Chapter 274 - 0274: You Mean More To Me

Chapter 274: Chapter 0274: You Mean More To Me

Elena’s Point Of View

I stared at him, my heart hammering a frantic, irregular rhythm against my ribs that had absolutely nothing to do with the car’s motion and everything to do with the heavy, dark promise burning in his eyes. The air between us had changed, thickened, grown dangerous in a way that made every nerve in my body stand at attention. I felt small and enormous all at once, as if I’d stumbled into something far bigger than myself and couldn’t find the edges of it anymore.

I blinked, my brain momentarily stalling as I processed what he’d just said. Surely I’d misheard him. Surely a man like Jaxx didn’t say things like that to a woman like me, not with that much certainty, not with that much heat.

"What?!" I managed to gasp out, my voice sounding far thinner than I liked. Heat crept up my neck, and I could feel the flush spreading across my cheeks, betraying every ounce of composure I’d tried to hold onto since getting into this car. I pressed my palms against the leather seat, grounding myself, searching for some semblance of control that seemed to be slipping further away by the second.

Jaxx didn’t even look away. His gaze remained fixed on my mouth with a focus that felt borderline illegal, as if he were memorizing every curve, every detail, committing it to some private archive only he had access to. "You heard me, Bambina. You wanted to talk about debts. I’m giving you a way to settle the ledger."

A sudden, sharp spike of self-consciousness shot through me, and I darted my eyes toward the rearview mirror. The driver... God bless his soul, was a picture of professional stoicism, his hands steady on the wheel and his eyes glued to the Texas traffic as if we weren’t even there, as if the air itself hadn’t turned thick with tension. I wondered, absurdly, how many times he’d witnessed scenes like this, how he managed to keep his expression so carefully blank.

Jaxx followed my gaze, a low, wicked smirk playing on his lips. Without taking his eyes off me, he reached for the armrest and pressed a small, silver button. With a soft, hydraulic hiss, a dark privacy partition slid upward, sealing us into a velvet-and-leather vacuum, the outside world vanishing as though it had never existed. The sudden intimacy of it, just the two of us now, made my pulse stutter even harder.

My breath hitched. "Jaxx! You had this all planned out, didn’t you? From the dress to the driver to... to this!" I gestured vaguely at the wall now cutting us off from the world. My voice came out breathier than I intended, betraying the flutter of nerves, and something else dancing in my stomach.

"And what if I did?" he challenged, his voice dropping into that dangerous, gravelly register that made my stomach do a slow, dizzying somersault. He shifted, closing the small gap between us until his thigh pressed against mine, the heat of him searing through the thin silk.

"What are you going to do about it, Bambina? Run? In these heels?" His eyes dropped to the strappy stilettos, then traveled slowly back up, leaving a trail of fire in their wake, and I felt every inch of that gaze like a physical touch. My skin prickled everywhere his eyes lingered, as though he’d actually dragged his fingers along my skin instead.

I was stunned into a thick, heavy silence. I wanted to be annoyed, I really did, but the way he was looking at me, like I was the only thing in the universe worth noticing, made it impossible to remember why I should be mad. Some small, rational part of my mind scrambled for footing and found none. It was infuriating, this effect he had on me, this ability to dismantle every defense I’d carefully constructed.

"Don’t worry," he murmured, leaning in until I could feel the heat of him through the layers of silk, until his breath ghosted across my cheek. "It’s totally soundproof. You wanted to repay a debt, and this is what I want. So why the hesitation now? You weren’t this shy back at the boutique." His hand came up to brush a strand of hair from my face, his fingers lingering against my temple.

"Well... I..." I stammered. "I meant money, Jaxx. Cash. A bank transfer. Not... not some lip-on-lip repayment scheme. That’s not how economics works."

Jaxx let out a soft, dark chuckle, one that seemed to vibrate through the small space between us. "Money is boring, Elena. I want something Graham could never afford. Are you really going to deny me, princess? After everything?"

