Chapter 16
Booked
Jacob
She’s still asleep when I wake.
Curled up on my chest like she was made to fit there—bare skin pressed against mine, breath slow and shallow, lashes flickering with the tail-end of a dream. The sunlight leaking through the curtains turns her auburn hair to gold. Innocent. Almost holy. Like last night didn’t happen.
But it did. It fucking did. And I’m never letting her forget it.
She’s mine now. In every way that counts.
That tight little body broke open for me.
Took everything I gave and begged for more.
The way she stared into my eyes as the orgasm crashed through her, eyes glazing and rolling back, a shuddering surrender that felt like it belonged only to me.
And now, with her legs tangled in mine and her scent on my skin, I feel like I’ve just won a war no one else knew I was fighting.
Mission fucking accomplished.
I drag my palm down her spine, slow and owning. Possessive. She’s mine now— marked in ways she can’t yet see.
She doesn’t stir.
Good. Because I’m not done thinking. Not by a long fucking shot.
Her body’s already mine, but her soul, that fragile, shivering heart she keeps trying to hide from me?
That’s still bleeding on the table, waiting to be claimed.
But I’ll make sure the only life she can imagine is the one beside me, so no one else will ever get close enough to matter.
Someday, she’ll wear my ring, and my name will wrap around her like barbed wire, enough to keep every other bastard in this town at bay.
And with Benny circling like a mutt sniffing after scraps, I don’t have the luxury of patience.
Last night I gave her soft—my version of it, anyway. Careful hands. Tender, if you squint past the obsession that drips off me.
I never planned to grow into a monster. Watching my father break my mother taught me the mechanics of containment, and maybe that explains why I hunted her like a man possessed.
My days begin and end with her name— God, they have for years.
She needs to wake up, see the bars I’ve built around her, and accept one inevitable truth: in every map I draw, Summer Miller is marked with my name.
But she doesn’t know. Not really.
She thinks I’m just some twisted bastard who wanted her and jumped at the opportunity.
That part is true, at least. But she doesn’t know the extent of what I saved her from.
She doesn’t know who her father fucked with.
What they were going to do to her the second he took Jackson down.
She doesn’t know about Donnie and Vince.
About the club. About the catalog of girls who never came back.
About the ones we did eventually manage to find.
If she did… if she knew what they would do to her… what she was supposed to be for them… She might just beg me to keep her locked in this house forever.
I grind my teeth and shift, careful not to wake her. She makes a soft sound, a little whimper, and my cock twitches at the memory of how she moaned last night. How she whined when I split her open for the first time and whispered mine into the hollow of her throat.
Jesus. I could drag her back under and fuck her until sunset.
But I won’t. This isn’t just about sex. It never was.
She’s a goddess, yes. A fantasy come to life.
But she’s also a woman with no idea how much danger she was in—could still be in.
A woman who still clings to hope like a lifeline, who still believes someone out there might love her, soft and clean, without the darkness.
And she’s wrong. Because there is no clean. Only survival. Only truth. Only me.
I pull on my jeans and head downstairs, pouring myself a coffee and staring out the kitchen window at the gravel road beyond the trees.
My mind’s already racing. I could tell her everything.
Lay it all out, brutal and raw. Make her see who I’m saving her from and why I took her before they could.
But she’d question it. Maybe not out loud, but in her head.
She’d wonder if I made it up to keep her here. To own her.
No.
I hear movement upstairs—soft creaking, the whisper of bare feet on floorboards—and I smile into my coffee.
Good morning, little doll. Enjoy the calm while it lasts. Because today? Today, you learn everything.
She rubs her eyes as she walks in, her voice still caught between dream and reality.
“You’re up early,” I say as she walks into the room.
I lean back in the chair, mug in hand, watching her.
“Didn’t sleep much.” She’s blushing. Flustered.
Her eyes flick to mine. A pause. She knows it’s because of her. Because of the way she broke under me, begged me, came apart until she didn’t know which way was up. And still—she looks at me like she wants to believe it meant something different. Something softer.
She slides into the chair opposite, positioning herself carefully.
Her arms close around her knees, and she rocks just a fraction.
