rode him this time—he’d had his fantasy, now I got mine—my thighs aching as I bounced up and down, but my body wracked with pleasure despite the soreness. My hands gripped either pec as his palms rested on my ass, our eyes locked the entire time. I could feel the sweat flushing from my body, hear the gasps of pleasure pass through my deep breaths, but I kept going. The power flowed from my sex to him again and again—not that he’d needed another boost so soon.
And maybe Veras needed its leader. Maybe I needed to talk to Nash and boost Zander and figure out where Alarik fit into all this—but right now, I just needed this.
We just need this.
Tossing back my head and shutting my eyes, I let out one more scream of pleasure, adding, “Jayden!” as I dug my fingernails into his chest, my thigh muscles giving so I could bounce no more. His seed responded in kind, shooting out just at the moment when I’d hit my apex and I moaned, taking it all in, breathing hard—hearing his own deep breaths. And then, ages later, I shifted to slip him out and collapsed at his side on the bed, wrapping an arm around his front as he encircled me in his arms entirely. He kissed my brow and took a deep breath, as if imbibing the scent of our workout, the proof of the two of us together.
