He puts a pillow under my head and I do as he asks. I close my eyes, spread my legs, and with my wrists bound, I tease myself with the small pendant. I can’t touch my clit directly—I’m way too sensitive for that—but as I move the vibrator in small circles—as I think about Jackson at the foot of the bed watching me, the camera photographing me—my body rises up again, getting wet again, tightening again.
The metal pendant turns warm and that change in temperature makes me gasp even as the controlled vibrations push me up. Higher and higher, and then higher still.
I come fast and hard and quick, and as I do, I open my eyes. Jackson holds the phone in one hand and he’s stroking his cock with the other, and I think it’s the sexiest damn thing I have ever seen. “Fuck me,” I whisper, and he tosses the phone onto the dresser behind him and takes me once again, wild and fast, because we both need it that way.
And when we explode together, and I lay in his arms and wonder how a day that had started so horribly could become so incredible.
I know the answer, of course. The answer is Jackson.
Soon, when we can move again, he unbinds my hands. I turn and prop myself on my side so that I can face him.
“Thank you,” I say. “I feel whole again. Like I’m not going to shatter.”
“I’m very glad to hear that.”
“But it’s all still out there. Reed, I mean. He still has us in a horrible position. The pictures or the movie. We’re between a rock and a hard place, and in the end, one of us will get screwed.”
“No.” He says the word so quickly and firmly that I almost believe him.
“How?” I ask. “How do we fix this? How do we untangle ourselves from this hell?”
“I don’t know,” he admits. “But we’ll figure it out. I love you, Sylvia. I love you, and I will make this right for you.”
Love. The word washes over me, warm and sweet and wonderful.
“Jackson …” His name is a caress upon my lips. “That’s the first time you’ve said that.”
“No,” he says. “It’s not.”
I’m about to argue the point when he continues.
“I’ve said it every day since I saw you. I say it in the way I look at you. The way I touch you. The way I never stop thinking about you. I’ve said that I love you a million times, Sylvia. This is just the first time I’ve said it out loud.”
I tremble from the force of his words, and from the emotion with which he said them. They are like a blanket, keeping me safe and warm, and I wrap them tight around me.
“We’ll figure this out together,” he says, telling me what I said to myself earlier when I was lost in tears and anger.
But now the world is clear and I’m staring into the crisp, cold light of reality.
And even with Jackson’s love to bolster me, I cannot help but be afraid.
twenty-four
“Good morning, beautiful.”
I open my eyes to the warm comfort of Jackson’s voice washing over me, followed by the brush of his lips against my temple.
“Good morning yourself.” I smile and stretch, and despite the worry that still hangs over me, I feel as bright and shiny as the California sun seeping in through the window. “Any brilliant ideas in the light of day?”
“None yet,” he says. “But the morning is young.” He moves toward the bathroom and I slide out of bed to follow him. “Don’t worry. He won’t do anything too quickly, that would be foolish.”
“Foolish?” I repeat as I lean into the shower to turn on the spray. “So far, he hasn’t exactly proven to be a brain trust.” Then again, he was managing to very efficiently fuck with both of us, so maybe he wasn’t an idiot, after all.
The thought doesn’t make me happy.
I move my towel closer to the shower and then reach in to check the water temperature. Jackson eyes me, his head slanted to one side. “Are you going in today?” he finally asks. “You have to pick up Ethan.”
“Well, yes.” The thought of staying in the suite or going home hadn’t actually occurred to me. “But that’s not until later. I can leave a bit early, but I have a ton to catch up on.”