Just Jayne

by Ripley Proserpina

  A shirt sat on a nearby hamper, and I pulled it on. Being naked was suddenly uncomfortable.

  The light was too bright in here, and it showed all of my flaws. With a sigh, I extended my arm to flick off the light when I heard someone laugh.

  Even though the walls were stone, the laugh wasn’t muffled. It was as if the person who’d made the sound let loose her hysteria directly in my ear. A door slammed down the hall and footsteps thundered away.

  I opened the door to the bedroom and peered inside. Klaus was still asleep. He hadn’t moved and clearly hadn’t heard the laughter.

  Had I imagined the sound? It was still daylight, but I had no idea how much time had passed since the last time Klaus had woken me. My body ached as if he was still inside me. I could almost feel his fingers clutching my wrists as he held my hands over my head and drove inside me.

  It was hard to see at first, since both ends of the hall had windows and sunlight streamed through the glass. My brain threw logical explanations at me: dust motes, haze.

  It wasn’t any of those things.

  Smoke billowed out from under the door, quickly now filling the hall with its unmistakable scent. I ran to the door and pounded on it before grabbing the knob and twisting.

  Diego lay in bed, asleep. The thick curtains that overhung his canopy bed were on fire.

  “Diego!” I cried, grabbing one of the heavy drapes and pulling it off. My brain barely had time to process the pain as heat seared into my palm, but I gritted my teeth. It fell into a heap on the floor. “Diego!” I was at a loss on how to put it out. My feet were bare, and I almost stepped on it.

  He rocketed out of bed, pushing me out of the way a second later. He grabbed another drape and dropped it on top of the first, smothering it. Grabbing my arms, he pulled me into an embrace. “Are you okay?”

  I couldn’t answer right away. My heart was pounding and beneath my ear, I could hear his pounding as well.

  “Jayne!” He shook me and pushed me back. His gaze raked me from head to toe as he grabbed my hands from behind his back. I winced when his fingers touched the palm of my hand. “What did you do?”

  “The drapes.” I shivered, and he pushed me toward the bed. Once I was seated, he wrapped a blanket around my shoulders.

  “Stay here,” he said, and he hurried into the bathroom. I heard the water run, and when he returned, he had a wet towel in his hand. Carefully, he placed it on my palm. “I’ll be right back. I’m locking the door, don’t open it except for one of us.”

  With one backward glance, he grabbed the knob and left. The door slammed behind him, leaving me alone. I huddled on the bed. My hand throbbed in time with my pulse, but I felt oddly disconnected from it all. Flipping over my hand, I removed the cold cloth to stare at my palm. It felt a lot worse than it looked. My skin was red, but not blistered. I’d been lucky.

  Diego had been lucky. How had this happened? He didn’t smoke. There was no incense burners or candles that I could see. The drapes didn’t spontaneously combust.

  The laugh.

  Grace Poole.

  The longer I waited for someone to return, the angrier I got. It was one thing to keep some crazy lady who just happened to laugh and run through the halls, and another thing to keep a lady who set fires.

  What about Soph?

  Oh shit. I threw the blanket off my shoulders and stomped to the door. Just as I grabbed the knob, it was wrenched open. Klaus stood on the other side. “Are you okay?” He enfolded me in his arms before I could answer. “What happened? Where are you going?”

  Pushing at his chest, I stepped away from him. “Sophie,” I said. “We have to check on her.”

  “Lee has her. She’s fine. How did you know?” he asked. He was asking how I knew about the fire.

  “I didn’t know what was going on,” I answered. “I heard Grace laugh and run down the hall, so I came to check it out.”

  His face flushed, and he narrowed his eyes at me. “Grace? You heard her and so you left. Without waking me? Jayne. What were you thinking?”

  What was I thinking? Right now, I had a lot of thoughts, and if he didn’t stop with the judging, I was going to tell him. “I was thinking that it was weird, and I wanted to make sure everything was okay.”

  “Alone? You can’t do that!”

  “Why do you have a woman like that here?” I asked. “Is this the first fire she’s set? Why in the world would you have someone so unpredictable in the same place Sophie is? What are you thinking?”

