3. JAMIE
JAMIE
His mouth moves against mine like he's been thinking about this for longer than the past hour, which should be impossible but feels true in the way his lips know exactly how to coax mine open.
The height difference means I'm on my toes, hands fisted in his shirt to keep myself steady, and he's bending down to reach me — this awkward geometry that should be clumsy but isn't because his hands are spanning my ribcage, holding me exactly where I need to be.
The taste of him hits me in waves. Something clean and masculine and warm, layered underneath with the faintest trace of coffee.
My brain tries to catalog it the way it catalogs flavor profiles — the initial note, the middle, the finish — but the system crashes because this isn't a recipe I can break down into components.
This is Jackson's mouth, and apparently my entire nervous system has opinions about Jackson's mouth that it forgot to run past my conscious mind first.
His thumb brushes along my jaw, and I make a sound that I immediately want to take back because it's embarrassing how breathless I already am.
We've been kissing for maybe thirty seconds, and I'm acting like he just discovered gravity. Except that's not entirely wrong because something fundamental has shifted in my understanding of how bodies work — specifically, how my body works when his hands are on it.
The heat starts low in my stomach and spreads outward like when you add hot cream to chocolate — that moment when the temperature change transforms everything from solid to liquid, and you can't go back.
My hips want to press against him, which is a new development because my hips have never wanted anything before.
They've just been the things that hold up my torso while I walk around and make pastries and live my life.
Now they're apparently participants in this conversation his mouth is having with mine.
I shift against him — barely, just a small roll forward — and his whole body goes rigid.
The reaction is so immediate and so total that it stops me cold. His hands tighten on my ribs hard enough that I feel each fingertip, and a sound comes out of him that's half groan, half something lower and rougher.
His hips jerk forward, and suddenly there's more of him pressed against me — more heat, more size, more evidence that this massive man who looks like he could bench press a car is barely hanging onto his control.
Because of me.
Because of my hips rolling forward maybe two inches.
The realization hits like stepping into an oven when you're expecting room temperature. This man — six foot seven, built like a fortress, who made Greg shrink into himself — just trembled because I moved. Not even moved deliberately. I shifted because my body wanted to shift, and he shook.
The power of it rushes through me like sugar hitting my bloodstream, immediate and dizzying.
For two years, Greg made me feel small and scared and helpless.
Made me the thing that other people acted on, the object of someone else's disgusting attention.
And here I am, barely dressed, standing on my toes in Jackson's bathroom, and this man is falling apart because I rolled my hips.
I do it again.
Deliberately this time. A slow, testing press of my body against his, and I watch his face while I do it. Watch his jaw lock. Watch his eyes darken. Watch the careful restraint he's been holding crack just a little bit more.
"Fuck," he breathes, and the word sounds like it got dragged out of him.
The heat in my stomach spreads lower, and suddenly I understand why people write songs about this, why they make terrible decisions and ruin their lives over it.
Not because it feels good — though it does, better than anything I knew was possible — but because of the power.
Because I can make a man like Jackson, my stepfather, lose his words. Because I can make him shake.
I reach up, unbutton his jacket, and slide my hands under his shirt, palms flat against his chest, and the skin-to-skin contact hits me like touching a live wire. He's warm everywhere, and solid in a way that makes me feel delicate instead of small.
My hands look tiny splayed across his chest, but not helpless tiny. Just... different. Like we're two pieces of something that fit together in a way that shouldn't work but does.
He's letting me explore. Holding himself still while my hands map the landscape of his torso — the hard plane of his chest, the ridged muscles along his ribs, the way his stomach tenses when my fingers brush lower. But I can feel the restraint in every line of his body.
The careful way he's holding back should make me feel safe. Instead, it makes me want to break his control completely.
I pull back from the kiss just enough to look up at him, and my voice comes out clearer than I expected when I ask, "Do you want me?"
His jaw locks. His hands tighten on my waist until I can feel the heat of each finger through my skin. The restraint wars with something raw and honest across his face, and for a second I think he's going to lie, going to be the responsible adult in the room and tell me this is a bad idea.
