Page 68 of Jax
I came undone quietly, no scream, no wildness. Just a trembling release that shuddered through me, tears slipping down my cheeks as my body clenched around him. Because I was safe. Because for once, I could let go.
He followed me over the edge with a groan low against my neck, hips driving deep, holding me tight as his own release ripped through him. His breath broke against my skin, hot and uneven, as if he’d given me every last piece of himself.
He didn’t collapse. Didn’t roll away. He stayed, still inside me, his weight pressed to mine like he was anchoring us bothto the moment. One hand threaded through my hair, the other steady on my waist.
“You’re safe,” he murmured again, softer this time, as if the words weren’t just reassurance, but a benediction.
And for the first time since I had been taken, I believed it.
The silencein the room had a shape now, not emptiness. It curved around us with breath and weight and a hum so steady it felt like home. Not a place. Not a person. Just the peace that arrived when nothing demanded your defenses.
His fingers moved slowly across my hip, steady arcs that didn’t coax or lead, only anchored. His other arm rested beneath his head, his chest rising in rhythm with mine. I was half-draped across him, one leg tangled with his, my cheek resting against the crook of my arm, pretending to be at rest, because sleep still felt like a kind of surrender I hadn’t earned.
But the ache in my chest didn’t carry shame. It wasn’t regret. It was gentler. The strange, beautiful ache that comes from being held like something sacred. Like I wasn’t just allowed, but wanted. And I didn’t know how to rest in that feeling without breaking it.
He traced a line along my waist, fingers brushing the dip there as if committing it to memory. As if he didn’t trust the moment to last and needed some part of it to stay with him.
I shifted slowly to look up at him, and found his eyes already on me. He wasn’t watching like I was a puzzle or a promise. He wasn’t searching for heat or cracks. His gaze held only reverence. That quiet kind that doesn’t try to decide whether you’re breakable or holy. Only acknowledges that you are both.
“You’re fucking beautiful when you let go,” he said.
It wasn’t flirtation. It wasn’t said to earn something. Just spoken aloud the way truth sometimes insists on being heard.
I wanted to believe him. Wanted to let that sentence seep into my ribs and live there. But belief is dangerous when you’ve built your bones out of armor. When letting go doesn’t just mean release, it means risk.
So I didn’t answer. Just tucked my forehead against the base of his throat, where heat met the steady cadence of his pulse. He didn’t say anything else. Didn’t try to fill the space. Just kept his hand moving gently over my ribs while his breath stirred the strands of my hair.
The danger wasn’t in the touch. It was in its patience. Its quiet. The way it didn’t ask or claim or insist. And I was starting to want more than quiet. I was starting to want to stay.
A tight pull gathered in my belly. Not arousal. Not fear. Something that sounded like mourning, threaded with hope, and that thing whispered truths I didn’t want to face.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. I wasn’t supposed to want this. I wasn’t supposed to open the door. But Jax had slipped through, anyway. And worse, I’d left it unlocked.
He shifted, kissed the top of my head with a tenderness that felt like apology and understanding folded into one. “You okay?”
I nodded, even though it felt like a half-truth. Not because I wasn’t okay in this moment, but because I didn’t know if this moment could survive the morning.
His hand stilled, just slightly. I felt the hesitation, the wait, the edge of a question he didn’t voice. But I didn’t unravel. Not yet.
Instead, I whispered, “Do you ever wish things could just be simple?”
His chest rose under my cheek, then lowered. “Yeah. All the time.”
I swallowed. Hard. “Do you ever let yourself believe things might be simple?”
A breath, then, “Only when you’re in my arms. Which, admittedly, is a rather new development.”
It wasn’t just the words. It was in how he said them. Soft. Unsure. Like he knew he might not be allowed to believe it, but he did anyway. It was a truth he offered gently, like the words were sacred.
I didn’t answer. Not with language. That had always failed me. I kissed him instead—slow, aching, shaped from everything I didn’t know how to say. My mouth fit against his like it belonged, and for a heartbeat longer than comfort allowed, I believed it did.
I wasn’t built for this. Not for gentleness. Not for wanting. I’d spent years burying myself in my art, telling myself I was happy being alone, and avoiding deep connections because they were complicated. But I wanted to try. Just tonight. Even if dawn shattered it. Even if I didn’t know how to hold it.
Because in the hush of that moment, with his hand pressed warm to my chest and his breath brushing mine, I felt it. Wanted. Not for what I’d survived in that warehouse. Not for the ways I could break. But for the girl beneath it all, the one I’d buried too deep to grieve. And for a single breath, I almost let myself believe that could be enough.
Almost.
But when he kissed my jaw, then my shoulder, and wrapped his body around mine with the kind of ease that saidstay, something inside me panicked. This felt too soft. Too safe. And I’d learned safety was never free.
