Page 61 of Released

LILLY

The door shuts quietly behind us, and I gaze around at the clean and neat apartment above the gym. It’s a studio with a large bed in one corner, a small kitchen in another, and a living-dining space between. There’s a door that I assume leads to a bathroom, and a bank of windows—blinds drawn—along the wall opposite the front door. The apartment can be accessed from the inside of the gym, and there’s also a door that leads to a fire escape down the outside of the building.

Soft music starts to play, and I recognise the song asLiftsby Lia Marie Johnson. I close my eyes as one of the guys comes up behind me and sweeps my hair away from my neck, his hot breath tickling my skin before his soft lips place a gentle kiss there.

“Kai,” I breathe out and sink into his arms that wrap around me, pulling me into his embrace, his fresh, woodsy scent enveloping me.

“When I saw that picture, sweetheart,” he murmurs against my skin, and I tense up when I realise what picture he is talking about. The staged one of my death. “My world ended, and I wanted no part in a new world without you.”

I melt back into him, fresh tears springing behind my closed lids as his arms move and he starts to unbutton the front of my shirtwaister maternity dress.

“Kai— I—” I stutter, lost for words at the raw pain of his and the rasp of his voice. A warmth in front of me has my eyes fluttering open to find Loki standing before me.

“I didn’t want to believe it,” my trickster Knight tells me, his own eyes glistening as he steps closer and helps Kai to push the dress from my shoulders. “I didn’t want to believe that I might have to live in a world where you no longer breathed.”

“Loki—” My voice catches on a sob, tears running freely down my cheeks as he dips his head, placing his lips above my trembling ones.

“But when I realised that it was really you downstairs, fuck, Pretty Girl. I thought I was gonna pass out,” he confesses against my lips, closing the distance and kissing me so sweetly, so reverently, it’s all I can do to not break down here and now in a sobbing mess.

I hated not being able to tell them, knowing that they would see that picture and assume the worst, but we needed believable reactions. We needed Julian to think that I was dead.

“Wait—” I pull back, my heart thudding as I turn to find Ash leaning against the back of the sofa, watching us with dark eyes. “Where does Julian think you are now?”

“He knows that we’re here, blowing off some steam,” Ash tells me, his arms crossed across his broad chest. He gives a small, devious smirk, his words not a lie, but I’m betting not the whole truth either.

“Doesn’t he expect, I don’t know, you guys to retaliate?”

Ash’s smirk drops, his jaw clenching. “He thinks, because it’s what we want him to think, that we are too well trained, too under his thumb and afraid of what he might do to us to seek revenge.”

I slump a little, a slow breath leaving me at that confirmation of their safety. I don’t even startle when I realise that Kai and Loki have stripped me naked, my clothes in a crumpled heap on the floor. Loki steps to one side, and Ash straightens up, stalking towards me with a predatory gleam in his silver eyes.

Two pairs of hands trace every curve, every dip and hollow of my body, and I’m shuddering under their touch alongside Ash’s heated gaze.

“I finally understood why Luc wanted to die,” Ash says, continuing the conversation Loki, Kai, and I were having, and I can’t help the flinch, knowing that I would have felt the same if it had been one of them. “There’s nothing without you, Princess,” he confesses softly, stepping right up against me so that I can feel the heat of his body through his shirt against my skin. “I do not exist without you.”

My face must crumple then as he reaches out and draws my mouth to his in a bruising kiss. He worships me with his lips and tongue, showing me how desolate he felt, how broken the news of my death made him. I kiss him back, letting him take everything that I have to give, an apology in the way that my tongue soothes his, my lips caressing him.

I jerk away as the door opens and shuts, turning my head to see Jax walking in with something in his hands. His brows are low, his jaw tight as he storms towards me. Ash steps aside to let Jax stand before me in all his vibrating ire. Taking in a sharp breath, I hold my ground as I look up at him, aware that I am the only one naked in the room.

“You know how I felt about that picture,” he tells me gruffly, his eyes hard and his muscles corded. “I get why it had to be done that way, but I’m fucking furious at you, Baby Girl.”

My eyes widen, and I open my mouth to say something, to argue with the twatwaffle, but he places a finger against my parted lips.

“I’m not going to kiss you now,” he tells me, and my pulse picks up speed when he opens his other hand and I see coils of red cotton fabric. “Not until you’ve been punished for breaking all of our hearts.”

My lips drag against his digit as they close, and I look up into his stormy gaze and see the pure, unadulterated need burning there. He can’t do anything about what happened, knows it needed to happen that way, but needs to punish someone now to exorcise the rage that’s running through his veins. I lick my lips, catching his finger in the process, and a shudder runs over his skin at the contact.

Wordlessly, I bring my hands in front of me, wrists together in offering. He waits a beat, then moves his finger away to grab the fabric and stretch it out until I see what it is.

“These are my wraps, Baby Girl,” he tells me as he works to bind my wrists tightly together. “I haven’t washed them since I last wore them, the blood from my split knuckles and my opponent is still on them.”

My thighs clench, and I gasp as he pulls tight. I give an exploratory tug, but my wrists don’t move. Deep chuckles sound around me, and I look up into Jax’s eyes first to see the dark gleam of satisfaction there. Turning, I can see a similar expression on Ash and Loki’s faces. Kai is still behind me, and I shiver to think of his amber eyes full of heat. He always likes me bound.

I jerk as a tug pulls me forward, and I turn my head to see Jax has the ends of the wraps in his grip and is pulling me towards the bed.

“Loki, on the bed,” Jax orders, and my trickster Knight obeys, going ahead and pausing at the side of the bed. He holds my stare as he strips out of his clothes; a printed T-shirt and smart jeans that hug his body and hang criminally low.

My breath stutters out of me when he drops his clothes to the floor, standing there naked and hard, and my tongue darts out to lick my dry lips again at the sight of his pierced member standing to attention.

---