9. Jace #3
“No. I’m not.” He got the third button free and pressed a kiss to the skin it revealed, unhurried, deliberate. “I’ve imagined this exact moment more times than I’m willing to admit out loud, and I’m not rushing through a single second of it.”
“That’s an alarming amount of premeditation.”
“You have no idea.” He finished the buttons and pushed the blouse from her shoulders, and the way he looked at her then—reverent, hungry, both at once—stole the quip she’d been building to say next.
Clothes fell away between kisses, slow despite two weeks of built-up want, because he seemed determined to memorize all of her before he let either of them rush.
His hands were reverent where she expected them to be hungry, tracing the curve of her waist, the line of her spine, lingering there to feel her shiver under his palm, the reaction itself worth savoring.
When her bra joined the rest of the clothes on the floor, he went still for a moment, drinking in the sight of her, and the raw want on his face did more to unravel her than his hands had managed yet.
“You’re staring,” she said, breathless, when he pulled back to look at her in the low lamplight.
“I’ve been staring since the ballroom. I’m allowed to catch up.
” His voice had dropped low and reverent, and for a moment he held her gaze, taking his time, a man finally granted the one thing he’d spent two weeks not letting himself want out loud.
He laid her back against the pillows, following her down, and the weight of him settling over her sent a fresh wave of heat through everything he hadn’t touched yet.
He kissed his way down her body slowly—her collarbone, the curve of one breast, the soft skin below her navel—learning her by inches, memorizing every hitch in her breathing, information he clearly intended to keep.
His mouth closed over one peaked nipple and her back arched off the mattress on a sound she didn’t recognize as her own voice, and he made a rough, pleased noise against her skin that vibrated straight through her.
“Jace—”
“I know.” He didn’t hurry. If anything, hearing his own name break out of her only made him slower, more deliberate, determined to earn every single one of the sounds he was pulling out of her.
His hand skimmed down her stomach, fingers finding her through the last scrap of fabric between them, and the broken noise she made at that first, testing touch had his whole body going tight with restraint. “Say it again.”
“Jace.” Barely a word by the time it left her.
He pulled the last of her clothing away and settled between her thighs with nowhere else in the world he’d rather be, and when his mouth finally replaced his fingers she stopped being capable of anything resembling a witty response at all.
He took his time with her, unhurried in a way that contradicted everything about how they’d gotten here—the small broken sounds she made, the way her spine arched when he found a spot behind her knee she hadn’t known was sensitive, the plea that slipped out of her before she could stop it—until she was shaking apart under his mouth and hands, his name the only word she had left, her fingers tangled in his hair and her whole body strung tight as a wire.
He didn’t stop until he’d wrung every last aftershock out of her, and only then did he crawl back up her body, kissing every inch of skin along the way, apologizing for none of it.
“Your turn,” she said, when she’d recovered enough breath to form words, and pushed him onto his back with both hands.
She took her time undoing what remained of his composure, her mouth following the same patient path his had taken, learning the planes of him the way he’d learned her—the ridged muscle along his stomach, the low sound that broke out of him when her hand closed around him, the way his hips stuttered up into her touch despite the visible effort it cost him to hold still.
When she finally took him fully into her mouth, the sound he made landed somewhere between her name and a prayer, and the sheer size of his hands fisting in the sheets instead of her hair told her exactly how much control that single act of restraint was costing him.
“Emma.” Rough. Wrecked. “If you keep doing that, this ends a lot sooner than either of us wants.”
She let him pull her back up his body instead, settling over him with her knees braced on either side of his hips, and for one long moment neither of them moved—only looked at each other, breathing hard, every last trace of pretense they’d ever hidden behind finally, utterly gone.
“I want to see your face,” he said, low, hands settling at her hips. “The whole time. No looking away.”
“I wasn’t planning on it.”
He guided her down slowly, and the sound that broke out of both of them when he finally, fully filled her had nothing performed in it at all—two people who’d wanted this since a ballroom two weeks into knowing each other, finally done waiting.
She set the pace at first, testing, savoring the way his jaw went tight and his hands flexed against her hips, restraint costing him visibly, every second.
When she found a rhythm that made his eyes go utterly gold, molten and wolf-bright in the lamplight, he let her have it exactly that long before flipping them both in one smooth motion and taking over completely.
He moved like he had all the time in the world and intended to spend every second of it proving what she meant to him—slow, deep, deliberate, punctuated by her name and by words that weren’t quite words at all, murmured against her throat, her jaw, the corner of her mouth.
She met him for every one of them, nails dragging down his back, her whole body chasing the same unraveling point his was, until neither of them could slow it down any longer and it broke over both of them at once, her name in his mouth and his in hers.
Afterward, he didn’t move off her right away, forehead pressed to hers, both of them breathing hard, his weight braced carefully on his forearms so he wouldn’t crush her even now.
When he finally did roll to the side, he pulled her with him, arranging her against his chest, the matter never once up for debate.
They lay tangled in each other for a long while after, her head on his chest and his heartbeat slowing under her ear, his fingers tracing slow, absent lines up and down her spine, unable to quite make himself stop touching her now that he’d finally started.
“That sound you’re making,” she said eventually, tracing a lazy line along his forearm, “is that a wolf thing?”
“Don’t ask me to explain it.”
“That’s not a no.”
“It’s not a no.” He tightened his arm around her, unbothered, unashamed of the thing he’d only now admitted to. “Some things don’t need translating.”
She propped herself up on one elbow to look at him properly, hair falling loose around her shoulders, and found him already watching her with an expression she’d never once seen on his face during business hours—soft, unguarded, faintly stunned, the look of a man still catching up to his own luck.
“What,” she said.
“Nothing. I’m memorizing this.” He reached up and tucked the same loose strand of hair behind her ear all over again, an excuse to touch her more than an actual correction. “I plan on doing that a lot from now on. Fair warning.”
“I don’t mind the warning.”
He pulled her back down for a kiss that had none of the urgency of an hour ago and all of the tenderness—slow, unhurried, a promise instead of a question.
When he broke it, he pressed his lips to her forehead, then her temple, then settled her back against his chest with the easy familiarity of a man planning to keep doing exactly that for a considerable stretch of forever.
“Stay,” he said, quiet, into the dark, a beat later.
“I wasn’t planning on going anywhere.”
“Good.” His arms tightened. “Because I’ve got several more hours of staring left to do, and I intend to use every one of them.”
She laughed against his chest, warm and unguarded, and the answering rumble of his own laugh moved under her ear—a sound she was fast becoming addicted to, low and real, unrelated to the controlled, clipped amusement he allowed himself in front of the team.
Neither of them spoke, the safe house quiet around them, the whole night finally catching up at once—two weeks of careful distance collapsed into a few hours that had rearranged everything neither of them had been willing to say out loud, and neither of them in any hurry to move.
Her phone buzzed on the nightstand, breaking the moment. She almost ignored it. Almost.
If you want the truth about Kane, the message read, from a number she didn’t recognize, come alone.
Emma read it twice, the warmth of the last hour draining out of the room in one cold rush.
Jace’s arm tightened around her, his whole body going still and alert in the space of a single breath, the soft, sated man from thirty seconds ago replaced by the one who tracked threats for a living.
“Neither of us is going alone,” he said, already reaching for his phone.
“Wasn’t planning on that either,” she said, and meant it, though some part of her—the part that had spent seventeen years chasing exactly this kind of lead—was already wondering how fast she could get dressed and back out the door.