Chapter 63
Tingles ripple through me, scattering shockwaves across my skin, as Jag lowers his head.
His mouth stretches, and his tongue swirls, sliding over my crown like a jaguar lapping blood from a fresh kill.
“Fuck!” I gasp, legs opening and hips thrusting, moving of their own volition.
Then he puts his lips in motion, and holy mother, he sucks me. The force and pull of his mouth sends my ass off the stairs, but his hands clamp me back down.
His tongue lashes without mercy, and the delicious heat of his throat drives me insane. I can’t hold still, can’t catch my breath, can’t stop the orgasm from slamming into me.
“Jag, I’m coming.” I yank on his hair in urgent warning. “I’m fucking coming.”
He doesn’t relent. I thrash and groan and fuck his mouth until I’m spent.
I don’t know what I expected from the notorious hacker, but I didn’t think he’d devour me so completely.
“Damn.” He leans back, licking his lips. “That’s the first time I ever enjoyed that.”
“Did I even last thirty seconds?”
“Not even close.” He smirks.
“I’m so turned on right now.”
“Ready to go again?” He slaps my cock and watches it thicken. “Already? Now I feel old.”
“Are you usually one and done?”
“Yeah. Sex was always a job. A means to an end.”
“Not anymore.”
“No.” His hand cups the back of my head. “Not anymore.” He pulls me in for a languorous kiss.
Without breaking apart, we rise and stumble up the stairs, groping each other’s cocks. Slowly, clumsily, we make it to the bedroom, bumping into the wall with stops and starts and ceaseless kissing and touching.
I push him toward the bed, fraught with nerves and desire. “My turn to suck you.”
“No.” He braces his feet, unmoving. “Your journal… He forced himself down your throat.”
“That’s the past. I want the future.”
I need him to impale me on his cock and fuck me until I forget. I want his filthy commands in my ear as he fills me with hot come and sweet memories.
“I’m not going to fuck you. Not your throat. Not your ass.” He reaches between us and palms my erection. “Not tonight.”
“I hate that for you. Try again.”
“Don’t be a brat. We’ll try something safe tonight.” He grips himself with his free hand and strokes us in tandem. “Something new for both of us.”
“I’m listening.” I cling to his shoulders as fresh need spikes fast, driving my hips and working myself in his grip.
“Do you have lube?” He kisses my lips, my neck, his hand never slowing between my legs.
“Bathroom.”
We separate long enough to cross the room and file into the en suite. I perch on the edge of the counter and glance at his tattoo.
Jaguar claws curl protectively around a feathered heart, fully healed. The composition, the restraint, the promise of what’s coming… I love how good it looks.
My gaze lifts to his. “I want to finish it.”
“Yes, with my hands on you.”
We share a moment of eye contact, panting, muscles tense, ready to tear each other apart. The release he gave me feels like a preview, just enough to light every nerve on fire.
He finds the lube in the first drawer he opens.
“Is this yours?” He squirts a generous glob into his palm.
“It’s a throwback to when Frankie shared this place with the pillow humpers.”
He rubs his palms together and greases up my cock.
His divine mastery of my anatomy, the speed at which his hands work me into a lather, and the promise glinting in his heavy-lidded eyes… Damn it all. This is torture.
“Sweet suffering balls.” My legs shake, and my head falls back on my shoulders. “You’re a dick-whispering wizard.”
“And you’re my—”
“Does that sentence end in magic wand?”
“Maybe.” He traps a smile between his front teeth.
“Cute. How about I do the jokes, and you do—” I shudder in the cruel squeeze of his fist. “That.”
“Let’s switch places.”
He doesn’t release my cock as we circle each other, trading ground and pressing closer. He stops at the sink, turns his back to me, and drags his hands down his inner thighs, rubbing the remainder of the lube into his skin.
Thrown by what he’s doing, I stare at the twin dimples above his sculpted ass.
The set of his shoulders, the lubrication along the inside of his legs, and the way he doesn’t look back to check if I’m following…
It’s an invitation.
But for what exactly?
Charged and buzzing, I press into the space he’s offering. “What are the rules of engagement here?”
“Keep your dick out of my ass. Neither of us is ready for that.” His chiseled glutes clench as he stands rod straight. “Everything else is up for grabs.”
“Everything?” I reach around and grab the thick base of his erection, making him groan.
I slot my body behind his, my chest snug against his back. Since we’re the same height and similar build, my chin fits easily on his shoulder.
In the mirror, our reflections line up, two silhouettes sharing one shape, edges matching where they meet. The alignment makes it easy to fit my dick into the tight, lubricated crease between his powerful thighs.
Then it dawns on me.
“This is the safe thing you want to try.” I give an experimental thrust, testing the friction.
“Fuck yeah,” he breathes.
“You’ve never done this?” I lock an arm around his chest and kick my hips, grinding into it.
“Never.” He strengthens his spine, crosses his legs at the ankles, and squeezes my dick with his adductor muscles. “Pound away, Wolf.”
The warm, lubed-up pocket beneath his taint is so fucking narrow. I slam my hips faster and harder, my arm restraining him against me as I bear down on him. I jerk him with my free hand, and his breathing goes wild.
“You’re almost as tight as your sister,” I rasp in his ear.
He releases a guttural groan and reaches a hand back to claw at my flexing butt. His other hand curls around my fist on his dick and shows me the pressure and pace he wants.
“Feels so fucking good.” My muscles shake with the need to come. “What do you get out of this?”