  All the color drained from his cheeks. He stepped inside, and then the pile of drapes caught his eye. “Jesus.”

  “He could have died in here, Klaus.”

  “But you found me.” Diego and Tennyson came up behind Klaus. “Not only have you changed our lives, you’re saving them,” Diego said. He reached past Klaus, who had crossed his arms angrily, to take me into his. “Brave Jayne.” Holding me tighter, he leaned his head on top of mine. He was shaking, and his breathing was ragged.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “No.” Stepping away, he took my hand. “Did you put anything on this?”

  “On what?” Tennyson asked.

  “She burned herself on the drapes,” Diego replied.

  “And you didn’t say anything?” Klaus asked. He threw his hands into the air and then slapped them against his thighs. “Jesus, Jayne. You’re running out of here looking for Sophie while you’re injured.”

  “I told you to stay here,” Diego said.

  “I was worried,” I answered.

  “Let me see,” Tennyson spoke quieter and calmer than I’d ever heard him before. Diego passed me over to him so he could examine my hand. “Not so bad. But we should run it under cool water for a while before putting some ointment on it.”

  The blanket slipped from my shoulders as he led me into Diego’s en suite bathroom. Silently, he ran the tap, fingers beneath the water to test the temperature. “Here,” he said.

  The cold water made me gasp and I curled my fingers. The movement caused a zing of pain to shoot from my hand up my arm. “It’ll peel,” Ten said. “But you were lucky. You could have burned yourself right to the bone.”

  I had the strangest urge to apologize, but I’d done nothing wrong. There was a fire and I’d acted. Weighing my burn against the other possible outcomes, I decided it was worth it.

  “Did you find Grace?” I asked.

  “Yes.” A muscle in Ten’s cheek jumped. Reaching past me, he took a cloth off a shelf. He held it beneath the water, saturating it and then placed it carefully on my palm. “She was drunk.”

  “Are you waiting until she sobers up before you fire her?” I said.

  Tennyson didn’t reply.

  “She can’t stay here,” I said. Why wouldn’t he look at me? “Tennyson. She’s not a safe person. You can’t have her around Sophie.”

  “Let us worry about Sophie, Jayne.”

  The breath I sucked in had nothing to do with how much my hand hurt. I knew Tennyson spoke without thinking, but this was too much. A different version of his face flashed before my eyes. This one was from my dreams and showed only disgust.

  At the sound, Tennyson lifted his head quickly. “Shit, Jayne. I’m sorry. That wasn’t what I meant.”

  I didn’t trust my voice. My hand hurt. I was tired and overwhelmed. Nothing that came out of my mouth was going to be logical, and I refused to angry-cry about it. Nodding, I pushed away from the sink and went back to Diego’s room.

  They looked like a group of guilty teenagers. Lee had joined them, but when he noticed me, he stopped talking. “Are you okay?” he asked, striding toward me.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Who’s with Sophie?”

  “Flora,” Lee replied. “She slept through everything, and she’s perfectly fine.” He pushed his hair back from his face before dragging his hands down it. “Jesus.”

  Surely, Lee would see this wasn’t okay. He’d make a decision, speaking for all of them
, and they’d do the right thing. But that was all he said.

  “I’m going to go to bed.” Suddenly, I was more tired than I’d ever been. The fire and my nightmares, along with the hours of travel, were too much.

  “I’ll come with you,” Klaus said.

  “I’ve got it,” I replied. “I’ll see you all in the morning.”

  “Jayne,” Tennyson said from behind me. “Don’t be like that. Please trust us.”

  Lee glanced at him over my shoulder and gave him a small head shake. More secrets.

  “You want me to be your wife, but you don’t trust me,” I said. “Grace is dangerous. Maybe if she stops drinking, maybe she should be allowed here, but she set fire to your bed, Diego. You could have died.” The four men in front of me looked at the floor, and I sighed. “Goodnight.”

  I didn’t expect them to follow me, but I was disappointed anyway.

