Chapter Six #5
She braced one hand on my shoulder, the other at the back of my neck. Her breasts moved with every stroke. Her hair came loose from the braid, pale strands sticking to her throat. She held my gaze and didn’t glance toward the door.
My grip tightened on her hips.
I slid one hand between us and found her clit.
Her rhythm faltered. “Dex.”
“I’ve got you.”
“I know.”
Those two words nearly finished me.
I worked her with my thumb while she rode me harder, breath breaking, thighs trembling around my hips. Her pussy clenched tight around my cock. I kissed her throat, her jaw, the corner of her lips, anywhere I could reach while she took what she wanted.
“Come for me,” I said. “Right here, Jade.”
Her body locked around mine, and she cried out against my lips, shaking through the orgasm while her nails dug into my shoulder. I held her through it, hips driving up once, twice, and then I was gone too.
I came hard, buried inside her, face against her neck, her name rough in my voice.
For a while, neither of us moved.
Then Jade made a small sound. “Your ribs?”
“Still attached.”
“You need a better line.”
“I’ll work on it.”
She laughed softly and rested her forehead against my shoulder.
I held her there until breathing became something we could do again.
Afterward, we cleaned up in the bathroom with an awkward amount of care.
“You need ice,” Jade said.
“I need five minutes.”
“You can have five minutes with ice.”
“That sounded like an order.”
“It was one. Don’t make me call Crystal and report noncompliance.”
“That’s low.”
“That’s effective.”
She won. I sat on the bed with a cold pack wrapped in a towel against my ribs while Jade stole one of my clean T-shirts and came back from the hallway wearing it over bare legs.
My pulse kicked once and stayed there.
She noticed. “Don’t get sentimental. Your shirt was closest.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were thinking loudly.”
“Occupational hazard.”
She climbed onto the bed beside me and leaned back against the headboard. For the first time since I’d met her, she let herself be tired without bracing to bolt.
“Crystal’s going to need help with the legal mess,” she said.
“Yes.”
“She’ll need someone who understands numbers and doesn’t make her feel stupid for being scared.”
“She seems pretty good at numbers herself.”
“She is.” Jade traced a seam in the blanket. “She was always good at that. I was better at drawing on things I wasn’t supposed to draw on.”
“That explains a lot.”
“It explains my sparkling career.” Her smile curved, then faded. “I don’t know if I want to go back exactly the way I was.”
“To Blackbird Ink?”
“To all of it. The shop’s good. My life there wasn’t bad.” She nodded toward the window. “But Crystal’s here. You’re near here. And Whispering Pines doesn’t have a tattoo shop.”
I didn’t move.
She glanced at me. “That’s not me asking you to solve it.”
“I know.”
“Do you? Because men get weird when women mention futures near them.”
“I’m not solving it,” I said. “I’m asking what you want.”
Her fingers stopped on the blanket.
Outside, a car passed on the street, normal and ordinary, with nothing to chase.
“I want a chair that’s mine,” Jade said slowly.
“Clients who come because they want my work. A front window with good light. Maybe Crystal doing the books if she wants and if she doesn’t hate the idea after everything.
I want to be close enough that she can call me without me driving half the state in a panic. ”
I waited.
Her gaze came to mine. “And I want you.”
She held my stare without a joke, a smile, or an escape hatch.
My chest tightened under the ice pack and the old bruises.
“You have me,” I said.
Jade’s eyes narrowed, but not with anger. “Don’t say that because we survived one terrible morning and had excellent sex.”
“The sex was excellent.”
“Dex.”
“I’m not saying it because of that.” I set the cold pack aside and turned toward her.
“I wanted you when I thought wanting you was the worst idea I’d had in years.
I still wanted you when I found out your name and had every reason to be furious.
And today, at the storage unit, I reached for you first.”
Her lips trembled once.
I touched her knee under the hem of my shirt. “I don’t know exactly what this looks like next week. I know I want to find out with you, as Jade, with no bounty between us and no running unless we’re both choosing it for fun.”
A laugh broke out of her, wet at the edge. “That was almost smooth.”
“I’m injured.”
“That’s your excuse?”
“It’s the one I’m using.”
Jade slid her hand over mine. “I want to find out too.”
I turned my palm up and laced our fingers together.
She took in our joined hands, then the plain room, the half-open blinds, the towel on the floor, and the corner of the dresser where I’d dropped my keys without thinking about who might take them.
Her thumb moved over my scraped knuckles.
“This is real?” she asked.
She kept her gaze on our hands instead of my face.
I lifted her hand and kissed the ink-smudged side of her finger. “It’s real.”
Jade let out a breath and leaned into my shoulder.
I held her there in the morning light, our fingers locked together, my keys on the dresser and her boots beside my bed.
This time, neither of us reached for the door.