19. Jade

There’s no sign of Almeth when we pull up outside the narrow brown house nearly an hour after we left it. The street is quiet, not a single person around.

None of us feels easy about staying here, but we have nowhere else to go, and I refuse to leave Wilkerson while my dad is still so vulnerable.

Being around him isn’t safe. Leaving him behind could prove fatal to him and to Meliah.

Shep shifted to a wolf and spent several minutes sniffing around the house and down the street, returning to say Almeth hadn’t come back.

Patten thinks his dad won’t run straight to Atticus to tell him where we are. He expects his dad will come back and try to convince us that we can trust him, then stab us in the back the first chance he gets.

It’s a worrying thought that chased me up the stairs and into the bathroom.

I decided that I needed a break from the tension building between Dominik and the others. I might be wrong, but I’m almost certain that Dominik was the person watching me and Shep in the kitchen last night. He hasn’t admitted it, but there’s been an almost frustrated, angry look in his eyes I’d rather avoid for a bit.

I glance in the mirror before I start the shower. There’s no sign of the gold firedrake I glimpsed in the refrigerator, so I must have just been seeing things. It’s not like I don’t have a million things on my mind.

A long, hot shower doesn’t relax me as much as I’d hoped it would. Mainly because the second I step out, my eyes go to the steamed-up mirror and I think of another change on its way.

Quickly drying myself with a towel hanging on the back of the door, I swipe my palm over the steamed glass and take a step back, dropping my towel.

I examine my body objectively. Or try to.

Nothing has changed.

Yet.

I’m still the same petite Jade I was before. My breasts are small, my waist narrow, and skin pale from all my time in the attic. I’m not a woman who has curves in all the right places. While I’d like to be a little curvier, maybe have bigger breasts, I don’t mind how I look.

“Ordinary,” I murmur.

But I have three men in my life now who seem to think I’m beautiful. I don’t see it, but I’m glad they do.

And then there’s Dominik…

I don’t care what he thinks of me.

Are you sure about that?

“Yes, I am,” I say quietly. “He hurt me, so I don’t care.”

Months from now, something big will change. Maybe my biggest change ever.

I move closer to the mirror, lifting my fingers to graze my flat belly.

A baby.

I thought getting out of the compound meant the end of Atticus Chira’s crazy obsession with all things dragon. Instead, it’s turned into the beginning of something new.

A new life.

I hadn’t thought this might be something I would want, but I think I do. At no point have I considered not having this baby. No one has brought it up, so it must be a thought I’m projecting? Is that even possible?

And is it strange to be so protective of someone who isn’t here yet?

I turn so I’m standing sideways, swiveling my head to keep my eyes on my still-flat belly.

What will happen when I start to show?

Will hormones make me want to forgive Dominik for his betrayal?

Can I protect my child?

As if the thought triggers it, a thin, wispy blue ribbon circles my right wrist.

Spirit.

At least, I think it’s the element Dominik called spirit. If he has the same ability, I’ve never seen it, though maybe that’s just another thing Dominik is keeping from me.

“He’s probably hiding it until the first opportunity he can use it to grab me and abduct me again,” I mutter.

I’d thought I’d gotten used to secrets and lies, but I think they’re making me cynical and slightly bitter.

I’m twisting my wrist one way and then the next when someone bangs on the door.

I jump and scramble to grab my dropped towel. “Give me a?—”

The door swings open and Patten stands filling the doorway. “I thought you might be upset,” he says, his hungry midnight-blue eyes focused between my thighs.

“I’m not upset.” Maybe that’s not entirely accurate.

“Right,” he says, not moving.

I’m not doing much moving either, my hand stretched toward my towel and completely naked.

His eyes take an eternity to traverse every inch of me.

I do nothing but stand there and let him look his fill.

And then he steps inside the bathroom, his eyes find mine, and he firmly pushes the door closed and locks it.

“Patten?” My mouth is dry.

He stalks toward me. “The towel. Drop it.”

My fingers must have a mind of their own, or Patten has some ability he never told me about.

The towel thumps to the floor.

I’m rewarded with a cheeky grin and a darkening of his gaze. “Hmm.”

He has me pinned to the bathroom wall a split second later as he steps into my naked body, and I feel how hard he is.

I consider him for a beat, curious at the approval in his eyes. And the pleasure. “You like giving orders.”

“I didn’t know I did,” he mutters, “but fuck, yeah, I think I fucking do.”

Shep yells something about Patten not bothering me if I want to be alone.

“She doesn’t want to be alone,” Patten yells back, and looks at me. “Do you?”

I shake my head.

I’ve spent too much time alone that I think it’s in my nature now to want to run off and chew on my fears instead of talking them through with someone. It’s not a healthy habit to have, and one I need to break if I want to build a future with Shep, Patten, and Isaiah, and I want to.

Patten gives me a brief heated look and yanks his shirt off before he stuffs it over my head.

