Chapter Thirty-Four #3
She made some sort of noise that was almost a growl, a sound of pure, frustrated need. Her eyes flew open, glazed with pleasure. “Wha… why did you stop?”
I looked up her body, meeting her heated gaze.
“Not yet,” I said, my voice rough. I lowered my head and licked her again, a slow, torturous pass, but avoided her clit.
I worked her with my fingers, driving her to the edge again, listening to her pleas and curses, feeling her body beg for release.
And again, just as her muscles began to flutter and seize, I withdrew my mouth, leaving her gasping on the precipice.
I did it a third time. Her cries were raw now, tears of frustration and overwhelming sensation leaking from the corners of her eyes. “Please,” she sobbed. “Jackson, please, I need to come. I need it.”
Fuck me. Hearing this wildfire of a woman beg for me? I would never get enough. Not to my dying day.
“You’ll come when I’m inside you,” I promised, my own control hanging by a thread. I was painfully hard, straining against my jeans. I rose up on my knees, fumbling with my belt. “Condom,” I muttered, turning toward the nightstand.
Her hand shot out, gripping my wrist. Her touch was electric. “No.”
I froze. “Holly…”
“I want to feel you,” she said, her voice fierce. “All of you. Bare. I’m on the pill. I want…I want to feel it.”
That undid me. The last of my sanity shattered. I shoved my jeans and boxers down, freeing myself. I was thick, aching, the tip already slick. I positioned myself at her entrance, using my hand to guide myself, rubbing the head through her wetness. She was so hot, so ready.
I looked into her eyes, holding her gaze.
“Mine,” I said, a low growl.
“Yours,” she echoed.
I pushed inside. The feeling was obliterating.
Hot, silken, impossibly tight wetness sheathing me.
A groan was torn from the depths of my soul.
I buried myself to the hilt in one long, slow, inexorable thrust, feeling her body stretch to accommodate me, hearing her choked cry of pleasure-pain.
I held there, embedded fully, letting us both feel the shocking, complete connection. Then I moved.
I pulled out almost all the way and slammed back in.
No gentle rhythm. No careful pace. This was a claiming.
A fucking. Each thrust was deep, hard, driving the breath from her lungs.
The bed rocked against the wall with a solid, rhythmic thump.
Her legs wrapped around my waist, her heels digging into my back, urging me on.
“Yes! Like that! God, just like that!” she screamed, her head thrashing on the pillow.
I fucked her with a ruthless, pounding intensity, each stroke aimed to bury myself as deep as I could go.
The sounds were obscene and beautiful: the slap of skin, her ragged cries, my own guttural grunts.
I could feel her inner walls beginning to flutter again, that delicious, rapid clenching.
She was right back on the edge I’d denied her.
“Now,” I commanded, pistoning into her. “Come for me, Malibu. Come on my cock.”
Her climax hit her like a seizure. Her body arched violently, a raw, shattered scream tearing from her throat as she convulsed around me.
The feeling of her pulsing, milking tightness was too much.
My own release detonated, a white-hot torrent flooding into her as I drove in one last, deep time, my shout muffled against her neck.
I collapsed on top of her, spent, both of us slick with sweat and trembling.
After a long moment, I shifted my weight, but didn’t pull out. I couldn’t. I was still semi-hard inside her, the aftershocks of my orgasm still rippling through me. I nuzzled her throat, tasting salt. “Holly?” I murmured.
She turned her head, her eyes hazy and sated. A slow, wicked smile touched her swollen lips. Her hips gave a subtle, testing roll beneath mine, and I felt myself stir in response inside her still-clenching heat. “You’re not done,” she whispered, her voice hoarse. “Are you?”
I could only smile before pulling her on top of me.
Over the next few weeks, we got very reacquainted with each other’s bodies.
Very. The counter. The bed. The shower. The bath.
The couch. On the couch so frequently, in fact, that when Dalton teased about bringing a black light over we practically tripped over each in our hurry to dissuade him from doing just that.
Which, of course, was the opposite of subtle.
In between Dalton’s roaring laugh, Maria’s deep blush, and the look we shared over their heads… we started to find ourselves again.
Things weren’t perfect. Hell, what did I expect? We’d never been the soft, easy kind of couple. We were gasoline and a match, two alley cats in a room full of fireworks, always one spark away from lighting the whole place up.
The first real fight hit a few months in.
I’d pushed too hard at PT that day. Told myself I could handle it. Told myself pain meant progress. By the time I made it up the stairs to our apartment, my leg felt like it had a live wire wrapped around it. Sweat soaked through my shirt, and every step sent a warning up my spine.
She was waiting on the balcony. Dinner was set on the table inside. Candles lit. The kind of domestic scene that still startled me sometimes—like I’d walked into someone else’s life by accident. I tried slipping past her.
“You overdid it,” she said.
“I’m fine,” I tossed over my shoulder, already angling for the bedroom where I could collapse without an audience.
“You’re not.”
I dropped my keys harder than I meant to. The clatter echoed down the hallway. “You gonna start bubble-wrapping me too? Dalton already tried.”
