Chapter Twenty-Two #2
He didn’t even give her one of his trademark stern Avas this time. Just moved right along, ignoring her attempt at rage-baiting him.
“This next rule”—he pointed to the weapons on the table and then at her—“is the most important one. Do you understand me?”
Jack waited for a long moment until Ava realized it was not, in fact, a rhetorical question.
“Sir, yes, sir!”
“Treat every weapon as if it’s loaded. Every single one. Every single time. The wrong one could go off, and you could lose everything like that.” Jack snapped his fingers, making Ava jump.
“Got it,” Ava said, because Jack had sounded more serious than usual. And he was always serious. “Anything else, or can I start blam-blamming?”
“We’ll start with this one.” Jack lifted a larger handgun. “This is a Glock, and it has less kick than the handgun I made. It’s quicker to load, too. Here, you try.”
“I just want to do the fun part,” Ava said. “Can I just do the fun part?”
“No.”
“But I’m the boss. Wait, did you say you made that gun?”
“You’re not the boss of this. And yes, I 3D printed it.”
Somehow that was hot, too?
Maybe Ava was losing it. Or maybe it was just that Jack was hot, and that bled into . . . well, everything he did.
“Ugh.” Ava leaned her head back dramatically. “Fine. Show me how to load the gun, so that I can treat it as if it’s loaded no matter what.”
When she’d first met him, he’d begged her to be serious at least once every fifteen-minute interval. Now, though, her attitude didn’t seem to faze him—he just breezed right on through, acting as if she was treating this as seriously as he was, and didn’t seem to mind her derailments.
Which was refreshing, honestly. Ari had been like that—seeing Ava for exactly who she was, no matter how silly Ava had acted. And it was terrifying, too.
If she had a choice—which she really didn’t, not if she wanted Cale dead—she would have gone running the first time she’d ever seen similarities between Ari and Jack. Because the way Ava’d felt when she lost Ari . . . she was never going to feel that way again. She wouldn’t survive it if she did.
She took the gun from Jack and stepped forward. He moved behind her, adjusting her hips with his hands, his fingers digging in. For a moment, just a moment, she nearly forgot the weapon in her hand.
Then he reached around her and settled one hand over each of her arms, adjusting her grip and her aim.
That was the moment she realized, weight settling in her stomach, that she had seen this gun in Jack’s hands before.
He had used this gun to kill the man who had kidnapped her.
This one, the one heavy and cold in her hands.
He hadn’t gotten rid of it like he’d said, either.
He had emptied this clip into someone and ended a life.
And Ava wanted to fuck him, right here and now.
Jack returned his hands to his side, but remained behind her, so close she could feel the warmth of his body, even though they weren’t touching.
“Now,” Jack said, his voice soft against her ear. “Fire.”
One.
Two.
Three.
Jack was precise, careful. Until her.
Ava breathed in and fired again.
Four.
Five.
Six.
Gun emptied, just for her. Jack, standing over a man’s body, firing even after it was clear Devin was dead.
Ava’s breath came in raggedly, went out worse.
She set the gun down and turned to him. “I want,” she began shakily.
“I want you to fuck me. I want you to fuck me right here, right now. I want you inside me. I want it to be rough, I want it to be hard, and I want to be walking stiffly until at least tomorrow. I want you to bend me over this table . . .”
Her voice lost its strength as she looked up at him.
Jack’s posture was similar to the way he’d stood while he was shooting earlier—his stance wide and commanding—and he was looking down at her with wildfire in his eyes. “Keep going, Boss,” he said. “We’ll do everything you want.”
“I want you to bend me over this table, and I want you to pull my hair. I want you to keep going unless I safeword and tell you I’m red,” Ava continued.
Her knees were trembling now, the immensity of it all sweeping through her body until she could hardly stand.
“Or if you’re red, of course. I want you to choke me, and I want you to spank my ass the whole time, and I want—I want—”
Jack’s hand trailed slowly up her arm, his touch slow and controlled. His index finger carved a line along her collarbone, and then, suddenly, his hand closed around her throat. Just hard enough to make Ava gasp. Not hard enough to leave her unable to.
