Chapter 282: 282 | This Room Was Built For You
The nightstand. Every sanctum configuration I’d ever built included a nightstand with a drawer. I’d furnished this particular version with Addison in mind, and right now the drawer contained exactly one item that I’d placed there during the design phase because some part of my brain apparently operates on a level of foresight that my conscious mind refuses to acknowledge.
I reached over and pulled the drawer open. Inside sat a strip of black silk, folded once. A blindfold.
Addison saw it and her entire body went still. Not tense. Not afraid. Still in the way a hunting animal goes still when it spots prey, every muscle engaged and waiting with absolute focus on the object in my hand.
"Where did that come from."
"I put it here."
"You put a blindfold in a drawer in your sex dimension before you knew I was coming tonight."
"I put a blindfold in a drawer because I built this room for you."
The crack in her armor spread from her eyes down to her mouth. Something fragile lived in that expression, something she would deny tomorrow and probably threaten to kill me over if I ever mentioned it.
"Put it on me."
I moved behind her on the bed. She sat with her back to me, all that pale skin and those two parallel scars on her upper back from training catching candlelight. I gathered her hair, all of it, that gorgeous mess of black and purple, and twisted it forward over one shoulder so the back of her neck was exposed. My lips found the knob of her top vertebra and I kissed it once before laying the silk across her eyes.
The fabric settled against her skin. I tied it behind her head, firm enough that light couldn’t creep in from the sides but loose enough that she could pull it off if she wanted to. She didn’t want to. Her hands fell to her lap and her shoulders dropped two inches as some of the constant tension she carried everywhere bled out of her body.
Addison Baxter without sight was a completely different creature. She didn’t compensate by turning her head to track sounds or tensing against the vulnerability. She leaned into it. Sank backward until her bare shoulders pressed against my chest and her head tipped back against my collarbone.
"Now what, Monroe."
I activated Sensory Hijack.
At Bronze rank, I could manipulate two senses at once. Touch was the obvious choice. I’d used it on Belle and Naomi both, amping up nerve sensitivity until every brush of my fingers felt like fireworks against their skin.
But Addison had told me to surprise her. And I had a better idea.
I focused the touch manipulation across the surface of her entire body. Every inch of exposed skin from her bare feet to her shoulders lit up with phantom sensation, like invisible hands were running across her stomach, her thighs, her arms, the backs of her knees, all at once.
Not my hands. I was sitting behind her with my actual palms resting on her shoulders, completely still. The phantom touches came from everywhere and nowhere, a dozen different contact points ghosting across her body in patterns that her brain couldn’t predict or brace against.
Addison made a sound that could have come from someone else entirely. High and startled and stripped of every shred of attitude she used as a shield. Her back arched away from my chest and her hands grabbed my thighs where they bracketed her hips, nails digging in reflexively.
"What. The fuck. Is that."
I dropped my mouth to her ear. "My hands are on your shoulders."
"Then what is touching my—" She shivered violently as a phantom sensation traced the underside of her left breast. "That’s. That’s not. How are you."
"I told you. I have things Aurora’s ability taught me."
I kissed behind her ear while the phantom touches kept running. Her throat. Her collarbones. Down between her breasts where goosebumps erupted across the pale skin in cascading waves.
I took my actual hands off her shoulders and placed them on her inner thighs where the stockings created a soft, warm boundary against my palms. The contrast between my real touch there and the phantom sensation everywhere else made her entire body jolt like she’d been shocked.
"Jace."
I kissed her inner thigh. Right above the stocking line where the skin was bare and sensitive and untouched by anyone who’d bothered to earn it. The silk of the blindfold shifted as her head fell back.
The phantom hands kept moving across her torso, her ribs, the dip of her waist, the curve of her hips above the lace waistband.
My actual mouth worked its way higher along her left thigh, pressing slow open-mouthed kisses against skin that smelled like soap and something warmer underneath, something that belonged specifically to the girl wearing the blindfold.
"Jace. If you don’t."
I kissed higher. An inch from the lace. Close enough that my breath ghosted against the fabric and I could feel the heat radiating from her.
The moan she produced was unlike anything I’d heard from anyone. Not polished or pretty or performed for an audience. It came from somewhere primal and uncontrolled, a low vibrating sound that climbed in pitch until it cracked, like a note held too long on a violin string about to snap.
The sound hit some frequency in my lizard brain that made my arms break out in goosebumps and my cock throb against the denim I was still wearing.
Beautiful. The word felt insufficient. Addison’s moan was beautiful the way an earthquake was beautiful, the way something enormous and devastating could also be the most honest thing you’d ever witnessed.
I decided it was time to eat.
Not the metaphorical kind. The real kind.
I pulled back from her thighs and repositioned myself so I was kneeling between her legs on the wine-colored sheets. Addison lay back against the pillows, blindfolded, chest heaving, her breasts rising and falling in a rhythm that matched my own heartbeat. I pushed one hand up her stomach to her right breast and cupped it. My thumb found her nipple and pressed.
I activated Essence Extraction.
