CHAPTER 34
JAGGER
Iwoke up with a gasp, my body jerking upright before my mind had even caught up.
The hotel sheets were twisted around my legs like I’d been fighting something off, and for a split second, I had no idea where I was—just that something felt wrong.
Dragging a hand through my sweaty hair, I tried to slow my breathing. My pulse was thudding hard in my ears, loud enough to drown out the silence around me.
What a fucking dream.
I’d been back in the hospital with Carlie.
It looked exactly the way it had the night she’d been hurt—the same sterile lighting, the same suffocating quiet, the same sense that something irreversible had already happened.
A wheelchair sat at the foot of the bed, though, turned slightly away from me.
I’d called her name, but when she pivoted toward me, it wasn’t Carlie in the chair. It had been Eden. It was Eden’s eyes locked on mine, searching and desperate, like she was waiting for me to fix it, to undo whatever had been done.
And I couldn’t.
That was the part still clawing at me right now. The helplessness. The rage. The bone-deep certainty that I had failed someone I was supposed to protect.
Swinging my legs over the edge of the bed, I braced my forearms on my thighs, breathing hard as I tried to force the image away.
It wasn’t real. It wasn’t happening.
I turned to where Eden was still asleep.
She was on her stomach, one arm tucked under her pillow.
Her breathing was slow and even and completely undisturbed.
I reached out without thinking and rested my palm lightly against her back, feeling the steady rise and fall beneath my hand.
She shifted faintly at the touch, murmuring something soft, then settled again.
Fuck.
Evidently, there was nothing quite like falling in love for the first time in your life to dredge up every unresolved trauma you’d ever carefully buried. Apparently, my subconscious had decided this was the perfect moment for a highlight reel. Fantastic.
My phone buzzed against the nightstand, and I groaned. It was three fucking o’clock in the morning. I reached for it before it could light up the room again and saw that it was Cruz.
Of course.
I cast one look back at Eden. She’d shifted but hadn’t woken up, and I slid out of bed and crossed the room, answering only once I’d stepped into the bathroom and closed the door quietly behind me.
“What happened?” I asked, keeping my voice low.
“O’Dalaigh got our message,” Cruz snapped.
I glanced at my reflection in the mirror and frowned.
I looked like death warmed over. I needed to take a shower before Eden woke up and saw me like this.
The last thing I needed was having to explain that I’d had a dream about my ex-girlfriend wearing Eden’s face.
The girlfriend who, in a roundabout way, was one of the reasons I’d ended up a psychopathic mobster in the first place.
One who had eventually killed Eden’s husband.
I really couldn’t explain any of that.
“And?” I prompted.
“And he sent one back.”
I leaned a hip against the counter. “That was quick.”
“One of the security guards just found a body,” Cruz said evenly. “It happened to be one of our judges.”
Shit. It had taken a lot of work to get in with the local judiciary. Even losing one made everything infinitely harder.
“Where was the body?”
“In the middle of the casino at Paradise,” Cruz snapped, and I almost grinned, imagining how frustrated he must look right now having to handle this without me for once.
“I mean, that is bold,” I murmured. Just like us delivering Claudia’s corpse, leaving a dead body was him saying he could reach into our house, rearrange the furniture, and leave without asking permission.
“How long ago did he find it?” I asked, making a note that the guards needed raises.
“About an hour ago. Security locked it down immediately before the media could sniff it out.”
It was only a matter of time for that. Judges couldn’t exactly drop dead on casino floors without some questions. And O’Dalaigh would no doubt be putting pressure on all the right people to ask them.
“He left us another little present,” Cruz said.
Of course he did. The man loved a signature.
“What was it?”
“A coin with an Irish crest stamped on it.”
I stared at my reflection again, watching the slow shift in my own expression. Now I wasn’t even impressed, because that wasn’t subtle at all. O’Dalaigh wanted escalation. He wanted spectacle. He wanted to see if we’d blink.
The dream flickered through my mind again—Eden in that chair, looking at me like I was supposed to fix it.
I exhaled slowly and straightened, my gaze still locked on my reflection. “We’ll be out first thing in the morning,” I told Cruz.
