Chapter 21 Jack
TWENTY-ONE
JACK
Oh, I am absolutely fucked.
My body, my brain, my entire nervous system have decided to betray me all at once.
The second Isla steps into the light, everything inside me answers. I’m not some casual guy sitting in a club on a Tuesday night with a dirty soda in front of him, pretending he knows how to behave. I’m a desperate man trying not to come apart in public.
My wife moves like the room belongs to her.
I don’t know what I expected. Maybe some version of distance or a performance she could slip into and hide behind, treating her body like a costume she puts on for the money and takes off again when the song ends. But that’s not what this is.
This is Isla with the brakes off. She’s sexy as hell, fully inside herself in a way that makes the rest of the room feel incidental.
The slip dress is black, short, and tight exactly where it should be. It skims her hips, shows off her legs, and catches the light along the sheen of her skin and the curve of her mouth. For one irrational second, I swear she’s doing it to punish me for showing up.
Which is ridiculous.
She told me to sit, order a dirty soda, keep my mouth shut, and tip well. The rules came fast and familiar. I said yes because I really, really wanted to watch. I also wanted her to stop looking at me like I was a problem she had to contain.
Mostly, though, I wanted her to finish the shift, walk out to my truck, and let me take her somewhere boring and normal. Somewhere we could talk and celebrate.
Instead, I’m pinned to this chair with my hands braced on my thighs, staring at Isla on a stage while my body reacts in a way that’s aggressive and impossible to ignore. I should not be getting hard in public.
I should not be getting hard over Isla Winslow (except on Saturdays and during the occasional personal crisis), who married me for paperwork and still won’t let my fingers brush her wrist in the kitchen after breakfast.
And yet.
She moves into the first beat, and my cock reacts like it’s been waiting for permission all night. I shift in my seat, angle my body, tug at my jacket. I’m trying to find a position that doesn’t advertise what’s happening under the table.
It only makes it worse. There’s more pressure and friction now. More of the exact kind of awareness I don’t need.
My mouth goes dry.
I take a sip of the drink she ordered for me. Sweet, cold, useless. None of it helps because Isla’s hand slides down her own thigh, tantalizingly slow.
My fingers tighten around the glass, and I remind myself of the rules. After this, I keep my mouth shut. I keep my thoughts to myself. I can do that, right? I’m good at keeping things light. Hell, I built most of my personality around it.
Isla turns. She plants her heels and rolls her hips in a way that makes my vision narrow. She’s not looking at me yet. She’s looking over the room, letting the men who pay for this pretend they have a chance at something other than a fantasy.
One of them tosses a bill.
Someone else laughs.
That isn’t how it’s meant to go here. Tossing dollar bills is a fast track to the floor managers giving you a look that ends your night. Luxe is high-class, and I’ll be damned if some finance bro thinks he gets to treat my wife like a vending machine.
I hear a low murmur from a table near the bar and let the words drift over anyway, low and ugly. “She’s got some hips on her,” someone murmurs. “She looks like she’d suffocate you between them,” another says, amused. “Worth it,” a third replies.
That thought makes something sharp rise in my chest, but I force myself to breathe through it. I’m not here to start a fight.
I’m here because I told her I’d meet her after her shift. She forgot to text me. I could’ve driven home and played it cool, but the idea of leaving her here while I went back to her house and waited in her kitchen made me feel unhinged.
So, I showed up. And now I’m paying for it.
Isla’s hands slide up her own body, from her thighs to her waist, then higher, fingers splaying over her ribs. She arches a little, just enough to make the dress pull tight over her chest.
I can see the outline of her bra through the fabric—something strappy and expensive. The kind of thing she’d never buy unless she had a damn good reason.
I swallow and think of her at home, hair damp, skin clean, looking like she belonged to no one on Earth. And the ugly, impossible thought that rose in me anyway.
Mine.
My jaw hurts from how hard I’m holding it shut.
She turns again to cross the stage, and I catch a glimpse when the hem rides up. A flash of black underneath. There’s lace at the edge of her hip, the strap of a thong cutting clean across the curve of her ass.
My brain supplies another memory from years ago. Isla at a summer fundraiser in a sundress, balancing a tray of wine, then bending to grab my dropped napkin while calling me a nuisance in front of half the town.
I remember standing there like a dipshit, thinking that if she ever let me get her alone, I’d take my time. I’d drag my hands up her thighs and kiss her until she stopped arguing with me long enough to moan. I’d put my mouth on every part of her she tried to pretend didn’t affect me.
I’d learn exactly how she sounds when she gives up control.
