Chapter 5 Sparrow
SPARROW
Everything has changed, and nothing has changed.
I still bring him coffee every morning. Still sit in the corner of his office with one of Preacher's books. Still catch him watching me when he thinks I'm not looking.
But now he touches me. Constantly. Casually. A hand on my hip as he passes me in the hallway. Fingers brushing the back of my neck when he leans over my shoulder to check my work. His palm warm against my lower back when we walk through the bar together.
Every touch sends electricity crackling through my veins. Every brush of his fingers makes me want more.
He kisses me too. Deep, devastating kisses that leave me dizzy and breathless. He backs me against walls and desks and doorframes, his hands tangled in my hair, his mouth hot and demanding on mine. He kisses me like he's been starving for it, like I'm the only thing that can satisfy the hunger.
But he never pushes further. Never lets his hands wander past safe territory. Never takes what I'm increasingly desperate to give.
I'm starting to combust.
"He's waiting for you, you know."
I look up from the glass I'm drying. Tessa is perched on a barstool across from me, a knowing grin on her face. The bar is empty, mid-afternoon lull between lunch and the evening crowd.
"Waiting for what?"
"For you to be ready. For you to ask." Her grin widens. "Fair warning: when you do, clear your schedule."
Heat floods my cheeks. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Sure you don't." She laughs, sliding off the stool. "I'm just saying. Jett's the kind of man who doesn't take what isn't freely offered. You want him? You're going to have to tell him."
She saunters off toward the kitchen, leaving me alone with my racing thoughts.
The idea plants itself in my head. Grows roots. Spreads through me like wildfire.
I want him. God, I want him so badly it's a physical ache. It's different from anything I felt with Garrett. That was about survival, about performing, about doing whatever I had to do to avoid the consequences of refusal.
This is for me. This is wanting something because it makes me feel alive.
I want Jett's hands on me. I want to know what he sounds like when he loses control. I want to be the one who makes him lose it.
The power in that thought is dizzying. After two years of having no power at all, the idea that I could want something and take it, that I could ask and receive, is almost too much to process.
But I'm going to do it anyway.
Ifind him in his office that night, long after everyone else has gone to bed.
He's at his desk, paperwork scattered in front of him, sleeves rolled up to expose his forearms. The tattoos there catch the lamplight, intricate designs that I've spent hours studying without ever daring to touch.
He looks up when I push open the door. Those gray eyes sweep over me, checking for damage, checking for fear. When he finds neither, something in his expression shifts.
"Can't sleep?"
I shake my head, my pulse already quickening at the way he's looking at me. "Don't want to sleep."
His eyes darken, pupils dilating as understanding dawns. He sets down his pen with deliberate slowness, his full attention now locked on me.
I cross the room, my heart pounding so hard I'm sure he can hear it echoing in the quiet office. Each step feels momentous, irrevocable. I stop in front of his chair, close enough that my knees nearly brush his. Close enough to touch if either of us had the courage.
"Tessa says you're waiting."
"Tessa talks too much." But there's no real irritation in his voice, only a barely restrained tension that makes my stomach flip.
"She says you're waiting for me to ask." I swallow hard, forcing the words out past the tightness in my throat, past two years of conditioning that told me my wants didn't matter. "I'm asking."
He doesn't move. Just watches me with those intense gray eyes, cataloguing every detail like he's memorizing this moment. The rapid rise and fall of my chest. The flush spreading across my cheeks and down my neck. The way I'm trembling, but not from fear—never from fear, not with him.
"You sure about this?"
"I've never been more sure of anything in my life."
"Sparrow." His voice is rough, strained, like he's holding himself back by the thinnest thread. "You've been through hell. I don't want to rush you into something you're not ready for—"
"Garrett took a lot from me." I move before I can lose my nerve, before the voice of doubt can creep in, climbing into his lap and straddling him.
His hands come up automatically, settling on my hips to steady me, the heat of his palms burning through the thin fabric of my pajama pants. "Don't let him take this too."
He goes completely still beneath me. I can feel the tension coiled in his body, the iron restraint it's costing him to hold back when I can feel exactly how much he wants this.
"Tell me if I do anything you don't like." It's not a request—it's a requirement.
