Chapter 562 | Let Her Look

Chapter 562: 562 | Let Her Look

"Good." She unbuttoned my shirt from the top down, slow, and her eyes never left mine. Her hands pushed my shirt open and slid flat against my chest, warm against my cold skin. "You know what I hate about it?"

"Tell me."

"I’m not even mad," Naomi said, and her voice dropped soft. "She looked so happy when she kissed you, and I’ve never seen her look happy, so I can’t be mad, and that’s so annoying."

She pulled her own blazer off and dropped it on top of mine. Her academy shirt clung to her like wet paper, and the regulation white had gone clear in the stripes of light from the window. Her bra underneath was plain black cotton, and her shell necklace sat cold against her collarbone with water still beading on the shells.

She looked down at herself and then up at me, and she didn’t cross her arms.

"Your turn to look," Naomi said. "I want you to look at me longer than you looked at her."

I looked. I took my time, because she’d asked for it and because she deserved every second of attention I could give her. Her brown skin showed through the wet cotton at her stomach, at her ribs, at the dip of her waist where the fabric pulled taut against the curve of her hips. The rain had done its work on that regulation shirt.

Every contour of her was visible now, the shape of her stomach muscles she’d built over months of conditioning, the way her chest rose and fell with her breathing.

Her pink and black braid had come half loose from its tie, and the strands that had escaped stuck to her neck in dark curls that dripped water down her collarbone and disappeared into the hollow of her throat.

The scratch from the alpha’s teeth ran under the fabric along her side, pink and healing, a thin line that followed the ridge of her ribs like a map of what she’d survived that morning.

I let my eyes move slow. Down her arms, where the rainwater tracked along the faint calluses on her palms from years of hauling nets. Across the flat plane of her belly where the shirt pooled against her skin. Back up to her face, where she was watching me watch her, and her lips were parted, and she hadn’t blinked.

The graft behind my sternum warmed against my bones. The silver-pink ring in the back of my skull burned so bright it hurt.

"How long was that?" Naomi whispered.

"About eight seconds, and I’m going for ten."

She laughed, bright and unguarded, the kind of laugh she only gave me when no one else was around, and she grabbed my face with both hands and kissed me.

She tasted like green tea and the brown sugar boba she’d snuck from the campus cafe before Theory that afternoon, and her mouth opened under mine without any of the shyness she still wore in public.

Just her lips warm on mine and her tongue finding the corner of my mouth and then the center of it.

Her hands slid down from my jaw, tracing along my neck and across my collarbones, down my bare chest and my stomach to my belt, and stopped there with her fingers hooked in the leather loop closest to the buckle.

"The vault’s at eleven," she said against my lips. Her breath was warm and tasted like sugar. "Belle told me this morning, and she said it was the last empty cup."

"Belle tells you everything, I guess."

"Belle told me to fill it before lunch so she can update the column in her little spreadsheet." Naomi pulled back an inch, and her ears had gone the pink of her eyes, that exact shade that told me she was embarrassed about wanting something she was going to do anyway. "So I’m filling it."

She reached behind her back with one hand, the motion practiced now where it used to be fumbling, and unhooked her bra under the wet shirt.

The straps loosened across her shoulders. She shrugged them down her arms, and the plain black cotton dropped between our feet onto the pile of discarded clothes, and her shirt was the only thing left between me and her.

Which was no barrier at all. The wet fabric clung to every curve and left nothing to the imagination, not the shape of her, not the weight.

Her nipples showed dark through the cotton, prominent and stiff from the cold rain, and a bead of milk had already soaked a small round spot over the left one, spreading slowly through the fibers of her shirt like ink on paper.

"Your body already knows," I said.

"My body is very embarrassing, and I don’t want to talk about it." She pushed me backward until the edge of the bed hit my knees and I sat down hard. Then she climbed into my lap, her wet skirt riding up her thighs, and her knees sank into the mattress on either side of my hips. "Talk about it with your mouth on me instead."

I pushed her shirt up over her breasts, and she lifted her arms so I could pull it off over her head. Her braid fell down her back. I put my mouth on her left breast, and the first pull of milk came warm and sweet, vanilla with that thick caramel she gets when she’s happy.

◆ ESSENCE ROUTED: VAULT ◆

Capacity: 11/12 → filling

Naomi made a low sound in her throat and wrapped both arms around my head. Her fingers dug into my wet hair and held me against her. Her hips rolled down into my lap in slow circles, and the damp cotton of her skirt pressed hot against my belt buckle.

"Don’t stop," she breathed. "Please, Jace, it feels so good when you do it slow."

I gave her slow. I let my tongue press flat and dragged the pull out long, and her back bowed against my arm until her shell necklace slid across my cheek. Milk ran down the underside of her breast, and I caught it with my thumb and brought it back to her lips. Naomi licked my thumb clean without opening her eyes.

The bathroom door opened down the hall.

Footsteps crossed the living room and stopped. I heard Belle say something low and cheerful, and then I heard Blair’s voice snap back at her, sharp and aristocratic and very close to my bedroom door.

"Where is he, Fox? He has my scarf in his blazer pocket, and I’m not leaving without it."

"I wouldn’t open that door, Davenport."

"I’m going to open whatever door I please."

Naomi went still in my lap. Her eyes opened and found mine, and they were wide and dark and absolutely not scared. She didn’t climb off me, and she didn’t reach for her shirt.

She tightened her arms around my head, pressed her breast back against my mouth, and whispered against my ear with her voice gone low and wicked.

"Let her," Naomi said.

The doorknob turned.