Chapter 27 #2
I’d grown up knowing I’d eventually wear twin capes of power and secrecy, but in moments like this, the weight of them was almost too much to carry.
And there wasn’t a single soul I could share that weight with either. No one in my life—not the sister I adored, not the people I worked with, not the women (or man) who’d shared my bed—could ever know the truth of Paxis. And I couldn’t trust anyone on the council enough to get close to them.
The realization made me on edge and out of sorts.
And that was before I got to my bedroom and remembered I had a drug lord’s son to murder.
“You’re here,” Jett said, glancing up from where he already reclined in my bed.
“I’m here.”
His face was serious as he met my eyes. “We need to talk.”
I crossed my arms and glared at him. “Agreed. Start talking.”
Jett pushed himself upright and leaned against the headboard.
What exactly was he going to say? That the punk had made him a better offer?
If Jett thought for one moment I was going to let him out of his commitment to me before the end of this week, he was wrong. If he thought I’d allow him to move from my bed into Santi-fucking-Alvarado’s, he was mistaken.
“Easy, tiger,” he said with a frown as he patted the bed next to him. “Why do you look so angry?”
I tried ignoring his concerned expression. “Whatever you’re going to say, the answer’s no.”
He made a funny expression, a little tilt of the head and purse of the lips, and then he looked amused. “Well, I was going to ask if you’d mind letting me fuck you. Since you said no, that means you won’t mind. Great! Let me show you how to prep.”
I ran a hand through my hair. “Don’t be cute,” I muttered.
Jett’s sunshine smile was warmer than the Mediterranean sun. “I mean, I could try, but it’s kind of my permanent state.” He patted the bed again. “Orrr you could just tell me what got you upset.”
“Damn it.” I yanked the covers back and climbed in. I gave in to the urge to hold him, pulling him fully into my arms, where I was starting to believe he might belong.
It wasn’t the same as being able to trust him, but the connection felt damn good anyway.
“Fuck,” I mumbled. He felt fucking incredible, all lean muscle and coiled tension.
He snuggled against me with a contented sound before grumbling about how many clothes I was wearing. “Get them off.”
I stepped out of the bed and stripped down to my boxer briefs before sliding in and pulling him down to lie face-to-face with me on our sides. Then I reached for his hand.
“Tell me what Santi wanted.”
“How’d you know Santi talked to me?” he demanded.
I rolled my eyes. “Next time you have an assignation with someone, maybe don’t do it where I can see you out the window.”
Jett rolled his own eyes twice as hard. “Next time you think you’ve caught me having an assignation with someone, maybe remember that I’m not an idiot or an asshole… and that no one actually uses the word assignation.”
Despite myself, I huffed out a laugh. “Touché. What did he want?”
Jett hesitated, his eyes flicking between mine. I could tell he was caught between telling me the truth or a lie. But when he blew out a breath and opened his mouth, I wasn’t sure which he’d chosen.
“Santi said to be careful of you. That he thought something suspicious was going on here. With the Paxis players.”
My antennae pricked, and I leaned up on an elbow. “Suspicious how?”
Jett hesitated. “He… he thinks the game is a front. He implied you’re using your ships to help his father move drugs or… or people.”
I stared at him. So much for Santi being worthy of the game. This was enough reason to ban him from ever becoming a player. Not to mention, it was a dirty lie.
“I’m not,” I assured Jett, cupping his face so he could see the truth in my eyes. “I don’t have a professional relationship with Esteban. And they don’t use Maris ships. At least, not to my knowledge.”
“You gonna tell me why you play chess with a drug lord, then?” The words were softly spoken, but his eyes pleaded.
It wasn’t his first time asking, but it was the first time I was tempted to tell him the truth. Instead, I leaned down to kiss him.
He let me kiss him once, twice, three times, before he pulled away. “That’s a good trick—the best—but I’m not falling for it.”
I combed my fingers through his messy waves. “I can’t answer that, Jethro.”