"I'll tell you."
"Tell me if you want to stop, for any reason. No explanations needed."
"I won't want to stop."
He exhales shakily, something wild and wanting in the sound that makes heat pool low in my belly. His grip on my hips tightens, fingers flexing against my skin.
"Okay, little bird. Let me take care of you."
He kisses me first. Slow and deep, his tongue sliding against mine, his hands traveling up my sides. I melt into him, letting the heat of his body seep into my bones.
Then he stands, lifting me with him like I weigh nothing. I wrap my legs around his waist and hold on as he carries me through a door I hadn't noticed before, into a room I've never seen.
His bedroom.
It's sparse but comfortable. A large bed with a dark comforter. A dresser. A window overlooking the back lot. The sheets smell like him, leather and smoke and something warm beneath.
He lays me down on the bed and follows me, covering my body with his. The weight of him should feel oppressive, but it doesn't. It feels safe. Grounding.
"I've been wanting to touch you since the moment you walked through my door." His voice is a low rumble against my throat, his lips tracing a path down my neck. "Two weeks of watching you, learning you, wanting you. I'm done waiting."
His mouth finds the spot where my shoulder meets my neck, and he bites down gently. I gasp, arching into him.
"These are mine now," he murmurs against my skin, his lips brushing over my collarbone where the bruises used to be. "Every inch of you is mine. And I'm going to worship every inch."
He strips my shirt over my head with careful hands, watching my face for any sign of fear. I'm not afraid. I'm burning.
His eyes trace over my body, lingering on curves I've always tried to hide. With Garrett, I was never enough. Too soft, too plain, too forgettable.
Jett looks at me like I'm a revelation.
"Beautiful," he breathes, and the word hits me like a physical blow. I didn't know how much I needed to hear it until this moment.
His mouth follows his eyes, trailing kisses across my chest, down my stomach. He unhooks my bra and tosses it aside, then cups my breasts in his hands like they're something precious. When his mouth closes over one nipple, I cry out, my fingers digging into his shoulders.
"That's it." His voice is a satisfied rumble. "Every sound you make is mine. Every shiver. Every moan. Mine, Sparrow."
I reach for his cut, desperate to feel his skin against mine. He shrugs it off, then pulls his shirt over his head, and suddenly I understand why he waited. Why he gave me time. He wanted me to be sure, because once I saw him like this, there would be no going back.
His body is a work of art. Muscle and ink and scars, a roadmap of violence and survival. I trace the tattoos with shaking fingers, following the lines across his chest, his shoulders, down his arms.
"You're beautiful," I whisper.
He laughs, rough and disbelieving. "I'm a lot of things. Beautiful isn't one of them."
"You are to me."
Something shifts in his expression. Something raw and vulnerable that he probably doesn't let anyone else see. He kisses me again, deeper this time, more desperate.
His hands find the button of my jeans, and he pulls back just far enough to look at me. A question.
I lift my hips in answer.
He strips me slowly, reverently. Jeans, then underwear, until I'm bare beneath him. I should feel exposed. Vulnerable. Instead, I feel powerful. The way he's looking at me, like I'm the most precious thing he's ever seen, makes me feel like a queen.
"Jett." His name comes out breathless, needy.
"I know." He presses a kiss to my hip bone. "I've got you."
He settles between my thighs, and my breath catches. I know what's coming. My body tightens with anticipation.
"Eyes on me," he says, and I look down to find him watching me with those intense gray eyes.
His mouth touches me, and I shatter.
The pleasure is immediate and overwhelming. His tongue traces patterns I can't follow, finding spots that make me gasp and moan and grab fistfuls of the sheets. He's relentless, patient, obsessed with my pleasure in a way no one has ever been.
I come apart on his tongue with a cry that echoes off the walls. He doesn't stop, just slows down, gentles his touch, drawing out the aftershocks until I'm trembling and oversensitive.
Only then does he rise over me, his weight shifting as he braces himself above my body.
He's shed the rest of his clothes at some point—I hadn't even noticed when—and I get my first unobstructed look at all of him.
He's big everywhere, imposingly so. Broad shoulders tapering to a lean waist, muscles carved and defined beneath tan skin, powerful thighs.
