Page 27

27

JACKSON

C ement steps gleam like obsidian under the downpour, rainwater sluicing between my boots as I climb toward her. Seraphine’s porch light halos her silhouette, the kind of dramatic staging she’d mock if this were anyone else’s tragedy.

She doesn't step back when I reached the landing. Doesn't step forward either.

Thunder rolls as she folds her arms. The motion pulls her leather jacket taut, that armor she’s worn since long before I knew her. “I told you not to–”

“Come here? Yeah. Bad idea. But here’s the thing?” I crowd into her space, rain plastering her dark hair to sharp cheekbones. “You tell me not to, you know I'm going to."

Her throat moves. One blink too slow.

I thumb a raindrop off her jaw, her breath hitching like she forgot how it feels to be touched without intent to break. “You want to run? Fine. But your tells are getting cheap — and I already told you that I'm not going anywhere."

“Jackson, we can't. I can't?—”

“Bullshit.” Lightning flashes, illuminating her eyes to a cat-like glow. “You’re not scared of dying. You’re scared of this.”

A shudder runs through her. Not the cold. “You don’t know what I–”

“I know enough. And that this–” I pressed her palm flat against my chest, her fingers jerking at the frantic rhythm beneath soaked cotton. “This heartbeat? It’s yours. Has been for longer than I should admit. Even when I thought we were enemies, it was always something more. And I'm not losing it now. I know you love me too."

She's silent for a moment, as if pained by my acknowledgement. But I can tell, I'm right. She's just too scared to say it.

“You’re insufferable.”

“But you’re still here.”

I can't tell if she wants to hit me, bolt or push me off the steps.

But then, she kisses me like detonating a fuel depot, all gasoline and spark. Heat blooms where blood welled, metallic tang lost in the deluge.

She murmurs against my mouth, the sound frayed and dangerous. “This is suicide, you sentimental idiot.”

I catch her wrist. “Better than dying in a safehouse with decaf coffee.”

The door hits the wall with a crack that should worry me. Her teeth scrape my lower lip as I walked her backward into the foyer, rainwater pooling around our boots.

“Stairs,” she gasps when I bite her neck.

“Elevator’s faster.”

“Broke it. Last Tuesday.” A breathless laugh ghosts my ear as she shoves my soaked shirt off my shoulders. “Fire escape practice.”

We take the steps two at a time, her back presses to the peeling wallpaper as I crowded her upward. Her jacket hits the third-floor landing. My belt buckle clatters against the railing.

"You know, we're going to have to come back for our clothes," she breathes heavily as I bury my face into her breasts.

"That's tomorrow's problem. Plus, the other tenants might enjoy the decorating," I respond between kisses.

By the fifth floor, her nails are digging into my hips, her laugh sharp and unsteady as I pin her against her own apartment door.

“Key,” I growl.

She snaps her fingers. The deadbolt screams like a scalded cat, metal warping.

“Show-off.” I kick the door open.

“You’re welcome ?—”

The rest dies against my mouth. Her apartment smells like gun oil and jasmine, the dissonance of her in every molecule. We leave a trail of wet denim and defiance to the bedroom, her teeth sinking into my shoulder when I lifted her onto the dresser. Glass bottles tremble as she arches against me.

“Wait—” Her head thumps back against the mirror, cracks spiderwebbing behind her. “The magic, if I?—”

“Let it.” I dragged her to the bed, her bare legs wrapping my waist. “Burn the building down. I’ll carry you out.”

She chokes a laugh into the crook of my neck. “Romantic asshole .”

I bury myself in her to the hilt, her heat strangling me in ways that make my back teeth ache. She’s drenched—not just rainwater slicking our skin now, but the kind of soaking that comes from hours of teeth-gritted denial finally snapping. Proof I’m not the only one who’s been starving.

Her cry when I drive into her is a live wire down my spine. No bull shit, no games. Just Sera, loud and feral as the storm outside. The vanity mirror shudders with every snap of my hips, bottles clinking like a toast to our mutual undoing. I bite the inside of my cheek until copper floods my tongue, determined to drag this out. To ruin her properly.

When she comes the first time, it’s not just the lamp that blows. The air itself crackles—ozone and her magic searing the back of my throat. Shards of glass halt mid-explosion, jagged constellations caught in the act of falling. Her thighs vise around me, sweat-slick heels digging into the small of my back as she vibrates with aftershocks.

“Fuck,” she pants against my collarbone, voice shredded. The suspended glass trembles, each fragment reflecting a different sliver of us—a hundred broken Jaxs and Seras panting in the kaleidoscope. Her fingernails carve half-moons into my shoulders. “You’re enjoying this.”

I don’t deny it. Let her see me grinning like the bastard I am as the bedside clock erupts next, gears freezing mid-tick like the world itself forgot how to breathe.

I catch her wrist, pressing it into the mattress. “Look at that. You’re gorgeous when you’re reckless.”

“Jackson, I can’t?—”

" You can. " The words burn against her mouth as I kiss her harder, swallowing her fractured gasp. Her hips jerk erratically, the heat between us igniting fresh shudders as our sweat-slicked skin rasps together. I taste copper—she’s bitten her lip again. The glass shards still quiver overhead, their jagged edges humming like struck tuning forks. "Let go, Sera." My palm skates down her spine, feeling every vertebrae tremble. "I’m not letting you fall."

I surge deeper in one brutal thrust, and her scream shreds into a broken, guttural " Jax—! " that shakes the air. The bedframe cracks against the wall as I launch her onto her stomach, her back a flawless arc of tension beneath me. My grip on her hips tightens, fingertips bruising constellations into her skin as I sheathe my cock to the hilt. She claws at the sheets, keening, every desperate noise peeling another layer off my control. I can feel her unraveling—the clench of her around me, the way her calves quake against mine, the sob trapped in her throat that’s equal parts fear and need.

Her knives rise when she breaks the second time, six honed edges orbiting our tangled bodies. Cold steel glints in the stuttering neon from the shattered window, throwing fractured light across Sera’s heaving shoulders. She twitches under my tongue as I drag it slow and purposeful over her. She arches violently, a wounded sound spilling out of her as the blades pivot faster, tips quivering toward me.

“Fuck—” Her hand fisted in my hair, the other gripping the headboard hard enough to splinter wood. “You’re… insufferable…”

“You’d be bored otherwise.”

When she shatters the third time, the walls groan like a dying animal. Sparks cascade from the ceiling as every bulb in the derelict complex explodes—a thunderclap of shattering glass followed by the acrid sting of burnt wiring. Darkness swallows us whole, but her magic remains. It thrums through the tangled sheets, vibrates in the steel frame of the bed beneath us. She clings to me, tremors wracking her body long after the aftershocks should’ve faded. I lose myself in the tidal pull of her, teeth sinking into the muscle of her shoulder as oblivion takes us both and I finally let myself pulse all my pent up need deep into her drenched walls.

I taste victory and sweat when I drag my tongue along her collarbone—charismatic and cruel. One of the shattered bulbs above us flickers weakly to life, casting her flushed skin in radioactive amber. Her laugh cracks open against my temple, all vulnerability and spent gunpowder.

“Still alive,” I whisper into the hollow of her throat, painting the words with my thumb.

She hits me with a closed fist this time—hard enough to bruise. “Barely.”

The knives sing as they hit the concrete floor, a discordant choir of falling steel. She kisses me. It’s not affection. It’s a reload.