I stared into his eyes, searching for a reason to say no. I couldn’t find one. The name Graham, spoken so casually, should have cooled something in me, but instead it only seemed to sharpen the ache already blooming low in my stomach. There was something almost cruel in the way Jaxx wielded that name, like a weapon disguised as an afterthought, and yet I couldn’t bring myself to resent him for it.

Slowly, as if under a spell, I moved closer to him. My heart thundered so loudly I was certain he could hear it. I reached up, my fingers trembling as they curled into his hair, the soft strands sliding between my fingers, and I pulled him down.

When our lips met, it was a collision. I intended for it to be quick, but the second our mouths touched, any thought of pulling away evaporated. Jaxx didn’t let me retreat. He growled into my mouth, a sound of pure hunger, and his hand slid into my hair, fingers tangling at the nape of my neck to keep me exactly where he wanted me.

His other hand dropped low and grabbed my ass, rough and greedy through the silk, and he yanked me flush against his body, no space, no air, nothing between us but heat. I gasped into his mouth, and he took the sound, swallowing it, his tongue sliding deep past my lips to tangle with mine.

I let out a muffled whimper against his lips, my arms winding around his neck as I pressed my body closer to his, needing to feel every inch of that solid, radiating heat.

The world tilted, and suddenly I was straddling him, the silk of my dress riding up my thighs.

"God, Elena," he groaned against my mouth, his teeth grazing my bottom lip before he sucked it into his mouth. The sensation made my toes curl in those expensive heels.

The kiss turned feral. It was deep, messy, and desperate... a claiming. When his tongue slid against mine, tasting of the water he’d been drinking and a fire that was all his own, a low moan escaped my throat.

I felt his hand leave my waist, traveling slowly, torturously up the side of the dress, his fingers tracing the curve of my ribs. Every touch left a burning trail in its wake.

He bit my lip, not enough to hurt, but enough to make my head spin, to blur the edges of reality until there was nothing but sensation. Then he was murmuring filthy, dark things into the heat of the kiss, his words punctuated by nips and licks. "You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to get you behind this glass," he whispered, his voice a rough edge against my skin.

"I’m going to taste every inch of you, Bambina. I’m going to make you forget anyone else ever touched you." The promise in his words made something deep inside me clench.

I whimpered when he began to suck on my tongue, the sensation sending a violent jolt of electricity straight to my core. My hips shifted involuntarily, seeking friction, seeking more. "Jaxx..." I breathed his name like a prayer, like a plea.

His hand moved from my ribs, cupping the curve of my ass through the silk and pulling me even tighter against the hard ridge of his desire. The evidence of his want pressed against me, and I arched into him, my breath coming in short, jagged gasps.

The car felt too small, too hot, the air too thick to breathe properly. "Uhm... Jaxx... please..." I didn’t even know what I was begging for, only that I needed more of whatever this was.

"Bambina," he groaned against my lips, the word half-strangled, vibrating straight through me.

"You’re crazy, Jaxx," I breathed. "Insane."

He grinned against my lips, slow and wicked, and I felt it in the kiss, felt the shape of that grin pressed into me. "Only for you," he murmured, and then his hands were on my thighs, spreading them, parting my legs wide as he pulled me over him. I let out a shaky breath as I found myself straddling him, my dress rucking up past my hips, the silk dragging against my bare thighs. The position left me feeling exposed and powerful all at once, a strange duality I didn’t have time to examine.

"Jaxx..." His name came out broken, half warning, half plea, the last shred of my resistance dissolving somewhere between his hands and his mouth.

His hand slid up under my dress, fingertips tracing a slow line along my inner thigh, higher, higher, and then he hooked his fingers into the thin scrap of my panties and pulled them aside, parting the fabric, and his touch found my clit, bare and dripping and aching for him.

I screamed into his mouth.

He smirked against my lips, his fingers circling slow, deliberate, maddening. "Shush, princess," he murmured, his voice dark velvet. "You haven’t even had the real deal yet."

