Page 9 of Blue-Eyed Jacks (Destroyers MC: Skilletsville PA #1)

A B I want to.” My pulse sped up.

For the first time in too long, I did. I wanted.

Which made little sense, but I couldn’t explain it.

Jackson should be everything I was afraid of, and by being that person but also being the person who saved me from a lifetime of torture, he became another person to me—one I desired.

He licked his lips. “Want.” His eyes searched my resolve.

I moved the pillows to the edge nearest the door. “My fortress is you. But if you insist on having walls, you are on the inside of them.” That was as bravely and boldly as I could say it without terrifying myself.

“I’m honored.” He dipped his head as if to bow. Then his grin tipped lopsidedly and his eyes raked me from head to toe. “Very honored.” One eyebrow arched to devilish angles.

The urge to fan myself was strong. But I resisted.

Instead, I took off the clothes he’d given me.

Except for the emerald lace panties he’d handed me in the store.

I posed, pushing one leg slightly canted on tiptoe to the right.

The stance flashed my inner thigh toward him.

Maybe that was wrong of me, but I needed him to see I’d healed.

More than healed. I was strong enough to trust him with this very vulnerable piece of me that extended past the physical form.

“Lay down and do that thing with your leg.” His voice rasped with a breathy huskiness that hadn’t been present earlier. “Show me all of it. I want to see you.” His eyes glittered. Whether it was a quirk of refraction or my imagination, but in those pinpricks of light flared red-hot desire.

When I arranged my legs, I opened them wider, baring the darker wetness covering my crotch. His gaze lingered there. Then, carefully and methodically, he removed his clothes. He didn’t drop them to the floor in slouched disarray, but took care to lay each piece over the antique chair in the corner.

As he slid his boxers down, he turned slightly.

In profile, he resembled an erotic Eros, youthful in grace but possessing all the masculinity and temptation a man should.

I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Then he climbed over my pillow fortress walls.

The heat from his skin clung to the air between us.

It begged me to drag him close, but it also scared me.

Could I do this? Would something go wrong?

Would his closeness trigger a panic attack?

I’d had a couple, but never pushed myself into intimacy like this before.

“Your safe word is butterfly.”

“I don’t need a safe word. We aren’t, I mean, I’m not ready for any bondage or…” say it, be accurate. I swallowed. “I don’t like S&M.”

He had the nerve to laugh. Then he sobered.

“Kate, I’d be sho—surprised if you did. Fuck .

Let’s lay it out. Say the fucking name. Shock has a reputation for being a sadist. I don’t.

And not only don’t but won’t go there. But, here’s a hard truth, because of him, you need a safe word to tell me when you hit your wall.

I can’t know where it is. So, that word is butterfly . Got it?”

I nodded.

“Say it right now.”

“Butterfly.”

He blew out a soft exhale. “Gorgeous. Inside and out.” Then he lowered his body until we touched. His lips brushed mine.

I kissed him.

His head reared back.

Had I done something wrong? Shock never let me kiss him. I braced for a blow or pain of any sort.

Jackson blinked. “You kissed me.”

“I’m sorry.” It was a mistake. I’d barely dipped a toe into the concept of sex and fucked up already.

“Don’t apologize. Don’t ever apologize to me. Ever.” His hand cupped my jaw, holding me in place, but not bruisingly so. I searched his eyes as he searched mine. “You kissed me.” He said again.

“I did.” Own it, Kate .

“So beautiful.” He leaned in. His breath warmed my skin as he finished those two words. His tongue touched my lips, and I raised my head to seal our mouths together.

And he reveled in it.

In me, in our connection—I was lost, unsure of how this was so arousing and empowering at the same time, but knew that I couldn’t stop kissing him.

I couldn’t bear not making the connection stronger and deeper and, oh God…

his hips canted into the cradle of my thighs, and the ridge of his penis pressed against me.

I ached to discover if it felt that good inside.

Like a flower pointing toward the sun, my body followed his lead and arched to find a connection.

Passion took over my reason, and I shimmied out of the last barrier between us.

The tip of his cock notched home. Instead of pain, I discovered joy. Bliss. But was this too fast? “Jackson?”

He froze. “Butterfly?”

“No.” A thousand times no.

At the reassurance, he pushed in as far as he could until he was seated against me. I felt the twitch of connection shudder through him. And my answering clench of muscles caused him to blink. “Kate.”

Was it a warning or a question? I didn’t know. I nodded, absolving him, answering him.

He stroked out and in again, holding my gaze with his and then mirrored the slow rock of my hips.

“Talk to me,” he begged. “Tell me what you need.”

Just him. Just this. Oh, and that. I gasped as he rocked into me harder at the apex of a thrust. “That. I like that.”

