Chapter 563 | He’s My Complication

Chapter 563: 563 | He’s My Complication

The door swung open.

Blair stood in the frame with her hair dry now and her blouse steaming faintly at the shoulders, the fabric no longer transparent but still wrinkled from her improvised heat treatment. Her ice-blue eyes swept the room in one motion, caught on the pile of wet clothes by my feet, tracked up to Naomi’s bare back, and then locked onto my face with an expression that could have flash-frozen the ocean outside.

"Monroe," Blair said. Her voice came out flat and cold and very, very controlled. "I need my scarf."

Naomi didn’t move. She kept her arms wrapped around my head, her bare chest pressed against my face, and her hips settled warm and heavy in my lap. The only concession she made to Blair’s presence was turning her head just enough to look over her shoulder, and even that motion was unhurried.

"Knock next time," Naomi said.

The temperature in the room jumped ten degrees. The window fogged at the corners, and the metal bedframe creaked as it expanded from Blair’s heat.

"I did knock," Blair said. "You were too busy to hear it."

"Then wait outside until I’m done being busy."

Belle appeared behind Blair’s shoulder with her laptop tucked under her arm and her amber eyes absolutely sparkling with delight. She mouthed something at me that looked like "new tab" and then disappeared back into the living room, already typing with one hand.

Blair didn’t move from the doorway. Her fingers had gone white around the doorframe, and the paint beneath her palm was starting to bubble. Steam rose from her collar in thin wisps that curled toward the ceiling.

"Onodera," Blair said, and her aristocratic accent got thicker when she was angry, every syllable clipped and precise. "Get off him."

Naomi laughed. The sound was light and warm and utterly unbothered, and it made Blair’s jaw clench so hard I heard her teeth click together. Naomi reached down between us and took my hand, lifted it to her mouth, and pressed a kiss against my palm while holding Blair’s gaze the entire time.

"No," Naomi said.

The ninth ring in the back of my skull went supernova. The silver-pink ring flared right beside it, and for one wild second I thought my brain was going to melt out of my ears from the sheer concentrated intensity of two very different women wanting very different things from me at the same time.

Blair’s nostrils flared. Her chest rose and fell beneath the wrinkled blouse, and her eyes dropped to where Naomi’s wet skirt had ridden up her thighs, to where her knees pressed into the mattress on either side of my hips, to the obvious shape of me straining against my belt.

"This is inappropriate," Blair said.

"So is melting my boyfriend’s doorframe," Naomi replied. "We can talk about appropriate behavior later. Right now, you’re interrupting."

Boyfriend. The word hung in the air between the three of us, and I watched Blair’s face go through about sixteen emotions in the space of two seconds. Shock first, then something that looked like hurt, then anger that burned so hot the air around her shimmered.

"He’s not your boyfriend," Blair said. "He’s not anyone’s boyfriend. He’s a complication."

"He’s my complication." Naomi’s voice dropped lower, and her hand slid down from my face to rest against my bare chest, right over the graft that was currently losing its mind beneath my ribs. "I waited nine weeks for him, Davenport. I watched him almost die twice. I caught him when he fell off a monster this morning. So yes, he’s mine, and you don’t get to tell me when I’m allowed to touch him."

Blair’s mouth opened and closed without sound. The paint on the doorframe had blackened now, and the metal hinges glowed dull orange.

I probably should have said something. I probably should have defused the situation, or at least pointed out that the building might catch fire if Blair didn’t calm down.

Instead, I leaned back on one hand and watched two incredibly beautiful women argue over me in my own bedroom, and I thought, Yeah, this is what reincarnation should feel like.

"You’re being childish," Blair said.

"I’m being honest." Naomi’s pink eyes had gone hard in a way I’d never seen before, and her jaw was set at an angle that reminded me of her mother in the photographs on her nightstand. "You’ve been circling him for weeks, Davenport. You pick fights with him every morning. You melt things when he looks at other women. You kissed him in a hole in the ground, and then you pretended it didn’t happen, and now you’re standing in his doorway acting like I’m the one with a problem."

Blair flinched. Actually flinched, like Naomi had thrown something at her instead of just words.

"That’s none of your business," Blair said.

"It’s all my business," Naomi replied. "Because I’m not pretending. I’m not running away every time I feel something. I’m right here, in his lap, with his mouth on me, and I’m not ashamed of any of it."

The silence stretched between them, thick and hot and charged with something that felt like it might explode at any second.

Blair’s hand dropped from the doorframe. She took one step into the room, and then another, and the floor creaked under her weight as she approached the bed with her eyes fixed on Naomi’s face.

"You think you’re brave," Blair said quietly. "Sitting there half-naked in front of me. You think that proves something."

"I think it proves I know what I want," Naomi said. "Do you?"

Blair stopped three feet from the bed. Close enough that I could smell the singed fabric of her blouse and the expensive lavender shampoo she used on her hair. Close enough that I could see the pulse hammering in her throat and the way her chest rose and fell with each breath.

Her ice-blue eyes dropped to my face, and for one second, the anger flickered into something else. Something raw and hungry and afraid.

"Monroe," Blair said. Her voice cracked on my name. "Tell her to move."

"No," I said.