Chapter 15

Jo

Dinner is outside, on a blanket in the garden.

I've barely said a word since the moment we shared on the sofa.

I have never done anything like that with anyone, and honestly, I'm still processing it all. He made me feel things, made me want to blurt out very uncharacteristic phrases. Dirty ones, for sure. More alarmingly, I found myself fighting back the urge to use words like "love."

We are most definitely not ready for that. Jakob and I aren't even officially a couple yet. Are we?

As we sit together and share a comfortable silence, Jakob devours his dinner. I blush while watching him inhale his chicken and peas.

I nibble on my food, not sure what to say.

"It's been forever since I felt anything like that," I finally say, filling the silence.

Was that too much?

On one hand, I feel powerful and sexy after having been manhandled to the point of a mind-numbing orgasm. On the other hand, I feel so strange and exposed now that I've said that.

And for another thing, I wonder what it means that he didn't let me finish him off. Not that I know how to. But maybe he sensed that I wouldn't know.

"I hope that's a good thing," he says with a questioning grin.

I nod enthusiastically. "Better than good."

Jakob reaches out and cups my jaw. The pad of his rough thumb feels so good as he strokes my cheekbone with it.

He looks happy. Maybe even satisfied. But is he just being nice?

I bite my lip when he turns away to refill his wine glass.

I want a do-over on last night. I want to invite him to share my bed. I want to make him feel as good as he made me feel. I just don't know what to say first.

I have so little experience with sex, but I'm pretty sure it's considered good manners to, at the very least, bring your partner to completion after they make you come so hard you see stars.

My cheeks blaze and my armpits sweat as I think about what happened right afterward. The sight of him sucking my essence from his glazed fingertips. Good gods, that felt so wrong to watch, but it made me ache for him all the more. I didn't think it was possible to want someone so much. I've always been a one-and-done girl. One quick round with the butterfly wand and I'm a sleepy little kitten.

Jakob has awakened so much in me, but at the same time, he's made me a mute.

He's studying me now as he sips his wine, his eyes looking all crinkly and gorgeous in the amber sunset. "Where's your head at right now, Josephine?"

"It's hard for me to talk about what's really going on in my head."

He sits up, crosses his legs, and rests his elbows on his knees, positioning himself so he leans in, showing me with every bone in his body that he's listening.

"You know there's nothing you can say that will make me think less of you, Josephine."

Jakob says my name with an edge of possession that makes my spine feel like cooked spaghetti.

I draw in a breath, readying myself to be the brazen girl that's locked inside somewhere. I'm about to set her free when Jakob's phone pings.

"I-oh…is that your phone or mine?" I ask.

He chuckles. "Doesn't matter. You look like you had something important you wanted to say. Say it."

He speaks softly, patiently, but still somehow commanding. I am utterly wrapped in his attention. He's made me feel safe since the moment he stepped off the train, just as he used to do when we were just kids.

"I took off a whole week of work," I tell him. I quickly add, "But I don't have to if you would rather have time away from me."

Everything I've ever wanted is right here. Why can't I just say what I want?

"You took a week off from work for my benefit?" he asks, threading his fingers through mine, a gesture so easy for him it makes me feel like we've been together for years.

"I did." What I don't say is I did it so we can have lots and lots of sex.

He chuckles. "Why would I want time away from you?"

I'm being a ridiculous little mouse. If I want my life to change, I have to change it. With Jakob holding my hand, I finally feel ready to speak these things out loud.

"I don't know why I said that. Because I don't want that. I want to spend as much time with you as I possibly can. I—I took a week off so we could reconnect before…before you decide what to do next."

Jakob takes no time to exhale before tumbling me under him on the blanket, taking my mouth in the most delicious kiss, sharing the sigh of relief with me. "You're the fucking sweetest, did you know that?"

I can't answer that while Jakob's tongue licks into my mouth. I'm warm and tingly everywhere. He makes everything I was worried about so easy. Almost too easy.

His phone makes that noise again.

I laugh against his mouth. "Someone's trying to reach you desperately."

Jakob groans through one, two, three soft pecks, then finally pulls out his phone.

My eyes drift to the screen there, and it's someone named Suzanna texting him the words in all caps: "CALL ME."

Instantly, my spine stiffens. But that could be anyone. It could be an elderly neighbor.

The neediness that I previously tamped down goes hand in hand with jealousy, I'm afraid. If Jakob knew how irrational I can be…

He curses. "My housemate. I hate it when she doesn't tell me what she wants."

You said a mouthful, I think silently.

As he dials with one hand, he keeps a gentle hold on my fingers with the other, squeezing.

His housemate. Housemate. So what? I tell myself. It's modern times. Men and women can be friends or cohabitate and it doesn't have to be romantic.

I wonder if I should give him some privacy for this talk because I can hear every word this Suzanna is saying through the phone at his ear.

"A big guy in a kilt was here asking about you, bruh. What the heck is going on?"

My mind races. Not a lot of people in Gravenland wear kilts anymore, not unless they're descended from a handful of specific ancestral warrior tribes or serve in the military—a Venn diagram that's almost a circle in this country. "What did he want?" Jakob asks. His eyes meet mine, then glance away.

Why do I feel like Jakob already knows what that man in the kilt wants?

Suzanna sounds a bit frazzled when she replies, "Dude, I don't know! But he was wearing the royal family insignia, and he was asking if I knew where you were on Prince Torben's 35th birthday celebration."

"And what did you tell him?" Jakob replies, rather forcefully.

"I told him as far as I knew, you were working in your studio."

"Good girl," Jakob says.

My feelings of jealousy had been starting to calm down until he said those words. Good girl.

Call me crazy, jumping to conclusions, but I do not like that.

But even through this fog of jealousy and hurt and confusion, I put the pieces together. Of course. That man in the kilt is Uther Nancarrow, special assistant to the queen and the princess. I wouldn't know his name, except that the royal watchers love to fawn over how handsome Uther is. It's a little ridiculous.

Is the queen's security guard trying to reach Jakob about the reward for rescuing Princess Flora? Have they identified him? Oh gods, it can't be about the ring, can it?

I watch the lines furrow deeper in Jakob's forehead. I study his resolute face that I once loved as a child. The face before me now is careworn and full of stories and heartache, and I'm falling so hard I barely recognize that childlike love anymore.

I slowly untangle my fingers from his and look away, focusing my attention on a male and female songbird, hopping and chirping in the underbrush a few meters away.

Happy little birds. All they do is sing and mate and look for food.

Would that human relationships were that uncomplicated.

I should have been a bird.