I look up from the glass I'm drying. Tessa is perched on a barstool across from me, a knowing grin on her face. The bar is empty, mid-afternoon lull between lunch and the evening crowd.
"Waiting for what?"
"For you to be ready. For you to ask." Her grin widens. "Fair warning: when you do, clear your schedule."
Heat floods my cheeks. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Sure you don't." She laughs, sliding off the stool. "I'm just saying. Jett's the kind of man who doesn't take what isn't freely offered. You want him? You're going to have to tell him."
She saunters off toward the kitchen, leaving me alone with my racing thoughts.
The idea plants itself in my head. Grows roots. Spreads through me like wildfire.
I want him. God, I want him so badly it's a physical ache. It's different from anything I felt with Garrett. That was about survival, about performing, about doing whatever I had to do to avoid the consequences of refusal.
This is for me. This is wanting something because it makes me feel alive.
I want Jett's hands on me. I want to know what he sounds like when he loses control. I want to be the one who makes him lose it.
The power in that thought is dizzying. After two years of having no power at all, the idea that I could want something and take it, that I could ask and receive, is almost too much to process.
But I'm going to do it anyway.
Ifind him in his office that night, long after everyone else has gone to bed.
He's at his desk, paperwork scattered in front of him, sleeves rolled up to expose his forearms. The tattoos there catch the lamplight, intricate designs that I've spent hours studying without ever daring to touch.
He looks up when I push open the door. Those gray eyes sweep over me, checking for damage, checking for fear. When he finds neither, something in his expression shifts.
"Can't sleep?"
I shake my head, my pulse already quickening at the way he's looking at me. "Don't want to sleep."
His eyes darken, pupils dilating as understanding dawns. He sets down his pen with deliberate slowness, his full attention now locked on me.
I cross the room, my heart pounding so hard I'm sure he can hear it echoing in the quiet office. Each step feels momentous, irrevocable. I stop in front of his chair, close enough that my knees nearly brush his. Close enough to touch if either of us had the courage.
"Tessa says you're waiting."
"Tessa talks too much." But there's no real irritation in his voice, only a barely restrained tension that makes my stomach flip.
"She says you're waiting for me to ask." I swallow hard, forcing the words out past the tightness in my throat, past two years of conditioning that told me my wants didn't matter. "I'm asking."
He doesn't move. Just watches me with those intense gray eyes, cataloguing every detail like he's memorizing this moment. The rapid rise and fall of my chest. The flush spreading across my cheeks and down my neck. The way I'm trembling, but not from fear—never from fear, not with him.
"You sure about this?"
"I've never been more sure of anything in my life."
"Sparrow." His voice is rough, strained, like he's holding himself back by the thinnest thread. "You've been through hell. I don't want to rush you into something you're not ready for?—"
"Garrett took a lot from me." I move before I can lose my nerve, before the voice of doubt can creep in, climbing into his lap and straddling him. His hands come up automatically, settling on my hips to steady me, the heat of his palms burning through the thin fabric of my pajama pants. "Don't let him take this too."
He goes completely still beneath me. I can feel the tension coiled in his body, the iron restraint it's costing him to hold back when I can feel exactly how much he wants this.
"Tell me if I do anything you don't like." It's not a request—it's a requirement.
"I'll tell you."
