He hisses, a sharp intake of breath through his teeth, but he doesn't pull away.
I grab the bar of soap. I lather my own hands, then gently wash the blood from his palm. My fingers slide over the rough ridges of his calluses, tracing the life line, the heart line. His hand is massive. My hand looks like a child’s toy inside his.
"Does it hurt?" I ask softly.
"Yeah."
"Good," I say, drying it with a clean rag. "Pain is a reminder. It tells you that you’re alive."
I look up.
He is watching me. His pupils are blown so wide his eyes are almost black. He is staring at my mouth. The muscle in his jaw is jumping, a rapid-fire tic.
"You have gentle hands," he says. The words sound like they were dragged out of him over broken glass. "For a mechanic."
"Precision work requires a steady grip," I murmur. "You can't force a gear into place. You have to finesse it."
I look at the wound. It’s clean now, the blood slowing to a sluggish ooze. It looks angry.
I lift his hand.
I don't know why I do it. It’s a glitch. A short circuit in the mainframe. Maybe it’s the heat. Maybe it’s the fact that he hurt himself to keep from hurting me.
I press my lips to the center of his palm, right over the cut.
I kiss the wound.
Jax freezes. His whole body goes rigid, turning to stone against the counter.
I taste the iron. I taste the salt of his skin. It’s primal. It’s an acceptance of the violence he carries.
For a second, he doesn't move. Then, a tremor runs through him, violent and shuddering.
He rips his hand away.
"Don't," he snarls.
He backs me up against the sink, his hands slamming onto the counter on either side of my hips, trapping me. He leans down, his face inches from mine. I can just feel the heat radiating off his chest, searing through my thin tank top.
"Don't do that," he breathes, his voice wrecked. "Don't touch me like you care. Don't taste me."
"Why?" I challenge, breathless. My pulse is a manic drumbeat against my ribs. "Because you might like it?"
"Because I'm barely holding on!" he roars.
He presses his hips against mine. There is no mistaking the ridge of him against my stomach. He is hard. Painfully, impossibly hard.
"You have no idea," he whispers, his nose brushing my neck, inhaling deeply right over the birthmark. "You're standing here half-naked, smelling like sugar and heat, fixing me up like I’m a broken toy. You don't know what the Wolf wants to do to you."
"Tell me," I whisper. The request is irrational. It’s dangerous.
"He wants to claim you," he says. The words are crude, blunt. "He wants to mark you. He wants to bite this spot on your neckand knot you until you can't walk. He wants to fill you until you smell like nothing but me."
My knees go weak. The air leaves my lungs.
Knot?
I don't know what that means. Not in this context. To me, a knot is a tangle in a wire or a way to tie a rope. But the way he says it—guttural, heavy, and final—makes it sound like something that destroys you and puts you back together different.
