Chapter 5 The Tour of Terror #3
“I’m almost afraid to see what will happen if there is a next time, you’re a menace,” I say.
"I’m a mother," Rosa shrugs. "Same thing. Now, let’s go find a place that serves waffles. I’m starving."
We follow her out of the jungle. As we step into the cool New York air, Jax grabs my hand.
"I love that woman," Jax says. "Can I ask her to adopt me?”
"Preston has her son wrapped around his finger,” I remind him. "So she’s practically family already. Package deal."
"Best merger ever," Jax grins.
We get back in the limo. Mother is furiously fixing her makeup in the compact mirror.
"Next stop," Mother snaps. "The Plaza. And if anyone mentions humidity, I will buy the weather channel and cancel summer."
"The Plaza has AC," Preston notes, checking his phone. "And excellent tea service. And significantly fewer insects."
"Then we go to the Plaza," I agree.
The war isn't over. But we just won the Battle of the Swamp.
The front door of the apartment hasn't even fully latched before the silence of the apartment begins to scream.
To anyone else, the suite is a masterpiece of minimalist luxury.
To me, it is a sensory minefield. The hum of the climate control is a jagged blade.
The scent of Mother’s expensive, floral perfume—clinging to my wool coat—is a suffocating shroud.
My skin feels three sizes too small for my frame, the "Ice King" armour currently vibrating at a frequency that threatens to shatter my internal organs.
"Max?" Jax’s voice is soft, cautious. He’s standing by the marble console, watching me with the predatory stillness of a man who knows exactly how to read a trauma patient before they crash.
I don't look at him. I can't. If I look at him, the data will overflow. Instead, I rip off my tie. It feels like a noose. My hands are shaking—not with fear, but with a kinetic energy that has nowhere to go. The audit. The NDAs. The thirty years of "calibration" I’ve just realized were a lie.
"I need a reset after today, it was too much,” I say, my voice sounding like gravel being crushed.
Jax moves. He doesn't offer me water. He steps into my personal space, invading the perimeter I usually guard with lethal precision. He smells like sweat and the rain that started falling as we left the Botanical Garden.
"Talk to me, Max," Jax says, his hand reaching out to touch my shoulder.
"No talking," I bark, my eyes finally snapping to his. "No data. No protocols. No Yorks. I need the Trauma Cowboy. Right now, Jax. I need you to break the circuit. I need to lose control, or I am going to explode."
Jax understands. He always understands. Normally, I am the one who needs the structure he provides, but tonight, the "Ice King" checks are bouncing, and I am overdrawn.
He doesn't lead me to the bed. He stays right there at the kitchen island, leaning back against the marble, his hands gripping the edge. He spreads his legs, a silent, daring invitation.
"Come get it, then," Jax challenges, his voice dropping to that rough, gravelly timbre that usually makes me check my pulse. "Shut it all off, Max."
I drop to my knees. The impact against the hardwood jars my spine, but I barely feel it.
I fumble with his belt, my fingers shaking not with nerves, but with a kinetic energy that has nowhere to go.
I yank his zipper down and free him, the scent of his skin instantly filling my nose—musk, antiseptic, and man.
I don't tease. I take him into my mouth, swallowing him whole. I need to silence the world, and this is the only way I know how. I bob my head, using my tongue to trace the veins, sucking hard enough to make his hips snap forward off the counter.
"Fuck... Max," Jax groans, his hands tangling in my hair, gripping tight. "Yeah. Just like that. Drown it out."
I use my teeth, just a graze, enough to make him hiss, before soothing it with the flat of my tongue. I work him with a desperate, rhythmic hunger, listening to the way his breathing fractures. He tastes like salt and life, and for a moment, the "Standard of Care" and Dr. Aris don't exist.
But it’s not enough. I need more friction. I need more mess.
I pull back, gasping for air, leaving him glistening and hard.
Before he can recover, I stand up and grab his shoulder and hip.
I spin him around with a force that surprises even me, slamming his chest down against the cold marble island.
It’s forceful, bordering on rough, but Jax just lets out a breathless laugh of approval, melting into the submission.
"Rough day, huh?" Jax gasps, his cheek pressed to the stone.
I don't answer. I yank his pants and boxers down to his ankles, exposing him to the cool air of the kitchen. The sight of him—pale where the sun doesn't reach, waiting for me—wires straight into my brain.
I don't hesitate. I bend over him, spreading his cheeks with both hands, and bury my face between his legs. I eat him out with a starving, eager intensity, my tongue driving deep, making him moan loudly in the empty apartment. I rim him until his legs are shaking, until he’s pushing back against my face, pleading.
"God, Max... please," he begs, his voice wrecked. "I need you inside. Now."
I pull back, my face wet, my senses reeling. I scan the counter. No lube. Just the expensive, imported olive oil Mother sent as a housewarming gift.
Perfect.
I grab the bottle, flip the spout, and pour it purely by feel. The green-gold liquid spills over his lower back and down the crack of his ass, coating my fingers as I reach for him.
"Olive oil?" Jax chokes out, shifting his hips as the cool liquid touches him.
"Viscosity is adequate," I grit out, using the slickness to slide two fingers inside him. He’s tight, hot, and ready. I work him open, adding a third finger, listening to the wet, slick sounds of the oil and flesh meeting. It’s messy. It’s unsterile. It’s chaotic.
I unbuckle my own pants, freeing myself, and press my front against his back. I’m shaking.
Jax looks back over his shoulder. His eyes are blown wide, dark with lust and a fierce, protective demand.
"Do it, Max," he commands, arching his back. "Take all that noise in your head and bury it in me."
