Chapter Twenty-Seven
Jett
The knock is soft. Too soft for her.
My jaw clenches as I stalk to the door, blood still dried on my knuckles, her pink scrunchie riding my wrist like a goddamn collar. I yank it open without a word.
She’s there. In my fucking hat. Wearing a pink sundress, barely covering her ass. Heels. Thigh highs. And in her hand? My glove.
Black. Fingerless. Cursed now, probably.
She’s not smiling. Not really. Just watching me like she already knows what’s about to happen and daring me to pretend I can stop it.
“Are you sure?” I ask.
That’s all I give her. One last out.
Her yes isn’t even a word. It’s a smirk. A tilt of her chin. A heartbeat of silence. Then a whispered, “Yeah.”
I snap.
One second she’s in the hallway, the next I’ve yanked her inside by the waistband of her skirt.
The door slams behind us with a hollow bang, the lock clicking like an executioner’s bell.
I shove her back against the wall, one hand braced above her head, the other already fisting in her stupid cotton-candy hair I can’t stop dreaming about.
“You wore the hat,” I growl, breath ragged. “You wore the fucking hat.”
“You told me to. I’m a good girl. I follow orders,” she breathes, wide-eyed. “Or maybe I just wanted you to rip it off.”
So I do.
I toss it to the floor and kiss her like if I press hard enough, I can stop thinking. Stop shaking. Stop feeling the way she’s wormed her way inside every hollow in my chest.
She kisses me like she’d bite if I pulled away.
Teeth. Tongue. War. This is how monsters fall in love.
She grinds up against my cock.
I groan, low, guttural, the kind of sound you make when you finally touch what’s been haunting you. There’s no foreplay. No pretense. Just raw hunger and the need to bury myself inside her before I fucking lose it.
Her skirt’s already rucked up when I grab her thighs and lift her. She locks around my waist like a fucking vise, breath sweet and wicked against my neck.
“Been soaked since you sent that message,” she purrs, biting my earlobe. “My pussy’s aching for your cock.”
I stumble us toward the bed, drop her, flip her like a doll, shove her face-down across the mattress, and yank her panties to her knees. They’re soaked. The kind of wet that makes me see red.
“Jesus Christ, Delilah,” I snarl, dragging two fingers through the mess between her thighs. “You this fucking messy for me?”
“You like it,” she sings, breathless. “You’re gonna wreck me now, right? Split me open like you promised?”
“I should,” I hiss. “I should fuck you so deep you forget how to smile like that.”
She looks back over her shoulder, lip between her teeth. “Then do it.”
I snatch the glove from her, dangle it in front of her mouth like bait.
“You want this?” I ask.
She nods, trembling.
“Open.”
She parts her lips like a sinner at communion, and I stuff it in her mouth. One soft, wet reminder of every filthy thought she had while she played with it.
“You fucked yourself with this,” I growl, voice shaking. “Now you gag on it while I fuck you for real.”
Her eyes flutter shut as I drag the head of my cock through her slick. I don’t tease. Don’t ask again. I slam into her in one brutal, claiming thrust.
She jolts like I shocked her, muffled scream caught behind leather and lust.
I fuck her like I hate her. Like I want to break her open and crawl inside. My fingers bruise into her hips as I pound her hard, fast, relentless. The slap of my hips against her ass is lewd, a wet, punishing rhythm.
“You think you can wind me up like a toy,” I bite out, hips slamming into hers. “You think this pussy’s a weapon.”
She lets out this muffled, wrecked whimper around the glove, bucking back into me, ravenous little slut.
“You’re right,” I say.
I lean over her, pin her flat with my weight, one hand curling around her throat, the other sliding down to rub her clit.
She jerks under me, hips stuttering, her clit so swollen it throbs under my thumb. I rub circles just shy of cruel, dragging every cry out of her lungs.
“Touched my shit. Broke into my life,” I whisper into her hair. “You opened a door you can’t close, princess. Now I own you. Every fucking inch.”
She shudders. My fingers don’t stop.
“Gonna fuck you so deep your body forgets anyone else’s name. So you’ll dream of this cock for the rest of your life.”
I thrust harder, deeper, sweat dripping from my brow to her spine. The glove is soaked with spit now. Her mascara’s smeared. Her moans are pure chaos.
And when she clenches around me, spasming, sobbing, I nearly black out, my rhythm going savage, erratic.
I pull out just long enough to flip her over and press her thighs up. I rip the glove from her mouth.
She gasps like she’s been drowning, lips red, jaw trembling, mascara-streaked and wild-eyed.
I want to see her wrecked face when I come. Want to watch her fall apart all over again, dripping and open and mine.
“I want you to come again. With me,” I rasp, my thumb dragging over the pulse at her throat.
Her lips tremble, spit-slick and quivering from the glove. “Then fuck me, Jett.”
I do.
Hard. Deep. Every thrust aimed like a weapon, fucking the shape of my name into her.
Her body bows with every impact, legs locked around my waist, hands clawing at my shoulders.
The bed slams into the wall. The headboard cracks. My rhythm turns savage, unrelenting, but I can’t take my eyes off her. Not even when she screams my name. Over and over, like a litany.
Her mouth drops open. She tries to say something, maybe beg, maybe praise, maybe nothing at all, but all that escapes is a broken sob.
Fuck.
“You see me?” I ask, breath ragged. “You want this. Me.”
Her cunt clenches like it’s trying to pull me inside her ribcage and keep me.
I catch her chin, force it steady. “Answer me,” I growl.
Her whole body’s shaking, crying, wrecked, but she doesn’t look away. “Yes.”
“You’re mine,” I whisper against her lips, forehead to hers. “Say it.”
“Yours.”