  38

  Lee

  The door shut quietly behind Jayne. No hysterics. No screaming. Just a simple, logical declaration of the facts.

  The whole thing was so Jayne I almost smiled. But one look at the charred drapes wiped away any amusement I felt.

  “Are you okay?” I asked Diego.

  “Yeah,” he answered. He went to the pile of drapes and gathered them into his arms. I watched him walk with them into the bathroom and then heard the tap in the tub running. Klaus went to the bed and sat on the edge of it. He crossed his arms and stared at the floor like it offended him.

  Ten leaned against the wall and stared at the ceiling, affecting nonchalance. But he didn’t fool me.

  “What did you do?” I asked.

  “Said something stupid again,” he answered. In a flash, he turned and kicked a bedside table so hard it slammed into the opposite wall and shattered.

  Diego rushed out of the bathroom. “What the fuck, Ten?”

  He didn’t answer, instead putting his back to the wall. He slid down it and brought his knees to his chest. “Fuck.”

  “Where’s Grace?” Diego asked.

  “Back on the fourth floor,” I answered. “Everything is locked.”

  “She was drunk?” Klaus asked.

  “Yeah.” Every once in a while, Grace lost her battle with alcohol and fell off the wagon. Inevitably, she got herself together and was as reliable as she usually was.

  “I should take her to a meeting,” Klaus said. “It’s been a while since I’ve been, too.”

  Klaus’s past had bit him in the ass at the same time we won our first Grammy. It should have been the best time in our lives, and instead, shit hit the fan all at once. All of us had not-so-great ways to deal with stress, and we’d all worked hard to fix them.

  I had no end of respect for him, and I knew part of why he rallied behind Grace was due to his personal understanding of alcoholism.

  “What do we tell Jayne?” Diego asked.

  “She has to trust us,” Ten said. He lifted his head and glared at me. “Why doesn’t she trust us?”

  Klaus snorted.

  Diego shook his head and shoved his hands into his pockets. He didn’t answer, but I knew what he was thinking.

  So I said it. “Because we’re lying to her.”

  39

  Jayne

  I woke up when my mattress bounced. Scrambling to seat myself, I found Klaus staring at me. “Guten Morgen.”

  “Morning,” I said. His demeanor was totally different than it had been yesterday. Gone was the anger and guilt. This Klaus was smiling. It made me immediately suspicious. “What?”

  “We’re going to London today.” He took my hand and pulled it into his lap. It felt better than yesterday since I’d slept with the wet cloth in my hand. “This looks better, how does it feel?”

  “Fine,” I answered, distracted. I’d put ointment on it, wrapped it, and then ignored it. Bringing him back around to his earlier statement, I asked, “Why are we going to London?”

  “Because unless you’ve changed your mind, we have a wedding to plan. Now hurry and get dressed. Everyone is waiting.”

  “What about—”

  “Sophie is coming, too.” He answered my question before I could ask it.

  After everything that had happened, I was surprised they were so gung-ho with the wedding. Despite being exhausted, I’d spent hours tossing and turning before I fell asleep. I’d been expecting a serious discussion about our future and fully anticipated them taking back their proposal. “Are you sure about this?”

  “We haven’t changed our minds, little teacher,” Klaus said. “Have you?”

  No. But I found the whole thing so hard to believe that it was difficult for me to accept they hadn’t. “No.”

  “Flora will meet us when we go to the lawyers.” He stood and went to my drawers. Pulling them open, he examined the contents. Without looking, he flung underwear, socks, a shirt, and jeans at me.

  “No bra?” I asked.

  He glanced over his shoulder at me. “No. If you never wore one, I’d be happy.” Something came over him, and he stalked toward me. “I’m very upset I wasn’t able to make good on my plan last night. I had hoped for hours with you.”

  Thinking back to the time he’d awoken me with slow, languid thrusts from behind, I swallowed hard. “We still have time.”

  He shook his head. “Not enough.” He came to a stop in front of me and dropped to his knees. I was wearing a T-shirt and underwear, and he lifted my shirt and dragged my underwear down my legs.

  “Klaus!”

