Page 46 of Legacy Ascended

There's a whole conversation happening around me that I've stopped following.

"Right," I say, and stand up.

The room looks at me.

"I want the three of you," I say, "and I'd like everybody else to have a really lovely evening somewhere that isn't here."

Renzo puts both hands over his face.

"Finally," Sophia says, and swings her feet off the wall.

Declan is already turning off the stove. "There's bread and the rest of the pasta if anybody needs feeding later. I'm in the library till eleven."

"I'm going to Sophia's," Renzo says, gathering his notes with enormous dignity, "and I'd like it noted that I've been extremely mature about this."

"You put your hands over your face."

"I've been extremely mature," he says again, and shuts the door behind him.

“Hell yes,” Torres says as soon as the door closes.

“You were waiting for them to leave?”

“Jessica, I’ve been waiting for them to leave all night. I was one Renzo joke away from carrying him into the corridor.”

He catches the back of my neck and kisses me in the middle of the room. God, I’ve missed this. His mouth, his hands, the way he holds nothing back once he knows I want him.

Luke closes his laptop, sets his phone facedown on top of it, and comes toward us. Soren puts his tea aside without taking his eyes off me.

We make it to my bedroom before I pull away long enough to speak.

“My shoulder’s fine as long as I don’t put weight on that arm or lift it over my head. If anything hurts, I’ll tell you.”

“You’d better,” Soren says.

“I will.”

He gives me a look.

“I mean it.”

“We heard you,” Luke says. He touches my jaw with the backs of his fingers. “You don’t have to convince us.”

“I’ve spent two weeks being extremely sensible.”

“You have,” Torres says. “We’re all very proud. Take your shirt off.”

I laugh. “You take it off.”

“Even better.”

He eases it over my head, careful with my left arm, then drops it on the floor.

This is my room. My bed. Nobody is waiting outside the door. Two weeks of walking past all three of them in daylight and being careful, and now the door is shut, and there is nowhere any of us has to be.

“I’ve missed this,” I say. “I’ve missed having time.”

Torres presses his mouth to my throat. “Then we’d better make up for it.”