Burn for You (Slow Burn Book 1)(98)

By the time we came back to our senses, the water had started to turn cold.

Jax reached out and turned off the spray. He wrapped his arms around me and hid his face in my neck, hugging me hard, his chest heaving.

He said my name, but I shushed him. “Not yet. Let’s not talk about it yet,” I whispered.

I was afraid what might come out of my mouth if he asked me how I was feeling.



We dried off and dressed in silence, avoiding each other’s eyes. We knew words would be too much, yet not enough. Something had changed between us in the shower. Something profound had taken root.

“You need food,” Jackson said, looking pointedly at my abdomen after another alarmingly loud rumble. My stomach sounded like it was occupied by a large, carnivorous beast, roaming around and kicking over furniture.

“Food! Yes!” I said with the volume of a person shouting across a highway to her friend stranded on the other side.

Jackson looked at me askance.

He stood in the bathroom doorway, watching me wind my damp hair into a big, messy bun. I’d pulled on a white cashmere sweater he’d bought for me and a pair of lovely charcoal-gray slacks he must’ve had custom made because they fit perfectly in both the waist and hips, a statistical impossibility.

“And maybe a stiff drink,” he added drily, examining my expression.

Stiff. Lord, don’t talk to me about stiff! I met his gaze in the mirror and forced myself to sound like a sane person. “So did you talk to your parents?”

One side of his mouth quirked. “I did.”

He let it hang there, torturing me. “And?”

A smile bloomed over his face. It was like watching the sun rise over mountains. “And they love you,” he murmured, holding my gaze.

Love.

Green beans, there was that word again.

It had been popping up in my head and on his lips for the past hour like weeds through cracks in the sidewalk. I had to remind myself that this was a business deal. He was here for his inheritance, I was here for my mama. It wouldn’t do to get ahead of myself and start attaching deeper meaning to things on account of hot shower sex.

Hot, emotional, vulnerable, soul-searing, life-changing shower sex.

“Uh-oh,” said Jackson. “I smell smoke. You’re thinking again.”

“Ha ha. Can we please go get some food before I eat that bar of soap?”

He pushed away from the doorway and wrapped his arms around me, resting his chin on top of my head. “Yep. But you have to promise if this little breakdown you’re having gets any worse, you’ll talk to me, so I won’t have to hold you down and tickle it out of you.”

I gave him scary crazy-lady eyes. “You will not tickle me. Ever. Understood?”

He tilted his head and whispered in my ear, “Sorry, sweetheart, that’s not in the contract.” Then he dug his fingers into my ribs.

I screamed and tried to twist away, but he was too strong. He wrapped his arms around me and lifted me clear off my feet so we were nose to nose, my arms pinned to my side, my feet kicking uselessly around his shins.

“It isn’t fair that you’re so giant,” I groused. “And freakishly strong.”

“I’m not that strong, but thank you.”

“Honey, you’re holding up my entire weight like I’m a loaf of bread. One of the airy kinds, like sourdough.”

He chuckled and kissed the tip of my nose. “Honey?” he drawled.

He lowered his lashes, smug as all get-out. I wondered with irritation why those kind of thick, silky, black eyelashes were always wasted on boys who didn’t appreciate how lucky they were to have them.

I sniffed like a snooty aristocrat. “It was a slip of the tongue. I’m getting lightheaded from lack of food. I could faint at any moment.”

He pressed a soft kiss to my lips and chuckled again. “I see. You’re still in fibbing mode. All right, I’ll let it go until”—he checked his watch, which meant he was now holding me up with one arm—“noon. Deal?”

I muttered, “Showoff.”

He laughed and set me on my feet. “After breakfast,” he said, leading me by my hand from the room, “you have your choice of horseback riding, bowling, tennis, fishing, boating, or touring the botanical gardens or rickhouse.”

“Rickhouse?”

He looked over his shoulder at me and grinned. “It’s where we house all the ricks, obviously.”

I rolled my eyes. “Obviously.”



The rest of the day was a fairy tale, and I was Cinderella.

We ate breakfast in a sun-filled room Jackson called the “solar,” serenaded by songbirds flitting in dozens of large cages hung at various heights around the room. The hovering servants seemed friendlier today, even daring to smile pleasantly at us when they brought our food and cleared out plates. Even more surprising, Jackson smiled back.