Chapter 43 - 0043: She Was Still Mine Now

Chapter 43: Chapter 0043: She Was Still Mine Now

Jaxx’s Point Of View

The door clicked shut behind her with a soft, almost mocking finality, and still, I didn’t move.

I stood anchored to the dark hardwood floor, my gaze locked onto that single, empty spot where she’d just been standing seconds before. The air in the private suite remained thick with her presence... the faint, lingering trace of her jasmine perfume cut right through the heavy aroma of high-proof scotch, cedar, and raw leather.

If I stared at the dark mahogany wood long enough, I half-expected her to materialize again. To throw another jagged insult my way. To bite her lower lip until it bled. To tease me, tempt me, fight me, destroy me.

Ten years of imagining this moment, and none of my fantasies had come close to the reality of her fury. I’d rehearsed a hundred versions of this reunion in my head, each one more controlled than the last, and every single one of them had just been obliterated in the span of ten furious minutes.

Elena.

Her name thundered through my chest like a sudden, brutal crack of lightning, tearing loose every single lie I’d spent over a decade carefully constructing. Every brick I’d built around my own cold heart, every oath I’d sworn to forget the way her voice sounded when she was pushed to her absolute limit, it all crumbled into worthless dust.

I’d told myself I was over her. I’d told myself a thousand times, in a thousand different cities, that the ache had finally dulled. What a spectacular, pathetic lie that had been. I’d built an entire identity out of that lie, brick by careful brick, and she had just walked through the door and blown it apart without even trying.

A slow, dangerous smirk twisted the corners of my mouth. It wasn’t a charming expression. No, this one was hollow, crooked, and dark, soaked through with a lethal kind of satisfaction. The kind of look that coiled deep in a man’s gut and warned him that something ugly was coming.

She hated me.

God, she fucking loathed me.

And I could feel it. I could taste it on the back of my tongue. It was in the venomous tilt of her glare, the rigid, trembling tension in her posture, the wild, desperate fire in her touch when she placed her hands flat against my chest and tried to push me away. It was utterly intoxicating. She burned hotter now than she ever had at sixteen... a woman scorned, bleeding, cornered, and breathing absolute fire.

Back then, her anger had been soft around the edges, easily coaxed into laughter. A raised eyebrow, a crooked joke, and she’d melt before I even finished my sentence. There was nothing soft about her tonight, and some dark, greedy part of me mourned that girl even as I craved the woman who’d replaced her.

There was something so terrifyingly alive about her tonight. After years of listening to the whispers, after watching her quietly vanish into the backdrop of Graham’s sterile world, seeing her break was the most gorgeous thing I’d ever witnessed. I’d spent a decade imagining her happy without me, imagining some version of contentment I couldn’t give her.

Watching her unravel tonight felt almost like relief, like proof that the life she’d built had never truly fit her. It felt, absurdly, like vindication... as though some buried, selfish part of me had been waiting ten years for the world to admit what I’d always known: that she was never meant for quiet rooms and silent dinners.

I let out a low, gravelly sound that belonged more to an animal than a man, running a hand heavily over my face, my calloused palm dragging down the shadow of my jaw.

"Help you get him back?" I whispered into the dimly lit room, my voice hoarse and thick, like grinding stones together. A dark, breathless laugh tore from my throat as I shook my head. "In your dreams, Bambina."

I took two slow, measured steps toward the floor-to-ceiling glass window overlooking the neon-soaked streets of the city below. I walked like a predator that knew the trap had already sprung, letting the prey run just far enough to believe she had a fighting chance before the real hunt began.

She wanted her marriage fixed? She wanted me to act as some pathetic, temporary pawn to make that spineless coward jealous? Cute. Truly adorable. As if I could ever be reduced to a tool for someone else’s benefit, least of all his. The sheer audacity of it almost impressed me. Almost.

I’d rather watch her entire world burn down to the ash.

I had zero intention of helping her fix a damn thing. If anything, I was going to make sure that pathetic little union was torn apart at the seams, pulverized until there wasn’t a single grain of foundation left to stand on. Before the month was out, Graham wouldn’t just lose her... he’d be signing those divorce papers with a shaking hand, wondering how the hell his entire life had vanished overnight. And I would be there, watching every second of his unraveling, savoring it like the finest vintage in my cellar.

I turned on my heel, stalking toward the private bar in the corner of the suite. The crystal decanter clinked sharply against the heavy tumbler as I poured three fingers of dark, amber bourbon. I downed it in one long, brutal gulp, letting the sharp liquid scorch its way straight down my throat.

It did nothing to numb me. The alcohol didn’t even graze the edge of the roaring inferno under my skin.

Elena Sinclair.

Elena fucking Sinclair.

Ten years. Ten agonizing, endless fucking years since I had last held her, since she’d been the sole reason I packed up my life and left this godforsaken city in a cloud of dust and blood. Ten years of watching her from afar, watching her slip a ring onto another man’s finger, watching her shrink herself down to fit inside a cage built by a family that looked at her like dirt.

I’d told myself I was protecting her by staying away. Another lie, apparently, one more brick in the wall I’d just watched crumble. I’d convinced myself that distance was a gift I was giving her, when really it had only ever been a gift to my own cowardice.

