Page 25 of Deacon

“Jackson…” She swallowed, her eyes moving back to his. “I’ve never…”

Everything inside him quieted. He lowered himself beside her and cupped her cheek. “Never what, Princess?”

“Any of it.”

The admission struck deeper than lust. He searched her face, giving her the chance to take the night back. “You sure you want this with me?”

She nodded, then caught his wrist and held his palm against her cheek. “I want this. I want you.”

Jackson kissed her again, slower now, before trailing his mouth along her throat and down the center of her body. He eased her panties over her hips, and Lila lifted enough to help him slide them down her legs. She trembled beneath his hands, warm and already wet when he settled between her thighs.

“You’re perfect,” he murmured.

His mouth brushed her inner thigh, his beard rasping softly across skin that jumped beneath the touch. Her legs opened wider when he kissed higher, and the first sweep of his tongue drew a broken sound from her throat. He took his time, learning what made her hips lift and what left her clutching at the grass. Each soft cry drove heat tighter through him, but he held himself back until her thighs trembled around his shoulders and his name spilled from her in breathless fragments.

Only then did he rise over her.

The head of his cock pressed against her, and Jackson held himself there, every muscle tight with the effort to remain still. “Tell me if it hurts.”

Lila nodded, but he waited until her eyes met his. “I want you,” she said again, steadier this time.

He entered her slowly. Her body resisted at first, tight and hot around him, and pain crossed her face when he pushed deeper. Jackson stopped at once. Her nails pressed into his shoulders while he bent to kiss her, his hand slipping between them to stroke her clit in slow circles.

“Breathe, baby.”

Her breath shuddered against his mouth. Gradually, the tension eased from her body, her muscles fluttering around him as pleasure began to overtake the sting. She shifted beneath him, asking without words, and he moved only when she lifted her hips to meet him.

For a while, there was nothing but Lila.

The grass dragged softly beneath them while warm night air moved across his back. The lake washed against the shore, low and steady, and her hands traveled over him with a mixture of wonder and need that unraveled him a little more with every touch. Crushed grass and lake water mingled with the scent of her skin. Whenever she whispered his name, wanting her stopped feeling like hunger and became the only truth his body recognized.

He kissed her until the edges of the night softened, until her fingers tightened around him and her breathing broke apart. Her body arched beneath his, drawing him deeper, and Jackson held her through every trembling wave.

Then the night went wrong.

The water lost its rhythm. Warm earth turned cold beneath his palms, and Lila stilled under him. When he lifted his head, her face refused to settle.

The eighteen-year-old girl beneath him blurred into an older woman, then shifted back again.

“Jackson.”

Her voice trembled through the darkness.

“Come back to me.”

Those words didn’t belong to the girl in the grass.

The stars vanished, and the lake went with them. Something warm closed around his hand in the dark, pulling him toward her voice while the memory shattered around him.

No.

The refusal tore through him. This night belonged to them. It was the last night he had held her, the final piece of her he possessed before everything slipped through his fingers and hardened into years he could never reclaim.

He didn’t want whatever waited beyond the darkness. He wanted the lake and the grass beneath them. He wanted her breath against his ear and the soft wonder in her voice when she said his name, offering him something he had no right to ask for and had taken anyway.

Jackson reached for the memory, furious now, trying to hold it together through force alone. It tore loose faster beneath his grip, as though something beyond the darkness dragged him away piece by piece.

Lila’s soft cries flickered and vanished. Moonlight fractured while her face blurred again, slipping from the girl in his arms into someone older and farther away.