I slam deep and stay there, locked tight as I come with a snarl, spilling into her while my hand fists in her hair and my teeth scrape the edge of her jaw. I kiss her like I’m dying. I want to choke on her breath just to keep it in my lungs.
And I don’t say it, but it’s there.
In the way I hold her through it.
In the way I don’t look away either.
I’m already hers.
I should let her go.
That’s what a better man would do. Get the hell up, walk away, leave her the space to realize this was a mistake.
But I don’t.
Can’t.
She’s laid out across the bed, hair tangled, thighs twitching, my glove spit-wet and discarded on the sheets beside her.
I watch her chest rise and fall in shuddering, aftershock breaths.
My fingers twitch at my sides, aching to touch, to fix, but I don’t know how to do that without fucking it up worse.
I sit down beside her. “Delilah.” It scrapes out of me like a wound.
She blinks up at me, dazed and dreamy. Wrecked in a way that makes my chest hurt.
“You okay?”
She nods. Then pauses. “Think so. Why?”
“‘Cause I just fucked you hard enough to break the goddamn bedframe.” I run a hand through my hair, tug hard enough to sting. “Just making sure you’re not gonna sue.”
She giggles.
I almost drop dead on the spot.
“Can’t sue if I begged for it,” she says, stretching like a satisfied cat. “I should be asking you if you’re okay.”
I flinch.
She sees it.
Of course she does. She sees everything. Even the parts I hate.
I glance away, jaw tightening. “Yeah. Fine.”
She props herself on one elbow and eyes me like she’s dissecting me. Trying to find the soft part of the monster and poke it with a stick.
“You tried to do aftercare just now,” she says. “Didn’t you?”
I grit my teeth. “I am doing aftercare.”
“Oh yeah? What part is that? The sulking?”
I glare at her. “This is me being tender, okay? I asked if you were okay. I sat on the bed. I didn’t run. That’s top-tier nurturing for me.”
“Aw,” she coos, wicked little smile curling her lips. “You’re like a pit bull trying to be a therapy dog.”
I should be insulted. I’m not. “Fuck off.”
“You don’t have to be perfect, Jett.”
My name from her lips makes something in me clench, low, sharp, and sick with longing.
I look up and meet her gaze. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You didn’t.”
I shake my head. “Not tonight. But I could. I’m not wired right. There’s a reason I’m in anger management, princess. I keep trying to white-knuckle my way through being decent, and then you show up in my hat, saying fuck me, and I just,” I break off, breath hitching.
She leans in slowly, so I don’t bolt. Like I’m some twitchy, half-broken thing. Maybe I am.
“Jett.” Her hand brushes my jaw. Light. Soft. Dangerous.
I close my eyes. Let her touch me. Just for a second.
“You’re allowed to want me,” she whispers. “You’re allowed to have good things.”
I bark a laugh that has no humor in it. “You’re not a thing, Delilah.”
“I’m not really good either. I can be yours.”
That slams into my chest like a freight train. I feel it everywhere. My breath leaves me in one sharp exhale.
I want to kiss her. Want to curl around her and pretend I know how to keep something without breaking it. But I don’t move.
I just sit there, watching her with the kind of hunger that’s not just about sex. The kind that says please let me keep this. Please let me try.
I swear I see something in her eyes I’ve never seen in anyone’s before.
She wants all of me.
Even the parts that scare me.
She shifts toward me, curling into my side, choosing me, even now. Even knowing I’m a mess. Still one cracked nerve away from doing something stupid.
I let her.
She smells like sweat and sex. Chaos and something terrifyingly safe.
I could get drunk off it.
I think I already am.
I wrap one arm around her shoulders and hold her like I care.
Because I do.
Even if I have no fucking idea what to do with that yet.
She’s soft against me. Warm. Quiet in that way that’s not silence but aftermath. The kind that says I feel safe here.
That wrecks me more than anything.
I drag the sheet up to cover her. Like that’s gonna fix anything. Like one strip of fabric erases the way she gasped when I split her open, glove still wet with spit. My hand shakes trying to smooth it over her hip. Fucking pathetic.
Delilah doesn’t miss it.
“Y’know,” she says lazily, “you can touch me without acting like you’re defusing a bomb.”
“Can I?” My voice is shot. “Because that’s what this is, Delilah. Like holding a grenade I already pulled the pin on. Just waiting for it to explode.”
She turns her head, cheek to my chest. Her voice is quieter now. “Maybe it will. But I’m not glass, Jett.”
I hold her tighter. Not rough. But possessive. Enough to feel her heartbeat sync to mine, or maybe mine syncs to hers. I don’t fucking know anymore.
“I should leave.”
“You won’t.”
And fuck me, she’s right.
I should. I should get the hell up, let her sleep, run a few miles until I stop wanting to carve my initials into her skin just so everyone knows she’s mine. But I don’t move.
“You don’t make this easy,” I say into her hair.
“You don’t want easy.”
She says it like she knows me. Like she sees everything.
I glance down at her, catch the flutter of her lashes against my skin. “No,” I admit. “I don’t.”
Easy’s a fucking lie. It’s fake smiles and ‘I’m fine’s and holding your breath around people who say they care but bolt the second your darkness shows.
She doesn’t do that. She never flinches.
Not when I’m rough. Not when I’m silent.
Not even now, when I’m trying to be soft and failing so fucking hard.
I want to tell her she’s dangerous. That she makes me worse and I fucking love it. That I’d burn every goddamn bridge I’ve ever built if it meant keeping her in my bed one more night.
Instead I say, “You want water?”
Because I don’t know how to say all the things clawing their way up my throat. So I try useful. I try gentle.
She smiles. “Only if you feed it to me like a Victorian invalid.”
I snort and roll out of bed.
Still naked. Still hard.
Still fucking hers.
God help me.
And her.