Jax’s gaze stayed locked on hers. "You know," he said, voice lower now, "you could punish me."
April blinked. "What?"
"For the monitor thing. The tickets. Two years of manufactured IT emergencies." He leaned back slightly against the desk, arms folding. "I could stay at your desk. On-call support. Immediate response time. You need a charger, I materialize. Password reset? I’m already there. Printer jam—"
"That’s not a punishment," April said.
"No?"
"You’d love that."
His mouth curved. "Yeah. I would."
The servers hummed steadily around them.
"So they work as rewards too," he said, grin sharpening with intent.
Heat crawled up her neck. This man had built a digital paper trail to prove she wasn't crazy. Had fabricated IT failures for the chance to orbit her desk. Delivered a petty revenge prank like it was an act of service. And now, in a server room lined with humming machinery, he was requesting time near her as the reward. And now—standing in a freezing server room—she was overheating.
"Consequences aren’t sexy until I say so," she managed.
Jax’s eyes went darker. "Noted. What about rules?"
"What about them?"
"You like rules. Boundaries."
"And?"
"Can we make them foreplay?"
April's brain did that thing where it tried to process a sentence and came back with error messages instead of answers. The question just hung there between them.
He'd held himself back for two years, bent systems around her without crossing lines. Now he was asking if her boundaries could be part of what came next.
He was waiting.
Jax's voice dropped even lower. "Can I—"
"Yes." April grabbed the front of his hoodie and pulled him in before the word had even finished leaving her mouth.
Mint and coffee.
Jax groaned against her mouth, and her fingers tightened in his hoodie. His hands found her waist and stayed there for a second, steadying, before he moved.
The kiss deepened. Jax's hands slid up her sides over fabric, ribs rising under his palms as her breath stuttered. He broke the kiss just long enough to press his forehead to hers.
"Can I—"
April answered by pulling him back down, fingers sliding into his hair.
Jax lifted her then—walked her backward two steps until the desk edge hit the back of her thighs, and set her on it, the cold metal biting through her slacks. Jax stepped in close, fitting between her thighs.
April tightened her legs around his hips. Then his mouth was on hers again. The hesitation gone. One hand came up to cup the back of her neck, fingers threading into her hair until strands began to fall loose around her face. The blue LED lights stuttered across his features while the server fans roared like a mechanical heart.
Jax's breath hitched when her fingers tightened in his hair, the scratch of stubble brushing her jaw as his mouth stayed on hers and his hands held her steady at the waist, her body folding closer against his.
The reinforced steel door rattled.
