Page 21

GRACE

The aftershocks are still rippling through me, my pulse throbbing low and deep between my legs.

My body feels both heavy and weightless all at once, like a balloon tied to a boulder.

I’m still riding the edge of sleep and sensation, as the sharp ache of release tangles with the hot sting of mortification.

Oh. My. God.

I’ve managed to keep this weird quirk a secret. My secret slumbering orgasms that wake me up hot and wet between my thighs. All my pent-up desires come out through dreams rather than in my real life, at least before Levi cracked me open.

And now?

It’s Jaxon who knows what I do. Jaxon, who saw what I’ve never seen myself.

His chest is rising hard and fast, his eyes dark as coal, burning hot enough to set me on fire if he gets any closer. His hands are clenched at his sides like they want desperately to reach for me, but won’t .

I don’t know which of us is more horrified.

I don’t know which of us is more turned on.

The air between us feels heavy and saturated with everything we’re both pretending not to want.

My heart pounds hard enough that I swear it must be audible.

His silhouette fills the doorway, tense and motionless, like one wrong word will send him fleeing or hurtling toward me.

The static that’s been simmering since the first moment I laid eyes on him has gone from a low hum to a deafening roar, loud enough that it drowns out reason.

I don’t want him to leave. I don’t want to be alone.

Not with the ache still curling low in my belly and the memory of his eyes locked on me like I was too tempting to resist.

Slowly, without thinking, I stand, reaching for the hem of my shirt and dragging it over my head in one smooth pull. The fabric whispers across my skin and falls to the floor. My voice comes out low, soft, and steady.

“Close the door.”

The click of the door latch sounds louder than a gunshot in the stillness of the room.

I don’t breathe. I can’t.

Jaxon turns, and in two long strides, he’s in front of me. That same black fire burns behind his eyes as his fists clench at his sides like he’s fighting a losing battle.

And then he moves.

His hand fists in my hair as his mouth crashes against mine, brutal and consuming, erasing every inch of space that’s ever existed between us and fusing us brutally. I gasp, and he swallows the sound, teeth scraping my bottom lip, tongue demanding entrance.

The heat flares bright and sharp, wiping out thought, reason, everything except the hunger clawing at my skin, and I answer him with equal fury, dragging my nails down his back, tugging at the waistband of those goddamn flannel shorts like they’re the only thing standing between me and oxygen.

We pull at each other frantically. His calloused palms find my hips, and he lifts me like I weigh nothing, slamming my back into the cool plaster wall with a grunt that’s half growl, half moan.

“Jesus,” I whisper against his neck, biting lightly, savoring the way he shudders under me.

Our legs tangle. My ankles lock around his waist. His hands slide up my thighs, hot and rough and reverent all at once.

I claw at his shoulders, lean my head back, and let the hunger take me under.

This is collision and combustion. We kiss like we hate each other for how badly we want this.

And still, I want more. I want what Levi gave me last night. To look into a man’s eyes as I lose all control of my body and mind.

I fumble blindly for the bed next to me, dragging him with me.

We collapse onto the mattress in a tangle of limbs and sweat and gasping breaths.

The weight of him over me, the heat of his skin, the way his mouth returns to mine like he can’t get enough is perfect.

I arch against him shamelessly as his mouth trails down my neck, over my collarbone, teeth grazing, tongue soothing.

“Jaxon,” I pant, fingers digging into his hair.

He groans low in his chest like the sound of his name on my lips, tears at a loose thread inside him.

His mouth closes around one tight, aching nipple, and I nearly come undone right there. My hips buck involuntarily against his thigh. He pins me with a hand to my hip, holding me still as he worships every inch of skin he can reach.

“Please,” I gasp, the word escaping before I can stop it.

That word undoes him.

His flannel shorts are gone in seconds, kicked away and forgotten. His mouth finds mine again, crushing, messy, full of teeth and tongue and everything we’ve both been choking back. I claw at his back, pulling him closer, needing him inside me.

With one hard, hot slide, he fills me, thick and perfect, stretching me until I gasp into his mouth.

He freezes, forehead pressed to mine, body trembling as he fights for control. Maybe the fog has cleared, and he’s realized what he’s doing. Maybe he’s going to pull away.

“Fuck, Grace,” he groans.

“Don’t stop,” I breathe, wrapping my legs tighter around his hips. “Don’t you dare stop.”

