Chapter 47 - Jag
Present day
Every inch of distance I planned to keep is gone. The reason I sneaked onto the island, the stoic goodbye I practiced, it all goes up in smoke as Dove’s mouth yields beneath mine.
Her fingers twist into the front of my shirt, dragging me closer. Close enough to feel that she’s hurting and angry and still mine in ways she’ll never admit out loud.
I grip her waist so urgently her breath breaks against my lips. Then she kisses me harder, pressing every bit of her tongue into my mouth.
She kisses me like that night seventeen years ago. The night she was dripping need and innocence and climbing inside my pants because she thought I was good enough for her.
It’s the same desperation now. But stronger. Older. Damaged.
Her lips cling to mine, her tongue chasing, demanding, and furious. Furious she still needs me this much and frantic to swallow the years we lost.
Every exhale she gives me is hot and vicious, filled with memories I never let myself think about.
Seventeen years of wanting her rips through me in a single rush, and my body answers with zero hesitation.
I’m hard in an instant. Painfully. Stupidly. And she feels it.
Her whole body shudders against mine. A choked sound slips into my mouth. Then she wrenches me deeper into the kiss.
Fuck me.
My hand flies to her hip, her thigh, then the curve of her ass where I’ve imagined holding her a thousand times.
She arches into it, and I know she’s thinking about our life together on the streets. Not everything. Not the worst parts. But the parts where she trusted me. The parts where she loved me.
Her breath trembles, brushing my cheek, my jaw, my throat as she tries to keep up with the pace we’re both sprinting toward.
I recapture her mouth and kiss her like our lives depend on it. She opens for me, melting and clawing, fierce and hungry, her tongue sliding and dueling and rocketing heat through my groin.
My pulse jackhammers. I can’t think, can’t breathe, can’t do anything but feel her pressing up against the seventeen-year void in my chest.
With her hands in my hair and her breath hot on my tongue, she brings every buried thing inside me back to life.
The longing.
The fury.
The stupid, stubborn hope I thought I burned out of myself years ago.
I’ve waited half my life to feel her like this again. To feel her shaking and clinging and kissing me like she remembers who we were before I destroyed everything.
But it doesn’t last.
I know the moment her mind replays what I did that night. She tenses and rips her mouth away with a cry.
“No.” She flattens her hands on my chest and shoves. “No! Don’t touch me!”
I miss her lips so desperately I pull her back.
Until the cold, unmistakable edge of a blade presses against my throat.
Wolfson Strakh is the only person on the planet who can sneak up on me.
“Lower your hands, or I’ll remove those first.” He fists my hair and wrenches my head back, exposing the line of my neck. “Then I’ll open your throat.”
I know he will. He’ll do it without mercy.
If I’m dead, I can’t keep them alive. So I drop my hands.
“Dovey.” He walks me backward, separating me from her. “Did he hurt you?”
“No.” She hugs her waist. “Wolf, I’m sorry. I—”
“Go to the kitchen and get yourself a knife. The biggest one you can find.”
“She doesn’t need it.” I grit my teeth.
Wolf’s free hand cups me between the legs, gripping the hardness there. “Feels like she does.”
Christ in hell.
I hold my hands out to my sides, breath locked in my chest. I don’t look at her. Not when my skin is bared under Wolf’s knife. Not when his fingers are curled around my erection. If I see her face right now, I’ll forget the blade and the consequences and everything I’m trying to keep alive.
But she doesn’t go for a weapon. She stands at the edge of my periphery and shakes her head at Wolf like she can’t process what he’s asking.
He takes in her expression, the tears, and releases my shrinking dick.
“You made her cry.” An ominous chill shivers through his voice. “What kind of monster are you?”
“The worst kind.”
It’s the truth. There’s no excuse left to hide behind, and the sight of her tears—tears I put there again—cuts deeper than the blade digging into my throat.
“Look at me,” she says quietly.
I don’t want to. I can’t. But the heartbreak in her tone drags my eyes up anyway.
“I loved you.” She balls her fists at her sides. “You were my entire world. My safe place. My family. My heart—” She inhales sharply. “And you threw me away.”
Wolf’s blade presses deeper.
Her glare is a blade all its own. “You threw me away when I was fifteen. So I did the only thing I could do to protect myself. I ran. But you weren’t finished with your torture.
You chased me. Hunted me. Showed up in every town I tried to hide in.
Every time I tried to start a normal life, you ruined it.
You fucked my friends. My boyfriends. Anyone who got close to me. ”
My lungs burn.
