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Shaheel tilted her head to the side in a sharp jerk of acknowledgment before striding away.
Makir’s eyes narrowed and focused on the chain mail forming under my fingers. “So this is how you transform that blanting weed that tries to kill me every time I’m in the wastelands into something that’s turned JayJay into the talk of Yurstille.”
“Here”—I thrust a knitting needle into his hands—“if you’ve got time to tease, you’ve got time to learn how to make chain mail.” I grinned.
Makir held up his blue palms and backed away. “I need to return to the hoverbay.” His tail squeezed my waist before he scampered off.
Worried about JayJay, I stared past the black stalactites growing from the domed ceiling and watched the moisture dripfrom their calcified branches and pool in the frilled mushrooms stacked below, a humid symphony.
Saluda slammed a cup of javae onto the table, startling me.
“We’ll help.” Smoke puffed from his nose.
Shaheel had also returned, and with her, an agitated, tight-lipped group of enforcers—Saluda, Hill, Efred and D’unter. Shouldn’t they be with JayJay?
“Is JayJay okay?” The idea of JayJay standing face-to-face with the person who’d destroyed his life made my stomach turn.
It must be killing him.
One of my knitting needles dropped into the moss, spearing it, and though I’d yet to meet him, I wished it were Devile impaled by its pointy tip. “Who’s going to help him back through the tunnel?”
D’unter’s razor-sharp teeth, sinister in his anger, flashed. “He’s fine.” The Boola fisted the thick needles like knives before he glanced at me, waiting for instruction. Voice softer, he continued, “Really, try not to worry. He’s doing much better.”
I adjusted the coppery weed in Hill’s very human hands. “Pass the lunal over your pinkie, under the third and middle fingers, and over your index finger. To create more tension, you can loop it.”
“This stuff is blanting stiff.” Efred’s Drack scales shimmered under the hung lights.
“Look, our talons work way better than this smooth point to get it on the stick.” Saluda showed Efred.
Shaheel twittered a tune that matched the beat of her needles knocking together. “This will be lightweight and flexible enough to fly in. Oh, no—”
Shaheel passed me the stretch of rings she’d been knitting, and I reworked her skipped stitch.
As Shaheel and JayJay’s team surrounded me, knitting, the strange, brimming frustration emanating from them eased.With five sets of chain mail on the way, my mind wandered back to how perfect last night had been.
JayJay stumbled into our cozy cave, exhausted. In four strides, he’d limped around our small cave, inquiring over every recent addition, spreading his shower-fresh scent everywhere. My attempts to ignore him after he’d decided to go for a walk when he should’ve been healing in bed proved futile. I messed up a tricky stitch on the helmet and stabbed myself with the awl.
“Shit,”I hissed, sucking on the pad of my thumb.
“Let me see.”JayJay placed the helmet on my sewing table, bringing my thumb to his velvety lips. Like a conduit, an electric tingle shot from his lips to my thumb, straight up my arm, and jump-started my heart. Then he picked me up and placed me on the mossy bed.
“Put me down. Your ribs are healing.”My anger at him for lifting me faded when he nuzzled behind my ear.
His deep voice rumbled, rolling over me like a physical touch.“You need another treatment.”
I nodded, caught in his trance.
He stripped my boots, pants and panties off. In the next flash, he’d unlaced his pants. His thick cock—or coil, as he called it—stood tall and proud in his massive hand before he hauled me over his lap.
My mouth watered as he stroked the thick length, and I whimpered when his thumb circled my clit to the same rhythm. JayJay slipped his hands under my shirt, lifting it over my head in one smooth movement when it got in his way. Every so often, in his slow seduction, he leaned his cock forward and nudged my center with the tip.
“Please,”I begged, fisting the soft hide shirt.“I need your skin against me.”His rumba sent waves of heat to my lower belly as the thick slabs of muscle lining his abdomen and torso came into view.
He curled down, palming his rib as an afterthought, and swept his hot tongue over my nipples.“These are mine.”
I shuddered with each nip and nudge, my hands skating over his velvety skin, skimming his chest and landing on his flexed arms.
He circled his plump head against my opening a few times, stoking the fire higher before he coaxed his ringed coil inside. Just the tip. So good. His eyes devoured me, and I trembled under his gaze. The intensity scared me, but I couldn’t look away.
