Chapter Four Jonah
Four days in this apartment, and I've learned exactly four things about the man.
One: he takes his coffee black and drinks it like it personally offended him.
Two: he owns more books than furniture, but I've never actually seen him read one.
Three: he watches me when he thinks I'm not looking. Security feeds, reflections in windows, peripheral glances that last a beat too long. I catch him every time, and every time, he looks away like I imagined it.
Four: he's starting to crack.
It's subtle. The kind of thing you'd miss if you weren't paying attention. But I've spent three years with nothing to do but observe—guards, doctors, the pattern of footsteps in hallways, the rhythm of shifts changing. Observation is the only skill I have left.
So I notice when Jagger's jaw tightens every time I make him laugh. Not a real laugh, mind you, but the almost-laughs. The moments when his mouth twitches and his eyes warm for half a second before the wall slams back down. Those moments are getting more frequent.
There’s this cute way his hands flex when I push too hard with the jokes. The tendons in his forearms going taut, fingers curling into his palms like he's stopping himself from reaching for something.
Or the half-second delay before he responds to my bullshit, like he's running my words through some internal filter and coming up confused by the results.
Yesterday, I caught him standing outside my bedroom door at two a.m.. He didn't knock. Didn't come in. Just stood there, breathing, for about three minutes before walking away. I watched his shadow under the door and wondered what he was thinking.
I wonder a lot about what he's thinking.
The great Architect doesn't know what to do with me.
That makes me smile.
This morning, I'm sitting on his kitchen counter because I know it pisses him off.
My feet dangle over the edge, heels tapping against the cabinet below.
I've got a bowl of cereal. His cereal, which is some kind of fiber-heavy cardboard masquerading as food, and I'm eating it dry because the milk smelled suspicious.
Jagger stands at the coffee maker, shoulders rigid, not looking at me.
"You know," I say, crunching loudly, "for a guy who claims not to feel things, you've got a very expressive back."
"Get off my counter for the love of GOD."
"Make me, Daddy J."
The words hang there. I've said them before, and he's ignored them before. It's become a thing between us—I push, he retreats, the tension ratchets up another notch.
But today, he turns around.
His eyes narrow as they darken, his stare so intense it knocks the wind out of me. The careful control he usually wears like armor has slipped, and underneath it is something raw. Something hungry.
My cereal suddenly tastes like sawdust.
"I said." He crosses the kitchen in three steps, stopping directly in front of me. This close, I can smell his soap, see the individual striations in his irises, count the faint freckles scattered across the bridge of his nose. "Get. Off. My. Counter."
"And I said make me."
My voice comes out steadier than I feel. My heart is jackhammering against my ribs, and every survival instinct I've developed over twenty-seven years of a pretty shit life is screaming at me to back down, to apologize, to do whatever the angry predator wants.
But there's another instinct too. The one that kept me investigating The Silent even when people started disappearing.
The one that refused to let me stay broken even when they poured chemicals into my brain and tried to erase everything I was.
The animal instinct a dog has when it catches the scent of a bone.
The one that looks at Jagger Harrison and thinks: I see you. I see the cracks and I want to know what's underneath.
He puts his hands on the counter, one on each side of my thighs. Caging me in. His face is inches from mine, and his breath is warm against my lips.
"You think you're clever," he growls. "You think the jokes and the attitude will protect you."
"Working so far. Last time you said please."
"Is it?" He leans closer, and now his mouth is almost brushing mine. "Because from where I'm standing, you look terrified."
"I'm always terrified. It's basically my default setting at this point."
"Then why do you keep pushing?"
"Because it's fun watching you pretend you're not affected."
His pupils blow wide. The grip on the counter turns white-knuckled. I can feel the heat radiating off his body, can see the pulse hammering at his throat.
"I'm not affected."
"Liar."
The word barely leaves my mouth before he kisses me.
It's not gentle. It's not romantic. It's teeth and fury and three days of tension exploding all at once.
He bites my lower lip hard enough to draw blood, then licks it away like he's claiming the wound he made.
His hands come up to grip my jaw hard, digging in, tilting my head back, holding me exactly where he wants me.
I should fight. Should push him away, remind him that I'm his prisoner and this is fucked up on about seventeen different levels.
