dhibooks Chapter 299: Pillows
Chapter 299: Pillows
When Felicity woke up the next day, she stretched and felt around for her new love, Dimitri, but he wasn’t there. His smell wasn’t there. She opened her eyes to see her other husbands, and then the heat hit her like a wall, not fever, not sickness, but something deeper, something that crawled up from her bones and turned every nerve ending into a live wire.
Felicity was on her feet before she even understood why, the soft throw blanket slipping from her lap as she stood in the centre of her bedroom. Her skin prickled. Her chest felt tight, too tight, like the walls were closing in and the air was too thin and nothing-nothing-was right.
She needed... Pillows.
Every pillow. Every cushion, every throw, every soft thing in this entire crumbling manor. Now.
"Voss," she called, and her voice came out high and thin, almost desperate. "Voss, I need, I need all of them. All the pillows. From every room. Right now."
She was already moving, snatching the two decorative cushions off the sofa and pressing them against her chest. The fabric was cool against her overheated skin, and a small, broken sound escaped her throat, something between a whimper and a sigh. Better. Better. But not enough. Not nearly enough.
Footsteps pounded down the hallway, and then Voss was there, filling the doorway with his massive frame, dark eyes wide and searching. His nostrils flared. She could see the exact moment he caught her scent, his pupils widened, his jaw clenched, and his entire body went rigid.
"Fel," he said, and his voice had dropped to that low, rough register that made something in her belly clench. "What’s?"
"Pillows," she said again, and she knew she sounded frantic, knew she sounded irrational, but she couldn’t stop. Her hands were trembling. "Every pillow in the house. Please. I need them. I need to...I need to build?"
She didn’t even know how to finish the sentence. Build what? A nest? A fortress? A cocoon? Whatever it was, her body was screaming for it with a ferocity that scared her.
Voss crossed the room in three strides and caught her face in his hands. His palms were warm and calloused, and he tilted her chin up, studying her with an intensity that should have made her shy. Instead, she leaned into him, pressing her forehead against his chest and breathing in the scent of leather and pine and him.
"Okay," he murmured, and his lips moved against her hair. "Okay, sweetheart. Whatever you need."
He didn’t ask questions. He never did when she got like this. He
just barked an order over his shoulder, " Victor, Ivan, every pillow in the manor. Now."and then he was guiding her to the centre of the room, helping her lower herself onto the rug because her legs felt like water.
Felicity curled onto her side, knees drawn up, arms wrapped around the two cushions she’d already claimed. The ache in her lower back was deep and throbbing, and her belly felt tight and heavy, the pregnancy making itself known in ways it hadn’t before. Everything hurt. Everything was too much. And yet the instinct driving her was stronger than the pain, this desperate, primal need to gather and arrange and secure.
Victor appeared first, arms overflowing with cushions from the east wing of the manor. His red eyes were wild, his usually immaculate hair dishevelled, and he dropped to his knees beside her with a tenderness that made her throat burn.
"Here, love," he whispered, and he began placing the pillows around her with careful, deliberate movements, one behind her head, two along her back, another tucked between her knees. "How’s this? Tell me what you need."
"More," she breathed. "I need more, and the ones from the blue room, the soft ones with the-the embroidery...."
"I’ll get them." He was gone before she finished the sentence.
Ivan came next, his massive form barely fitting through the doorway with the mountain of bedding he’d collected. He’d stripped entire beds, sheets, comforters, everything and his expression was one of grim, focused determination. He didn’t speak. He just arranged everything around her with the precision of a man building a barricade, his large hands gentle despite their size.
Then Damien, carrying the decorative throw pillows from the library, his dark eyes gleaming with something feral and protective. And Lucan, who’d somehow found every spare cushion in the storage closets, his lean body moving with that liquid grace as he added his contribution to the growing nest. Exile was next; he had raided Snow and Leaf teams’ houses and taken all their pillows as well.
Within minutes, Felicity was surrounded. Pillows stacked three deep on every side, cushions forming walls around her, soft fabrics draped over her body like a canopy. She lay at the centre of it all, curled on her side, and finally, finally, the tightness in her chest began to ease.
"There," she whispered, pressing her face into a pillow that smelled like lavender. "There. That’s, ugh, that’s better."
Voss settled behind her, his chest flush against her back, one massive arm draped over her hip. She could feel the rumble of his voice through his ribs when he spoke. "Talk to me, Fel. What’s happening?"
"Hormones," she managed. "I think. Everything’s too much. My skin hurts. My back hurts. I couldn’t sit still. I needed?"
"Shh." His lips found the curve of her shoulder. "You don’t have to explain. You have it now. You have everything."
Victor lay on her other side, his body curving around her front, his hand coming to rest on her swollen belly. "The little ones are active this morning," he murmured, and she could feel the wonder in his voice as one of the babies kicked against his palm. "They feel it too."
"My body is hungry," Felicity said, and she didn’t just mean the babies. She meant the ache between her thighs, the emptiness that the nesting had momentarily distracted her from but couldn’t erase. Her body wanted to be filled. Wanted to be saturated. With them. With their seed, their essence, everything they were.