Page 128 of Unconditionally Yours

It’s that word: trying.

Because I’m trying too.

And maybe we’ll ruin each other.

Bloody, breathless, and somehow still holding each other.

Jett peels the bag from my hand like I’m breakable. He’s trying to be the kind of man who takes care of a girl gently.

Too late. I’m already fucked up. Bent around him like barbed wire. Bruised from the ride and asking for more.

He turns on the water.

“You don’t have to,” I start, but his fingers are already under the hem of my shirt.

“I do,” he says. “Shut up and let me.”

My skin sparks when the shirt comes off. He drags it over my head like he’s unwrapping something sacred and dangerous at once. His hands pause at my bra strap, then glide around, careful, and fuck, it shouldn’t feel like anything. But it does.

The bra slips. He doesn’t even look. He’s all focus. All intention. And then he sinks to his knees.

I sway. Grab his shoulder. “Jett…”

“Everything off,” he says. Not commanding. Not cruel. Worshipful. Like I’m a job he needs to get right this time.

He strips me and kisses just below my navel. The soft scrape of his stubble lights me up. Goosebumps flare everywhere.

“You’re shaking,” he says.

“Because you’re trying to be nice,” I say, throat dry. “That’s the scariest part.”

He looks up. Eyes dark. “Get in the shower.”

I do.

The steam’s already thick in the air like a spell. The tile is warm on my back and I’m still reeling, still waiting for the catch, the crack, the Jettness under all that sweetness.

He steps in behind me, water coursing down his shoulders. Fuck, his body. I’ve seen it. Tasted it. But not like this. Not under this yellow-gold light, with no hurry in his hands, just heat and silence and the promise of something coming.

He pours vanilla body wash into his palms and starts at my shoulders.

“You’re tense,” he says.

“No shit.”

He slides down my back, slow. Over hips. Thighs. Every place he touches, I ache. His thumbs graze just below my ass and I arch into it, chasing more.

He doesn’t give it. Fucking tease.

“Don’t stop,” I whisper.

“I’m trying to be careful,” he says. “Don’t wanna hurt you.”

“I want you to.”

I feel the Jett-shaped rupture in the universe.

He grabs my hips and turns me so fast my head whips. I hit the tile with a thud, water spraying down my chest. His hand comes up, flat palm on the wall beside my head.