Chapter 26
I try James’s door first, rapping softly against the wood, but there is no sound on the other side and when I poke my head in, I find the room empty.
Where is he?
I glance down the hall to Roc’s room where the door is shut.
I go there, but before I can knock, I catch the sound of faint grunting and my heart catches in my throat.
What if Hally has already gotten to them? What if he’s trying to hurt them right now?
I burst into the room and—
I suck in a breath.
The blood freezes in my veins.
“Oh god.” I stumble back. “I—I…I shouldn’t…oh god.”
They are on the bed, together, sweat coating their skin.
My mind immediately goes to embarrassment and my body immediately goes to exhilaration.
This is something I shouldn’t be seeing and yet…and yet…I can’t tear my eyes away.
“Does no one know how to knock?” Roc says.
I turn for the door, but Roc is suddenly there, slamming it shut.
“You have two choices,” he tells me, his hair damp and mussed, his lips red and swollen, his cock soaking wet.
My pussy clenches at the sight of him. It remembers quite well what it was to be fucked by him. I never would have thought I’d be jealous of James getting that part of Roc. I thought they hated each other more than anything else in the world.
“One,” Roc says, “you come over to the bed and you join us.”
My mouth drops open.
“Two, you sit in that chair and you watch.”
Sense comes back to me like a slow trickle of water. I cross my arms over my chest realizing that I’ve barged into his room in nothing but my nightclothes.
“Or how about the third option?” I challenge. “I leave.”
Roc surrounds me and I backpedal into the door. He puts his hand on it just above my head, caging me in on one side. Every hard line of him is in my face, overwhelming me. On the surface, there is nothing to differentiate Roc from any other man, but deep down my body knows that he is danger personified, more monster than man.
The hair rises along my neck.
“Do you want to leave, Your Majesty?” he asks me.
I start to answer, try to form the three letters into one word—yes—but it won’t come out. Because the letters are actually wrong, because the answer is no.
My silence says everything.
“Then I repeat,” Roc says, “you have two choices.”
“Crocodile,” James says, nearly a hiss.
But Roc cuts him with a look over his shoulder and says, “Six words, Captain. Remember?”
James falls quiet, scowling at Roc.
What does ‘six words’ mean? It’s things like this that remind me of just how outside of them I am. They have coded language, secrets, and inside jokes.
How long have they been together? How did it even happen?
Are they together-together?
“I’m married,” I tell Roc.
“I won’t hold it against you,” he says.
I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be doing this. Not because I’m married. Hald has had so many mistresses in the time of our marriage, I’ve lost count. In fact, he encouraged me to take on a lover several times before.
It’s not Hald and any duty to the marriage.
It’s Roc and James.
It’s the temptation of them.
It’s the terror that they’ll leave me again as they did before and I will be left clinging to the memory of them, scrambling for scraps of a life.
If they’re together, they don’t need me.
I tilt my chin, looking up at Roc. “Did you know I was here? Did either of you know?”
“No, we didn’t,” Roc confirms.
I look between him and James. “Then why now? Why did you come?”
Roc’s answer is quick. “For you.”
“Why?”
James climbs off the bed and comes over. He too is naked, his cock so hard, it’s pointing at me, the tip glistening.
I swallow, my body buzzing in a way it hasn’t buzzed since I left Neverland.
I expect James to give me an explanation, something to help it all make sense.
But instead, he takes a chunk of my hair in hand, yanks my head back and kisses me.
All of the tension melts from my body.
James kisses like he didn’t know what it was to breathe until our mouths were meeting.
A shiver races up my spine.
He kisses me long and deep and the air is warm against my skin, his lips warmer still.
And when he breaks it, he rests his forehead against mine and says, “I’ve missed you all of the days that have stretched between then and now. If I’d known you were here, pregnant with my baby, I would have come, Wendy Darling. I would have saved you or died trying.”
Tears burn in my eyes and my chin wobbles, but James holds fast. He gives me the intensity of his stare so I know…I know…that he is telling the truth.
I break down. Right there in his arms. I sob like no time at all has passed, like I’m still the girl in that dark, wet prison cell, watching my belly grow, knowing that no one is coming to save me.
But every day I dreamed of it. Of James or Roc or both sweeping in through that prison door and taking me far, far away.
“I’m sorry we didn’t come,” James tells me. “But we are here now.”
I nod against him and then our mouths crash together. He drives me back against the wall. Our kisses are frenzied, hungry, desperate to close the distance between all the years hanging between us.
He unties my robe, yanks it from my body, then wraps his hand and his hook around my thighs, hoisting me up into his arms.
We bang against the wall. The thin straps of my nightgown slip from my shoulders and my breasts hit the air, nipples peaking. James takes one in his mouth, his tongue sliding over the tight bud and I arch my back, eager for more of him.
I know I shouldn’t be here. I know I shouldn’t be doing this.
But I am lost in him, in the desperation to feel saved.
And when my eyes drift open, refocus, I spot Roc behind us, watching.
I hold out my hand for him, panting, as James uses his hook to tear off my panties.
My pussy is throbbing, dripping wet. To have them both, at the same time…it’s so illicit, so wrong…
I haven’t been this turned on in…forever.
“Please,” I beg Roc.
It isn’t until James glances back and gives Roc a nod that he comes.
“Hold on to me, Wendy,” James says.
I wind my arms around his neck, holding on tight as he lines himself up at my opening.
Roc puts his mouth to James’s ear. “Don’t go easy on her, Captain.”
James’s gaze darkens. His hook digs into the back of my thigh and pain bites into my skin.
“I would suspect the queen needs to be properly fucked,” Roc adds and then, taking Roc’s orders, James plunges hard inside of me.