He stops. “You know about that?”
I don’t look at him. “Doesn’t matter. Two blocks that way.”
He moves again, and all I can do is try not to breathe in the smell of cigarettes coming off him, all while swallowing the nerve to ask what the hell he did with the Jax I used to know and since when does he fucking smoke.
Fifty-Five
NOW | JAX
Iwake up before her. The only good thing about this hour is that the rest of the city is still quiet. Even Tar City needs a minute before it starts gnawing at itself again.
Sisk is draped over my chest, one leg thrown over mine. There’s a red line on her cheek from the pillow. I breathe in her hair and my whole body reacts. It’s not her shampoo, it’s just her. A warm scent that awakens a primal instinct to pull her closer and never let go.
There’s a round dark bruise on her thigh with the perfect shape of my grip. I flex my hand slowly against the sheet. I don’t remember squeezing that hard, that’s the part that fucks with my head. Not that I left marks, that I didn’t feel when I did.
She presses closer unconsciously, like she doesn’t even question whether I’m safe to lean into. She stirs but doesn’t wake. Last night I edged her for too long, I told myself I was teasing, pacing, that I was in control. I wasn’t, I was starving.
The full moon’s still weeks out and I can already feel it. The fucking pull, the itch in my blood that has nothing to do with sex and everything to do with hunger. Sisk thinks this is some kind of game. She thinks I’m being dramatic, overprotective. She doesn’t get it. She doesn’t understand what it feels like tobe inside her, knowing that one wrong second, one lost second of control, could hand her over to that black fucking hole in the ground we call a landmark.
Last night, she told me to finish somewhere else, offered her face like that was a solution. Risk isn’t fucking negotiable anymore. I told her I needed a day. A day to fix it. To cut whatever needs cutting so this body stops being a goddamn liability. To make sure I can be inside her again without the risk of creating someone that doesn’t belong to us.
Her fingers slide over my stomach. “You’re thinking too loud,” she mumbles.
My hand comes down on her wrist, stilling it.
She rolls on top of me like we didn’t stand in an alley last night watching tar crawl back into my fucking skin like it belonged there.
“I told you it’s fine,” she says softly. “I can’t get pregnant.”
My body reacts instantly to her weight. I grip her hips to keep her still. “Stop fucking grinding, things are different now.”
She exhales through her nose. “Why?”
“Because now I know,” I say. My voice is rough. “And the tar knows I know.”
She turns against me and every muscle goes tight, fighting the urge to flip her over and forget every rational thought I’ve had since yesterday.
“There are other things we can do,” she says carefully.
“I don’t fucking trust myself to stop at a blowjob,” I say, my voice a low growl. “Not when I can smell your cunt from here.”
“You can… smell me?”
I don’t answer. How the fuck am I supposed to tell her that when the moon’s effects are on, I can smell her cunt from across the goddamn room? Because I know her. She won’t hear a warning if I do tell her, she’ll treat it as a challenge.
The hunger’s already there. Not just for her, for violence, for blood, for the quiet that falls over the city when I let myself loose.
I need to get this surgery done as soon as possible. The tar shifts under my skin, a silent objection to the thought.
My grip tightens before I even realize I’m doing it.
“Jax.”
I release her immediately and the decision settles into place. “I need you to stay the fuck away from me today.”
She pulls back.
“I need to do this,” I say, sitting up. “For us.”