The sight of him naked and wanting me is almost overwhelming.
He should scare me. The sheer size of him, the raw masculine strength coiled in every line of his body. He doesn't.
"Still sure?" he asks, his voice rough as gravel as he positions himself at my entrance, the blunt pressure making my breath hitch.
"Jett." I wrap my arms around his neck, fingers threading through the hair at his nape, and pull him down until our foreheads touch, our breaths mingling in the small space between us. "Please."
He pushes into me slowly, excruciatingly slowly, his eyes never leaving my face as he watches for any flicker of pain or discomfort.
I gasp at the stretch, the burning fullness as my body adjusts to accommodate him—bigger than I expected, bigger than anything I've felt before, filling me so completely there's no room for anything else.
"Okay?" he grits out through clenched teeth, every muscle in his body gone rigid with the effort of holding perfectly still, giving me time to adjust.
"More. Please, Jett. Move."
He moves, and I lose the ability to form coherent thoughts.
It's intense. Consuming. He sets a rhythm that builds and builds, his hips rolling against mine, his mouth hot against my throat. He whispers in my ear between thrusts, praise and possession and things that make me blush even as they drive me higher.
"You feel so good, little bird. Like you were made for me," he murmurs against my ear, his voice thick with desire and strained control.
I moan, nails raking down his back hard enough to leave marks, claiming him the way he's claiming me.
"That's it. Take what you need from me. I've got you," he encourages, his breath hot against my skin as he maintains that relentless, perfect rhythm.
The tension coils tighter and tighter in my core, winding like a spring compressed to its limit. I can feel the edge approaching fast, that cliff I'm about to fall off, my entire body trembling with the nearness of it.
"I'm going to—" I can't finish the sentence, the words dissolving into another broken moan.
"I know, baby. I can feel it," he rasps. His hand slides between our sweat-slicked bodies, fingers finding that sensitive bundle of nerves that makes my vision blur. "Let go for me. I want to feel you come apart around me."
I shatter. The orgasm crashes through me in waves, pulling a cry from my throat that sounds like his name. He follows moments later, groaning against my neck, his body shuddering with release.
We lie there for a long moment, still tangled together, breathing hard. He's heavy on top of me, but I don't want him to move. I want to stay exactly like this forever.
Eventually, he lifts his head, those storm-gray eyes finding mine with an intensity that steals what little breath I have left.
"You okay?"
"Better than okay." I trace my fingers along the sharp line of his jaw, feeling the scratch of stubble beneath my touch. "That was..."
"Yeah." A small smile curves his lips, softening the hard edges of his face. "It was."
He rolls off me but doesn't go far, pulling me against his side like he can't bear even an inch of distance between us. I rest my head on his chest, the steady thud of his heartbeat gradually slowing beneath my ear as we both come down from the high.
"Mine," he murmurs against my hair, the word a declaration and a vow all at once.
"Yours," I agree without hesitation.
"You're wearing my patch after this." His voice is rough with possessive certainty.
I laugh, still breathless and floating. "Is that an order?"
"It's a promise."
He holds me for a while longer, his fingers tracing lazy patterns on my skin. Eventually, he carries me to the shower and washes my hair like I'm something precious. Back in bed, wrapped in his arms, I feel something I thought Garrett had killed forever.
Hope. Peace. The bone-deep certainty that I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be.
"I'm not running anymore," I say.
"No," he agrees. "You're home."
I fall asleep with his heartbeat under my ear and his arms around me, safe and warm and finally, finally free.
When I wake, the bed is empty.
Panic flares for a moment before I see it: a leather jacket draped over the chair by the window. His spare cut, I realize as I sit up. The one he wears when his everyday cut is being cleaned.
But there's something different about it. A patch on the back that wasn't there before.
I climb out of bed, wrapping the sheet around me, and cross to the chair.
Property of Iron Saints MC
And beneath it, in smaller letters:
Riot's Old Lady
Tears spill down my cheeks. Happy tears, for the first time in longer than I can remember.
I came here running from a monster. I found a home. I found love. I found a man who looks at me like I'm worth fighting for.
I put on the cut over my bare skin and look at myself in the mirror. It's too big, hanging off my shoulders, swallowing me up. It's perfect. I'm home.