Chapter 76

Chapter 76
Brooklyn

I wake to dark glass, city lights, and the slow rise and fall of my husband’s chest under my cheek.
Those two words still hit me strange in the best way, my husband, and they settle warmer now than they did at the altar, maybe because the room’s finally quiet enough for them to land all the way, with no music, no clinking glasses, and no toddlers trying to climb under banquet tables, just the hotel suite, the low hum of the air conditioner, and Jackson’s arm heavy around my waist like he fell asleep trying to keep me exactly where he wanted me.
I don’t move right away. I’m too happy to risk breaking the spell.
The lamp on the far side of the room still glows soft and gold. My dress hangs over a chair. His jacket’s draped by the window. One of my shoes is under the coffee table, and for some reason that makes me want to laugh. I spent months planning every flower, every chair, every piece of timing, and in the end the thing that feels most like proof is a shoe on its side and a wedding band pressed cool against my own when I curl my fingers into the sheets.
Jackson stirs when I shift enough to look at my hand.
“You okay, Baby?” he asks, voice rough with sleep.
“Yeah.”
His mouth drags once against my hair. “You’re awake.”
“So are you.”
“Barely.”
I smile against his skin. “You still snore.”
“No, I’m perfect.”
“You absolutely are.”
“Don’t lie to me on our wedding night.”
I lift my head enough to look at him, and even half asleep, he’s beautiful in that sharp, wrecked way that never really lets me breathe easy.
“You know,” I tell him, “I really thought I’d feel different after the ceremony.”
His hand slides up my back slowly. “Different bad or different good?”
“Neither. Bigger, maybe.”
His gaze stays on mine. “And?”
“And I don’t. It feels like us. Just… steadier. Like we finally said out loud what we’ve already been living.”
Something shifts in his face at that, something quiet and deep and so openly his that it makes my throat tighten before I can help it.
“Come here,” he says.
I almost laugh because I’m already halfway on top of him, but I go anyway, lifting up enough for him to pull me in higher. He kisses me once, slow and warm and unhurried, and the whole room feels like it exhales with me.
“That’s what it feels like to me too,” he murmurs against my mouth. “Not new, but more official. Like the world can stop acting surprised by what’s always been true.”
I brush my thumb over his cheek. “You cried.”
“One time.”
“You cried during my vows.”
“You cried during mine.”
“Because you started it.”
That almost gets a grin out of him. “I knew you were going to use that against me.”
“I’m your wife. That’s one of the perks.”
The grin comes fully then, lazy and wicked. “Perks, huh?”
His palm slides down to my hip under the sheet, then lower, and heat flickers through me so fast I feel it in my toes.
“Jackson.”
“What?”
“You know what.”
“Just looking at my wife.”
“You can’t look with your whole hand.”
“I can if she lets me.”
I try to roll my eyes, but it’s hard to fake annoyance when his hand’s already curving over my ass, and my body’s still humming from earlier. He must see the exact second that realization catches up to me, because the look on his face goes hotter.
“There she is,” he says softly.
“Shut up.”
“No.”
I lean in to kiss him again just to stop him talking, and that would work better if kissing Jackson ever stayed simple. The kiss starts soft. It always does when we’ve got nowhere to be and no reason to rush. Then his hand tightens at my hip, my leg slides over his, and suddenly I’m remembering exactly what it felt like to stand in front of him tonight while he looked at me like I was the one miracle he wasn’t going to question.
He rolls us easy, and just like that I’m on my back with him over me.
The sheet slips down. He looks, not quick either, but thorough.
My skin heats all over. “Still doing that,” I mutter.
“Got married,” he says, kissing my collarbone. “Didn’t go blind.”
He works me up slow with his mouth and hands until I’m the one moving under him, chasing, which seems to amuse him a lot for a man who should be more focused on the fact that I’m close to climbing him like furniture. When I tug his hair hard enough to make him look up, his eyes are almost black.
“You got something to say, wife.”
I hate how much I love that. “Yes,” I whisper. “Get your mouth lower.”
He groans outright. “You say romantic things to me.”
“I married a detective. He can take context clues.”
He laughs once against my skin, then does exactly what I asked.
The first touch of his mouth between my thighs nearly takes me off the bed.
“Oh, my God.”
“There you are.”
He says it like he found something and fully intends to keep it, and then he goes back in with the kind of focus that ought to count as a professional skill. I try to stay still. I fail within seconds. His hands pin my hips down when I start writhing too hard, and the ring on his finger taps lightly against my thigh every time he adjusts his grip.
That little detail does something filthy to me. “Jackson,” I gasp.
He only hums. I’m already close, and he knows it. He drags it out anyway, just enough to make me plead once, then curse him for smiling into me when he hears it.
“Mean,” I tell him weakly.