“Are you into anything illegal?”
I didn’t want to lie to him, so I hesitated, trying to find the right words.
“Correction,” he said with the barest smile. “Are you into anything nefarious?”
“No,” I said quickly. “Never.”
He studied me as if my face were a lie detector. I tried to show him with my expression what I couldn’t put into words.
“What am I missing?” he breathed, almost to himself. His eyes were still on me. “If you don’t tell me, I can’t help you.”
Jett pushed me onto my back and moved until he lay on top of me, his knees to either side of my waist and his cotton-covered cock brushing mine. My hands went to his ass to pull him closer.
“I’m not sure you can help, baby,” I murmured before turning to kiss the inside of his elbow.
Why did I feel better simply because he was here with me? Having him within arm’s reach was an immediate balm to the tension that had been riding me all day.
His eyes were wide, lips plump in their usual bow shape.
“You called me baby.”
I snorted. “No, I didn’t.”
“You did. You called me baby.”
Heat flooded my face. “I… no. I wouldn’t have.”
Jett’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t need to be a dick about it.”
He started to climb off me, but I grabbed him to keep him there. “Wait. Please. Just wait.”
He sighed and slumped, as if giving up. I hated to see his disappointment. In part because I believed him. I probably had said it. Let it slip, rather. I just shouldn’t have.
I shifted to sit up, still holding him in my lap. “Don’t go anywhere,” I said softly. “Please.”
He stayed in my lap but straightened and crossed his arms over the shirt he’d pulled on.
I noticed absently it was my favorite, the one Celeste had given me this past Christmas as a joke.
It had the company logo on the chest, but instead of Maris Holdings, it said Maris, Hold Me.
It was a joke from when we were kids and she’d misunderstood the company’s name.
I nudged his arms away from his chest and traced the logo over his chest.
Then I told him the story behind the shirt.
While I told him about my sister, about the months we’d let her get it wrong and other memories of her as a child, Jett listened with those denim fucking eyes trained on me like I was important. Like what I had to say was worth listening to. Like Santiago Alvarado was nothing.
“She calls me Johnny,” I said, adding a non sequitur. “Like you have.”
He chuckled. “Does she?”
I nodded and traced the logo again, enjoying the way it hardened his nipple. “Sometimes.”
Jett leaned forward slowly and dropped open-mouthed kisses along my jaw, my throat, my cheek and forehead. By the time he made it down to my shoulders, I was breathing heavily and hard as a rock.
“Can I fuck you?” I asked, hope like a fragile balloon in my chest.
He bit his lip and smiled. “You make it sound like I’d be doing you a favor.”
“You’d be doing me a very, very big favor,” I said, feeling the joy of bantering with him.
He opened his mouth, and I knew he was going to make a joke about being on the clock, about being well compensated for having sex with me, but I didn’t want to hear it. I put my fingers over his lips.
“I want you to want it,” I said, feeling pathetic. “Not because—”
Jett yanked my hand away and leaned down to kiss me, holding my face in place.
He kissed me hard before pulling back. “I have never done anything sexual with you I didn’t want to do, Locke.
I promise. If you’d offered me zero dollars to come here with you, I still would have agreed. ” He huffed. “Maybe even faster.”
I held the back of his head and kissed him again, relishing the feel of Jett and his words. I trusted him. For once, I didn’t worry he was telling me what I wanted to hear. Maybe I was a fool. Maybe I was just like all his other sugar daddies who’d fallen for pretty lies.
But I didn’t think so.
I was finally able to admit that there was something different about our connection.
If he were only with me for the money, he wouldn’t have been as upset by the ups and downs this week as he had been.
I’d seen his frustration when I’d dismissed him.
He had to be used to being dismissed by other powerful men, but it was different with me. At least, I liked to think it was.
I sat up and rolled him onto his back, pressing him into the mattress with my hips. “I want you. Badly.”
