Chapter Seventeen
Ava braced her hands on the tub and pushed herself to a sitting position, her spine straight.
“You’d have to kill me,” Ava said.
Jack arched an eyebrow at her, a look that said he very much could stop her, and quite easily at that.
It was more serious than she had ever been with Jack, and she could tell that he could see it, too, could see the wildfire in her eyes, ready to burn everything down.
“I’m not going to kill you, Ava Cavalcante,” Jack said firmly, but he was not looking at her when he said it. “But you’re not going to ruin this for me. I have reasons, too. Do you understand?”
“I do speak the same language as you,” Ava snapped.
He was an asshole. He was an asshole, and controlling, and she knew all this—she knew all this—so why was it hitting her this hard now?
Why was the anger so fierce she was shaking?
“You should get the fuck out of the bathroom. I can do this alone, since you’re all about that now. ”
Jack hesitated, suds dripping lazily from his hands. “Ava, I—”
“Get the fuck out!” She wanted him gone as badly as she wanted him inside her. She wanted to wrap her hands around his throat as badly as she wanted him.
He stood, wiping his hands and arms on one of the towels, and nodded to her before stepping back.
He was halfway out the door before Ava pulled herself to her feet with a small, pained grunt. “Wait,” she said. She’d have him, have this, if she could have nothing else.
Jack turned, his look guarded. “Do you need—”
“Fuck you. I don’t need anything,” Ava said. “I want—I want you.”
He crossed the space between them so fast Ava lost her breath, and then he was in the water with her, his hands at her waist, lifting her off her feet, pressing her against the wall so hard it rattled her.
“Ava,” Jack breathed against her mouth. “Ava, we shouldn’t.”
“Yeah,” Ava said, her hand fumbling at his zipper. “But we’re going to.”
Because fuck it all. If this was what it took to stop feeling the miserable cocktail of grief and fear and anger, to stop feeling at all, Ava was going to jump at the chance.
And then his mouth was on hers, hard and rough and bruising, and his tongue was in her mouth, and Ava couldn’t tell where she ended and he began.
When he drew back for a moment, his chest heaving, his pupils dilated so much she could barely see the brown of his eyes at all, Ava laughed, tipping her head back and letting it thump gently on the wall behind her.
“I need to rinse,” she said. “Jack, I’m all soapy.”
He grunted, nudging the faucet so that it sprayed above them, blinding her momentarily.
Ava sputtered, but he pressed in harder, ignoring the water. “Whatever you want, little firecracker,” he said. “Are you wet enough now?”
A moan escaped her lips, something feral and hungry and sharp. “Jack,” she gasped. “Get your clothes off.”
She tugged his zipper down, and then shoved at his jeans, which were wet now, too wet to easily drag off him.
Jack set her down briefly, peeling his jeans and boxers off and kicking them aside before he lifted her again, pressing her back against the wall. He was—bigger than he’d felt when he’d pressed against her.
Ava stared for a moment, and then caught his gaze, the twist of his lips, and blushed.
“Fuck you,” she whispered.
“Working on it,” he said, and then he kissed her again, slower and softer and crueler, and Ava could think of nothing else. There was here, there was right now, there was Jack’s skin on her skin, and his hands holding her up by her hips in a grip that would leave bruises.
“I want you inside me,” Ava snarled.
He laughed, a sound she hadn’t heard from him yet, something that made her feel warm all the way through. “You can learn to be patient,” he said.
“No, I can’t,” Ava said. “Fuck me right now.”
“I know you go to that domme to get tied up and topped,” Jack said into her ear, in that low voice, that half growl that made Ava’s insides twist. “I just didn’t know how much you needed it.”
Ava squirmed, his words, his tone, all of it going straight to her clit. “Fuck you,” she said. “You don’t know what I need.”
“You need to be fucked hard and spanked harder,” Jack said. “But that last part will have to wait.”
Ava gasped as he slid inside her—she was slick with cum, but the stretch of taking him so fully still hurt, hurt in the best way. Hurt in a way she never wanted to stop. “Fuck me hard,” she whimpered. “Jack.”
He thrust inside her, slamming into her so hard she hit the wall behind her with a hard thump. “Anything you want, Ava.”
“Anything?” she asked.
He freed one of the hands holding her up and slapped her ass so hard she knew without looking that he’d left a handprint. “Anything,” he said.
Ava had no space left for words after that, as he thrust, hard and fast, no space left for anything but moaning, no space left for anything but him, inside her, filling her.
The water was still falling, steam still rising, and he was the only thing she could see—his face, inches from hers. His chest heaving, his arms tense where they held her up.
Unbidden, the image from last night returned—Jack’s face when he saw her injured, Jack turning on the man who had hurt her, Jack firing three rounds with unerring accuracy.
Unexpectedly, Ava’s body responded in kind, and she contracted around him, her body trembling from pleasure as wave after wave of her orgasm rushed through her.
He finished just as the last waves of it were coursing through her, her clit still trembling.
Ava’s ears were ringing as Jack set her on her feet and turned the water off. Her knees felt wobbly, too.
Jack grinned down at her as he helped her out of the tub. “You good?”