“The perineum…” He gasps, shaking violently as his body surges into our combined fists. “It’s a nerve-rich pleasure center.” Another strangled gasp. “Massive orgasmic potential.”
“What do we call this? Screwing the gooch? Tapping the taint? Grinding the grundle?”
“The slow burn.”
I’m burning, all right. Sweat beads my forehead, and volcanic pressure builds in my balls.
“Please, tell me you’re close.” I meet his eyes in the mirror.
“Waiting for you.” He jerks our hands faster on his dick and hisses past clenched teeth.
He’s fucking magnificent. The power in his physique, the hunger in his eyes, and the brutal girth of him in my fist.
“Mine.” I hold his stare in the mirror and sink my teeth into the curve of his neck, breaking skin.
We fall over the edge together, bucking, groaning, spurting onto the floor, and coming undone. Pleasure tunnels through me, wave after wave, liquefying my legs and starving the room of air.
The musky, intoxicating scent of our sex chases my inhales as I collapse against his back, exhausted and sated.
When I can finally breathe again, I lift my head and find him staring at his neck in the mirror.
A bloody bruise rises there, darkening fast and spreading under the skin like a storm finding shape. It imprints him quietly, a bloom of color that says, Mine.
The day you tattooed me, you said something that stuck.” He traces a finger around the bite mark. “You said when this tug of war turns on me…”
“You would already have my teeth in your throat.” I rest my chin on his shoulder. “Regrets?”
“With you? None.”
“Tomorrow.” I kiss the hinge of his jaw. “We’ll get her back. Then you can face your regrets with her and stop punishing yourself without her.”
His shoulders stay rigid, and his hand curls on the counter. He wants the same future I want, but he doesn’t know how to believe in it.
He’ll catch up.
We shower off our mess, shut off the lights, and fall into bed, foregoing clothes. I curl on my side and fit myself against him, head tucked into his chest. I don’t ask. I just follow my instincts and go where my body decides it belongs.
It feels bold and brave, my way of claiming intimacy with this hard-edged, seemingly untouchable man. But he doesn’t flinch. Instead, he sinks his fingers into my hair and combs through the wet strands.
“You didn’t spiral.” His nails scrape my scalp. “What’s up with those triggers?”
“You didn’t make it weird this time.”
“I didn’t make it weird the first time.”
“You had a fever, no working hands, a creaky cot, bad breath—”
“Now you’re being a dick.”
“Yeah.” I sigh. “I don’t know why it didn’t set me off this time. My triggers don’t follow rules. Just like me.”
“What did you do after your last panic attack?”
“I wrote the journal. Ironic, huh? My reaction to you prompted me to put my story into words for the first time.” My eyes close. “Then I let Dove read it.”
“And after?”
“I stopped hiding. I let my family see the scars and read what I survived. It changed how I see myself in the wreckage.”
“Maybe that’s why the panic didn’t sneak in this time. You emptied what you were carrying instead of letting it pile up. Gave the fear fewer places to hide.”
“Maybe.”
“Tell me something.” He adjusts beneath me, getting comfortable. “Something about your life in the Arctic that isn’t in the journal.”
I think for a second and reach for a day I’ve never put on paper or said out loud.
“After I killed my mother for abusing Leo, Denver had to leave on a final supply run before the long winter. Leo sneaked me into a shipping crate before it was loaded onto the bush plane. I was eight.”
Jag’s fingers slow in my hair.
“The dumb animal was hellbent on my escape and gave me precise instructions. When the plane lands, sneak away. Find help. Don’t think about him or Kody or Hoss ever again.
” I loosen a breath. “I waited in that box for hours, felt it get dragged onto the plane, and heard Leo tell Denver I’d run off into the hills because I couldn’t handle what I’d done to my mother.
But when the engine kicked on, I knew what would happen.
Denver would return to Hoss, find me gone for good, and hurt my brothers until someone broke. ”
I shift, remembering the cold fear, the terrible choice.
“You didn’t go.” Jag strokes a supportive hand along my spine.
“I jumped out before Denver took off and told him everything. I blamed it all on Leo. Said he put me in the box and told me how to escape.”
“Were you afraid he’d punish Leo for that?”
“Yeah, but not the way you think. I knew Denver would punish him by hurting me. Kin punishment.” I stare at the dark. “He heated a knife in the fire, held me down, and pressed it across my chest. Leo screamed louder than I did. I hated that part.”
“Goddammit, Wolf.” Jag’s breath hitches as he hauls me closer.
“You can’t see the burn mark anymore. It’s buried under everything else. But I feel it sometimes and remember the choice I made. A choice I never regretted.”
“You think I’ll put you in a proverbial box and send you away from the cartel?”
“You’ll try. I’ll respond. Act surprised later if you want.”
“You don’t know what you’re signing up for.”
“That ship sailed. I already signed on the line. Paperwork’s done. Let me draw you a picture.”
I tell him everything from the second I walked into the tattoo parlor and saw the carnage.
I tell him how the fear hit, then the panic, then the helpless fury, how I flipped between blaming him and grieving him, and how I tore through Sitka, street by street, dock by dock, screaming their names.
I tell him how I cracked, how I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, and how my world imploded.
Then it shattered again when I found his computer equipment, the videos, all the reasons I strapped on a bomb and pulled him out of hell.
“I know the cost, Jag, because I already paid it.”
“I’m sorry.” He bows his head to my shoulder, breath stuttering, grief heavy in his voice. “So damn sorry.”
I don’t want his apology. I want his commitment.