His head lifts just enough for me to see his mouth, wet and devastating. “You’ll live.”
“I might not.”
“Then stop saying things worth dying over.”
That gets a real laugh out of him, and then his mouth goes right back where I need it, and I’m done talking for a while because I come hard enough to feel it in my shoulders. He holds me through it, palms firm on my hips, murmuring praise that’s half filthy and half sweet and all him until I’m limp under him and breathing like I just sprinted uphill in heels.
He comes back up the bed and kisses me, and I can taste myself on him. My whole body gives one long shiver.
“Hi,” he says.
I look at him for a second. “You’re smug.”
“You’d be smug too.”
“I would never.”
He just raises an eyebrow. “Okay,” I admit. “I would.”
I reach down between us and wrap my hand around him.
That shuts him up, which feels good. His forehead drops to mine, breath going rough all over again as I stroke him slow. “Baby.”
“What?” I ask sweetly.
“You know what.”
I smile. “I’m just looking at my husband.”
His eyes close for a second. “You’re dangerous.”
“And you’re just now figuring this out?”
I keep going, slow enough to make him tense. Jackson always looks controlled from the outside. Even tonight, even wrecked and happy and half naked in a hotel suite, there’s a part of him that still feels like a contained force. Knowing I can put my hand on him and make that control slip is one of my favorite things in the world.
He catches my wrist before I can push too far.
“Up,” he tells me.
I roll with him before he can say it twice, and then I’m over him, hair falling around my face, my body still warm and humming while he watches me like he can’t quite decide if he wants to wreck me again or worship first.
Probably both, and definitely both once I sink down onto him slowly.
The sound he makes punches right through me. I brace my hands on his chest, my ring flashing every time I move, and for a second the whole world narrows down to the stretch, the fullness, the way his fingers spread over my hips like they were built knowing me.
“Brooklyn,” he says, and it’s awe and need and love all at once.
Then I start moving. Slow at first, because I like watching him lose his composure in pieces. His hands shift, guiding without taking over, and I follow the pressure of them till we find a rhythm that makes us both forget how to be quiet.
His gaze never leaves mine. That gets me more than I want it to.
By the time I speed up, I’m already shaking again. He sits up enough to get one arm around my back, one hand between us, and then it’s over for me.
“Jackson, right there.”
“I got you.”
“I know.”
The second orgasm hits so hard I fold into him, forehead at his neck, and he wraps both arms around me and drives up through it with the kind of rough, perfect urgency that strips every thought out of my head. He follows a few seconds later with my name broken over and over against my mouth, and when it’s done we end up half collapsed across the bed in a tangle of limbs and sweat and laughter neither of us has the energy to hold back.
I lie there with my cheek on his chest, ring pressed between us, and listen to his heartbeat settle.
Then my stomach growls. He starts laughing so hard I slap his ribs.
“Don’t.”
“You have impeccable timing.”
“I’ve had half a piece of cake and one bite of chicken in twelve hours. This is your fault.”
He reaches for the room service menu on the nightstand, still grinning. “What do you want?”
“Fries, a cheeseburger, and a chocolate cake if they have it.”
“Anything else, wife?”
I smile so hard my face hurts. “Just this.”
While he orders, I sit up with the sheet around me and watch him. The low voice, the bare chest, the wedding band, and the way he says thank you when he hangs up because even now, even like this, he’s still exactly himself- that’s what gets me all over again, not the dress, or the flowers, nor even the kiss at the altar, but this.
The man in the lamplight. The room after the vows. The way nothing about us turned fake just because it turned formal.
When he sets the phone down, I lace our fingers together.
“What?” he asks.
“I’m happy.”
Something soft passes over his face. “Good.”
“No, I mean really happy. The kind that makes you nervous because you know how much you’ve got to lose.”
He turns toward me fully then, hand tightening around mine. “We’re not losing this.”
“I know.”
“Say it like you mean it.”
I breathe in slow. “We’re not losing this.”
“That’s right.”
Room service comes. We eat in bed like absolute slobs for people who just got married in expensive clothes. We talk about Lily’s face during the ceremony, Nora spinning in the reception skirt Aspen bribed her into, Sawyer falling asleep on Dallas like a tiny drunk man after cake. Then the room goes quiet again.
This time the quiet feels full. By the time we finally settle back under the blankets, the sky outside the windows has gone lighter at the edges. My head rests on his shoulder. His hand spreads over my stomach.
“Mrs. Jones,” he says quietly.
I smile into the pillow. “Still sounds fake.”
“Get used to it.”
“I plan to.”
He kisses my forehead, and I let my eyes close.
The last thing I feel before sleep takes me is his thumb brushing over my ring finger, like he still can’t help checking that it’s real. Neither can I.
Which is probably fine, because some things ought to stay astonishing.