15. Emma #3
“I was already staying.”
What followed had none of the urgency of the first time.
He undressed her slowly, almost solemn about it, lingering at every new inch of skin to trace it with his mouth, like he had the rest of his life and intended to use every second of it.
She learned the same patience in return, tracing the old scars along his ribs, the tension banked permanently into his shoulders, until he was shaking under her hands in a way the composed, controlled Alpha Jace Maddox never let anyone see.
“You don’t have to hold back,” she murmured, against his jaw, feeling the restraint still coiled tight through every muscle in his back.
“I know.” His voice had gone rough, low. “I want to remember every second of this one. Slow is the only way I know how to manage that.”
He eased her down into the quiet instead, the creek outside the only sound besides her breathing, and took his time in a way he hadn’t let himself the first time—the inside of her wrist, the curve of her hip, the ticklish spot below her ribs that made her jump and then laugh, breathless, before the laugh turned into something else entirely.
By the time he settled between her thighs, she was shaking, and when his mouth finally closed over her, the sound that broke out of her was raw and unguarded, nothing left in it for anyone but him.
He didn’t hurry. Where the first time had been fast and hungry and half-blind with two weeks of built-up want, this was deliberate—slow enough that she felt each individual choice he was making, and stayed there until she’d lost every thread of a sentence, nothing left in her mouth but his name, no adrenaline required to get her there this time.
When he finally moved up her body and settled over her, both of them bare in the low lamplight, in no rush to be anywhere else in the world, he braced his weight on his forearms and held her gaze, clearly intent on watching every second of it happen.
“Look at me,” he murmured, and she did, holding his eyes through every slow, deliberate roll of his hips that followed, nothing hidden on either side of it.
He kept the pace unbearably slow, drawing every sound out of her like he had all the patience in the world to spend, and when she finally begged him to move faster, he only kissed her instead, murmuring that they had all night, that there was no reason to rush a single second of it.
There was no danger nipping at the edges of the moment, nothing left to manage or protect against. Only the low lamp light, the sound of the creek somewhere past the window, and two people choosing each other slowly, deliberately, with absolutely nothing left to prove.
When it finally crested through both of them, it came slow and complete, a long, shuddering wave instead of a single sharp peak, and it registered less as release and more like arrival—a weeks-long circling finally, quietly, coming home.
Afterward, tangled in each other in the dark, Jace pressed a kiss to her shoulder and said nothing at all, and for once neither of them reached for a single word to fill the quiet.
Dawn came gray and quiet through the guest room curtains, and Emma woke to Jace already awake beside her, watching her with an unguarded softness he never let anywhere near a boardroom, at peace in a way that made him look ten years younger than the man who ran meetings downstairs.
“You’re staring.”
“I’m allowed to.” His knuckles trailed down her arm, slow and lazy about it. “Breakfast in twenty minutes. My mother makes eggs on a schedule that predates modern civilization, and she will absolutely notice if we’re late.”
They found the kitchen already full—Roman arguing with Diesel about bacon technique, Jace’s mother presiding over the stove with the calm authority of thirty years feeding this pack, and a matching, unmistakable ease between Jace and Emma that neither of them bothered hiding this morning.
Jace’s mother read the whole situation off their faces in under a second and said nothing at all, which communicated more than an entire conversation would have.
She simply set down two plates side by side at the corner of the table instead of apart, and went back to the stove humming what was unmistakably a wedding march.
Tucker’s voice crackled through the radio on the counter before anyone sat down, sharp and urgent enough to cut every other sound in the kitchen dead.
“Boss, you need to see this. Satellite’s picking up heavy vehicles moving toward the disputed parcel. Trucks, equipment, at least a dozen men.” Static crackled for a beat, and when he spoke again his voice had gone grim. “Kane’s not waiting anymore. He’s moving on it right now.”
Jace’s whole posture changed in the space of a breath, the soft, unguarded man from thirty seconds ago folded away and replaced by the one who ran a war.
The shift in the air between them registered before he even opened his mouth to answer, the whole warm morning collapsing into the next fight without any warning.