Chapter 378 - Jeniffer’s Awakened Powers
The food was excessive.
That was the first thing he noticed — the table set with more than dinner, more than a weeknight warranted. Chicken, the braised kind she only made on Sundays or when something needed softening. A clear soup that smelled like ginger and something green. A bowl of congee with the soft-boiled egg already placed, the yolk barely set, the way he had liked it since he was small.
Gareth stood in the kitchen doorway and looked at the table and thought: ’she cooked all of this while I was—’
He did not complete the thought.
"’Is something happening today?’" He pulled out his chair and sat. Kept his eyes on the food. "’This looks like a holiday.’"
Jennifer was at the counter.
Her back was to him.
He watched her shoulders — the familiar set of them, the rounded, honest slope that he had used to read moods from his entire childhood — and something in the set of them was slightly wrong. Not tense. More like ’managed.’ Like a person whose posture is normal but whose normalcy is an active process rather than a passive one.
"’Actually.’" She turned. Set a glass of water at his place. Did not fully meet his eyes. "’I’m going on a trip.’"
He looked up.
"’What trip.’"
"’For the bakery.’" She sat across from him, hands wrapping around her own cup. "’There’s a company — they’re interested in the cakes. Someone wants to see the full range, they invited me to come and — it’s a few weeks.’"
Gareth looked at her.
"’What company? You have the bakery, you don’t have a—’"
"’It came up recently.’" Her eyes went to the table surface. "’Very recently.’"
"’Mom.’"
"’It’s fine.’" She looked up and the eye contact was — it lasted two seconds before her gaze moved — not evasive, but careful in a way that was new, careful in the way a person is careful when they are managing information they’ve decided you don’t get yet. "’You should focus on basketball. Your father was a great player, you should—’"
The word ’father’ landed the way it always landed — like a door opening into a room that was mostly empty now but still had a shape.
Gareth looked at her face.
She was looking at the table.
There was something at the edge of her eyes.
Not tears yet. The place where tears come from, pressurizing.
"’Mom.’" Softer. "’What happened.’"
"’Nothing.’" She shook her head. Fast. "’Nothing happened. Eat.’"
He watched her for a moment.
Then he picked up his chopsticks.
They ate.
The food was good — the chicken fell from the bone the way it only did when she’d had time and intention, the soup was clean and deep, the congee was exactly what it had always been — and Gareth ate and let the quiet do the work that questions couldn’t, and his mother sat across the table and didn’t quite eat and held her cup and occasionally looked at the window.
"’Fine,’" he said, setting down his bowl. "’Few weeks. Just make sure you actually call.’"
"’The network out there is—’"
"’Mom.’"
She stopped.
"’Try.’"
She looked at him.
"’Okay.’"
He leaned back, something he’d been holding releasing slightly. "’And when you get there, show them everything. The cardamom ones. The egg tarts. Don’t just bring the safe stuff.’" He pointed at the chicken. "’Don’t just bring the chicken. Bring the whole—’"
"’!’"
Jennifer flinched.
The flinch was a full-body thing — her shoulders going up, her hands tightening on her cup, her eyes going briefly wide — and then she sat very still.
Gareth frowned.
"’Mom?’"
Her face was — ’flushed.’ A color that had arrived in the last two seconds without any visible cause, running from her jaw up toward her hairline, and her lips were pressed together with the specific, controlled pressure of someone managing a sound.
"’I’m fine.’" Her voice was slightly higher than usual. "’I just — the cup was — hot.’"
He looked at the cup.
The cup had been on the table for ten minutes.
"’Right,’" he said, slowly. "’The cup.’"
She nodded.
He watched her face.
She was looking at the space slightly to his left — not at him, not at the wall, at the air beside him — with an expression that was trying very hard to be a normal expression and was not entirely succeeding.
His eyes went sideways.
Nothing there.
"’Mom, you’re acting—’"
"’Eat your congee,’" she said. Still the slightly elevated voice. "’It’s getting cold.’"
Gareth looked at his congee.
His eyelids went heavy.
He noticed this — registered it with the mild surprise of a young man whose body had just sent an unexpected signal — and opened them deliberately.
They went heavy again.
"’That’s—’" He blinked. Blinked harder. The kitchen was the same kitchen, the table was the same table, his mother was across from him and her expression had changed to something that looked like—
"’Mom.’" His voice came out slow. Rounded at the edges. "’Why am I—’"
His chin dropped toward his chest.
He caught himself.
Looked up.
His mother’s eyes were wet.
"’Mom—’"
He fell asleep in the chair, his head tipping forward gently, his breathing settling into the long, even rhythm of deep and immediate unconsciousness.
The chair caught him.
Jennifer sat across the table and watched her son sleep and said nothing for a long moment.
The hand on her ass had arrived so quietly she had not heard him cross the kitchen.
Raven’s palm, large and warm and entirely familiar to her by now in all its unhurried possessiveness, settled over the thick curve of her left cheek through the fabric of her skirt and ’kneaded.’
She did not look at him.
She kept her eyes on her son’s sleeping face — the slack, peaceful face of a young man under a magic that was not hers but that she had, in the end, chosen to use — and her jaw tightened.
The hand squeezed.
Her skirt shifted.
She felt the hem being worked upward at the back — the familiar, efficient motion of fingers that had learned this fabric today — and the cool kitchen air hit the back of her thighs.
She kept her eyes on Gareth.
"’You used it,’" Raven said.
His voice was warm and close. He had moved near enough that his breath reached the back of her neck, the specific warmth she had been smelling all day — that scent, the one that had made her leak in a municipal garden before he’d even touched her — arriving again and doing what it did.
Her thighs pressed together.
She didn’t answer.
His hand pulled her skirt higher.
"’Dream magic.’" A low, considering sound. "’From your first awakening. And you chose it for this.’" The sound in his voice was not quite surprise. More the warm satisfaction of a man whose prediction has been confirmed. "’Protecting the boy.’"
"’Don’t.’" She said it to the table, to her son’s sleeping face, to the cup she was still holding. "’Don’t make it into something.’"
His fingers found the waistband of her underwear.
She closed her eyes.
"’You promised.’" Her voice was level. She had practiced level. Level was the one thing she had left. "’You promised he would be safe.’"
His lips found the back of her neck.
The kiss landed below her hairline — slow, deliberate, the press of a mouth that had no intention of rushing anything — and she felt the warmth of it spread forward along her jaw and downward through her chest and she ’hated’ the warmth for arriving, and it arrived anyway.
"’Of course.’" The words vibrated against her neck. His hand curved over the full, soft weight of her ass, fingers spreading across the generous flesh, feeling the give of it. "’He’ll be fine.’"
The fingers dipped lower.
She exhaled.
Slow. Controlled. The exhale of a woman who is choosing not to make a sound in a kitchen where her son is sleeping three feet away.
"’You just have to—’" His lips moved from her neck to her ear, the voice dropping further, the specific quiet of a man who knows he is the only one being heard and is using that intimacy to deliver something that will not leave easily. "’—satisfy me. Every day.’"
Jennifer looked at her son’s face.
The soft, peaceful slope of it in sleep — the jaw loose, the small crease at the corner of his eye that had been there since he was three, the face of a young man who had no idea what the women in his life were doing to keep him breathing.
Her pussy was wet.
She acknowledged this the way she acknowledged all the things her body was doing that she hadn’t asked it to — flatly, precisely, with the professional detachment of a woman who had run threat assessments in worse conditions.
Her hand, resting on the table, tightened around the cup.
"B-but... I will not let you try that again with my back."