The dojo smelled like rubber mats and effort.Which is a polite way of saying it smelled like a gym, but Jade had a rule about calling it a gym. Gym was where you went to look at yourself in mirrors and grunt at weights. The dojo was where you came to get better. These were different things and she would explain the difference to you at length if you tested her on it.I'd stopped testing her on it around week three."Pads up," she said.I got the pads up.She came in fast, jab, cross, jab, and I absorbed the impact through the pads and my arms and my general sense of self-worth, which had been through enough at this point to be fairly resilient.This was calm. That was the thing I kept noticing. Everything had been noise for weeks, Derek, Marcus, Leona, the lineup, the call, the group chat pinging at 2 AM, and now it was just this. Jade's footwork on the mat. The clean snap of leather against foam. The rhythm that didn't require emotional processing."You're drifting left," she said.

She got rid of the rest of what was between us with minimal ceremony, shed her own bottoms in one pull, and then it was just her skin warm against mine on the rubber mat and her hand guiding my cock inside her and she sank down in one slow, rolling drop of her hips that emptied my lungs completely.She was tight and slick and took me to the hilt and held there for a breath, and I watched her jaw set the same way it did when she was absorbing a hit and deciding it wasn't enough to stop her.Then she started to move.Fast. From the start, no warmup, no easing in. Her hips snapped down to meet mine in a rhythm she set and kept and did not apologize for, her thighs gripping my sides like she'd calculated exactly how much leverage she needed. Every roll ground her down against me and pulled a wet, slick sound from where we connected that I was going to be thinking about for weeks.I put my hands on her hips. She let me."Don't zone out," she said, breathless but still in charge of the situ

I sat with it for a second. "Most mentorships work because there's a clear structure. Teacher, student. If you collapse that, you're left with something neither person knows how to navigate. And I don't know how to navigate it."She didn't move. "What if the structure doesn't collapse? What if it evolves?""Into what?""Into something more effective." She picked up her wine glass from the table, the one she'd poured before I arrived, and held it without drinking. "The most effective influence relationships in history have always had personal dimension. Not romantic, necessarily. But they had investment, stakes. The attention you only get when someone actually cares what happens to you.""You're making an argument for complicating things.""I'm making an argument for what's already complicated." She set the glass down. "You didn't text me back for days.""I was thinking.""I know." A small smile. "You trusted me with your embarrassing stories. You don't do that with people you're keepi

I was on my couch in boxers and a T-shirt that said WORLD'S OKAYEST, scrolling my phone with the laser focus of a man avoiding every thought he'd had in the last six hours.Leona's office. Leona's window. Leona's everything. The elevator with the jazz. The version of me in the polished steel doors that had looked, for once, like he knew what he’s doing.I'd come home, decided I wasn't ready to be a person yet, and poured cereal into a bowl that may or may not have been clean.Spoon. Phone. Cereal. The holy trinity of not processing your feelings.Then the hair on my arms stood up, that ozone-and-licked-battery tang creeping in, and I knew that feeling. I did not love that feeling.[TRUE NEXUS EVOLUTION: STAGE 1 — INITIATED]"Oh, come ON," I said, to no one, with cereal in my mouth.The light in the room bent. That's the only way I can describe it. Like someone grabbed reality and squeezed, and a column of pale blue light poured up out of the middle of my living room rug, the one with

A/N: Unfortunately, I messed up some chapter numbering, and this chapter should have been chapter 40, but I skipped it due to the numbering issue. I'm sorry, guys. It doesn't change anything plot-relevant, but it is a Clara scene that's important (Clara bond quest ends) and also spicy. Enjoy!Derek was locked up.I kept repeating that fact in my head like a mantra. Derek Vance. In custody. Behind bars. Not standing outside Clara's window. Not sending threatening texts. Not existing in any way that mattered to us.It was late. Almost midnight. The police station had taken forever, and now we were back at the building, standing in the hallway outside our units.Everyone looked like they'd been through a blender set to emotional exhaustion setting.Clara's shoulders were slumped in a way I'd never seen before. Not defeated. Just... tired. Like she'd been holding herself upright for weeks and finally had permission to slouch.Jade was still in combat mode, jaw tight, eyes scanning the hal