Chapter 11
Eleven
NOW | JAX
Every step is a war as I move toward her. If she’s not here, I won’t be able to stop myself. I know it. My body knows it. The tar knows it. She wasn’t home. Why the hell would she be out tonight? She knows how this works.
My vision sharpens to razor clarity. I’m seconds from slipping. Seconds from taking the first wrong person who turns the corner. A flash—the woman the tar wants tonight—flares across my mind and I blink, forcing it away.
I brace a hand on the studio doorframe. The wood trembles under my palm.
I’m going to break the damn building if I wait another second.
I think about knocking. For half a second, I really do, but I don’t have time.
I reach for the lock and the magic jumps to my fingers like it’s been waiting for me to give up pretending.
The doorknob rattles, turns—click—I push the door open.
She’s not alone. There’s music playing from a speaker on the counter. Her hair is down—which means this isn’t work, this is pleasure. Behind her, with his hands on her waist, is that fucking guy. The dad. A red haze drops over my vision, and all I can see is his neck snapping under my hands.
Heat slams into my ribs so violently I double over.
He sees me first and startles. “Can I help you? Who are—?”
I don’t hear the rest, in two strides, I’m on him. I grab a fistful of his shirt and slam him into the wall. The drywall cracks. “GET. THE. FUCK. OUT.”
His eyes go wide. A dark patch spreads rapidly across the front of his light-colored pants. Piss. The coward actually pissed himself.
“I’m—?” he stammers, not even looking at her.
“Now,” I snarl, and the voice that comes out… isn’t entirely human.
Magic hums beneath my palm, begging me to push harder. To break bone. To feed it. I crack my neck and slowly release him. I’m holding myself together by threads and grit and nothing else.
I don’t even have to look at her. She already knows what’s happening. “You’re fine, Spencer,” she says, her voice steady. “Let him go, Jax.” She comes closer. “Spencer, I’ll see you next week.”
The fucking fuck she will.
A loud crack snaps behind me—something structural giving out. I grunt, swallowing the magic down. I lean in close to the coward, my voice a low promise. “If I ever see you near her again, I’ll peel your skin off while you’re still breathing.”
He doesn’t need to be told twice; he scrambles away, tripping over his own feet, not daring to look back.
I stand there, chest heaving, one hand braced against the wall like the entire building might collapse if I let go.
“Jax,” she whispers. “His daughter is a student, you can’t…”
She doesn’t even finish her sentence because I’m already losing it. My head snaps back, eyes glaring up at the ceiling as a searing heat bleeds into them.
“Shhh,” she says, moving closer, “talk to me.”
The hunger—the magic—the need—surges so brutally I have to shut my eyes before it knocks me flat. “It wants… a…” I force out.
She steps closer, placing a gentle hand on my back.
“Aah—” I flinch hard, hissing. The touch is agony and relief all at once.
“Let me see.” She turns me toward her and lifts my shirt. Her fingers drift over the Markings, tracing the edges of the burning lines. A feral sound tears from my throat, my back arching as the magic roars under her touch.
Her breath stutters. “A baby?” she whispers, her eyes wide with shock.
My hands ball into fists so tight my knuckles crack.
“Shut the light off,” she says, her voice urgent.
“What?”
“Turn. The lights. Off, Jax.”
I don’t flip a switch, I destroy every bulb in the room. Glass pops. Darkness drops. Total, suffocating black.
She steps in—close enough her breath warms my stomach—and presses her lips to the Marking, so gently I almost cry from the pain. Her hands go to my jeans, fumbling with the button. The zipper slides down on its own. The magic doesn’t hesitate, neither do I.
I brace both hands on the wall because if I touch her—if I grab her—I’ll shove so deep down her throat she’ll choke.
She feels the restraint in every trembling muscle. “Deep breaths, bad boy…” she rasps. “Let me suck this curse out of you.”
Her tongue circles me once, slow and wet, clockwise. I feel every ridge, every vein on my cock jump under the heat of her mouth. A bead of pre-cum wells at the tip, and her tongue flicks out to lap it up before she takes me deeper.
I watch her in the large mirror on the opposite wall. She takes me slow—painfully slow—her kind of slow—a rhythm that cages my mind, steals my consciousness, forces me to focus on her and nothing else.