There was a brief pause on the other end of the line, one that meant Cruz was weighing something. “Did it go well?” he finally asked, the edge in his voice softening just slightly. “With her.”
“Yes,” I said, but it came out distracted. “It went well.”
“Just well?” Cruz pressed, because he’d known me long enough to hear the difference.
I dragged a hand down my jaw, annoyed at myself for letting anything show. “I’ll talk to you about it later,” I told him, “when we don’t have a dead judge to deal with.”
“Fair,” Cruz muttered.
“See you tomorrow,” I said before hanging up.
The phone hit the counter with a dull clack. Something was clawing at the inside of my ribs, a dark, irrational certainty that if I walked out of this bathroom right now, she’d be gone. That somehow she’d slipped away while I was on that call.
I threw open the door, my chest heaving as I lunged back into the room. It kind of felt like I was having a heart attack as I stared down at her sleeping form.
Stalking over to my bag, I pulled out a pair of handcuffs I always packed just in case. My hands were shaking as I snapped one bracelet around my left wrist before walking over to her and carefully sliding the other cuff around her right wrist.
The chain was short—barely six inches. She couldn’t go anywhere . . . not that she seemed to be in a hurry at the moment. I perhaps shouldn’t have worried about drugging her all those weeks. Eden was a pretty deep sleeper. She still hadn’t stirred.
I wasn’t done yet, though. I wasn’t going to feel better until we were connected in every way. I slid a finger inside her black lace panties and tore them off. She finally jerked awake, and her eyes flew open.
“Jagger—”
I was already on her.
One knee shoved between her thighs, spreading her while my free hand pinned her hip to the mattress. The chain rattled as I yanked her bound wrist up over her head, securing it beside mine. She arched instinctively, confusion flashing into heat, then fear, then something darker—recognition.
I didn’t wait for words.
I thrust into her hard. She cried out, but her thighs clamped instinctively around my hips, her heels digging into the backs of my legs, pulling me deeper even as her breath hitched in panic.
Her inner walls gripped me in frantic, pulsing waves, not fluttering but squeezing down in tight, erratic spasms, like her body was trying to anchor itself to me through sheer force.
“Jagger—wait—”
“No.” My voice came out shredded. I pulled back and slammed home again, harder, burying myself to the root until there was no space left between us. The chain jerked taut between us and bit into my skin. “You’re not leaving.”
I pinned her down harder with my weight, my forearm braced beside her head and the short chain forcing her wrist to stay locked near mine. Every movement tugged the cuff, a constant reminder—tug, clink, tug, clink—like a heartbeat made of steel.
Her eyes widened farther. “I’m not—”
“You’re never leaving me.” Each word punched out with a desperate thrust. “Never. You hear me, Eden?” I leaned down and pressed my forehead against hers, my breath ragged against her mouth.
“I’ll chain you to me. I’ll burn the fucking world down.
But you don’t get to walk away. Not from this. Not from me.”
She whimpered, a half sob, half moan, and her hips rose to meet mine despite the tears gathering at the corners of her eyes. Her free hand clawed at my shoulder, her nails digging deep as she clung to me. “I’m not—I’m not leaving—”
“Say it.” I fucked her faster, vaguely aware of how loud the bed frame was banging against the wall. “Say you’re mine.”
“I’m yours,” she gasped. “Yours. Only yours. Jagger—please—”
The plea ripped through me, and I drove deeper, grinding my hips so the thick ridge of my cock dragged relentlessly over that swollen bundle of nerves inside her with every forceful plunge.
She jerked like I’d electrocuted her, a high, keening sound tearing free from her chest as she shattered around me.
Her cries were muffled against my neck as she came, trembling, her chained wrist jerking against mine.
I followed half a second later, heat exploding down my spine as I spilled into her.
We stayed locked together, the chain clinking softly every time one of us shifted. Her eyes were glassy and wide, still locked on mine like she was seeing straight through to the monster underneath.
I pressed my mouth to her temple . . . gentler now. “You’re never leaving,” I whispered again, quieter this time. “Never.”
She swallowed hard, then nodded shakily. “I know,” she breathed. “I don’t want to.”
The fear didn’t vanish. But right then, with her bound to me, full of me, trembling in my arms—it was quiet enough to breathe.
For now.