Page 89 of Jackal's Pride

Maureen

“Come on, Jack,” I huffed. “Help me out here.”

The only response I got was the full extent of his weight pressed on me as we crumbled to my bedroom floor.

“Jack.” I tapped his shoulders, tracing the curve of his eyelashes with my gaze as I did. “Jack.” I found myself smiling the longer I stared down at him. “I can’t lift you up into the bed by myself. You’ve got to stop overdoing it.”

No response.

This was us every day for the last week since the incident in New York. He saved as many people as he could from the pestilence brought on by the end. Afterward, I’d carry him back to our house—Jackal’s life was with me now so of course my home was his. I had to get Barron to help me carry him yesterday.

There was no point in telling Jackal we could take a break for a day. He wouldn’t. Not when it was my life on the line.

I stroked his head lovingly before grabbing the blanket off the bed and snuggling up beside him, placing one of his giant arms around my waist as I covered us. I rested when Jack rested just so that we had more time together. Sometimes I’d do my Reaper work while he slept like this, then come back and rest with him a little before he awakened. Him waking up was what I looked forward to the most.

Later, I awakened with his giant palm pawing at my breast as he nuzzled my neck. “Mm,” I mumbled and pushed my ass against him.

“Wonder what I’ll hear from your mind today?” he mused affectionally.

Having our minds linked randomly at any given moment was bizarre, there was no other way to put it. There was no hiding your deepest fears when you couldn’t protect your own thoughts in your head—that was what I might have thought before I met Jackal, or maybe even a week ago when we first heard each other’s thoughts. But now being inside his head—the small moments I got to—was beautiful.

“She’s beautiful. The slope of her back, the curve of her thighs, the roundness of her ass.”

“She’s mine… How am I so lucky? Do I deserve this amount of happiness? I don’t think I do, but I’m never letting her go all the same.”

“Look at her trying to resist me.”

No, Jack, you’re the beautiful one,I wanted to say each time I heard his thoughts.In there, I was painted so prettily. Held so high. Broken down into all these pieces that made me who I was—I heard all the ways he saw me, even when I was being unreasonable—he adored it. Even when I was mean—it only made him want to ravish me. When he knew I was sad—he was sad.

I didn’t belong to anyone, but I was his. I didn’t understand how that worked, but it was real. I was me, and I was always going to live for me. But Jackal? He laid claim to the only parts I could give away—my heart and bitter soul. He thought they were something special, but I didn’t agree. On the other hand, I knew his heart and soul were extraordinary, and he gave them to me. Tome.

The other night, he foolishly said, “There’s no me without you.”

Those absurd words made my cold, dark heart pitter-patter against his beating heart. But then I heard his thoughts and realized something. Jackal was it. He was my soulmate.

I spent years thinking I’d never get this, get what my parents had. It was one thing to see it all your life, but it was another tofeelit. Until love found you, there was no way of truly understanding it. Only then, could you believe it existed. You might say you didn’t want it—like I did—but when it found you, there was no telling it to go away. It wasn’t until I met Jackal that I knew why I didn’t think I wanted it. No one had made me feel romance but him.

Pulling me off the floor, Jackal laid me on top of him. He ripped off our clothes. Always rushing had become a routine for us. I figured in another hundred years maybe we would get more chances to take our time. Maybe I’d get around to teaching him how to be better at foreplay. Jackal had no problem with fucking, but his lack of experience showed in other areas. He was plenty attentive, though, about learning how my body came unglued.

But then maybe taking our time with things like foreplay wasn’t meant for us. Rough and slow, fast and rough, frenzied and bruising. We were wild with each other—for one another.

But sensual and slow with him?Oh,how I was falling in love with that as well.

“Do you want me to make eggs?” Jackal asked after the first round. I was still lying on top of him—still on the floor.

I lifted my head and smiled. “Want me to make us something better?” I asked him.

“Only if you show me how,” came his response. I taught him how to make eggs yesterday. Jackal preferred when I cooked him something instead of materializing food. So he bargained to learn how for us when I didn’t want to. What he already knew was that I didn’t mind doing it for him. My secret was long out after the mind reading, nonetheless, Jackal wanted to do something for me. Perhaps, he wanted ways to spoil me like I did him by feeding him.

It was a strange yet fascinating sensation learning to live with someone you desperately wanted to make happy. But that was how I knew I loved this life. I loved Jackal for making all these new things so easy and fun.

“I love you,” he whispered.

“I know.” I grinned and then said it back with my thoughts.“I love you.”

Harvest and his group, however, were still a problem. New troubles came to the human world every day. A world that was still ending.

But with Jackal, when there was a chance to rest and a time not to worry, I got lost in him. I began to paint our future—wondering what we will be once we’d stopped Harvest and the Devil from ascending to the human world.

I didn’t know what our future would be, but I was already smiling in anticipation.