And then tonight, she had walked straight into my den.

Nothing in this world could have prepared me for the moment she stepped through my door. The moment she stood in my space, her breathing ragged, her eyes wide with shock, her scent filling up every inch of room I possessed. She was back in my orbit. Back in my room. Trapped against my wall. Ten years of careful distance, dismantled in the span of a single heartbeat.

I rested my knuckles against the cold marble of the bar top, staring down at the empty crystal glass in my hand.

She wasn’t what I had expected. She was so much more.

For years, Graham had talked about her during high-stakes board meetings like she was nothing more than dull, decorative wallpaper... uninteresting, soft-spoken, a colorless, lifeless socialite who sat quietly at dinner parties and didn’t utter a word. He’d painted her with such drab, pathetic brushstrokes that the rest of the world had actually started to believe him.

I’d almost believed him myself, in my darker moments, when I needed to convince myself that I hadn’t lost anything worth mourning. It had been easier that way... easier to picture her dulled and diminished than to imagine her thriving without me.

They thought she was broken. They thought she was weak.

But the woman who had stood trapped between my body and the wall tonight? That wasn’t the woman Graham had been talking about.

This woman had lethal, uncontrolled fire raging behind her eyes. Not just anger at being betrayed, but raw, unfiltered passion... a wild, dangerous storm that mirrored the exact same flame that had dragged me to my knees eleven years ago. Graham had spent a decade suffocating that fire, smothering it under expectation and silence, and he’d never even noticed what he was killing. The fool had been sitting on a furnace and complaining about the cold.

My tongue darted out to lick a stray drop of bourbon from my lower lip as my mind dragged me back to the feeling of her skin.

That kiss.

Jesus Christ, that kiss.

I closed my eyes, replaying the exact sequence of events in excruciating, torturous detail. The initial shock as my mouth slammed over hers. The desperate, shuddering breath she took against my cheek.

The way her lips had parted beneath mine... not just in surprise, but in instinctual surrender. The faint, sweet sound of that soft moan catching in the back of her throat when my hand slid down her spine and pulled her hips flush against mine.

I could still feel the ghost of her fingers curling into my shirt, torn between pushing me away and pulling me closer. That single contradiction told me everything I needed to know about where I actually stood with her.

She hated me with every fiber of her soul. She claimed I was an asshole, a monster, a ghost from her past she wished had stayed dead.

But her body?

Her body remembered every single touch. Her skin recognized mine the instant I laid hands on her. Her heart pounded against my palm in the exact same frantic rhythm it used to when we were kids hiding out in the dark, stealing moments neither of us were supposed to have. Ten years hadn’t erased that rhythm. Nothing ever would.

That wasn’t just a kiss to get out of a room. It was a resurrection. A lethal taste of something I had bled for a decade ago, and something I now wanted with an unhealthy, suffocating fever.

Only this time, a taste wasn’t going to be enough to satisfy me.

I didn’t just want her lips. I didn’t just want her crying out my name in the dark while she used me to spite her husband.

I wanted every single inch of her. I wanted her sharp, venomous tongue. I wanted her fury, her pride, her foolish resistance, and her absolute, breathless submission. I wanted her tears, her sighs, her bruises, her fire. I wanted to completely unmake every piece of the polished, perfect wife she had tried to become for Graham, tear her down to her bare roots, and rebuild her piece by piece... with my name burned deep into every corner of her soul.

I poured myself a second glass, but I didn’t drink it. I just held the crystal tight enough to threaten the glass, my eyes narrowing as I stared out into the dark skyline.

She thought she was still calling the shots. She thought this dirty little arrangement was a game she could control, a contract she could execute to win back a man who didn’t deserve to breathe the same air as her.

She was dead wrong.

I had no intention of ever letting her walk back to him. Not again. Not after feeling the heat of her mouth against mine. Not after watching the way her eyes darkened when I trapped her against the door. Not after the complete storm she had awakened in my chest.

She had belonged to me first. Long before Graham ever put a band on her finger, long before his mother ever dared to look down her nose at her. She was mine back then, and she was going to realize she was still mine now. Graham had his chance. He had ten whole years to cherish what he had, and he blew it. Now, it was time for her to come back to where she truly belonged.

Was I obsessed? Unquestionably.

Was I out of my mind? Absolutely. I had crossed whatever line separated devotion from madness so long ago that I couldn’t even remember what sanity used to feel like. Somewhere between the last time I’d touched her and tonight, I’d stopped caring whether that made me a monster.

Would I stop? Not a chance in hell.

Not when she’d walked into my domain on her own two feet. I would burn down every bridge she owned, ruin every contract, destroy Graham’s reputation, and dismantle every sacred vow she’d ever uttered at an altar just to make sure she stayed right where I wanted her.

Beside me. Under me. Mine.

A slow, heavy breath escaped my lungs, vibrating low in my throat as I spoke aloud into the quiet darkness of the room, my voice dropping into a harsh, possessive growl.

"You came to me yourself, Elena..."

I closed my eyes, letting the words settle into the foundation of the room like an unholy vow.

"...and now that I’ve got my hands back on you, I’m never letting you go."