That was before I married her and moved into the same house.
Before I heard her come for real.
Fuck, this is torture.
She reaches the pole, curls one hand around the metal, and looks out at the room with an expression that’s almost bored. Meanwhile, my entire body is lit up like a live wire.
Then she climbs.
Muscle shifts under skin. Arms, shoulders, stomach. The sight hits me low and hard because I know exactly how strong she is. I’ve watched her haul crates, carry ladders, dig trenches, drag tarps full of clippings until her hands shook, and then keep going anyway.
Now, she’s doing it in heels.
I should be impressed in a normal way.
I am impressed in a filthy way.
She hooks her knee and leans back, hair spilling, the dress sliding up her thighs. The music slows, and she lets her body follow it, shifting her hips, letting the pole support her.
It’s the quietest the place has been all night.
She drops and then lands with that same composed expression.
I press my knee out under the table, trying to relieve the pressure in my pants without making it obvious. My breath comes in through my nose. I’m trying not to lose it. I really, truly am.
I’m failing spectacularly.
Isla reaches for the hem of her dress. She lifts it a couple of inches, not enough to fully expose, but enough to show the black lace and the line of her thigh higher up. She runs her fingers along the strap at her hip, then slides her palm across her stomach.
My vision goes grainy at the edges.
She drags her hands up her body again, then pauses at her chest, fingertips gliding over the fabric in a way that makes it obvious she knows exactly what she’s doing. She’s teasing herself, and watching it feels unfair on a level I don’t even have language for.
When she hooks her fingers beneath the thin straps and eases them down her shoulders, the whole room seems to tighten around the moment. Everyone leans in, caught in that held-breath silence that only happens when people know they’re looking at something worth waiting for.
The dress slips lower by degrees. First, her shoulders, then the elegant line of her collarbones, then the soft inward curve at her waist when she arches. Nothing about her looks tentative.
It’s the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.
Her body is exactly the kind that undoes me. Those lush hips, that soft middle, the full weight of her breasts, every part of her made to be admired and, more than that, held on to.
Maybe the sight of a woman like that would wreck me no matter what. Maybe it’s only this devastating because it’s Isla. I don’t know, and at this point, I’m not capable of pretending the distinction matters.
She lets the dress fall the rest of the way, and it pools at her knees.
Her hands move again, sliding from her ribs to her stomach, lower, then back up. She tips her head, spine curving in a way that makes my grip clamp hard on the edge of the table.
I wish we were alone. I wish this were happening somewhere private, somewhere without a room full of strangers getting to look at her, too, as though she isn’t my wife in the most inconvenient, complicated way possible.
When Isla edges closer to the front of the stage, heat moves through me so fast it feels almost violent.
She lowers gracefully onto her knees and settles back on her heels before arching, her hands going behind her to unfasten the bra. Black lace loosens and slips away, revealing full, teardrop breasts that shift softly with the movement. Her nipples tighten in the cool air.
I drag my tongue across my bottom lip and immediately make things worse for myself by imagining the weight of her in my hands, the feel of her breast filling my palm, the sound she’d make if I took one into my mouth and kept going until she gasped my name like a plea.
Jack. Please. Don’t stop.
Then, as though she can actually feel the force of my attention from across the room, she looks at me again. It isn’t an obvious stare, nothing anyone else would clock, but it lingers for one dangerous beat too long to be innocent.
Stay right where you are and watch. You don’t get to touch me, Jack Rhodes, but you can sit there and suffer.
Her gaze drops, quick and wicked, and this time, it isn’t my face she’s looking at. Heat surges up my throat so fast I nearly choke on it.
Then she turns away, and the room gets to breathe again. I don’t.
Blunt desire pulses through me, and I have to shift in my seat, pressing my heel into the floor in a useless attempt at relief that doesn’t give me away.
This level of frustration should make me angry.
Instead, it leaves me with the overwhelming urge to get on my knees in front of her to apologize.
Two acts of contrition for every time I ever flirted with someone else in front of her.
Another for every time I let her believe she had to do everything alone.
I want her in my bed, but I also want her everywhere else. I want her to choose me outside of all this mess.
I’m done telling myself this is coincidence, or convenience, or some generous favor I agreed to out of pure goodwill. Whatever lives between us is real. It’s been real for longer than either of us has wanted to admit.
And if I have anything to say about it, Isla Winslow is never going to feel alone again. Not on a stage, not in the orchard, not in her kitchen at six in the morning while she tries to hold the whole world together through sheer force of will.
Not if I can help it.