I grip his hips, my fingers sliding on the oil before finding purchase on his skin. I line up and push into him, a long, smooth glide that feels like coming home.
"Jesus!" Jax cries out, his head falling forward onto his arms.
I don't hold back. I begin to move, snapping my hips against his with a bruising rhythm. The smell of the fruity oil mixes with our sweat and the lingering scent of floral perfume I’m trying to sweat out of my pores.
I fuck him with everything I have, every thrust a rejection of the mask I’ve worn for thirty years.
"Yes," Jax hisses, pushing back to meet me, taking every inch deep inside. "Right there. Give it to me. Harder, Max."
I am lost in the sensation—the heat of him, the slide of the oil, the sound of skin slapping against skin. I am not the Ice King. I am just a man, drowning in the one person who makes sense.
The tension coils in my belly, tight and painful. I drive into him faster, harder, until the world narrows down to just this friction.
"Let go!" Jax shouts, sensing I’m close.
I bury my face in the crook of his neck and let the noise go. With a guttural roar, I spill myself inside him, the climax hitting me like a physical blow, wiping the data clean. I collapse onto his back, my heart hammering against his spine, the silence finally, blessedly, empty.
Jax
The steam in the master shower is thick enough to hide a platoon, turning the gold fixtures into vague, ghostly glimmers. I have the water cranked up high, scalding hot—the only temperature that scrubs away the kind of day we’ve had.
I am sitting on the tiled floor, the water hammering against my back before cascading over Max.
He is sitting in front of me, knees pulled to his chest, forehead resting on his arms. The "Ice King" armour lies shattered somewhere back in the kitchen, along with a puddle of olive oil and my dignity.
Here, in the steam, there is just Maxwell.
Naked, shivering despite the heat, and finally quiet.
I’ve already scrubbed the worst of it off myself—the sweat, the slick film of oil, and the drying, sticky tracks on my thighs where Max spent himself inside me. Washing the "York" off my skin is easy; it’s just a physical mess, an indicator of just how desperately he needed to claim something real.
Washing the "York" off him? That takes a hell of a lot more than soap.
I take the washcloth, soak it in the hot water, and press it to the back of his neck. I work in slow, methodical circles, moving down to his shoulders, then tracing the line of his spine. I am trying to scrub away the humidity of the swamp, and the suffocating stench of his mother’s disapproval.
"You're back," I say quietly, watching the tension finally bleed out of his trapezius muscles.
"I am," he whispers. His voice is raw, stripped of its usual crisp cadence.
I keep the rhythm steady. "Want to tell me what was in those papers you and the Spare were printing at four in the morning?"
Max leans back, his wet head finding the centre of my chest. I wrap my arms around him immediately, pulling him into my heat, shielding him from the spray.
"Mother paid a doctor," Max says. The words fall out of him without a script, heavy and unpolished. "A specialist. Dr. Aris. From 1996 to 1999."
My hands pause on his chest. My combat senses flare—threat detected. I wait.
"She paid fifty thousand dollars to suppress a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder," he continues, his eyes fixed on the drain where the water swirls away.
"She signed NDAs. She paid for 'Social Calibration' and 'Behavioral Masking'.
She didn't want a son, Jax. She wanted a PR release.
She spent my entire childhood paying a stranger to erase me so I could meet the 'Standard of Care'. "
The silence that follows is heavier than the steam.
I feel a surge of rage so pure and hot it nearly rivals the water temperature.
I want to drive to York Manor and burn that mansion down to the ground.
I want to find every person who ever made this brilliant, complicated man feel like a mistake and introduce them to the business end of a trauma shear.
He is waiting for me to pull away. I can feel it—the brace for impact. He thinks I am going to see the "glitch" in the system and realize I’ve bought a counterfeit.
The idiot.
I turn him around, ignoring the splash of water. I frame his face with both hands, my thumbs sweeping the water off his high cheekbones.
"Max, look at me," I order, using my attending voice.
He looks. His blue eyes are red-rimmed and unguarded.
"That 'Standard' she paid for? It was boring.
It was fake. And it didn't work," I say, unable to stop a sharp, fierce grin from touching my lips. "Because you’re still here. You’re still the man who reorganizes my spice rack alphabetically when you're stressed.
You're still the man who can diagnose a rare cardiac anomaly from across a room but can't handle the texture of a lumpy sweater. "
I lean in closer, forcing him to see the truth in my eyes.
"You're spectacular, Max. You're spectacularly you. And if you think a $50,000 bribe changes the fact that you’re the most brilliant man I’ve ever met, then you’re not as smart as I thought you were."
"I am a jurisdictional nightmare," he whispers. It sounds like something Preston would say.
"You're my nightmare," I correct, leaning in to press my forehead against his wet skin. "And I don't give a damn about the NDAs. None of that changed you. It just made you fight harder to find your own way back. I love the man I’m marrying, Max. Not the version she tried to buy."
Max closes his eyes. Under my hands, I feel his chest hitch, a lung-deep release of pressure that he must have been carrying since brunch—hell, maybe since 1996.
"She threatened to buy the pavement, Jax," he says, a small, tired laugh escaping him.
"Let her," I say, pulling him into a kiss that tastes like salt and steam and survival. "We’ll just walk on the grass. Or we’ll buy some better shoes."
He melts against me, the "Ice King" finally at rest, leaving just the man I love.
"The Plaza," he murmurs against my mouth.
"The Plaza," I agree. "But with waffles."
"Every day," he says, sounding sleep-drunk and serious. "On the honeymoon. we're having waffles every day, right?"
"Deal," I grin, kissing the water off his nose. "I'll personally tip the chef."