Instead, I grab the front of his shirt and pull him closer.
He makes a sound—somewhere between a growl and a groan—and then his hands are everywhere.
Shoving my thighs apart, yanking me to the edge of the counter, pressing his body between my legs until I can feel exactly how "not affected" he is.
His cock is hard against my stomach, thick and insistent, and my own dick responds with an enthusiasm that would be embarrassing if I had any dignity left.
I don't. The detention center took care of that years ago.
"This doesn't mean anything," he says against my mouth.
"Sure it doesn't."
"I'm using you."
"Okay."
"You're an asset. A tool. This is just—"
"Jagger." I pull back just enough to meet his eyes. "Shut the fuck up."
He stares at me. For one second, two, three, and then his mouth crashes into mine again, harder than before.
His hand slides down my chest, my stomach, and palms my cock through the thin cotton of the pants he gave me. I jerk against him, a moan escaping before I can bite it back. He swallows the sound, tongue pushing into my mouth, and starts stroking me with rough, deliberate pressure.
The friction is almost too much through the fabric. Almost not enough. I can't decide if I want him to slow down or speed up, so I just hold on and let him set the pace.
"You want this," he says. Not a question.
"Yes." The word comes out wrecked. "Fuck. Yes."
"You shouldn't."
"Probably not. Don't care."
He squeezes, just this side of painful, and I arch into his grip like I'm trying to crawl inside his skin.
Three years since anyone touched me with anything other than clinical detachment or casual cruelty.
Three years of my body forgetting what it felt like to want something, to need something, to burn for anything other than survival.
Now I'm burning. Jagger lit a match somewhere in my chest and I'm going up in flames.
His thumb finds the head of my cock, circles it through the dampening cotton, and my vision whites out at the edges. My hips stutter forward, chasing the sensation, and he makes a low sound of approval that vibrates through his chest and into mine.
"Look at you," he murmurs against my mouth. "Coming apart already."
"Fuck you."
"Maybe later."
The casual promise sends another spike of heat through me.
I grab the back of his neck and kiss him harder, tasting blood from my bitten lip, tasting coffee and something darker underneath.
He responds by shoving his hand inside my waistband, finally getting skin on skin, and the first touch of his palm against my bare cock makes me cry out loud enough to echo off the kitchen walls.
His free hand grabs the back of my neck, holding me still while he works my cock. The rhythm is brutal, almost punishing, like he's angry at me for making him feel this. Like he's trying to get me off fast and hard so he can pretend it didn't mean anything.
It works.
The orgasm hits me like a freight train, ripping a sound out of my throat that I'll be embarrassed about later.
My whole body seizes, hips bucking, hands fisting in his shirt hard enough to tear the fabric.
He keeps stroking me through it, milking every last shudder, until I'm gasping and oversensitive and pretty sure I've forgotten how to breathe.
Then he steps back.
His hand is wet with my cum. His lips are swollen, red from kissing. His hair is beautifully wrecked from where I grabbed it without even realizing.
He looks ruined.
He looks scared as shit.
"That shouldn't have happened," he says.
I'm still trying to remember how words work. "Too late."
"It won't happen again."
"Sure."
"I mean it." He's backing away, putting distance between us like I'm contagious. "This was a mistake. A moment of weakness. It doesn't change anything."
"Okay." I slide off the counter, legs shaky, pants tented and wet. "Whatever you need to tell yourself."
"I don't—" He stops. Runs a hand through his hair. Takes a breath that shudders more than it should. "I'm going to my office. Stay here. Don't touch anything."
"Little late for that, don't you think?"
He flinches like I hit him. Then he turns and walks away, and I watch him go, and I think about the way his hands shook when he touched me.
The way his voice broke on the word "mistake."
The way he kissed me like I was an oxygen tank saving him from drowning.
Fuck, Daddy J, what are you doing?
He avoids me for the rest of the day.
I know because I pay attention. I hear him moving through the apartment—footsteps in his office, the creak of a chair, the occasional muffled sound of a phone call. But he doesn't come to the kitchen. Doesn't check on me. Doesn't appear in doorways to glare at me with those complicated gray eyes.
It would be insulting if it wasn't so fucking predictable.