Chapter 586 | Lessons from Belle and Misato

Chapter 586: 586 | Lessons from Belle and Misato

I followed her into the bathroom because I was not an idiot, and I had already lost every argument I’d had since five in the morning.

The water came out scalding the second Naomi turned the handle, and steam filled the small room fast enough to fog the cracked mirror. Naomi pulled her underwear down over her hips and kicked it into the corner before stepping under the spray. The water ran down her shoulders and over her chest and along the dip of her spine, and she tilted her head back with her eyes closed so the stream hit her face and soaked her hair dark against her scalp. I stood there long enough that she opened one eye and stared at me through the steam.

"Are you getting in, or are you going to stare at me until the water goes cold?"

"I’m weighing my options."

"Your options are me in a shower or Belle at breakfast."

I stripped out of the training gear and stepped in behind her. Naomi immediately leaned back against my chest, and her wet skin slid against the leopard scars and Misato’s bite mark and the faint brown smudge where Blair’s palm had scorched me through the shirt. Her hand reached behind her and found my hip, pressing her fingers right over Belle’s hickey from Sunday.

"You’re covered in other girls," Naomi said.

"You’ve mentioned that before."

"I’m mentioning it again so you remember." She turned around inside my arms and looked up at me through the water running off her lashes, and her pink eyes held something softer than the teasing in her voice. "I’m going to leave one of my own before breakfast. Somewhere Blair will see it during drills."

"That’s petty, Naomi."

"I learned it from Belle." She pushed up onto her toes and kissed the side of my throat right over my pulse, and then her teeth closed down on the skin there hard enough to make me grab her waist. Euphoric Feedback caught the sting and flipped it into heat that shot straight down my spine. Naomi held the bite for several seconds before she let go and licked over the mark with the flat of her tongue.

"There," she said, sounding very pleased with herself. "Now you’re balanced."

"Balanced how?"

"Addison on the left side of your throat. Me on the right." She dragged a fingertip along the new mark and smiled at her own work. "Belle gets your hip. Misato gets your shoulder. Blair can have whatever’s left."

My graft gave a hard pulse behind my sternum, and the silver-pink ring in my skull flared bright enough to blur the edges of my vision. Naomi felt the flutter under her palm where it rested on my chest, and her expression shifted from smug to hungry as she pressed closer against me.

Her breasts were already heavy against my ribs. A bead of milk had formed at her left nipple, and the shower spray washed it away before another one took its place. Naomi’s body had learned to answer my proximity weeks ago, and now it didn’t even wait for me to touch her.

"The vault’s at ten," I told her. "Vale cost me two this morning."

"So drink it." Naomi slid her hand up the back of my neck and pulled my head down toward her chest. "Points still count when you swallow instead of storing. You told me that in the hospital."

"You remember that?"

"I remember everything you say," she whispered, throwing my own line back at me, and I laughed against her collarbone before I closed my mouth over her nipple.

Vanilla and caramel flooded my tongue, sweet and warm and tasting like the black sand beach I had built from her memories. The interface flashed in the corner of my vision with a point notification I ignored completely. Naomi made a low sound in her throat and pressed her back against the tile, her fingers tightening in my hair as I drew another long pull and swallowed. Her hips rolled forward into my thigh, slow and grinding, and I felt how wet she was against my skin in a way that had nothing to do with the shower.

I slid my hand down her stomach and between her legs. Naomi gasped and grabbed my shoulder, and her nails bit into the skin right over Misato’s mark. She was hot and slick and swollen against my fingers, and she rocked her hips against my palm while I worked her in slow circles and kept drinking from her breast. The milk came faster each time she moved, spilling over my chin and running down her ribs in thin white lines that the water carried away.

"Jace," she breathed, her voice cracking on my name. "We have thirty minutes."

"We can do a lot in thirty minutes."

"Don’t you dare get cocky right now."

I pushed two fingers inside her and curled them forward, and she stopped arguing. Her head fell back against the tile with a soft thunk, and her other hand slapped flat against the glass door as her thighs started shaking around my wrist. I switched to her right breast and pulled hard enough that she cried out loud, the sound bouncing off the bathroom walls and probably carrying straight through to Hikaru’s room.

"Hikaru can hear," Naomi gasped.

"Hikaru heard Belle last week. She survived."

Naomi laughed and moaned at the same time, which turned into a strangled noise when I pressed my thumb down on her clit. I gave her Euphoric Feedback at level four, only a little push, and her whole body locked tight against the wall. She came hard on my hand with her eyes squeezed shut and her mouth open against my temple, and milk sprayed from both breasts across my chest as her inner walls clenched around my fingers in long, rolling pulses. I held her up through all of it because her knees had stopped working, and I kept my thumb moving slow until she grabbed my wrist and pulled it away.

She sagged against me afterward, breathing hard against my wet shoulder while the water beat down on both of us. The steam had filled the whole room by then, and the cracked mirror showed nothing at all.

"I hate you," Naomi mumbled into my neck.

"You keep saying that word wrong."

"I’m saying it exactly right." She lifted her head and looked at me with flushed cheeks and swollen lips and water dripping off the end of her nose. Then she reached down between us and wrapped her hand around me, grinning when I flinched. "We still have twenty-six minutes."

"You counted?"

"Belle taught me." She stroked me once, slow from base to tip, and watched my face the entire time. "Turn around and put your hands on the wall, Monroe."

"Are you giving orders now?"

"Misato’s been teaching me too," Naomi said, and her pink eyes glinted through the steam. "Hands on the wall. Now."

I put my hands on the wall.

We made it to breakfast with four minutes to spare. Belle sat at our table by the windows with her laptop open and a plate of bacon in front of her that she had already stolen from three different people. She looked up when we walked in, and her amber eyes went straight to the fresh bite mark on the right side of my throat.

"Symmetry," Belle said, typing without looking at the keyboard. "I appreciate a woman who plans ahead."