And then he moves. Every hard, punishing thrust sends me spiraling, gasping, clinging to him, and we lose ourselves in it.

The wet slide of my post-orgasmic pussy, the anger, the heat, the frustration, the chemistry that’s been gnawing at us since the second we met—it explodes in this frantic, desperate rhythm.

I rake my nails down his back, hips rising to meet every brutal snap of his. I kiss him like I want to consume him, like I can swallow the tension and the guilt and the want and somehow make it clean.

The knot inside me coils tighter, tighter, tighter. He presses his hand over my mouth, stifling my cries, whispering hotly against my ear.

“That’s it, darlin’,” he growls. “Take it. Take my fucking dick,” and as I shatter, twitching beneath him, he slows, but only for a beat.

Jaxon lifts his head, sweat dampening the curls at his temples, those dark, fathomless eyes boring into mine like he isn’t done with me yet, and this isn’t nearly enough.

He pulls out slowly, and I moan at the emptiness he leaves behind, then he flips me onto my stomach with a sharp, effortless motion. His hand sprawls across the back of my neck, firmly holding me there like he needs the control, or he’ll come apart.

“On your knees,” he mutters, voice ragged. “Now.”

I obey, half-drunk on release, body lax and humming with everything he’s done to it. I brace my arms and lift my hips, and when he sees the slick mess between my thighs, he lets out a sound I feel in my spine. Low. Possessive. Rumbling .

He doesn’t ease back in. He plunges , hands gripping my hips hard enough to brand me, dragging me back onto him like he needs me to feel how far gone he is. I cry out, my forehead pressing into the sheets, every inch of me stretched and filled and shaken .

He fucks me like a man trying to burn something out of himself.

Hard, deep, and unrelenting.

As every slap of skin-on-skin echoes through the room, his fingers dig in harder, and I whimper from the force of it and the overwhelming need he pours into every thrust.

“You feel that?” he growls. “This is what you do to me, Grace. You ruin me.”

I can’t answer. My mouth is open, but there’s no air. No thoughts. Just sensation and the sharp ache where he slams into me. My scalp stings where his hand tangles in my hair and pulls my head back so he can see my face.

He leans down, chest to my back, breath hot against my ear.

“I can’t be gentle with you,” he whispers, voice shaking. “Don’t ask me to.”

“I won’t,” I gasp. “I don’t want gentle. I want you .”

And it breaks him.

His pace turns brutal and savage, each stroke slamming into that sweet, raw place inside me until I’m sobbing his name into the sheets, eyes squeezed shut, fingernails clawing at the mattress.

Pleasure ripples through me again, so violent, blinding, and absolute that my whole body locks, convulsing around him, and still— still —he doesn’t let up.

“Jaxon—” I choke, twisting to look at him.

He growls something that might be my name, and then he’s spilling inside me, hips jerking, his abs tense, arms trembling as he pours himself into me with a sound like a surrender.

We collapse together, breathless and undone. His lips press to the tender place at my nape, his breath gusting hot over my skin. His hand finds mine blindly in the wreckage of damp sheets and sweaty skin, and he squeezes.

It’s a quiet, broken thank-you.

The storm inside me isn’t gone. It never is. But the ache feels a little quieter. I close my eyes and try to catch my breath, focusing on the moment and not what comes next, because what comes next is always a disappointment.

Jaxon shifts, bracing his forearm against the mattress to keep from fully collapsing his weight onto me. His breath is ragged against my throat, warm and uneven. I feel his heart hammering against my ribs, a brutal, frantic rhythm that matches my own.

Neither of us speaks.

Slowly, painfully, reality seeps back in through the cracks. My fingers, still clenched tight around his back, loosen, dragging gently down the sweat-slicked ridges of muscle as my pulse slows. My legs fall open, trembling from the intensity of it all.

Jaxon doesn’t move to get up. He exhales as one big hand slides absently down my side, following the curve of my waist like he’s memorizing it without even realizing.

I thought he’d pull away. Roll over. Escape into that hard shell of distance he seems to live behind, but instead, he stays.

His body remains warm and heavy on mine.

His mouth brushes once, barely there, against my shoulder, then, without a word, he shifts again, carefully sliding out of me and pulling me into his arms as he settles onto his side.

His breath catches as I stiffen in surprise, but I don’t resist. I can’t.

I let him gather me close, my back to his chest, one long arm anchoring tightly around my waist.

The heat of him calms the tremble in my limbs, even as my mind spins wildly.