He ground his hips against mine. “This?”

Oh, fuck yes . I couldn’t form words. But I also needed more.

I needed him to hold me and tell me it was going to be okay, that he was never going to leave me and that I would never have to be scared again.

But that was a promise he couldn’t make.

And I wouldn’t beg for something I couldn’t have.

So I begged him to kiss me again, and again.

And then I begged for him to hold me closer and tighter. Thrust harder…

And with a douse of realization, I wanted something more. But did I dare ask?

“You still with me?” His thrusts were almost bruising.

As my silence stretched, he slowed.

“Kate?”

Hesitantly, I met his eyes. “Can you?”

“Anything.” His eyes were sincere.

“My neck is sensitive.”

“Should I stay away from it or not?”

“Not. Just don’t choke me.”

His eyes narrowed for a fraction of a second.

“I would never do that.” He freed a hand and stroked down the ridges of my windpipe with his thumb.

He didn’t stop when he reached my collarbone.

Instead, he changed directions and ran it up to my chin.

With another change of directions, it skimmed down again.

On the fourth slow sweep, it tickled. I flinched, but also wanted to beg for more.

The sensations sparked to my toes and back.

I gasped.

“Found it.” His lips touched that point.

More nerves lit up, and I began to quiver. “You did.”

He breathed on my skin and ran his teeth along the path of sensitive skin that made me arch off the bed. In response, he pressed our hips together, getting his dick seated deep. And bit down with his teeth.

It wasn’t hard, just a nip. But I lit up like a firework. My vagina fluttered, my clit snapping awake like a motor roaring to life, and I moaned. For the very first time, I wordlessly begged the heavens for this sweet torment to never end.

Jackson’s thrusts grew harder, a counterpoint to the fluttering and pulsing and shocks sending me into ecstasy. He groaned, too. Our eyes met. “I can’t hold…on,” he said.

Power. I had power. “Come.”

His eyes went wild for a moment. The agony in his guttural cry was one of victory and surrender rolled into one. In it, he cried one word, “Kate.”

A trembling took over. I felt it in where he seated between my legs, and in his arms, and all the way down where I’d wrapped my legs around his thighs and locked us together.

He was so beautiful in this moment. Despite the stretched, open-mouthed, stupefied wonder on his face, despite the sweat on his brow or his disheveled hair, he was almost angelic in majestic masculinity.

Then he smiled.

It was easy to love that smile. There was no pain twisting it sideways or artifice crooking his expressive brows. This was the smile of a man who had nothing to hide. I wiped away a trickle of sweat from his brow. “Who needs a safe word?”

Instantly, the smile changed. Some of the pain inside him seeped out and his brow turned crooked again. “There’s always round two for that.”

“Really?”

“What? You think I’m a one-and-done guy?”

I shrugged. The motion jogged him loose, and a trickle of fluid seeped out in its wake. I froze. “You didn’t wear a condom.”

His eyes darted between us and back to mine. “Pill?”

“Implant.”

That single-word exchange was a small relief.

“I’m clean.” Two years and two rounds of antibiotics and I could safely say I was. Or had been up until ten minutes ago.

“Kate, I can see where your mind is going and I swear this is the very first time I’ve ever forgotten.” His face turned red.

I traced the color from his chest to his cheeks. “Are you embarrassed?”

“No.”

“You sure about that?” I tapped his warm cheeks.

He rolled off me. “Kate, I’ll answer when I get back, don’t get mad, okay?”

Don’t get mad? I wasn’t that much of a novice to know those words usually meant I should get angry. I searched for something to clean up with, but he beat me to it, bringing back a dampened towel. Instead of handing it off or letting me fend for myself, he held onto it.

“Let me.”

“No.”

“Kate.” There was a soft warning in the way he spoke my name.

I acquiesced by letting my legs fall open. “How am I supposed to stay angry at you if you have your hand between my legs?”

“You’re not supposed to be angry.”

“Really?” Sarcasm dripped from the word.

He paused, putting a little pressure on the towel. “Since fourteen, I’ve only been with hookers. They bring their own condoms. I forgot.”

There was too much to unpack in his confession for me to handle. “Fourteen?” I hadn’t even kissed a boy yet at that age.

“Fourteen.”

“How did you pay her?”

Jackson smiled. “I didn’t. Dad did.” The smile fell.

Oh. Wow.

Too much to unpack. Except… “How do you know about the towel thing?”

Another smile, this one quirked off to the side and devious. “Mom had the Joy of Sex on the coffee table for as long as I can remember.”

“Huh.”

His eyes twinkled with mirth. “She also had a fully illustrated Kama Sutra. Wanna see how much I remember?”

“You’re dangerous.”

His grin shot wide. “I try.”