“I let myself believe it was because you cared.” Her voice cracks. “That maybe you were keeping me safe. That maybe you still loved me.”
I can’t breathe.
“I wanted you once.” Her eyes shine with grief. “I wanted you so damn much. But you didn’t want me back. You made that very clear. So why, Jag? Why didn’t you just leave me the hell alone?”
“I couldn’t.” I swallow against the steel, because she’s right about one thing. She loved me, and I pissed all over it. On purpose.
She wipes her face and looks away. Angry. Ashamed she cried. Ashamed she kissed me. Ashamed she let all those years hit her at once.
Wolf shifts around me, and for a split second, the absurdity of him is all I see.
What in tropical-hell is he wearing?
Floral rain boots, turquoise shorts with flamingos in sunglasses, and a vintage black tee with a snarling white wolf, its fangs dripping cartoon-red. The shirt hangs lopsided on him, exposing a scarred shoulder that hints at more scars underneath.
Without moving my head, I focus on his face, and… Goddamn. His eyes gleam with that special kind of madness, the razor edge between queer and violent that only trauma-bred boys can master.
“That’s it?” He flutters his thick eyelashes. “You’re not going to defend yourself?”
There’s nothing to defend.
I removed every boyfriend Dove brought home.
Every girlfriend she thought was a friend.
They were bottom-shelf humans. Dead ends with faces.
The boys cheated on her. The girls were toxic, most of them addicts, and they treated her like shit.
So I fucked them to prove their disloyalty and killed the ones who dared to hurt her.
None of them was worth her time or attention. But she doesn’t know that. She only knows the ruin I left behind.
For the longest time, I thought breaking her connections was protecting her. I thought if I kept the world from taking advantage of her, she could be happy.
Twisted logic from a twisted life.
But now?
Now I know the only person who’s ever been worthy of her is the same one holding a knife to my throat.
Wolf will fight for her, kill for her, and protect her from everything and everyone.
Including me.
Her chest rises and falls fast, her hands curling uselessly at her sides. Not afraid. Not timid. This is Dove broken open and trying to rebuild her armor.
“You won’t touch her again.” Wolf lifts my chin with the blade, bringing my eyes back to him. “Not without her permission. Not in confusion. Not in nostalgia. Not because you’re lonely and she makes your dick hard.”
“I’m leaving. For good.” My chest constricts. “I came here to say goodbye.”
“That right?” Wolf narrows his arctic eyes. “Where are you going?”
“Doesn’t matter. She has you, and you’re the only one good enough for her.”
“Hm. Yeah. We’re going to table all of that for a minute.” He makes a face. “Dove darling… Safety check. Would your stepbrother physically harm you?”
“Never.” She steps closer. “But he might hurt you.”
“I don’t think so.” He lowers the knife and paces in the space between her and me. “Here’s the thing, Murder Muffin. I feel very possessive of my woman.”
He twirls the knife like a lethal baton. Not a flashy trick. Not for show. Just the effortless, predatory movement of a man thinking aloud with steel and fingers.
I’ve never seen anyone handle a blade like that.
“My feelings for Dove are bigger than me. We’re talking princess level.
In the realm of the Magic Kingdom. The real deal.
” He spins the knife along his knuckles, catches the hilt backward, flips it forward, and meets my eyes.
“My feelings for you are…” He gives Dove a look.
“Confused?” His gaze snaps back to me, the blade twirling again.
“Maybe that’s why you’re still breathing.
But the night isn’t over. Help me understand it. ”
Confused. Yeah, that makes two of us.
I’ve spent years taking Dove’s companions off the board. Not because I wanted them. Not because they meant anything. But because they didn’t deserve her. I didn’t just fuck them. I made sure she walked in at the right moment so she’d drop them quick.
But Wolf?
If I took Wolf to my bed, it wouldn’t be for Dove’s protection. It would be because I want him. And Christ help me, I do.
All my plans to test him, manipulate him, and break him down evaporated when I learned who he is at his core.
He’s dangerous in ways I respect and loyal in ways I don’t understand. He’s attractive, uncivilized, honest, eccentric, and unashamed of who he is.
He and I? We can’t happen. Because I know what that would do to Dove, and I refuse to hurt her again.
And Wolf wouldn’t hurt her, either.
So yeah, my feelings for him are confused, inconvenient, and completely off-limits.
“Help you understand?” I stand perfectly still, hands loose at my sides, waiting for one of those blade rotations to stop dead in my chest. “Which part?”