Her jaw tightened. “I’m trying to keep you from ending up back in a hospital bed.”
“Newsflash, Malibu—I’m not broken.”
The second the word left my mouth, I wanted it back.
She stepped closer, and I saw it then. The anger. But underneath…fear.
“We buried you, Jackson,” she said, voice shaking in a way that cut deeper than shouting ever could. “And doing that almost had our friends burying me. Don’t you dare snap at me.”
That knocked the air out of me. I stared at her, breathing hard, leg throbbing, pride flaring uselessly in my chest. I hated that she saw weakness. Hated that she worried. Hated that I couldn’t give her a clean, unscarred version of myself. But underneath all of that was something worse.
Guilt.
“I know,” I said quietly.
Because she was right. They had buried me.
Folded a flag. Said goodbye. And she’d unraveled in the wreckage of it.
Silence stretched between us. She moved first. Pressed her forehead to my chest like she was anchoring herself.
Or maybe anchoring me. I felt the tension drain out of me in a rush I didn’t expect.
I swallowed hard, lifted her chin until I could see her eyes, and kissed her.
Soft. Careful. Like something breakable.
“Guess we’re both still learning how to do this,” I murmured.
“Yeah,” she whispered. “But we’re learning together.”
That was the part that scared me the most. Together meant I could fail her in real time.
Slowly but surely, we found a rhythm. Not perfect. Just ours.
We cooked together most nights. I handled the knife work—hands steady, movements precise. It felt good to be good at something again. She hovered like I might slice myself open at any second, pretending she wasn’t watching.
We ate on the couch. Watched the news. Made fun of terrible commercials. I stole her socks because she wore the thick ones and mine were always disappearing. She stole my hoodie and never gave it back. We discovered several new uses for her massive shower.
Balance.
At night, my body betrayed me. Sometimes I’d jolt awake before I even knew I’d fallen asleep, lungs burning, heart racing like I was still under metal and smoke. Sometimes I’d hear rotor blades in the hum of the ceiling fan. Sometimes I’d see fire when I closed my eyes.
She never panicked. She’d press her palm flat against my chest, right over my heartbeat. “You’re home,” she’d whisper. “You’re safe.”
Home.
Safe.
Two words that still felt foreign in my mouth.
“I just had to get home,” I’d murmur sometimes, half stuck in whatever dream had dragged me under.
She never asked what that meant. She knew.
Some nights, when I was drifting but not fully gone, I felt her tracing the scars on my arm.
Light touches. Like she was memorizing them.
Counting proof that I’d made it back. I never said anything.
I just shifted closer until our foreheads touched.
That closeness weighed more than any kiss.
More than any promise. Eventually the apartment stopped feeling temporary.
My boots stayed by the door. My toothbrush sat next to hers.
My coffee mug—stained beyond redemption—claimed permanent territory on the counter.
The air smelled like motor oil and her favorite candle. It shouldn’t have worked.
It did.
It wasn’t some fairytale version of survival. It wasn’t clean or shiny or Instagram-worthy.
It was real.
One night after dinner, we sat out on the balcony.
The city hummed below us, lights scattered like someone had dropped a handful of stars.
Rain hung heavy in the air. She leaned into me, head on my shoulder.
We’d just showered together. My skin was still warm.
For once, my head was quiet. No crash. No sand. No rotors.
Just breathing.
“You ever think we might actually be okay?” she asked.
I thought about it longer than I should’ve.
“Maybe,” I said finally. “Still feels like a second chance I didn’t earn. Like I’m living somebody else’s tomorrow.”
It was the truth.
Men better than me didn’t make it out of that valley.
Why did I?
Her head snapped up.
“Don’t you dare say you didn’t earn it,” she said, sharper than she meant. “You bled for this life. You clawed your way back. You get to have a tomorrow, Jackson.”
I kissed the top of her head. “Yes ma’am.”
She grumbled and tucked herself closer like she was claiming territory.
Later, in bed, when she fell asleep beside me, I stayed awake a little longer. Watched the streetlight glow crawl across the ceiling. Felt her weight against me. Her breath warm against my neck. For months, I’d whispered one sentence into the dark.
Got to get home.
Now I was here.
Her arm was draped across my ribs, careful without realizing it. My leg throbbed in a dull, familiar way. My scars pulled when I shifted. But the ghosts were quieter.
For the first time since I crawled out of that wreckage, I wasn’t bracing for the dark to swallow me whole.
It just…settled.
Most nights, that was enough. On the ones it wasn’t, I’d lie there staring at the ceiling until the shadows started moving again.
Counting breaths. Counting seconds. Counting the ways I didn’t deserve to still be here.
Sometimes I’d slip out of bed and pour a finger of something amber into a glass.
Just enough to quiet the hum under my skin.
Just enough to take the edge off the memories without waking her.
It wasn’t about getting drunk. It was about turning the volume down.
I’d stand at the kitchen counter in the dark, swallow slow, wait for the burn to chase the ghosts back into whatever hole they’d crawled out of.
Then I’d go back to bed, trying not to wake her as I tried forcing myself to believe I was allowed this.
It didn’t always work.