“What are you doing?” I ask when I can see again.

“I need to kiss you.” He snags my hand and pulls. “We can’t do this in here.”

“Why can’t we kiss in the bathroom?”

“You’re naked.” He swings open the door and peers over his shoulder at me.

“But why do?—?”

He pins me to the hallway wall, and his kiss, a hard, furious thing, silences me. I’m sliding my hands up his back, dragging him closer when he breaks the kiss. “That’s why. Understand?”

I understand.

Making it to the room he claimed as his takes a long time, even though it’s just down the hallway. Mainly because Patten keeps stopping to pin me to the wall and kissing me.

In his room, he stops and turns to face me, giving me a probing look.

“What?” I ask, trying to read his expression.

“It just hit me that I dragged you down here, and at no point between there and here did I ask you if this was even what you wanted.”

Dad thought all demons were dangerous and that I could never trust one.

Patten is so much more than just a demon to be hunted. There’s a kindness and a vulnerability in him that I think it would be very easy for someone to miss. But I see those things, only because I think he lets me.

Smiling, I step into Patten, winding my arms around his shoulders as I stand on my tiptoes and kiss him.

His hands flex on my hips before he kisses me back, holding me against him.

“That was a surprisingly sweet kiss for a guy who just dragged you down the hallway,” he breaks away to tell me. “I’m not sure I deserved it.”

“You did.”

His gaze dips and a half-smile tugs on the corner of his lips. “I like you in my shirt.”

“It’s soft,” I admit. “And you weren’t doing as much dragging as you thought you were. I’m a little curious about any other instructions you might have for me.”

He sweeps me into a lingering, lush kiss that kills any desire to go anywhere or be anywhere but in Patten’s arms.

He strokes his hands down my back, massages my ass, molds me tight against him and then grips the hem of my shirt and starts lifting upward.

After breaking the kiss, we’re looking right at each other when he pulls the material over my head and tosses it aside.

For one long moment, he peers down at me. “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my life.”

“A witch cursed you, and you spent ten years with only Isaiah and Shep. Maybe you just don’t get out enough.”

He snorts a laugh then kisses me again. I stroke my fingers over his bare chest, finding his pants’ button and popping it open.

“Tired of waiting for instructions?” He smiles against my lips.

“Maybe.” There’s no maybe about it. I need Patten in the same way I need Shep. Knowing he thinks I’m beautiful, that he wants me as much—or maybe even more—than I want him, makes it impossible to keep my hands to myself.

He groans, deepening the kiss when I slip my fingers inside his waistband to touch him.

He pulls his hands off me long enough to shove his pants down the rest of the way.

Keeping my eyes on him, I kiss a steady path down his chest until I’m on my knees in front of him. “You did this to me in Chicago. My turn.”

“Jade,” he breathes, hands in my hair, pushing it out of my face as I kiss his tip.

“Hmmm?” I lick.

He tightens on my hair and groans again when I draw him into my mouth, careful with my teeth. I love the way he tastes, almost as much as I love the way his hand is fisting in my hair.

This is a new kind of touch, one I’ve never done before, but I love that it’s dragging the deepest, sexiest groans from Patten’s chest.

“Shit, Jade.”

He loves what I’m doing to him, and I don’t think I want to stop doing it.

I’m on my knees between his open thighs, my head bobbing, and Patten’s hands are in my hair as he urges me to take more of him.

“That’s it, baby.”

Slowly he lays back and I peek up at him through my lashes, wanting to read his expression.

His eyes are closed, long groans and husky grunts erupting from deep in his chest.

I lift my head. “You were supposed to be giving me instructions.”

His eyes flutter open and he stares down at me like I’m crazy. “You think a man can use his words at a time like this? A marching band could have started up beside us and I’d have had no fucking clue.”

I grin at him, and he gives me an easy, lopsided smile. “I never thought it could be fun.”

He runs a hand through my hair as I rest my palms on his thighs. “What could be fun?”

“This. Sex.”

His fingers thread through my hair, making my scalp tingle. His eyes are both aroused and playful. “It can be whatever you want it to be.”

Licking my lips, I lower my head again.

He doesn’t look away. Neither do I.

“Keep playing, sweetheart,” he quietly encourages.

So I do.

A suck here, a lick there, and I lose myself in sensation. I try to swallow as much of him as I can when he pulls me away. “That’s it, sweetheart. No more.”

“But—” My eyes flick to his fierce erection. He was throbbing in my mouth and he wants me to stop?

He sits up, right on the edge of the bed, turning me so I’m in his lap, my back to his chest. “I’d like to do some playing of my own.”

There’s a mirror hanging on the back of the door, and through it, my gaze connects with his.

“Patten?” A warm blush spills from my cheeks down over my pebbled breasts.

“Can you see how beautiful you are?” He nips my throat as nudges my pussy with his cock. Seeing it at my entrance, knowing how good it will feel when he pushes inward, has my muscles rippling in anticipation.