“What else?” he asked softly, his eyes boring into hers.
“I want you,” Ava gasped. “I want you to decide when I come. I want you to decide . . . if I come.”
Was her face red from the embarrassment of having to say all this out loud, or was blood just rushing to her face because she was being choked? It didn’t matter anymore. Nothing mattered except for Jack’s hands on her.
“I want you now,” Ava said, pushing forward against Jack’s fingers.
He moved so quickly she barely knew what was happening, one rough hand settling on her hips and spinning her to face the tables. Her yoga pants were yanked down the next moment, one of the little bedazzled jewels falling to the ground with the force of his tug.
“No underwear? Again?”
Ava could hear the humor in his voice, and then every thought was erased because he brought his hand down across her ass, hard. She yelped, lurching forward, as a fiery, delicious sting spread across her skin.
Jack peeled her tank top—his tank top—over her head the next moment, one hand reaching around and cupping her breast.
“You should never cover these,” he said. She heard the zip of his fly coming down, and then Jack tossed her clothes onto the edge of the table. “If I had my way, you’d never have a bra on again.”
Ava opened her mouth to respond. What she was going to say, she had no idea.
But something, anything, to maintain her sass, to maintain her control.
But he wouldn’t fall for that, because she’d laid out every single thing she wanted him to do to her.
And because he never fell for that, no matter how insistently she teased him.
And then Jack’s hands were on her hips again, lifting her up.
The table was just tall enough that, bent over, Ava’s feet barely touched the ground. Jack was standing behind her, feet firmly planted, yet again maintaining his control while Ava lost hers, inch by inch.
“Jaaack,” Ava whined.
He brought his right hand down on her ass again. “You’ll behave,” he said. “Or I’ll come, and you won’t.”
“Jack!” Ava twisted her head to look at him. “That’s not fair.”
“No, it isn’t,” Jack said, a grin breaking across his face. “But it’s what you want.”
She couldn’t even argue with that, not when she’d spilled her guts and asked him for the kind of steamy, kinky fucking sex she’d wanted with everything she had.
Jack pushed against her entrance, not as carefully as he had that first time, and then he was inside her. Ava was wet enough, desperate enough, that when she stretched it hurt only a little, a delicious ache and fullness that made every thought in her head stutter to a stop.
“Like this, Boss?” he asked her, leaning over so that he was close to her ear.
When she didn’t answer, he slapped her ass, harder than he had before.
Ava clenched on him involuntarily, a wave of pleasure rolling through her. “Like this,” she said. “Keep going.”
He thrust into her again, his hips slapping her already-sore ass, and then he reached one hand to cup her throat. “Color?” he asked firmly, slowing his pace.
“Green,” Ava said. “You?”
“Green,” he said, and then his hips slammed into her ass again, his cock so deep inside her it was the only thing Ava could think about.
“Jack,” she whimpered. She was close, she was close already, and she wanted to come more than she had ever wanted anything in her entire life. “Jack, please. I’ve been so good. Can I—can I—”
She couldn’t say it.
He laughed roughly, his hand shifting from her throat to sink into her curls and tug, rough enough pain spread across her scalp, but not so rough her neck itself jerked. Jack sank into her farther, letting out a soft sigh that made Ava’s heart stumble dangerously.
“You’re stunning,” Jack said softly.
The words caught Ava off guard.
“Shut up,” she told him.
He laughed. “You can’t come if you can’t take a compliment,” he decided, and he was fucking her harder and faster now, his hand moving to the back of her throat and squeezing. His other hand was all over her ass, slapping it a few times before he reached around to finger her clit.
“Jack,” Ava gasped his name. “Jack, let me come.”
“When you let me compliment you.”
“Fine,” Ava said raggedly. “Fine, say nice shit about me, just let me—let me fucking come.”
“Language,” Jack reproved her, pulling his hand from her clit so he could squeeze a fistful of her ass again.
