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“Mmhm.” Her voice is muffled against the quilt. She turns her head just enough to look at me with one eye. “I think I’m going to need a minute.”

“Take all the minutes you need.”

She closes the eye again. Jax settles against the headboard and puts one hand very lightly on the small of her back, and she makes another one of those small, satisfied sounds, and I lie there watching her and thinking about how badly Patrick Calhoun is going to lose.

And how little of this, at this exact moment, has anything to do with him.

6

ANNA

I’ve never felt so sated in my entire life. My body is deliciously spent, sore, as if I’ve just had the workout of my life. My mind feels the same, exhausted, but in the best way possible. My eyes flutter closed, and I sink deeper into the mattress.

When I woke up yesterday morning, there was nothing but hopelessness. I was filled with dread and fear for how the day would end. My future looked bleak, and though I’m still uncertain of what’s to come, I already have more hope than before.

The mattress dips, and I pry my eyes open again. Jax is getting off the bed, stretching his lean body. He runs his fingers through his long, brown strands, scratching his scalp along the way. Then he turns around to face me.

Our eyes meet, and the light pouring through the window makes his face glow and highlights everything anxiety made me miss earlier. He is even more handsome than he looked downstairs—a sharp jawline, strong cheekbones, and full lips made for kissing.

“Like what you see?”

“Maybe.” I grin.

“I’m taking a shower. If you want to join me?”

“I’m not sure if my legs will work long enough,” I half-joke.

“Don’t worry. We won’t let you fall.” Mark’s sleepy voice meets my ears. He tussles beside me and sits up. Of course, he is just as good-looking as Jax, but in his own way. I’m guessing they are both around thirty years old, which makes them ten years older than me. I guess a ten-year age gap is the least taboo aspect of what we did this morning.

“Will the shower be big enough for all three of us?”

“Only one way to find out.” Jax shrugs and holds his hand out to me. I place my palm into his much larger one, and he pulls me off the bed with ease.

The bathroom attached to the main bedroom is huge, bigger than my room at home, and the shower ends up being more than enough to fit the three of us. It’s also just as pink and floral as the other two. Gotta respect a unified decorating scheme, I guess.

Jax turns on the water from two separate showerheads, one on the side and a rainfall one from above.

The water warms fast. Steam rises off the tile and starts to soften the edges of everything—the pink grout, the glass door, the two men now standing on either side of me.

I look down at myself without meaning to. It’s the first time since the bedroom that I’ve had a second to actually look. My inner thighs are slick. I can feel where Mark was inside me. It’s not uncomfortable, exactly. It’s just different. Then I notice the creamy white cum smeared down my skin. “Oh, my god. You didn’t use a condom.”

“I know. I meant to pull out, but fuck, you felt so good.”

“I’m not on any birth control, obviously.”

Mark’s brow furrows. He glances at Jax, and Jax gives him a look I can’t read, and then Mark turns back to me with an expression that has more sorrow in it than I would have expected from a man who kidnapped me at gunpoint. “That’s on me,” he murmurs. “If—if something comes of it, we’ll figure it out. Together. That’s not a burden you’re going to carry alone.”

“You barely know me.”

“I know enough.”

I look at him. Steam is beading on his shoulders and rolling down the plane of his chest, and his eyes are steady on mine, and I don’t have a response ready for what he just said, so I don’t give one. I nod once and turn my face into the spray.

Jax’s hand settles on the small of my back. Not possessive. Just there. Like an anchor. “Come here,” he says, and he pulls me gently under the rainfall head. The water sluices down over both of us while he reaches for the shampoo, and I close my eyes and let him wash my hair.

Nobody has washed my hair since I was little. Mom used to do it when I was small, before she got sick. I had forgotten what it felt like to have someone else’s hands in my hair with no agenda beyond kindness. Jax’s fingers work the shampoo through slowly, careful at the roots, patient with the tangles. He doesn’t rush. He doesn’t talk. He just washes my hair.

I feel my throat tighten, and I don’t understand why.