Breathing fast, I look away when it becomes too much.

Instead, I focus on Patten as he presses my thighs wider apart and urges me deeper into his lap.

Moaning, I writhe, throwing my head back as he thrusts until he’s sunk into me to the hilt.

“Open,” he breathes into my ear.

My eyes flutter open.

I watch him skim his fingers down my body, delve between my thighs and circle my clit.

“How is that, baby?”

I grip his wrist, so full of him I can barely think. All I can do is move, rocking back as he pumps into me. “You think I can use words now?”

He laughs, kissing my throat before he grunts and his fingers strum my clit.

My release is coming. I close my eyes as Patten surges faster, our skin slapping together.

“No,” he bites out, pumping harder, “let me see.”

It’s almost impossible to keep my eyes open, or to keep them fixed on his as my body shatters. “Patten,” I gasp, grinding myself on him.

Patten grunts as his hips slap up, and he strains, holding me tight for one long moment before he claims my lips in a bruising kiss.

We’re both breathing hard as he moves us back onto the bed, dragging a sheet over us. My muscles don’t want to work. None of me does. So I just let him do all the work.

He never lets me go, keeping us locked together as he turns us, so we’re spooning in the middle of his bed.

I fight back a yawn. “We need to go downstairs and talk about Atticus and the people who want to hurt Isaiah.”

And before Dominik comes up here and decides he wants to set fire to Patten. He’s held off for now, but I refuse to believe his patience is endless. He wants me back in New York, so it’s only a matter of time before he abducts me again.

Patten kisses my throat, hooking an arm around my middle. “And we will. Just want to hold you.”

I’m falling asleep when he kisses the back of my shoulder. “I meant to tell you about my da.”

“It’s okay.” I give his arm a squeeze.

“I meant to, but I wasn’t looking forward to it. He isn’t a good person, Jade. And I?—”

“Are not like him,” I interrupt, guessing where this must be going. “Did you think I would think you were?”

He doesn’t respond.

I turn around so we’re face to face.

“You’re not the same. When he slipped into my dream, he looked like you, but I knew it wasn’t. I didn’t feel safe.”

“I make you feel safe?” His dark blue eyes soften as he tucks a strand of hair behind my ear.

I nod. “Why haven’t you fed on me?”

“What makes you think I haven’t?”

“I asked Dominik what it would feel like, and I don’t feel drained or exhausted like he said I would. In that distracting lesson with the blue spatula, you told me an incubus needs sex to get stronger, but you slept with me and didn’t feed. Not now or back in Chicago, and you could have back then. I wouldn’t have even known what you were doing.”

He looks at me for several seconds. “You asked before how I aligned my demon half with my human half. The answer is, I haven’t.”

I scrunch my nose. “You haven’t?”

“Being half means I don’t need to feed to survive the way a full incubus would,” he explains. “It also means I’m weak.”

“You’re not weak.”

“I am not a garden variety incubus,” he gently interrupts me. “I’m an oddity. Most halfies like me don’t get any juice. My ability to wield fire was rare enough for my da to want to use me in whatever scheme he didn’t want to risk himself.”

What he’s saying—or not saying—finally makes sense.

“You said you fried the witch who cursed you, but I haven’t seen you use fire once.” In the compound, when a guard lunged at me, Patten shot him. If there was a time to use his ability to fry someone, it was then. “And because you haven’t fed, you can’t fry anyone?”

He shakes his head, drawing me against his chest. “It is what it is, beautiful. While I’d appreciate being able to set dragon guy on fire, it’s not something I need.”

But there’s a note in his voice that makes me think he’s not being entirely honest with me or even himself.

He’s human and demon.

Not one or just the other. Both. Surely he misses the other half of him?

I broke the witch’s curse and he can have sex with anyone and feed, giving him back the power he had before.

So why isn’t he feeding and regaining the power it sounds like he misses?

“Patten…”

He kisses me. “You wore me out, so how about we get some rest?”

He doesn’t want to talk about this. There are so many things I’m actively avoiding talking about too, namely my emergence, my pregnancy, and Dominik. It would be hypocritical of me to push him to talk when, if he asked me about any of the above, I’d do my best to change the subject.

“Okay.”

He nods, not quite meeting my eye. “I don’t know much about taking care of a baby, but I thought I could help the kid learn how to fight, maybe defend themself.”

My heart melts.

I swear there must be literal puddles forming beneath me because of Patten’s hesitant, but deeply, deeply sweet offer. He thinks he’s as bad as his dad, but he wants to look after my child in a way that his dad didn’t look after him.

“Patten?” I wait until he meets my gaze and I smile. “You have so much more to offer than you think. A lot more. Thank you.”

He grins and pulls me close. “And if you need me to kill dragon guy…?”

Would that make everything easier? Yes. I sigh. “Don’t tempt me.”

He laughs.