Page 48 of Hymns of the Broken

Then he stops dead in his tracks.

I almost run right into his back. “Jasper—” I whisper, aiming for stern but landing somewhere between unsteady and breathless.

He spins so fast I barely have time to gasp.

Suddenly, I’m pinned. The cool concrete wall bites into my back, and his hands plant on either side of my head caging me in. His eyes are fire and shadow all at once. Burning into me and stripping me down like he’s determined to see every hidden piece.

“I can’t do this,” he mutters to himself like every word costs him.

My heart stumbles. Fear threads through me, but so does something I don’t want to name, something that terrifies me more than his strength ever could. I admit it to myself.I want him.God, I want him so badly it feels like a sickness.Blake has never made me feel this way, never cracked me open with just a look. This is instant, inevitable—like the universe handed me to Jasper and laughed at the consequences.

“Do what?” I breathe, my voice trembling despite my best attempt to sound unshaken. Even now, I’m scared to admit what’s pounding inside my chest. Because every time I’ve wanted something this badly, it’s been taken from me.

His gazedrops slowly, from my eyes, to my lips, and then to the strip of skin exposed under my mesh top. The rise and fall of my chest give me away, betraying the fact that I’m shaking, not from fear, but from the need.

I open my mouth to argue, to say anything that doesn’t sound like I’m begging for him, but then he leans in.

Not to kiss me, but to destroy me.

“You are driving me crazy,” he says, the words vibrating against my skin. “Every second I’m not touching you is a waste.”

The confession guts me. No one has ever said something like that to me—like I’m a necessity, not an option. My lungs are too small, my chest too tight, and every nerve in my body is screaming for me to either run or give in and let him consume me.

“I think about you every fucking night. Every fucking day,” Jasper whispers, each word carving straight into my ribs. He exhales, a sound that’s half-frustration, half-desire, and it makes my thighs clench without my permission. Shame crashes through me, but so does want. He notices. Of course he does.

A slow, dangerous smirk curls his lips as his knee slides forward, nudging my legs apart until he’s exactly where I don’t want him. Or maybe where I do. God, help me.

His next words practically have me panting. “I think about what you sound like when you fall apart. What you would look like under me, begging me not to stop.”

A shiver tears down my spine. Blake has touched me a hundred times, but he has never once made me tremble just by speaking. He’s never unraveled me with the promise of what he could do. That kind of power should scare me. It should make me shove Jasper away. Instead, it makes me want to climb inside his fire and never come out.

He doesn’t move away. Doesn’t give me air. His knee stays a quiet threat between my legs; his body radiates heat and restraint wound tight enough to sing. If I move, I detonate us both. If I don’t, I might combust anyway.

His dark eyes catch mine, reading me like he already knows the ending. He’s measuring how far he can push before I break and which piece of me wants it most.

Then his lips ghost across mine. Just a brush that suggests sin.

“You don’t get it yet, do you?” He asks. “You’re not fighting me, Sawyer. You’re fueling me.”

The sound of my name in that tone hits a place I’ve kept barricaded for years. Everything I’ve ever wanted has either been taken or taught me not to want at all. And still, I tip toward him.

His hand slips beneath the hem of my mesh top. Heat blooms along the path of his palm as it slides up my waist slowly. Every inch he claims is a fuse sputtering to life.

“All that attitude,” he murmurs, fingertips tracing my ribs. “All that defiance,” his thumb drifts over the curve of my breast just enough to steal my breath. “It only makes me want to ruin you more.”

I can’t think. I can barely stand. There’s a part of me that wants to say no because no has been my only shield. There’s a larger part that wants to surrender because surrendering to him doesn’t feel like losing. It feels like finally being chosen without conditions.

“Jasper…” The whisper scrapes out of me, and I hate how needy it sounds.

“I dream about you choking on my name,” he rasps, his voice is like gravel soaked in sin. “I wake up hard and angry because I can’t fucking have you.”

The crack in his tone is the most dangerous thing about him. It’s not a performance; it’s a fracture. It matches the one in me.

“And then I see you,” he breathes, his breath skimming my lips. “In your little outfits. Laughing. Flirting. Acting like you don’t know what you’re doing to me. Watching you give Riot even a scrap of attention makes me feral. You’re mine.”

If someone else said that, it would sound like Blake—like a cage. From Jasper, it sounds like a vow dragged out of a man who has never begged for anything. And still, fear needles in.

If I let myself want this, what does it cost? What does it break?