Divine Milking System-Chapter 56 | The Copper-Rank Spiral and the Gold-Rank Romance
They stood there under the spray. Not talking. Not moving. Just breathing together while the water ran cold and the steam slowly cleared.
Finally, Naomi pulled back. Looked up at him.
"Can I ask you something?"
"Always."
"Wave Motion." She bit her lip. "Can you use it now?"
Jace’s eyebrows lifted. "You want me to test it?"
"I want to see if it worked."
"Right now? In the shower?"
"Why not?"
He laughed.
"You’re serious," he said.
"I gave you my ability. I want to see what it looks like when you use it."
Jace studied her face for a long moment. Then he stepped back and held out one hand, palm up.
"Alright. But if I blow a hole in the wall, you’re explaining it to Hikaru."
Naomi grinned.
She watched his expression shift. Concentration replacing the easy warmth. His brow furrowed slightly. His jaw tensed.
Nothing happened.
Then she felt it.
A change in the air. A pressure building around Jace’s hand that made the steam swirl differently. The water droplets on his palm began vibrating in place.
Golden-white light flickered between his fingers.
Naomi’s breath caught.
The light grew brighter. Coalesced into a tight spiral of energy that rotated slowly above his hand, humming with barely contained power.
It looked exactly like hers but golden instead of blue. Exactly like Wave Motion was supposed to look when she called it up for training.
But it also looked different.
Smaller. Weaker. The rotation wasn’t as tight. The glow wasn’t as intense.
Copper rank, she realized. He’d stolen her ability but it had downgraded to the starting tier.
Still. Watching him hold her power in his hand, seeing the spiral of light reflected in his amber eyes, made something in Naomi’s chest swell with pride.
"It worked," she whispered.
Jace closed his fist. The light vanished. The pressure in the air released all at once.
He looked at her with an expression she couldn’t quite read.
"Thank you," he said.
"For what?"
"For trusting me enough to let me have this."
Naomi reached up and touched his face again. Her thumb traced along his cheekbone.
"You’re welcome," she said. "Just don’t use it to blow up anyone I like."
"No promises."
She kissed him. Quick. Sweet. The kind of kiss that promised more later without demanding anything now.
When she pulled back, Jace was smiling.
"Get dressed," he said. "Before I decide we’re doing this again."
Naomi’s whole body flushed hot. "We can’t."
"Why not?"
"Because I can barely walk as it is."
"Fair point."
She stepped out of the shower on shaking legs and grabbed a towel from the rack. Her reflection in the mirror was a mess. Hair plastered to her skull. Face flushed. Lips swollen.
She looked thoroughly destroyed.
And she couldn’t stop smiling.
Jace turned off the water and grabbed his own towel. They dried off in comfortable silence. Naomi pulled her sports bra back on with some difficulty. Found her shorts crumpled by the door. Jace dressed in clean boxer briefs and basketball shorts.
Naomi pulled her hoodie over her head and smoothed it down with both hands, buying time she didn’t need.
Her hair was still damp. Her legs still ached. The space between her thighs had that new soreness she didn’t have language for yet, foreign and warm and not unpleasant.
She reached for her phone on Jace’s nightstand.
"You can stay."
Naomi’s hand stopped.
She turned around. Jace sat on the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees, looking at her with an expression that was different from all his other expressions. The ones she’d catalogued over three days. The calculating one. The amused one. The focused one he wore during training when he was pretending not to struggle.
This one was quieter.
"Stay tonight," he said. "If you want."
Naomi searched his face for the angle. The system reason. The extraction logic that made keeping her here strategically useful.
She didn’t find one.
"You don’t need more milk," she said slowly.
"I know."
"So you don’t need me to stay for the ability."
"I know."
"Then why?"
Jace looked at her for a long second. His jaw worked slightly, like he was deciding how honest to be. Then he just said it.
"Because I want you here."
The words hit her somewhere soft. She wasn’t prepared for them. Had steeled herself against strategy and calculation and all the careful Jace Monroe architecture of wanting something without admitting it. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚
Not this. Not four words with nothing attached to them.
"Jace."
"You don’t have to," he said.
"That’s not—" She stopped. Pressed her lips together. "I didn’t say no."
The corner of his mouth moved.
Naomi looked down at her phone, then at the bed, then at Jace sitting there with his damp hair and his tired eyes.
She thought about her empty room. The journal she’d write in tonight about what happened, the letter to Marcus and Devon she’d never send, the ceiling she’d stare at until exhaustion finally pulled her under.
She thought about her mother saying one day is enough to know.
"My roommate stays in her room," Naomi said finally.
"I know."
"Nobody would notice."
"Probably not."
She set her phone back down on the nightstand.
Jace watched her do it. Didn’t say anything. Didn’t make it into something bigger than it was.
Naomi pulled back the sheets on the side she’d occupied for the last forty minutes and climbed in. The pillow still smelled like her shampoo and his soap mixed together. She pulled the covers to her chin and looked at the ceiling.
The bed dipped as Jace settled beside her. He reached over and turned off the lamp. The room went dark, soft city light from the window cutting a pale stripe across the floor.
Neither of them spoke.
Jace lay on his back. Naomi lay on hers. A few inches of space between them in the dark.
Then his hand found hers under the covers.
Naomi stared at the ceiling.
Her chest felt enormous.
Outside the closed bedroom door, she could hear nothing from the living room. Hikaru, who had definitely heard everything, was maintaining a silence so total it bordered on supernatural.
Naomi closed her eyes.
"Goodnight," she said quietly.
"Night," Jace said.
His thumb moved once across her knuckles.
Naomi fell asleep holding his hand.
