Page 10 of Jax
When the door finally opened, I didn’t register the sound so much as the shift in pressure; the air changing around me. Then a shape filled the doorway, a man stepping into the light, and a voice I recognized, low and steady and entirely human, reached me through the fog.
“Hey,” Detective Mercado said. I didn’t look up. “Sorry that took so long.”
His footsteps were slow, cautious, and measured, like someone approaching a wounded animal. I hated how accurate that felt.
“You okay?”
I forced myself to lift my head. I met his eyes with the dull clarity of someone halfway through drowning. My voice barely worked. “Yes, Detective. Just... stress.”
He frowned, not deeply, not in alarm, just enough to show he was concerned. But he didn’t push. He didn’t press. And thatalmost broke me all over again. I wanted him to ask. I wanted him to know something was wrong. But I couldn’t give it away. Not yet. Not without losing Violet for good.
“Please, I think we can dispense with the formalities. Call me Quinn. After all, we’re going to be seeing each other semi-regularly for the foreseeable future.” He offered a hand to help me stand up, and I took it shakily.
“And why is that, Detec—Quinn?” I already knew the answer to the question, but I was hoping, praying that I was wrong. His next words dashed those hopes.
“You’re being moved to a secure location, as I said.” He said. “Off-grid. We’re pulling in a team. You’ll be safe there until we can figure out what the Dom Krovi want with your art studio.”
He said it like reassurance. Like this was what safety looked like.
But I understood the truth now. I understood what was happening behind the scenes, where no one else could hear.
I wasn’t being protected.
I was being delivered.
I gave him a slow, small nod, knowing that anything more would have exposed me. My heart was already racing again, not with panic this time, but with something far worse, something that settled deep and cold, certainty.
The placement was happening. The plan was in motion. They’d gotten me exactly where they wanted. And this team I was about to meet had no idea that I was the threat already living in their house.
I stood slowly, every muscle aching, every inch of me still vibrating from the weight of what I now carried. I didn’t look in the mirror again. I didn’t want to see myself like this, what they’d made of me. I just kept my eyes ahead.
They’d built the perfect weapon.
Wrapped it in fear.
And sent it through the front door.
3
Jax
There’snothing quite like suspending your best friend’s girlfriend and watching him edge her by candlelight to remind you how painfully single you are.
The playroom was warm. Not just physically, though the sconces and floor candles kept it a few degrees above comfortable, but emotionally. It radiated something old and sacred. The air always felt charged in here, like static before a storm, humming with held breath and friction waiting to happen. Candlelight flickered against the deep red walls and black leather accents like a heartbeat you could see, and every sound—the creak of jute, the sigh of skin—was holy.
I sat cross-legged on the padded floor just outside the drop zone, hands resting on my thighs, trying not to adjust my jeans while my entire body hummed like a tuning fork. Maddy was suspended in front of me, already flying.
Her arms were pinned tight behind her in a chest harness that framed her breasts and pulled her forward, while her legs hung bent at the knees, ankles tied together with the kind of decorative precision only Niko bothered to maintain mid-scene. Her skin glowed pink and gold in the firelight, flushed where therope bit deepest, sweat shimmering at the curve of her throat. She was trembling, but not from pain. Not from fear. From something far more delicious.
Niko stood behind her shirtless, his back taut with focus. The light caught on the sheen of sweat across his chest, highlighting every muscle as he moved around her like a shadow. One of his hands was tangled in the rope, and the other drifted over Maddy’s hip, fingers grazing her skin with maddening slowness.
“Such a good girl,” he murmured. “Open for me. That’s it. Let it stretch you. You can take more.”
Maddy whimpered, her body shifting toward the sound of his voice even as the ropes held her still. Every part of her moved in small, carefully allowed ways. Hips flexing, toes curling, lips parted on a broken gasp. Her thighs quivered with tension, her mouth was slack, and her eyes were half-lidded. It was art. It was control. And I was sitting here like a monk watching a sex tape in slow motion, holy and hard at the same time.
Niko had asked earlier, when I volunteered to run safety for the scene, “You okay?”
It wasn’t the question that bothered me. It was the way he’d meant it.