"Shut up, idiot," I gasped, and I smacked his shoulder, my palm landing flat against the expensive suit, but there was no force behind it, none, because his fingers were moving again and my whole body was betraying me, arching into him despite every protest my mind tried to form.

He laughed low in his chest, and then his mouth left mine and traveled down, kissing my throat, open-mouthed and wet, sucking a mark into the soft skin there while his fingers kept rubbing my clit, faster now, harder, his calloused pads dragging over that swollen bundle of nerves until I was trembling, until my thighs were clamping around his hand, until I couldn’t breathe.

"Jaxx... Jaxx, I..." I couldn’t finish the sentence. My hips chased his fingers shamelessly, my nails digging into his shoulders, my head thrown back against his mouth, every coherent thought dissolving into pure sensation. Somewhere distant, a voice that sounded like mine tried to protest, tried to remind me of dignity and restraint, but it was drowned out entirely by the roaring need consuming me.

"That’s it, Bambina," he rasped against my throat. "Come for me. Let me feel it."

And I came. Hard. My whole body seized, my back arching, a broken sob tearing out of me as the pleasure ripped through me in waves, my thighs shaking around his hand, my core clenching around nothing, pulsing, throbbing, and he kept working me through it, slow and gentle now, drawing every last aftershock out of me until I collapsed against his chest, boneless and gasping, my breath coming in ragged, uneven pulls.

Then, with a suddenness that left me reeling, he pulled away.

He pressed his forehead against mine, his chest heaving as he struggled for air. His eyes were dark, almost black, with a level of intensity that made me tremble, something raw and unguarded flickering behind the desire. For a moment, I glimpsed something unguarded in him, a vulnerability that felt almost more intimate than everything that had just happened between us.

I sat there on his lap, my hair a mess, my lipstick long gone, my dress bunched around my hips, my panties still pulled aside, and my heart feeling like it was about to burst out of my chest. For a moment, neither of us moved, caught in the strange, fragile quiet that followed. I studied his face, searching for some crack in that usual armor of arrogance, and found only tenderness staring back.

"You taste so good," Jaxx said, his voice raw and ragged. "I’m having a serious fucking hard time controlling myself right now. But I will." He drew a shaky breath, his thumb tracing my lower lip, swollen and red from his attention. "You mean more to me than just a body, Elena. I’m not going to take you in the back of a car like some cheap thrill."

The words landed somewhere deep in my chest, spreading warmth through the haze of desire. No one had ever spoken to me like that before, with such raw honesty mixed with restraint. It made me want him even more, and it frightened me a little, too, how easily he could reach something in me no one else had ever touched. I wondered, briefly, what it meant that a man capable of such ruthlessness in every other part of his life could be this careful, this deliberate, with me.

I couldn’t reply. I just stared at him, my brain a chaotic static of emotion and need. I was about to say something, anything to bridge the sudden, heavy silence, when a sharp, electronic ringing shattered the moment.

Jaxx let out a hissed curse under his breath and reached for the partition button. The spell broke instantly. As the glass slid down, the driver’s voice came through, calm and steady, as if he hadn’t just been sitting three feet away from a volcanic eruption.

"Sir, we are at the airport."

I blinked, my brain struggling to catch up with reality. Airport? The word didn’t make sense. The sunlight hitting the windows felt too bright, too sudden, pulling me from the intimate darkness we’d created, yanking me back into a world that suddenly felt far too exposed. Reality came crashing back in with all its mundane, practical weight, utterly at odds with the storm still raging inside me.

My body still hummed with the aftershocks, making it difficult to focus on anything else. I turned to Jaxx, my eyes wide, my thoughts still tangled in the heat of the last few minutes.

"What?!" I squeaked, smoothing down my dress with shaking hands. The fabric felt foreign against my sensitized skin. "Airport? Jaxx, what are we doing here?"