35. Jax
Chapter thirty-five
Jax
Iskate toward the boards. The scrum shifts around me, noise, bodies and cameras blurring at the edges.
And there she is.
Notebooks in hand. Eyes too bright. Trying hard to look professional and failing at it in a way that makes something go stupid in me.
For one second there’s still glass between us.
It shouldn’t feel like anything. It’s just glass. Just rink boards. Just the line between the ice and everyone else.
It feels like a mile.
Then she puts her hand on it.
“You saved it,” she says. “You did it.”
I laugh, low in my chest, and put my hand over hers on the glass.
“Yeah.” I smile. “I did.”
“The glove save. In overtime. You just—” She stops. Swallows. “That was the ghost.”
“I know.”
“You didn’t even flinch.”
“I know where it lives.” I look at her. “You told me.”
Her face changes.
Just for a second.
That’s enough.
“Hey,” I say.
She looks at me. “What.”
“You still owe me a can of Fancy Cat.”
She laughs.
Right there at the glass with the whole arena still going and the Cup on the ice just feet away.
I watch her laugh and think — my person — and for once the words don’t feel too big.
They feel late.
The celebration runs until about two AM.
She’s there for all of it. Camera up, recorder on, doing her job — like someone who gives a damn about what happens to this team.
Not watching it.
In it.
Brody finds her first. Of course he does.
He talks at her with both hands moving, face still red from crying he will deny until his last breath, and Nova somehow manages to photograph him, nod at the right moments, and not smile hard enough to expose him.
Barely.
Aiden and Aurora find me near the lockers. Aurora leans up and says something in my ear I am taking to the grave, and when I look for Nova again, she’s across the room with Riley, notebook out, camera strap twisted around her wrist like chaos is just another language she knows how to translate.
I just watch her work. I’ve been watching since October. I don’t have a word for what she is to me.
Every word is too small.
The team replica Cup ends up on the kitchen counter. Brick is already on the counter. Looking at the Cup. Looking at me.
“I know,” I tell him.
Nova is in the kitchen wearing my hoodie. She looks at Brick. At the Cup. At me.
The corner of her mouth moves. Not a full smile. Just — that.
All those mornings.
Her coffee cup next to mine. Her camera bag by the door. Her notebooks on the table. Her plant on the windowsill that I keep accidentally overwatering and she keeps not mentioning.
All the ordinary evidence of her staying.
All the times I almost said it and swallowed the words instead.
I cross the kitchen. Put my hands on her face and look at her.
Then I get my mouth on hers and don’t let her go.
The kiss starts slow — controlled, the version I do when I’m being careful — and then she presses her body against mine and the careful version’s gone.
Her mouth opens. My hand goes into her hair.
The other slides down her back to the small of her spine and I pull her against me and she feels what she does to me, makes a sound into my mouth.
That’s the end of slow.
Hard the way I’ve been hard since she walked into my kitchen six hours ago looking like this. My jeans aren’t hiding a damn thing, and she’s pressed flush against me now, feeling exactly what she’s done to me. Her body catches up before her mouth does.
She rolls her hips against me once.
Deliberate.
“Nova.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m not — I’m not gonna last if you keep doing that.”
“Good.”
She does it again.
I get my hoodie off her — the gray one — and it’s gone.
The sports bra follows, and her tits spill free into my hands, soft and heavy and enough to make every thought in my head turn filthy.
I drag my thumbs over her nipples and feel the way she arches into it, the way her breath catches like she’s been waiting for my hands all night.
My mouth goes to her throat. Then lower.
I close my lips around her nipple and suck, slow and hard, until her fingers dig into the back of my neck and my name breaks out of her.
I give her other one the same attention — tongue, teeth, the kind of pull that makes her hips roll against me like she can’t help it.
“That’s it, baby,” I murmur against her skin. “There you are.”
Her pulse is jumping under my mouth when I move back up to the hollow of her throat, then lower again, because there’s no version of me that gets this close to her and doesn’t taste more.
She makes a small sound and her hands are at my shirt, dragging it up, and I get an arm out of one sleeve and she gets the other and the shirt goes the way her hoodie went — somewhere, gone, not relevant.
Bare chest to bare chest. Her palm flat over my heart for one second. Then her hand drops.
I kiss her again — slower, on purpose, because she just put her hand on my heart and that needs a second — and then I’m sliding my hand down between us. Get her leggings off. My hand under the waistband, into her underwear, two fingers sliding along her clit.
“Fuck.”
“Yeah.”
She’s so wet, and that does something to me I don’t know how to manage.
