As if he can feel it, he leans in and slips a strong arm under my knees. He lifts me slowly and effortlessly into his lap. Our gazes never break as he cradles me against his chest. I’m enveloped in his reverent hold as he skims my cheek with his knuckles, catching strands of my hair and pushing them back with a tenderness so achingly soft and intimate that my vision finally blurs.
He finally breaks our stare, giving me the dignity of privacy while my tears fall.
The sentiment only makes them fall more.
His gaze tracks everywhere else—on my lips, my collarbone, the slope of my chest—and my skin burns beneath it.
I don’t want to want him. But I do.
I don’t want to need him. But I have.
The truth tastes like surrender, sweet and humiliating, and for a second, I realize what this is, what it could be. A place to stop fighting. A place to let someone else hold the weight.
In his lap, I can finally rest.
I blink away the tears as his touch trails down my neck, and I tilt my head, letting my cheek rest against his arm.
“Are you tired, buttercup?” His words are soft and slow, the kind of lazy comfort that comes from knowing someone, as if we’ve always been this.
I shake my head.
“No pain?”
I shake my head again.
As if not believing me, he finds the end of my gown and gently curls his fingers around the material to hike it up. I don’t stop him as he reveals my underwear, the small space between my legs, and the piece of gauze taped to my upper thigh where the stent went in.
Slowly, he peels it off, careful not to tug the skin.
The small incision is closed, healed for the most part, and he runs his thumb around the red edges, his touch feather light. My breath gets caught somewhere in my chest at the proximity of where I want him most.
I lift my hips toward him.
His throat bobs, eyes flicking to mine with something warring in them.
“You’re going to hate me tomorrow,” he sighs, leaning toward defeat.
“Maybe,” I whisper, voice breathy. “But you didn’t seem to care last time.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Jax
Ihook a finger along Kira’s waistband and slowly pull her underwear down as if I’m testing the edge of a blade until she’s exposed for me, and—fuck—there’s a sheen of wetness between her slit.
I know I should let her rest—she only has one more night here before she finds out what I did. But restraint has been a rope I’ve been chewing through for three straight days.
It’s been torture watching her steal irritated glances at my hands, and I barely contained myself, surviving on the way her fingers would thread through mine in her sleep. But now she’s in my lap, wet and arching for me.
And I’m fucking rock hard.
I turn her in my lap and place her thighs on either side so she straddles me. Gripping her hips and fisting her skin, I drag my palms up to her waist and push the gown up. She lifts her arms in compliance, her nipples rising with the motion.
I throb inside my jeans.
Jesus Christ, she’s not even fighting me.
She’s naked in my lap, tears dried on her cheeks, dripping for me, and I don’t know what I like more—the honor of her submission or the burn of her hate.
