Chapter 42
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Jade
As I wake up, I reach out for Malachi, my heart dropping when I realize that the space beside me on the mattress is empty.
I blink a few times, my eyes adjusting to the gray morning light coming in through the small cabin windows and stretching long and thin across the floorboards.
I roll over, my hand hitting empty sheets.
The indentation on Malachi’s pillow is the only proof he was there at all.
I decide to go look for him and I pull an oversized cotton shirt over my head, sliding my feet into the cozy slippers and then head out in the hallway. When I reach his office, I find the door is cracked open, a thin line of yellow light spilling onto the rug in the hallway.
“Hey,” I push the door open without knocking but Malachi doesn’t even look up. He is sitting at his wooden desk, surrounded by a mess of printed flight manifests, background checks, and city maps. There is a half-empty mug of black coffee in front of him, beside a stack of passport copies.
He didn’t get any sleep again.
The dark shadows under his eyes look bruised against his skin, making my soul ache at the sight.
He’s holding a red pen in his hand, striking out a highway route on the map and drawing a sharp, alternate line through the back roads.
“What are you doing?” I ask, my voice rough from sleep.
“Rerouting,” he says, his eyes still glued to the paper. “The main interstate is too exposed so we must take the service road to the airstrip, then switch vehicles at the lumber yard, and use the secondary charter terminal instead of the main hangar.”
I walk over, resting my hands on the edge of the desk. My eyes drop to the paper covered in his sharp handwriting. Every pilot’s file, every security guard’s background record, every mechanical log for the twin-engine charter plane is spread out before him. He hasn’t delegated a single piece of it.
“You're vetting the pilots yourself?” I ask.
“Every single one,” he answers, his thumb tracing the edge of one pilot’s license. “I want their families checked, their debts looked at, their flight paths tracked for the last six months. No one gets near that aircraft unless I know every place they’ve slept for a year.”
I watch the way his jaw works, the tight, rigid line of his shoulders. This isn’t just some security protocol. He’s become obsessed with it because my name is on the flight manifest.
“And the men staying in Ireland?”
“There are six of them,” he says, tapping a list of names. “Cain hand-picked them and I vetted them. They’re the ones that will stay inside the perimeter and make sure there are no visitors, no outside lines, no exceptions until I clear them.”
“And if something comes up?” I ask.
“I have people that I trust in Ireland on speed dial,” he reassures me.
I look down at the maps, then back up at his face. “Why aren’t you travelling with me?”
Malachi stops moving and when he looks up, his eyes meeting mine his expression is completely stripped of everything except for a hard resolve. “Someone has to stay here.”
“Right, to hunt him down.”
“To tear his world down to the dirt,” Malachi corrects me as he stands up slowly, pushing the chair back on the wooden floor.
“Nolan is watching my movements and he knows all of my cars, my schedules, every shadow I cast in this city… If I board a plane, Nolan will feel the shift. He’ll look and he’ll find Ireland. ”
“So you stay here as the target,” I whisper.
“I stay here to draw his fire from you,” he says, closing the distance between us.
He stops right in front of me, before he continues.
“Nolan wants to hurt me. I suspect he wants to break what belongs to me more than he wants to have a cigarette with his morning coffee. If I am in New Orleans, his eyes will be on me, not on an airplane crossing the ocean.”
“And who is flying with me?”
“Cain,” Malachi says. “He is the one who’ll escort you to the property, lock down the perimeter, and he won’t leave the place until I decide it’s safe.”
“But...”
“There’s no one I trust more with this than Cain, Jade,” he insists. “Trust me with this, okay?”
“Okay,” I remain completely still, the reality of it finally settling.
He is sending me away to keep me breathing, but he is staying behind in the absolute epicenter of the war, weaponizing himself as the distraction.
My heart aches at the realization and I reach out, my fingers sliding up the front of his shirt until I can feel the heavy, relentless thud of his heart.
“You’re playing a very dangerous game, Mal,” I tell him, my voice barely audible.
“I’m playing the only game that ends with us both alive,” he murmurs.
The packed duffel bags sit by the front door like a dead weight.
I didn’t realize that I was going to leave so soon, I thought I would have at least a few more days with Malachi before leaving for Ireland.
And now every shadow in the bedroom feels heavier somehow, and every tick of the clock louder.
We didn’t even talk about how fast the timeline would move, one day we were arguing over maps, and now the flight manifest is printed, the guards are briefed, and there are only hours left before Cain drives me to the airstrip.
Malachi walks into the bedroom, wearing a plain black t-shirt that clings to the broad line of his shoulders.