My hips jerk and she steadies me with one hand. I lock my arm against the wall. I’m one second from forcing her too deep. It’s not enough. The voice rides up my spine, expands in my ribs, claws into my skull—a growl rips out of me.
She understands instantly this is worse than previous times. So much worse. She cups my balls in both hands, the weight of them heavy in her palms, then she lowers her mouth and licks them. The first hot, wet flick of her tongue against the sensitive skin there makes my vision white out.
It’s all too much. “I can’t—” I choke out.
She returns to my cock, her lips parting to take the head, and I lose everything.
I thrust—hard—until she takes every inch, her throat constricting around me.
I can’t stop. I can’t stop. I fuck her mouth like it’s the last thing I’ll ever do, chasing the release, chasing the silence.
My hips slam forward, a brutal rhythm, and I make sure she swallows every drop as I come with a hoarse shout.
Relief hits—or it should. The roaring in my head quiets for a minute. The magic recedes, just enough for me to draw a full breath without my ribs feeling like they’re in a vise.
I look at her as she licks her lips and comes up to kiss the Markings again. “I got you,” she tells me.
To both of our surprise, the magic boils back up, hotter and faster than before. I can’t think straight. One second she’s on her knees; the next, I’m pinning her against the wall.
I’m shaking, too far gone. I’m barely holding back, fighting the urge to take her like an animal.
She leans in, “It’s okay. You know I like it rough.”
With barely a thought, I have her legs wrapped around my neck, her entire body held by magic and the wall, suspended in the air for me.
Every sense spikes as I push her leotard aside, and her arousal floods in, thick and sweet. I drag my nose up and down her pussy, inhaling her, hunting that scent. It’s maddening.
My tongue pushes into her and she moans without fear. I want to devour her.
Tonight I’m nothing but hunger. A wolf. A shark. A creature built for eating in the dark. It takes everything I have not to leave another mark I can’t take back.
I’m already hard again, fantasizing about shoving into her when my brain shuts down. The magic spikes, erupts, and everything goes wrong at once.
The air snaps violently and every mirror in the studio detonates: the wall-length mirror; the framed ones near the barre; the small one on the counter. All burst at once—and all of them aim their shrapnel at us.
Glass rains and she screams.
“Sisk!” I yell, moving before I think, sliding her off my shoulders and bringing her to the floor. All I can think is I saved her, I stopped it—until I see her. She's curled on the floor, her thigh clutched in her hands as blood spills fast, too fast, between her fingers.
“My leg—” she gasps, sobbing. “Jax—my leg—”
The magic thrums wild under my skin, unstable—and suddenly I understand what I’ve done. I drop to my knees beside her, my hands hovering, afraid to touch her. Afraid I’ll make it worse.
“Don’t move,” I grit out, trying to force the magic back down. It fights me like a living thing under my skin, hungry and violent.
Her blood is soaking into the floorboards, spreading fast.
“It hurts,” she whimpers. “Jax, it hurts so much.”
I press my palm against the floorboards, trying to ground myself, but the magic just keeps building. “I know. I know, baby. Just—just breathe. I can fix this.”
The air shimmers around us, warped by the energy pouring off me. Every shard of glass on the floor starts to vibrate, drawn to the chaos inside. I’m going to hurt her. I’m going to kill her if I don’t get this under control.
“Look at me,” I demand, my voice rough. Her tear-filled eyes meet mine. “Whatever happens, don’t look away from me.”
She bites her lip against another sob. The smell of her blood is thick in the air, calling to something primal in me, something that wants more.
I have to fix this. My hands hover over her leg, shaking. I try to push the magic out, to knit the skin back together, to make it right. But it’s a wild animal, snarling and thrashing inside me. It doesn’t want to heal, it wants to consume.
The glass on the floor lifts an inch, hovers, then clatters back down as I wrestle the power back under control. My breath comes in ragged pants, sweat beading on my forehead. I’m making it worse. I’m always making it worse.
Her eyes roll back, her body going limp.
“Sisk? Sisk!”
I don’t remember moving. I don’t remember breathing. I don’t remember fixing my pants. I don’t remember grabbing her coat. I don’t remember getting through the door.
I only know one thing: I hurt her. This time it’s real. Not a bruise or a scrape. Real. The tar is still seething beneath my skin, the power waiting for another chance to break free.
It hits me like a killing blow: She’ll never be safe as long as I’m around.