She gasps when I touch her. My fingers slip into her opening and she rocks against my hand and her teeth go into my shoulder.
“Jax.”
“Yeah.”
“Jax.”
“I got you.”
Her hand comes between us. Palms me through my jeans.
Hard.
The whole length of me — her hand is hot and steady pulling a moan from me.
She undoes my button.
Zipper.
The pressure releases and I exhale.
Her hand goes inside. Wraps around my cock. So tight and slow, base to tip, and I have to put my forehead against hers and breathe.
“Jesus, Nova.”
“I know.”
“I want—”
“Yes.”
She squeezes me again.
I lose what I was about to say.
I get her pants the rest of the way off.
She’s bare in my kitchen in just her thong and the only light is the lamp by the door and the moonlight coming through the window.
Her skin is silver and warm at the same time and she has one hand at the back of my neck and the other working me slow, like she has all the time in the world.
I don’t have all the time in the world.
I’m going to come if she keeps doing that and I’m not coming in my kitchen at three AM into her hand. Not tonight.
I slide her hand off me.
She makes a small noise of protest.
“My turn first,” I say.
“Jax—”
“Me first.”
I lift her.
Hands under her thighs, I lift her clean off the floor.
She wraps her legs around my hips on instinct, and I cross the kitchen with her in three steps — the counter is right there.
The counter where the Cup is. The place I’ve put my coffee every morning for the past six years, and now I’m setting my girl down on the granite three feet from it at three AM in my kitchen.
The Cup is on her right.
She doesn’t look at it.
She looks at me.
Her hands are in my hair.
“You ready?” I say.
“For what.”
“My turn.”
I drop to my knees between hers.
She goes still on my counter, thighs at the edge, hands braced behind her on the granite. Hair around her shoulders. Chest flushed. Her underwear is the only thing between my mouth and her.
I pull her thong down. Slow. Watching her watch me. The only thing between my mouth and her, gone.
Her bare ass on the counter, knees parted.
I look up at her.
“Look at me.”
“I am.”
“Stay here with me.”
“I’m here, Jax.”
I slide my tongue up the inside of her thigh.
She gasps.
I kiss my way up. Slow. The crease at her hip. The skin just below her belly button. Each kiss somewhere different so she doesn’t know where the next one is coming. Her hand goes to the back of my head. Her breath catches.
“Jax—”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t tease.”
“I’m not teasing.”
“You are.”
“I’m just thanking you.”
“For what.”
“Everything.”
I slide my tongue along the slit of her pussy.
She arches off the counter and her hand fists in my hair and she makes a sound I’ve never heard her make before.
I work her slow. Flat of my tongue first, finding the rhythm her body wants. Her hand in my hair tightens. Her thighs come around my shoulders and I put one hand flat on her stomach to hold her down and the other slides up the inside of her thigh and stays there.
“Jax — fuck — Jax —”
I close my mouth slurping and sucking her clit.
“Oh — oh — oh —”
I love how she sounds.
I love how she comes apart for me.
I love that she’s on my counter with the Cup three feet away and her thighs are around my shoulders and there’s no part of her that is performing anything right now.
She’s here. Fully here.
I slip a finger inside her. She’s so wet. So ready. I curl my finger and find the spot that makes her whole body vibrate —her thighs tighten around me, and I work her. Tongue and finger together. Building. Not letting her come yet, holding her at the edge.
“Jax — please —”
“Yeah.”
“Please.”
“Tell me what you want, baby.”
“Make me come on your mouth.”
“Yeah.”
I work her faster, her body lifting off the counter, her sounds getting louder and shorter and more broken — full sentences to fragments to my name to just sound. Just Jax and yeah and fuck and then nothing,just—
I press my tongue flat against her and add a second finger and curl them up.
That does it.
She comes with my mouth sucking her cunt— thighs locked around my shoulders, whole body shaking — open, unmanaged and completely hers, no audience, no professional context. Just her in my kitchen coming for me.
I work her through it. Don’t pull off. Stay with her every second.
She pushes my forehead away when she’s too sensitive.
I kiss her thigh. Sit back on my heels. Look up.
She’s looking down at me.
Hair wild. Chest flushed. Eyes wet.
“Come here,” she says quietly.
I stand up.
Her hands come up to my jaw. Both of them. Cupping my face.
“Damn,” she says.
I can’t speak.
I lean my forehead to hers and breathe.
She wipes her own taste off my mouth with her thumb. Looks at me. Doesn’t say anything else. Just lets me find my voice.
“Still on the counter.”
“I can feel that, Jax.”
I smirk.
I get my jeans the rest of the way off.