Chapter 7 Jackal #2
“God, I love you,” he says. And the combination of aggressive fucking and soft words destroys me. Heat explodes through me, and I come violently over the new sheets, my entire body tensing.
Garrett groans, a broken sound, when I clamp down on him.
His hips stutter, turning erratic.
He slams deep, once, twice, and then…
“Fuck, Wild.”
He comes inside me, spilling hard, his breath hot against my skin.
Finally, he collapses half on top of me. Cock still buried. Sweat immediately cooling on our skin.
His hand finds mine on the mattress, and he laces our fingers. Garrett kisses my shoulder, then kisses it again. “I love our bed,” he mutters, causing me to chuckle.
“Me too.”
“Happen to love our life too.” He tightens his hold on me for a moment.
And lying there, fucked out and full of him, I believe it.
After we’ve cleaned up, we claim our spots for sleep.
But when I wake needing the bathroom four hours later, I realize Garrett is no longer next to me.
As I drag my fingertips across the empty sheet, my fingers slipping over the faint dip in the mattress Garrett’s body has left, I realize he’s been gone a while.
My body carries the memory of being well loved as I walk to the bathroom. I love fucking. I love making love with Garrett even more. And I thought that, tonight, he’d hold on to me all the way through morning. That what we did together would be enough to keep the dreams from his consciousness.
I place my hands on the sink and look into the mirror. He never sleeps through. Told me he hasn’t since he was a child. There’s something about being raised in a household with so much violence that leads to hyper-vigilance. Always looking out for where the next danger might come from.
It’s impossible to not feel the slight sting that after all our years together, I haven’t found a way to give him the antidote to that yet. That real sense of peace and ease that allows his heart and head to rest easy.
He reassures me it’s because it’s a lifetime habit, built in childhood, maintained in the military, impossible to shake. But that doesn’t mean I won’t keep trying to figure it out.
He told me the chamomile tea I got for him tasted like someone had soaked a bar of soap in hot water.
A massage with magnesium butter left him horny, but still wide awake at three in the morning.
The weighted blanket had lasted forty-two minutes when he declared it was like being humped by a ghost.
And the soothing rainfall white noise setting I’d set on my phone was met with “It sounds like someone is pissing in a corner.”
Speaking of which, I take a leak, wash my hands, and make my way back to bed. I’m almost there when I see a flicker of light across the street through a gap in the blinds.
I reach for my gun, because if that’s whoever painted that fucking slur on my home, I’m gonna put a bullet through their head and then sleep like a baby.
I use the muzzle to nudge the curtain back an inch farther, but as I squint and try to focus on where the light is coming from, something settles in my chest.
Garrett.
I let out a breath that is half laugh, half resignation.
“The man is going to drive me insane.”
The night is cool and quiet, the street empty, as usual, and there he is.
On Isla’s porch, sleeves pushed up, and the tiny LED flashlight slipped between his teeth, flashing every time he moves.
And goddamnit, he’s using an antiquated brace and bit instead of a power drill, so he doesn’t wake Isla as he fits the security cameras he got Wren to purchase for him.
“You’re gonna wreck your shoulders, again,” I mutter.
Like always, he’s painfully focused and determined.
My chest squeezes with the kind of affection I’ve always felt for him. He might mask it behind the scowl, and the monotone voice complaining about all the ways the world sucks, but he cares.
More deeply and more fiercely than anyone I’ve ever met, and yet, I’m not sure he’s ever felt safe enough, even with me, to fully unleash it. The love he has for me isn’t the showy kind. It’s not packed with PDA and never demands anything in return.
And he shows the rest of the world he cares through his acts of service. We’re both solid mechanics, but he’s helped just about every brother strip down the engines of their motorcycles.
So, I don’t need to be a genius to figure out why he thought this was the right way to make Isla take the cameras.
Once they’re installed, he’ll have rationalized, she won’t take them down.
He’s doing this while she’s asleep to keep his distance, the same way he cleared the rest of her gutters while she was out of the house.
But every time Garrett does something like this, something so thoughtful and protective and sweet, he shows me what devotion looks like. And I know he’s worried deep down, like I am, that the club somehow damaged her bright smile.
My mind drifts to her lips and I wonder what it would feel like if she let me be the one to kiss her softly and reassure her that while the world is as cruel as she thinks, I could make it a softer place for her.
The thought feels disloyal to my man.
I put the gun down on the windowsill and wonder how I got so damn lucky that this man loves me like he does, even if it’s in his own way.
And yet, as I look over to Isla’s house, I wonder if it would be good for him to have someone else to love just as much.
There’s a whisper of a thought that he might be into her.
I wonder if he thinks about what it would feel like to kiss her too?
Or maybe I’m projecting, because I’ve always found her smile to be one of the prettiest things about her. Although, before I sound too sweet, I think about that figure of hers, especially how round and high her tits are.
I debate pulling on some joggers to go join him. He might be able to work faster if I hold the flashlight. But if I go out there, he’ll only tell me to get home out of the cold. Me, an accomplished tracker who can sleep outside in a shelter made from tree trunks and pine branches.
Instead of arguing with him, I return to bed. Somehow, he always finds his way back to me by morning, so I trust that tonight will be no different and pull the covers up to my chin. “Good night, love,” I say, knowing full well he can’t hear me, but hoping he can feel it all the same.