His eyes warmed, and his cheeks darkened. “Then what the fuck are you waiting for?”
I kissed him again, happy to lose myself in him, his body, his fucking undimmable light.
We kissed and touched each other like teenagers, grinding our cocks together and feeling each other up without going any further. As if we had an unspoken agreement to make it last as long as possible.
By the time I was ready for more, Jett’s neck was streaked with red, his heaving chest and audible breaths the best rewards for my efforts.
“You’re killing me,” he murmured. “Please.”
I reached down to shuttle a hand over his cock. Our clothes were long gone, and all of his bare skin was irresistible. I thought back to the first time he’d blown me in my kitchen, when I’d thought of him as an easy mouth.
Liar. You never thought of him that way.
Jett’s face tightened with desire so strong I had to close my eyes. “You’re so fucking beautiful.”
His lips brushed my ear. “Then why aren’t you lookin’ at me, Johnny?”
If I opened my eyes, saw the affectionate, open look on his face, it would change everything. I knew it as well as I knew my own name. My family legacy.
The Paxis code.
“Can’t,” I said, giving him a lazy smile instead.
The low sound of his laugh moved through me as his mouth continued teasing me. “Liar,” he breathed against my skin.
Every part of me was engaged and wanting. It wasn’t just my skin itching for his. My cock thickening for him. But also my chest pulled tight with need. My gut twisted up in him.
“Jethro,” I murmured.
“I like it when you call me that,” he said.
“It’s your name,” I said, knowing maybe it wasn’t. From that very first night at the Candy Bar, he’d introduced himself as Jett, as if Jethro was a fake name he’d put on his employee paperwork and then forgotten about.
Could that be it? Could that be the reason so many details about him didn’t add up?
“Mm.”
I opened my eyes to look at him. “Tell me.”
His smile was strangely off. If I hadn’t been so aware of him, I might not have noticed.
“Baby,” I said, feeling the truth of it. The plea and the cracked-open chest of it.
He tucked his face into my neck. “Yes. That. Definitely that.”
I moved through the motions of loving him like I was two people. One handled the physical side. Lube, stretching, sucking his cock until his eyes rolled back in his head and he was begging me to get inside him.
The other made sure he was turned on, out of his mind with pleasure. Protected. Adored. Safe and satisfied.
His body squeezed hotly around my cock as I thrust into him from above. His knees bent up toward his shoulders, his toes already curling.
“So fucking sexy,” I couldn’t help but say. “So hot. Such a good boy for me.”
Jett’s cheeks were flushed and eyes glassy. “Want to make you feel good.”
He was transparent as glass, and in that moment, I realized I didn’t need to know his real name to know who he was.
And who he was to me.
“Come for me, baby,” I whispered into his sweaty temple when I couldn’t hold back any longer and my body pounded into his.
“Oh god,” he whimpered. “Fuck. I can’t… oh fuck!”
His release was intense, overwhelming both of us and sending my brain and body flying.
By the time we recovered, I was cum-drunk and not in my right mind.
And maybe I wanted to be real with him for a minute. Connect with him in a way that might help him understand why I was the way I was.
Which was my only excuse for what I said a little while later.
“Santi’s right. The game isn’t just a game,” I said into the darkness, after we’d cleaned up and returned to the bed. Jett’s head rested on my shoulder, and I was drawing lazy shapes with my fingers up and down his arm.
I couldn’t tell him everything. But I could give him this.
“We use it to communicate things that can’t be said aloud or written down. Each move carries meaning beyond the board.”
He blew out a long breath. “Okay,” he said softly. “That’s what I thought.”
I moved my hand into his hair. “Please forget I told you that. Santi should never have brought it up, but since he did… I just… don’t want to keep secrets from you.”
The silence stretched.
“Santi didn’t say anything.”
I shifted until I could see his face in the dim light from the edges of the shutters. “What do you mean? You said he told you—”
“I lied.”