Page 104 of Burn With Me

My brows clench together as I watch her come undone. Isthiswhen she’s going to tell me about the club? Nothing would make me stop loving her—that or otherwise.

I open my mouth to tell her that exact thing when she blurts out, “Chris touches me!”

I’m glad her hands still cover her eyes because I know she’s expecting me to be shocked, but since she’s already confessed this to her stranger at the club, it takes me a moment to think about how to react.

Rage pours through me, just like the night I destroyed the room at Désirer. Now that Ginny is out of their apartment, that man has a whole lot of hurt coming to him when he gets back into town.

Ginny takes my silence as disgust.

She pushes me away, curling onto her side in the fetal position as she starts to cry harder. “I tried to ignore it. I tried for so long, but as we got older and I moved in with him out here…Ilethim do it.”

I roll onto my back, removing the condom and tossing it down into the trash can beside my bed before moving back to wrap my arms around her and pull her into my chest. “Ginny, I’m so sorry that happened to you. Chris is a fucking weak excuse for a man, and trust me when I say he’ll get what’s coming to him.”

“Didn’t you hear me, Jackson? I said I let him do it. There were times when Ilikedit,” she reiterates. Her crying is starting to cease, and she’s taking long, gasping breaths between her stuttered words.

“Ginny, he abused you. He’s older than you, and he knew what he was doing was wrong.”

“But what does that say about me? That I liked it?”

“You mentioned that you tried to ignore it, and then you got older. I’m going to assume this started when you were a child?” I gently wipe her tear-stained cheek with my thumb as she nods in the affirmative.

“He fucking abused you, Ginny. It doesn’t matter if yougrew to like it. Our bodies find ways to cope with traumatic things. He’s a fucking psychopath. He sure as hell shouldn’t be allowed to be treating patients, let alone women and babies.”

She tenses in my arms, and I gently nudge her to turn toward me. “I’m only going to tell you this once. If you want to speak to me about it, you can, but you don’t have to. If you’d like, we can arrange for you to speak to a therapist, but only if you want to talk about it. I don’t care about your past. I care about you. All I want is to chase away the darkness that haunts you. I see the fire inside you, and I want to light the world up with it. I love you for everything that you are and everything that you’ll become. I’ll be the pyre for your flames to reach the heavens. Whatever you want, it’s yours to take.”

She looks up at me through glassy eyes, her determination to heal shining brightly through as she says, “I don’t want to take anything from you, Jackson. I just want to grow with you. I want to build a life with you. I’ve never been in love with anyone, but I love you so much it scares me.”

“There’s nothing to be scared of, baby. I’ve never been in love with anyone either, but loving you doesn’t frighten me. It gives me hope.”

Ginny reaches up to pull me down for a soft kiss that grows more heated as our tongues intertwine, and she rolls me onto my back.

She’s the light that led me out of my darkness. I want to return the favor. The way I feel about her, as foreign as it is, makes my heart feel like it could burst at any given moment. When I look at her, I’m filled with love and the need to be good—everything I’ve always chased away until she came along.

Now that we’ve both admitted it, I have to end things with her at the club.

She can never know that it was me behind the mask all along.

It will be the only thing I ever keep from her from here on out.

Ginny

As I exit the elevator at Jackson’s, my lips stretch into a smile to see him working at the kitchen island on his laptop. There’s a large vase of long-stemmed white roses next to him, and a card leaning against it with my name scrawled across it.

“Be still, my heart! Are my many admirers sending flowers now instead of love letters?” I swoon, placing the back of my hand on my forehead and talking in the best Southern accent I can muster.

Jackson and I made a statement with the papers after the party last weekend. Jackson Tailor is officially a taken man—and I am the official owner of no less than five pounds of hate mail.

He smirks, eyes never leaving the screen as his fingers fly deftly over the keyboard. “Those are from me.”

My cheeks warm as I pick up the card and slide the cardstock out of the envelope.

For a fresh start and a symbol of my unending loyalty.

“You’re just a modern-day Shakespeare, you know that?” Slowly, I make my way over to him, waiting while he types the last of his document before he closes the computer and pulls me to him.

Jackson has many different ways he likes to kiss me. All of them are equally passionate, each having their appropriate time and place. But my favorite is when we’re alone at home, and his eyes fill with pure lust, lips attacking mine like he’s starved, tongue caressing like he’s trying to memorize every dip and swell of my mouth while his fingers search for any patch of bare skin they can find.

When he grips the back of my bare thighs under my skirt and lifts me to sit on his lap, I feel his hard length against my clit and shamelessly rock against him once as my arms encircle his neck. Our kiss ends, and he hugs me to him, burying his face in my hair and inhaling my scent.

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