Page 85 of Beautiful Prey

Down the corridor, Seren’s clerk cries out again, followed by Seren’s voice. My cousins keep their appetites. Who am I to begrudge them?

On the way back, I stop at the glass. On the roof terrace, Onyx sits in one of the low chairs, the blanket still around his shoulders, his oxygen line catching the city’s light. Ryven stands beside him, and they both look out at the valley and the moving stars. Onyx says something, making Ryven huff a laugh.

The sick brother, safe. The stubborn one, wrecked and sleeping in my bed.

I’m such a damn fool, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t love it.

Both of them under my roof, breathing easy for the first time in Light knows how long. My prey in my bed. His brother safe six doors down.

Yeah. I could get used to this.

Like I told Jade, the wedding’s still happening.

Just not the way Dad thinks.

Carrying the oil back to my bed, I ease down beside my prey and take care of what’s mine.

15

JADE

Iwake up warm, which is how I know something’s wrong.

I’m never warm. My room in the eastern block traps the cold, and on some mornings I wake to my own breath fogging the air above my cot. But there’s a weight across my waist now that isn’t a blanket, a slow heartbeat at my back that isn’t mine, and when I shift, a bright ache runs up from the base of my spine.

Last night arrives all at once.

I go rigid.

Asher Clement is asleep behind me, one heavy arm across my waist, holding me against his chest. His breath stirs the hair at the back of my neck. I’m naked, sore, and there’s a faint slick of oil on my skin where he must have worked the ache out of me after I fell asleep.

I don’t remember that part. I remember his mouth. His hands. His body inside mine. Begging him for it. Coming apart underneath him. And, somehow worse than all of that, the thing I said when I was half asleep and stupid enough to tell him the truth.

I can hate the rest of it. I can’t hate you being nice.

Light.

I let Asher Clement fuck me in his own bed, and I wanted him to. Some traitorous part of my body still remembers exactly how much. That is more than enough to think about.

Easing out from under his arm, I hold my breath when he makes a low sound and tightens his grip for one suspended second. Then it loosens. He turns his face into the pillow and keeps sleeping.

I slide off the enormous bed and stand in the early gray light, my heart going far too fast.

Onyx.

Where the fuck is Onyx?

Everything else falls away.

I find my pants, drag them on, and make it out the door barefoot before I’ve even finished doing them up.

The penthouse is a maze. Room opens into room, glass everywhere, the city laid out gray and enormous below. Moving through it too fast, I open doors onto a study, another sitting room, a bathroom bigger than our entire flat, and the panic climbs with each wrong one.

He was fine last night, wasn’t he? He was laughing. He was having the dinner of his life. But laughter costs him. Everything costs him. And a whole night this far from his own bed, his oxygen, his medicine, his careful routine⁠—

I shoulder-open the last door in the corridor.

Onyx lies in a real bed, blankets tucked up over his shoulders. His oxygen line runs cleanly to a machine beside him, newer and quieter than anything the clinic has ever given us. His face is turned toward the window.