He stops at the edge of the bed, ignoring the bags by the door, but I know he sees them. “You’re staring.”
“I don’t get to see you wearing a t-shirt every day,” I force a smile. “You look hot.”
I don't wait for him to respond before I kick the blanket off, stand up, and cross the floor until I am standing right in front of him.
“Who’s staring now?” I ask, my voice quiet.
“You’re leaving in six hours, Jade,” he answers, his voice full of meaning.
“Then let’s not waste any time…”
I reach out, my fingers hooking into the waistband of his jeans, and pull him down hard against me.
The control snaps between us instantly and there is no room for slow burn tonight or any hesitation.
Malachi’s hands fly to my waist, his fingers digging into my skin with a bruising, desperate force that leaves zero doubt about what he’s feeling.
He lifts me effortlessly, backing me up until the back of my legs hit the edge of the mattress and I tumble backward.
He follows me down, his weight settling over me in that familiar, comforting way.
He doesn't give me room to breathe before his mouth crashes down on mine, rough and demanding, tasting like coffee and whiskey. He strips my shirt away in one fast tug, his hands mapping every inch of my skin like he’s trying to memorize it before morning.
There is nothing but pure hunger and pain in him tonight, reminding me that this is the man who can kill someone without even breaking a sweat. And tonight, he’s putting that precision into undressing me before I can even keep up with the pace.
I feel his erection hard against my leg, but he doesn’t waste time before burying himself into me with a heavy, relentless rhythm, the bedframe slamming hard against the wall with every thrust.
Thankfully we don’t have any neighbors because every time we have sex, we’d end up with a police report.
The thought alone distracts me for a second, and I open my mouth to tell Malachi the joke, but he shuts me up with his mouth before I can even make a sound, his tongue finding mine for a rhythmic dance together.
I hook my heels at his lower back, pulling him so tight against me there isn’t an inch of air left between our skin.
We aren’t fighting for dominance tonight like we usually do.
This is our countdown until the morning, every heavy, driving shift of his hips feeling like a clock ticking down to zero, and the panic sitting under my ribs is sharper than I would like to admit.
Malachi drops his forehead against my shoulder, his breath hot and ragged, his teeth catching the sensitive skin of my neck just hard enough to sting.
He is holding on to me with the same desperation that’s making me tangle my fingers into his hair and hold onto him as strongly as if my life depends on it.
“Look at me,” he murmurs, his voice rougher than I’ve ever heard it.
When my eyes meet his, my vision still blurry, I notice how his gaze is entirely stripped of the cold armor he wears for the rest of the world. He’s showing up as the raw, exposed version of himself, terrified in a way he would never let anyone else see.
“Mal—” He suddenly changes the angle and his cock hits that sweet spot inside of me, as he drives deep with a desperate, unyielding surge, knocking the air out of my lungs causing me to cry out, my hands struggling to grip to the hard muscles of his shoulders as the wave breaks over us. “Yes! Right there!”
My inner muscles tense around his cock causing Malachi to groan into my skin, his whole frame going rigid, a long, shaking shudder tearing through him as his warm cum spills inside of me.
“Fuck, Jade,” he says, low on breath. “The way you milk every last drop of me so eagerly drives me insane.”
“And it feels so good to do it,” I smile. He pulls out of me and collapses next to me on the mattress, his right hand laying on my chest, holding me.
We lie there for a long time, but my mind won’t stop even for a second. I can’t stop trying to find a different solution, one that might be better and wouldn’t require to put an ocean between us. But no matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to find one.
I lift a hand, my fingers tracing the base of his neck, feeling the familiar beat of his heart against my chest.
“Mal?” I whisper into the dark.
“Yeah?”
“What happens if you can’t find him?” I ask.
The question hangs in the quiet space between us for a while. It is the one thing we haven’t dared to say out loud.
What if Nolan slips through the net? What if the tracking device and the motel raid were just the beginning of a war that has no end, and I remain stuck across the ocean while he bleeds out in New Orleans?
Malachi slowly lifts his head. He looks down at me, the shadows hiding his eyes.
“I’ll never stop looking,” he says, his tone confident.
“I’ll tear this city apart block by block, and burn every dock and warehouse he owns to the ground, and if I have to, I will cross the ocean to find him.
There is no place for him to hide, Jade. ”
I look at him, really look at him, and I believe him.
“Good,” I say.
I pull his head back down, pressing my mouth to his, tasting the salt on his lips, holding onto him tightly in the dark before the sun comes up to take me away.