Then he says, "You have no fucking idea," and his voice is so low and rough that I feel it in my chest.
Those five words land in my body like a match dropped into kindling. The fact that this man — this massive, steady, unshakable man — just admitted that I'm destroying his control. Me. Five foot two, twenty years old, standing topless in his bathroom with tears still drying on my cheeks.
I kiss him again, and this time it's not exploration or discovery or any of the tentative things it was before. This time it's an answer.
His restraint snaps.
The change is immediate — his hands in my hair, his mouth hungrier, more demanding. The kiss deepens into something that makes my knees wobble and my brain short-circuit. He tastes like want now, like the last thirty seconds of careful control just evaporated, and I'm the one who made it happen.
The moment his palms glide down my thighs, the world tilts—not just physically, but in some deeper, more fundamental way.
One second I’m standing, the next I’m airborne, suspended between his hands. The cold slap of marble against my bare back steals my breath, the shock of it sharp and electric, but before I can even gasp, Jackson is there, stepping between my knees, his heat swallowing the chill.
The counter’s edge digs into the backs of my thighs, but I barely register it because now we’re finally, finally eye level, and the way he’s looking at me—like I’m the only thing in the universe worth focusing on—makes my pulse stutter.
His voice is rough, a low scrape of sound that seems to come from somewhere deep in his chest. "Tell me to stop." But his hands are already moving, thumbs dragging slow, deliberate circles up the inside of my thighs, each pass sending a jolt straight through me. "Tell me this is a bad idea."
His breath is warm against my mouth, his words a challenge, but his touch is anything but uncertain.
I don’t tell him to stop.
Instead, I lock my legs around his waist and pull, dragging him closer until there’s no space left between us. The sound that tears out of him isn’t human—it’s raw, guttural, like something primal just got unleashed.
His mouth crashes into the side of my neck, lips and teeth and tongue working in a rhythm that makes my back arch.
The movement presses my chest against his, and the friction of his shirt against my bare skin is a reminder—oh god—I’m still half-naked, still leaking, still aching in ways I don’t fully understand.
Jackson freezes for half a second when he feels it. The wetness. The warmth. His head lifts just enough for his gaze to drop, and I follow it, watching as a thick bead of milk wells at my nipple, then spills over.
His throat works, his jaw tightening like he’s fighting some internal battle, and then his voice comes out strained, like the words are being dragged from him. "Jamie." Just my name, but it sounds like a confession. Like he’s admitting something he shouldn’t.
Then his mouth is on me, and it’s nothing like before.
Before, it was clinical. A solution to a problem. His hands too big, his touch careful, detached, like he was performing a task that needed doing. But this? This is want.
His lips seal around my nipple, his tongue working in slow, deep pulls that send heat pooling low in my stomach. The milk flows freely now, and he drinks it down like a man who’s been starving, like this is the thing he’s been denying himself for too long.
The sounds he makes—low, rough hums of satisfaction—vibrate against my skin, and I can feel the way his body tenses, like he’s holding himself back from taking more, harder, faster.
My fingers tangle in his hair, gripping tight, not to guide him but to anchor myself because the sensations are too much—too good, too intense. When he switches to the other side, I don’t just let him; I hold him there, my nails scraping lightly against his scalp.
The groan that rumbles out of him is almost feral, and the vibration of it against my skin makes my thighs clench around his hips.
His hands slide under me, palms splayed wide across my back, holding me up like I’m something precious, something fragile, even as his mouth works me with a hunger that feels anything but gentle.
This isn’t just relief. It isn’t just biology.
It’s him. It’s the way his breath hitches when I whimper, the way his fingers dig into my skin like he’s afraid I’ll disappear, the way he’s drinking me down like I’m the only thing that can quench his thirst.
And for the first time in weeks—maybe ever—my body doesn’t feel like a betrayal.
It feels like it was made for this.
"I need you," I whisper, and the words surprise me because I've never needed anyone like this before. Never felt like I might actually die if someone didn't touch me soon, didn't fill the aching emptiness that's opened up inside me.