The way she flinches when she moves — a wince, a sudden intake of breath—tells me last night lives under her skin in the form of pain.
There’s heat behind her eyes and the quiet way she presses her thighs together tell the whole story—she wants more.
“About last night….”
I smile. Slow. Dangerous. “Last night was just the beginning, Summer.”
Her lips part, but she doesn’t answer. I don’t let her.
I stand, set the mug down, and walk around the table until I’m behind her.
My hands settle on her shoulders, heavy, grounding.
I plant a gentle kiss on her shoulder, then stand back to my full height.
I don’t want to ruin this moment; I want to enjoy the first morning we’ve had as lovers rather than enemies.
But she needs to know. She deserves to know.
So, I head to lean against the kitchen counter, standing where she can see me, and speak.
“There’s something you need to know,” I murmur, my voice low enough to make her lean in. “Something I’ve been waiting to tell you until the time was right.”
She stiffens instantly—I can feel it, the subtle quake that ripples through her chest where it presses against me. “What is it?” she whispers, her voice a thin thread of sound.
“It’s not something I can explain.” I hold out my hand. “I need to show you. Come.”
Her eyes meet mine, wide, searching. “Where are we going?”
I pause, just long enough for the tension to twist tighter between us. Then, softly, deliberately, I drop the words that make her freeze. “To my office.”
She stops dead. Every muscle in her body goes rigid, like I just drew a knife across the space between us.
I wait for it—the panic, the fire, the harsh words she usually spits when she’s scared. But nothing comes. Just silence. Stillness. And somehow, that’s worse.
“Why?” she breathes, barely a sound at all.
My jaw flexes. I drag a hand down my face, then rake it through my hair, trying to hold onto the thread of control that always frays when she looks at me like that.
“Because you only know half the story,” I say. “And half isn’t enough anymore.”
Her eyes burn into mine, steady and terrified all at once. “I thought I knew everything.”
I shake my head slowly, firmly. “Not all of it.”
Confusion flashes across her face, raw and unguarded, and it hits me harder than I expect.
“Then show me,” she says, voice trembling.
I study her for a long moment, weighing whether she’s ready—whether I’m ready.
Then I nod once. “Once you see this, there’s no going back. You’ll understand everything. Why I did what I did. Why I took you in the first place.”
“Jacob….” she whispers, chewing the inside of her cheek. “You’re scaring me.”
“Come,” I repeat, the word cutting this time, a command cloaked in restraint.
I move down the hall, the sound of my steps echoing through the house. The key hangs heavy in my hand as I stop at the door. I turn it in the lock, the click loud in the silence, and push the door open.
The air shifts the moment we step inside.
My office is dim, the faint scent of tobacco and cedar still lingering from nights I couldn’t sleep.
She follows close behind, and when I glance at her, I can tell she’s been here before—the flicker of recognition in her eyes gives her away.
I expected as much. I’ve left her alone here enough times for curiosity to take hold.
But one thing I know—she’s never opened that drawer. The one with her name carved into the metal tab. Summer.
Her voice wavers. “That drawer… that’s all about me, isn’t it?”
I turn toward her slowly, letting the weight of the moment hang thick between us. She looks small beneath it—unsure, frightened.
“Yes,” I say, my voice rough, almost reverent. “Everything in there is about you.”
I push the key inside and pause to take a breath before removing it.
Considering how the documents inside will wreck her.
But she needs to know. I slide the drawer free, the weight of it solid in my hands, and set it down on the desk between us.
She hesitates, then steps closer, the air between us charged and trembling.
Her fingers hover at the edge, but she doesn’t touch it. She only looks.
On top of the files are the photographs—the ones I’ve kept, the ones that matter.
Candid shots of her laughing with friends, sun streaking through her hair.
One with her parents at graduation, all proud smiles and soft arms around their little girl.
And then the one that always gets me—the one of us standing side by side at the neighborhood cook-off.
Her smile is small in it, polite, uneasy. She looks like she’s trying to disappear while the camera flashes, but I remember that day like it’s carved into me. She’d just turned eighteen. I’d waited. Watched. Told myself I would keep my distance until it was time.