Ava sucked in a sharp breath of air, as much as she could manage with his hand wrapped around her throat. She was looking up now, at that fucking target with six new holes Jack had left there. An empty magazine. For her. That gasp in his mouth. For her. “Jack, please, Jack—”
His voice dropped an octave as his hand tightened. “All right then, Ava,” he said softly. He reached his hand around her, fingers settling on her clit again, and then he increased his pace. “Come for me, Ava Cavalcante.”
The moan that ripped from her mouth was half pain, all pleasure, the orgasm racking her body so intensely it felt as if it would never end.
The world was floaty, a hazy, sunlit place where nothing bad had ever happened or could ever happen.
She was sensitive, almost painfully so, as Jack finished while the last waves of her own orgasm shuddered through her.
And then he was lowering her gently down, her feet finally flat on the earth again.
“Jack,” she said softly.
He was smiling, a soft thing she hadn’t seen before. “Ava.”
“I can’t stand up.”
“I can carry you.”
He lifted her and carried her to the van, setting her carefully on the passenger seat.
“I can’t drive naked,” Ava said.
“A shame,” Jack said. “I’ll go get your clothes.”
Ava shifted. She was sore—sore in more places than her ribs. Sitting like this, even for the twenty minutes it would take to return to their motel, was going to be the sweetest of agonies.
When Jack returned with her clothes, the ammunition, and the handguns, Ava felt a laugh bubble up through the pleasant haze that still enveloped her. “This is ridiculous,” she said. “Look at us.”
Jack grinned at her. “You need anything?” he asked. “I brought Gatorade. There’s some in the back. And I can help you get dressed.”
“I would say that I can do it all myself,” Ava said. “But you fucked that out of me. For now.”
“Are you saying hyper-independence can be solved through a rough lay?” Jack asked thoughtfully as he crouched to put the yoga pants where she could stick her feet into them.
“I’m not not saying that,” Ava said. “Why, did it solve your avoidant personality?”
Jack looked up at her wickedly. “I’m not not saying that,” he told her.
For as roughly as he had fucked her just now, he helped her into her clothes so tenderly it made a very different part of her ache.
“Who knew contract killers gave such good aftercare?” Ava said.
But she waited until they were both safely in the van, with the windows and doors shut, and well on their way, before she said it.
Because avoid detection, everybody is always watching, blah, blah, blah. Ew, he really was rubbing off on her.
Or maybe she was just still so deep in that hazy post-scene, post-sex, post-power-exchange glow.
“We’re gonna have to do that again,” Ava told him. “When we get back to the cottage—”
“Wait.” Jack’s voice hardened. “Duck down. Now.”
Ava unbuckled and slid down in the passenger seat, her body obeying before her brain caught up. “What the fuck is going on?” she hissed at him. That had hurt. She was sore, damn it, and her ribs were still aching.
“There are cops,” Jack said. His face was a mask, but she could see his knuckles were white around the steering wheel. “There are six squad cars. Outside of our cottage.”
“Shit.” Ava poked her head up, and Jack pushed her gently down.
He was still driving slowly, maintaining that cool despite it all.
For the first time, Ava was glad that he was driving and she was on passenger princess duty, because she would be pissing herself and blowing through stop signs and looking wildly in all directions, and the cops would snap her up like that.
Actually, they would have probably snapped her up a long time ago if not for Jack. Jack, who’d emptied his gun into someone on her behalf and fucked her until she couldn’t walk.
“What are we going to do?”
Oh, fuck how scared her voice sounded. Fuck how scared she felt.
She wasn’t supposed to feel anything. That was the deal, after Ari died. She wasn’t supposed to feel anything except her desire for revenge.
But fear was pulsing in her throat, driving every other thought out of her head.
“It’ll be all right.” Jack’s voice had returned to steady, calm. Even and low and smooth.
Ava’s heartbeat slowed, just a little.
When had she started to trust his words the way she did right now?
When he’d fed her dinner? When he’d brought Dove chocolates back for her?
When he’d returned with cinnamon buns and her coffee order and strawberries?
When he’d demanded she tell him what she wanted, and then given every bit of it to her?
“I trust you,” Ava whispered.
His eyes locked on hers.
“Thank you,” he said softly.
And that was when the red and blue flashing lights of the cop car lit up behind them.