  He buried his face between my legs, giving me a long, slow lick along my folds. My legs shook, and I grabbed his shoulders to steady myself, hissing when I put too much pressure on my hand. Without looking, he reached up to remove my hand from his shoulder and placed it on the bed. He hummed, and the vibration went straight to my clit.

  His hands were calloused and his touch rough as he moved his hands to my ass. Tugging me even closer, he dipped his tongue into my entrance, swirling as if he was trying to collect every drop of wetness he’d conjured.

  “Oh God.” I wouldn’t be able to stand. I wanted to squeeze my legs together, but also open them wide so he could do whatever he wanted to me.

  Klaus didn’t give me the chance to do either. He grabbed the back of my knees so I fell backward. One hand fumbled at the button on his jeans, while he pushed two fingers inside me. He drove them in and out, watching them disappear inside me until he could get his pants down.

  In one smooth push, he was in me. I gasped and wrapped my legs around his hips.

  He stood at the side of my bed, holding onto my hips as he chased his own orgasm. I watched him stare down at me, transfixed with the place where we joined.

  Sweat dripped from his bangs, down his temple, to his curve of his chin. I sat up, cupped his neck, and drew him down to me so I could run my tongue along his jaw.

  “Fuck, Jayne.” My name left his lips on a groan.

  He pushed a hand between us, rolling my clit between his fingers, and I detonated. He followed me, grunting low and deep as he came.

  “I was going to do so much more than that.” Out of breath, he described what he’d planned. “I wanted to lick you awake. I wanted to take my time. Wring two or three orgasms out of you and then fuck you.” His talk made me squirm, and he rubbed a lazy circle around my clit. “Think you could come again?”

  I nodded. Klaus smiled wickedly and leaned down to kiss me just as someone pounded on my door.

  “We need to go.” It was Lee. And he didn’t sound amused.

  Sighing, he took a step away from me and glanced down. “Damn it, Jayne.” He stared between my legs. He reached for me, pushing a finger inside me. “Watching me drip out of you is the hottest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.” He pulled out and pushed in again. “Later.” His calloused skin dragged against mine before he stepped away. “Shower quickly. Do you need help wrapping your hand?”

  I shook my head, and he sighed, looking a little disappointed. “I have to leave or I’m goin
g to join you. And then Lee will probably kick down the door.”

  I pulled my T-shirt, which had somehow ridden up during our quickie, down as far as it would go and scurried into the bathroom. I didn’t bother to look at myself in the mirror because I didn’t want to see how happy I looked. It all seemed too tenuous, and I didn’t want to jinx it.

  “Jayne, try this one.” Tennyson pushed a shirt and pair of pants over the top of a changing room. Dragging it down, I studied it.

  No.

  For the last four hours, I’d let Ten lead me around London into shops that closed and locked their doors just for him. It had been fun—at first. But I’d reached the point now where each outfit felt less like me, and more like a person Ten wanted me to be.

  The other guys had taken Sophie to do something. They wouldn’t tell me what, but I suspected it had something to do with a ring as all the little girl could talk about on the way here was sparkles and bling.

  “Is it on?” Ten asked.

  Standing in my bra and underwear, I opened the door a crack and peered out at him. “No.”

  He played with his lip ring and then asked, “Why not?”

  “These clothes aren’t me,” I said. I was probably as red as a beet, but I trudged on. “I told you, Ten. I’m sorry if that disappoints you.”

  Grabbing the edge of the door, he pulled it open so he could slide inside. “Jayne. I don’t care what you look like.”

  “Why are you always trying to dress me?” I asked. “Do you want me to change?” If it meant so much to him, I’d do it. A pair of leather pants hung on a hanger. It’d taken me quite a bit of shimmying to get into them, but I could do it again. I wouldn’t be able to eat. Or pee. But if it made him happy. “What’s your favorite one?” I asked. “I’ll buy it.”

  “You’re not buying it, Jayne. I want to buy it for you.”

  “Uh-uh.” They’d paid for the trip to California. They’d paid for the trip back. They took care of everything. I could buy my own clothes. “Pick your favorite. I’ll buy it.”