Chapter 131 - 0131: Come To Me Freely

Chapter 131: Chapter 0131: Come To Me Freely

Elena’s Point Of View

My throat felt bone-dry, parched with a thirst no water could satisfy. My mind screamed at me to say the words, to order him out, to save myself before I drowned completely.

But my lips stayed sealed, parting only to let out a shallow, shaky breath as his chest rose and fell against mine, each movement a reminder of how close he’d let himself come.

I could feel the warmth radiating off him, could smell the faint trace of cedar and something darker beneath it, something that made my head spin worse than any wine ever had.

"That’s what I thought," he murmured, dangerous, dark satisfaction lacing his voice.

I clutched the edge of the table harder, my knuckles whitening with the effort of holding myself together. My mind was shouting walk away, but my body betrayed me... my thighs pressing tighter together, a tremor racing up my spine like wildfire along a fuse. He noticed; of course he noticed. Nothing about me escaped him anymore.

His eyes darkened, his jaw flexing once, a muscle ticking there like a warning he refused to heed. I hated how much I craved his attention, how starved I’d become for someone simply looking at me like I mattered.

"See?" he murmured, his lips close to my ear now, close enough that I could feel the warmth of his words before I heard them. "Your body knows me, even if your mouth won’t say it."

"I... don’t," I stammered, trying to push air into my lungs that suddenly felt too small to hold it. "Don’t twist this."

"I’m not twisting anything." His breath slid down the side of my neck, raising goosebumps in its wake. "I’m telling you the truth. You feel this as much as I do."

"No," I whispered, even as my head tipped back just slightly, my pulse fluttering under his mouth like something caught and desperate.

"Yes." His voice returned to that velvet-wrapped steel, patient and merciless all at once. "And you hate it because you can’t control it."

My heart slammed against my ribs, each beat a small confession I refused to speak aloud. He wasn’t wrong. That was the worst part. I hated that he could see it. I hated that I couldn’t stop trembling, that my body had become a traitor conspiring against every rational thought I still clung to.

For years I’d prided myself on control, on never letting anyone glimpse the cracks beneath my composure. Jaxx didn’t just glimpse them; he pried them open like they belonged to him.

"You think this is control?" I rasped, trying to summon every ounce of venom I possessed, digging for some fragment of the woman who used to command boardrooms without flinching. "You think coming here, cornering me in a gown, makes you powerful? You’re weak, Jaxx. You couldn’t even stay away for three weeks like I asked."

His eyes flashed with something dark and raw, his grip on the wooden vanity tightening until the polished surface creaked beneath his weight, the small sound loud in the charged silence between us. "Don’t mistake my lack of patience for weakness, Elena. Staying away from you for three weeks was pure fucking agony. Every night I sat alone, knowing you were in that house with him, knowing he didn’t appreciate a single thread of who you are... it nearly drove me mad."

"That’s my life, Jaxx! Not yours!"

"It’s a life that’s suffocating you!" he roared softly, his tone sharp enough to cut through the quiet room like a blade through silk. "Look at you! You’re starving for something real, something that actually makes your heart beat, and you’re too terrified to admit that I’m the only one giving it to you!"

"Jaxx..." I whispered again, the word shifting from warning into something closer to a question, something I wasn’t sure I wanted answered.

He finally drew back just enough to meet my eyes, though his body stayed pressed against mine, an anchor and a threat in equal measure. His stare was a storm, dark and unreadable, but beneath it something softer flickered, something almost like restraint fighting to hold its ground.

For a moment I thought I saw the boy he had been once, before whatever had hardened him into this man who spoke in growls and ultimatums.

"I’ll ruin you," he repeated quietly. "I can’t promise you soft things, Elena. I can’t promise you light when all I’ve known is darkness." His thumb brushed the air at my jaw, still not touching, a ghost of contact that somehow felt more intimate than skin against skin.

"But one thing I know for sure..." His voice dipped lower, thicker, roughened by something that sounded dangerously like sincerity. "...I’ll never make you cry."

I blinked up at him, my breathing uneven, my chest aching with the effort of holding myself together. "You already have," I whispered before I could stop myself, the confession slipping free like a wound reopening.

His jaw clenched. He closed his eyes for a heartbeat, and in that brief darkness I saw something crack behind his composure. "Except," he murmured, "there’s one place where even I can’t promise that."

My pulse stuttered, dread and want tangling together until I couldn’t tell them apart. "What...?"

He opened his eyes again, his gaze locked on mine, blacker than I’d ever seen them. They didn’t just look at me; they reached in, stripped away every excuse I’d built around myself, leaving me exposed in a way that had nothing to do with the gown clinging to my body. His lips curved into a smirk, small, dangerous, but so controlled it was worse than if he’d lost it completely.

"You wanna know where?" he murmured.

Every instinct in me screamed don’t ask. My body already knew the answer; it was thrumming through my veins like a pulse, making my thighs press tighter together, making my breath stutter in my chest. But my mouth betrayed me anyway, as it always seemed to when he was close enough to touch.

"Where?" The word fell out of me like a secret I hadn’t meant to tell, like a door I hadn’t meant to open.

He bent his head slowly, lowering until his mouth hovered at my ear. His breath grazed my skin, hot enough to make goosebumps race down my neck.

When he spoke, his voice was velvet and gravel, soft and brutal all at once, each word deliberate, unhurried, as though he wanted me to feel the full weight of it settle into my bones.

"On my bed..." he began, each word dragged like a blade across silk, "in my arms... with my cock buried deep inside you. Hitting you hard until you see stars."

My eyes slammed shut. A tremor raced through me so fast I had to grip the edge of the vanity behind me to keep standing, my legs threatening to give way entirely. I almost moaned, biting it back at the last second, my teeth digging into my bottom lip hard enough to sting.