“Am I good?” Ava shook her head at him. “You’re incorrigible. And insufferable. And some other insulting thing that I can’t think of right now, because you fucked the thoughts out of me.”
Jack arched an eyebrow at her again, humor still twinkling in his eyes as he grabbed her a towel and wrapped it around her carefully. “How are your ribs after that?”
“You did that to me and you’re still worried about my ribs?” Ava stared back at him, dumbfounded. “No, don’t cover that up. Stay naked.”
Jack tipped his head back and laughed, a sound so warm and bright it took Ava’s breath away for a moment. “You are incorrigible. And yes, I’m still worried about your ribs. That’s why I didn’t lay you out on the bed. I thought your ribs wouldn’t respond well to me on top of you.”
“Everything else would have,” Ava told him, drawing another laugh.
“Am I not allowed to dry off?” Jack asked, holding the towel in the same hand that had smacked her ass.
She twisted to look at it. The outline of his handprint was still there, and firmly so. “No,” Ava told him. “You can dry off, but you can’t get dressed. That’s my rule for the evening.”
Jack lifted her unceremoniously and carried her back out of the bathroom. He set her on the bed, ignoring her noises of protestation. “Do you make the rules, then?” he asked.
“I always make the rules.”
“What does your domme say when you tell her that?” Jack asked her conversationally, running the towel through his hair.
“Not much,” Ava told him. “Usually she’s too busy tying me up.”
“Or gagging you, I assume,” Jack added, drying himself with militant efficiency. “Are you going to dry off and get dressed, or lie there all night?”
“What do you have against rest?” Ava said. “And excuse me, who said anything about gagging? You don’t even know if I’m into that.”
“Are you not?” he asked.
Ava was into most things. She’d been into everything, when it came to Ari. Her kink was just Ari, honestly, the way her wife had been able to make Ava feel it all. But now that Ava was alone, kink was a good distraction.
Jack was a good distraction.
And if both the kink and the desires for Jack were embarrassing, well, she was a little bit into that part, too.
“I’m not not into it,” Ava admitted. “What about you? Have you played this way much before?”
They had just had sex, not particularly kinky, but his bossiness—Ari would have called it toppiness—seemed well practiced.
Jack shrugged one broad shoulder as he started pulling things out of the refrigerator. “Sometimes,” he said softly, his voice a little distant. “I’ve played around with it before.”
“Do you always top?” Ava asked, slowly massaging the towel through the ends of her hair.
Jack looked at her over his shoulder, grinning. “With you?” he said. “Yes, always.”
Ava pulled her wet towel off and flung it at him.
He caught it easily. “I assumed you always bratted your way to the bottom,” Jack said. “But feel free to correct my assumption if I am incorrect.”
“No, Your Eminence,” Ava said. “Though you can spare me the pretentious language.”
Jack brought her a paper plate with a sandwich—turkey and Swiss on rye bread, with a neat slice of tomato and lettuce—a small handful of carrots with hummus, and a few strawberries.
“Dinner,” he said. “You haven’t eaten in—I don’t know how long.”
“What time is it?” Ava squinted at the motel clock. In bright-red numbers, it read 6:57 p.m. “Maybe twenty-four hours, then?”
She hadn’t felt hungry until he held the food out to her, though how he had known, or guessed, that she loved a turkey and Swiss on rye was beyond her.
“Does this work for you?” Jack asked. He was still naked, standing in front of her with his arms folded, watching her carefully.
“Unfortunately, I love turkey and rye,” Ava told him. “I do hate for you to be right, though. And strawberries are ideal. Though I won’t be eating a vegetable.”
Jack turned away without responding to that assertation. “I’m making myself a turkey and provolone,” he said. “And try the hummus before you rule it all out. It’s an olive tapenade.”
“You’re an olive tapenade,” Ava told him, but she tried it anyway. When his back was turned, so he wouldn’t know if he happened to be right about that, too.
He returned a few minutes later, taking a seat in the one chair in the room as he ate his sandwich. “Don’t get crumbs in the bed,” he told her.
“Don’t tell me what to do unless you’re fucking me,” Ava responded through a mouthful of her sandwich. Her carrots and hummus had been decimated, but she was hoping he wouldn’t notice that part.
“Mmm,” he said.
“Don’t mmm at me, you oaf.”
“All right, please don’t get crumbs in our bed,” Jack said.
“Wait,” Ava said. “Our?”
“You just demanded I get naked and then rode my cock while I had you up against the shower wall,” Jack said. “Are you shy now? And do you see more than one bed?”
“Right, I don’t care if you’re balls deep inside of me, but I do like to have my space when I’m sleeping,” Ava said. “So don’t you dare cuddle me, understood?”
Jack mock saluted her, but his eyes were serious. “When you’re finished eating, we should talk about what comes next.”
“When I finish, I was thinking about getting on my knees on the carpet over there,” Ava said.
Jack nearly choked on a bite of his sandwich. “Oh.”
“Yeah, oh. But if you have super-serious important updates on our murder date, we can of course do that first.” She said it in the sweetest tone she had, which was not saying much.
“No,” Jack said, leaning back in his chair and surveying her with a smirk. “No, I think I prefer you on your knees first.”