His lips tilted up in a smile, as though he were thinking the same thing. “Was it really nonconsensual yesterday?” he asks quietly.
I scoff. “It wouldn’t have mattered if it was.” I’d never admit that I didn’t know.
Jackson hums. “Keep telling yourself that.” He leans against the opposite counter, studying me over the rim of his mug. In the soft light, with his hair mussed from the night air, he almost looks approachable—almost. “I can’t sleep in this massive house, some nights.”
The statement catches me off guard. “What?” I blurt out, inelegantly, before I can stop myself.
“It’s too quiet.” His voice roughens. “When you grow up with paper-thin walls and neighbors fighting at all hours, silence feels like a lie. Like waiting for the other shoe to drop.” His hands tighten on the coffee mug. “Used to lie awake listening for my father’s truck, trying to guess from the engine sound whether he’d won or lost. Whether I needed to hide.”
Understanding hits. I know that hypervigilance—the need to stay alert, to listen for trouble. The control, the cameras, the perfect surfaces—all of it masking the boy who grew up with nothing. Who learned early on that power was the only protection worth having.
Maybe that’s why he watches everything so closely. The same reason I handle dangerous horses alone—we both learned young that trusting others means risking everything.
The realization makes me study him in the soft light. He’s letting me see this crack in his armor. Offering vulnerability when he could demand submission. Like he’s trying to earn my trust rather than claim it.
“Daddy used to say silence meant the horses were either sleeping or plotting trouble.” The words slip out before I can stop them. Back then, I hadn’t realized he was really listening for loan sharks, for men he owed money to. Even at his worst, he’d always checked the horses first. Protected them, if not himself. “He’d walk the stables at night, checking every stall. Said you could hear trouble brewing if you listened hard enough.” What I wouldn’t give now to hear his boots on those planks one more time, even if it meant another fight about bills we couldn’t pay.
Something shifts in Jackson’s expression. “Smart man.”
“Stubborn man.” Grief tightens my throat. “Too proud to admit when he needed help. Too independent to—” I cut myself off, but it’s too late.
“To what?” Jackson sets down his mug, moving closer. “To admit he was drowning? To reach out before it was too late?” His hand curves around my jaw, tilting my face up. “To accept that sometimes survival means surrender?”
My pulse hammers against his palm. “I’m not him.”
“No.” His thumb traces my lower lip. “You’re much more dangerous to me.”
His touch burns like a brand, but I can’t make myself pull away. The counter’s edge digs into my back as he crowds closer, until his heat surrounds me, until his scent—coffee and leather and night air—fills my lungs.
“Why?” The word comes out breathless, desperate. “Because I fight back?”
Something flashes in his eyes—dark and hungry and almost uncertain—before his control snaps back into place. His other hand slides into my hair, loosening what’s left of my braid. Coffee forgotten, cooling on the counter.
“Because you still think this is a fight you can win.” His voice roughens as his fingers tighten in my hair. The slight tremor in his hand betrays something he’d never admit to feeling. “Because you haven’t learned that your submission is inevitable.”
But there’s a crack in his perfect mask—the way his breath catches when I arch against him, how his grip gentles for just a moment before he remembers himself.
“Is that what you want?” My voice breaks as he pulls my head back, baring my throat. “To break me completely?”
“I want what’s mine.” His lips brush my jaw, my throat, the pulse hammering beneath my skin. Each touch precise, controlled, but his heart pounds against my palms where they’re trapped against his chest.
Heat pools low in my belly, shame and desire tangling until I can’t tell them apart. His grip is iron, but his hands shake slightly, and the contradiction undoes me.
“I hate this.” The words come out as a gasp. “I hate that you make me want this.”
“No.” His teeth graze my throat, and my hands fist in his shirt. “You hate that I see through every wall you’ve built. That I know exactly what you need before you’ll admit it to yourself.”
His words strip me bare, expose every secret I’ve tried to hide. From him. From myself. Tears burn behind my eyes, but I refuse to let them fall. “Why are you doing this to me?”
“Because you’re mine.” The possessive growl in his voice doesn’t quite mask something deeper, something that makes his hands tremble against my skin. “Because every time you yield, every time you break for me, you prove I was right to want you.” His thumb strokes over my thundering pulse. “Tell me to stop.”
I can’t. I won’t. Please don’t make me choose.I say nothing, frozen in the tender moment.
Dawn’s first light spills through the windows, painting his kitchen in shades of gold and shadow. Reality creeps in with the sun—the sound of early-rising ranch hands, trucks pulling up the drive, the world intruding on our midnight confessions.
Jackson’s hands fall away, leaving me cold. The mask slides back into place, the vulnerability in his eyes hidden once more behind calculation and control. But something has shifted between us, exposing fundamental truths we can’t take back.
“Get some rest.” His voice is gravel and smoke. “We have work to do today.”