His words hit something low in my belly, something I’d been denying for weeks, something that had been building in the quiet, lonely hours long before he ever said a single word. I thought of all the nights I’d lain awake beside Graham’s cold, indifferent back, aching for exactly this kind of hunger, and hating myself now for finding it in the last place I should.

"Jaxx..." My voice came out uneven, more breath than sound. My chest rose and fell fast, brushing against his with every breath, the friction of it making me tremble harder, making the small space between resistance and surrender feel impossibly thin.

"Say it," he growled low, his lips pressing light as a feather against the warm skin behind my ear. "Say you want that. Say you’ve thought about it just as much as I have."

"I haven’t..." I whimpered, a lie so feeble it evaporated before it even left my lips, dissolving into the charged air between us.

"Liar," he whispered, his tongue barely brushing the hollow below my earlobe, sending an agonizing bolt of electricity down my spine. "You’ve imagined my hands pulling you tight, my body heavy over yours, taking you until you can’t even remember your own name. Tell me I’m wrong, Elena."

"You’re... you’re cruel," I gasped, my hands tightening on his shoulders, my knuckles straining against his coat as I tried to keep myself upright, as though he were the only solid thing left in a room that had begun to spin. "You come in here... saying things like that..."

"Because it’s the truth," he murmured, pulling back just enough to look into my wide, blown-out eyes, searching them like he was looking for permission he refused to take without asking. "Because I refuse to let you pretend that what we have is just some mistake you can wash off."

His smirk faded, his jaw tightening as he looked at me, something shifting behind his gaze, some private battle resolving itself in an instant. "As much as I would like that, Elena," he said, quieter now, "no."

My eyes flew open, confusion cutting through the haze he’d wrapped me in, sharp and sudden as cold water. "What?" It was a whisper, but sharp, edged with disbelief.

He stepped back just enough for me to see his face fully, but his hands stayed planted on either side of me, his body still a wall of heat pinning me against the vanity. He looked at me like he was fighting himself, like he was holding back something bigger than both of us, something that cost him more than his usual composure ever let on.

"I want to fuck you," he said flatly, the truth landing like a gunshot in the quiet room. "But not like this."

My lips parted, but no words came out, my mind scrambling to catch up with the sudden shift in him. His eyes softened just a fraction, but his voice stayed steady, low, unwavering.

"I want to fuck you knowing you want it. Not because of some revenge or payback against your husband." His gaze flicked down briefly, to the thin gold band still circling my finger, then back to my eyes, something like pain flickering there before he masked it. "Don’t think I don’t know what Graham’s done. Don’t think I don’t want him to choke on the sight of what he’s lost and can’t ever get back. Trust me, I want that. I’d give you that."

His hand moved closer, hovering near my jaw, but he still didn’t touch me. The restraint in that small distance was a thunderclap between us, louder than anything he could have said.

"But not like this," he said again, quieter, like it cost him something vital to say it. "Not when you’re angry. Not when you’re trying to hurt him through me. Not when you’re still fighting yourself."

My breath hitched. He was right, and it burned, the truth of it settling low and shameful in my chest. It burned that he could see it, that he wouldn’t just take what I was almost offering, that he cared enough to refuse me when refusal was clearly the harder thing.

Some small, wounded part of me almost wished he’d simply take what he wanted and spare me the agony of choosing.

"I..." My voice cracked. "I’m not..."

"Yes, you are." His tone cut off my denial before it could fully form, gentle but immovable. "And you hate that I’m saying it out loud, but it’s the truth. I don’t want a piece of you that still belongs to someone else. I don’t want to taste another man’s shadow on your skin."

"You think I want his shadow on me?" I choked out, a raw, burning anger flaring up through the desire he’d coaxed out, tears threatening at the corners of my eyes. "You think I want to wear this ring? You think I enjoy feeling like a ghost in my own life?"

"Then take it off," Jaxx demanded softly, his dark eyes glittering with a fierce, uncompromising fire that made my chest ache. "Take it off, walk away from him, and come to me freely. Not as a weapon to hurt Graham. Not as a desperate escape. Come to me because you want *me*."

"It isn’t that simple, Jaxx!" I cried out softly, tears of frustration stinging the back of my eyelids, threatening to spill over despite every effort to hold them back. "You don’t understand the consequences! You don’t understand what he’ll do!"

"Let him try," Jaxx growled, stepping into my space once more, his presence towering, protective, and dangerous all at once, a wall between me and every threat I’d named. "Let him try whatever he wants. I will burn his entire world to ash before I let him lay a finger on you again. But I won’t take you while you’re still tethered to his name."

His eyes softened again, flicking briefly to my mouth before locking on my eyes, that same restless hunger simmering just beneath the surface. His control was terrifying, beautiful, a thing barely leashed. "I want to ram my cock deep inside you," he continued, his voice dropping into a growl that vibrated against my ribs. "Because you asked for it. Begged for it. Because your body wants me."

I trembled, gripping the vanity harder, my body already betraying me, already aching from the words alone, every nerve alight with a need I no longer had the strength to deny. He leaned closer again, his breath sliding down my throat, hot and slow, making my knees shake, my resolve dissolving further with every passing second.

"Not because of Graham," he murmured. "Because of you."

His eyes were so dark now they looked almost black, bottomless, unreadable except for the restraint straining behind them. His thumb twitched once near my jaw, like he was seconds from touching me and ending all of his restraint in one motion.

Then he exhaled slowly, closing his eyes for a heartbeat, gathering himself the way a man gathers strength before setting down something precious rather than crushing it.

"I won’t fuck you," he said finally, his voice low but hard as steel, "while you’re still wearing another man’s ring."