Ruined (The Eternal Balance #1)(56)

“H-how so?” I managed.

He came around to the front, expression severe. “You’re restrained. Not a danger to me at all. But—” Jax ran a hand over my cheek, then trailed his fingers down my neck and over my left breast. “I’m still a danger to you.”

Ho-lee crap.

Talk about a total body meltdown. I did my best to keep breathing evenly, but my body had other plans. Pulse spiking, I said, “Do your worst.”

The war between what he truly wanted, and the fact that he’d been insisting they couldn’t be together, raged behind his eyes. I saw the exact moment he broke. The tension in his body melted away. With a gentle push, I toppled back onto the couch. Jax was on me in an instant.

His lips crushed mine, violent and possessive, stealing my breath away. “I want you so f*cking bad,” he breathed against my lips.

Tingles exploded from the top of my head to the tip of my toes, making me warm in all the right places. I made a move to grab his shoulders and the sound of metal filled the air.

Jax laughed. A dark sound that nearly made my heart explode. “You’re at my mercy,” he growled. In a single yank, the shirt tore in half, and a chill raced across my exposed skin.

“Holy shit,” I breathed, straining against the cuffs as his mouth came down to nibble on the tender flesh beneath my bra. When he got to the nipple, I twisted and bucked, squirming against the electric feel of his eager mouth.

My reaction only seemed to drive him harder. He chuckled against my skin, teeth tugging at the edge of the bra. “I love the sounds you make. Music. They’re like pure f*cking music.”

I wanted this. Badly. Almost badly enough to keep my mouth shut and enjoy the ride. But the conversation we’d had in the field after what happened in the car came rushing back. The pain. I hated the thought of him in agony, and to let him continue would be selfish. “Jax, I think we need to stop.”

“Stop?” He panted, trailing a line of kisses up my neck and lingering at the edge of my jaw. “No way. I’m not stopping this time. I’ve wanted you forever, Sammy. You want it, too.”

“I do,” I said through clenched teeth as he slid the right side of my bra aside, exposing bare skin to the chilly air. “But it’s not worth the fallout. You’ll be in horrible pain. Lose control.”

“I’ve already lost control,” he growled, taking me into his mouth and sucking hard. The pull, with the slightest pressure of his teeth, drew an involuntary moan from my lips. “You do that to me.”

I gasped as he ground himself against me, the sensation nearly making me scream. The friction was mind-blowing, sending wave after wave of heat pulsing throughout my body. But I couldn’t let this go on. If he wasn’t going to put the brakes on this for his own good, then I’d have to be the one who stepped up. With as much force as I could muster, I said, “Jax, stop.”

He went completely still. Pulling away, he slid from the couch and backed away several steps. The look on his face was pure guilt. “God, Sammy. Right now you smell amazing. I’ve wanted you for the longest time, you know that, but the lust you’re putting off is driving the thing inside me insane. I don’t want to stop—but I do. And Azirak…”

“Wants to devour me?” God, how I wanted to be devoured…

Jax grinned. “You’re so inviting all trussed up and ready to go.” He took another step back, then two forward. “God, Sammy…”

The way he was watching me, like a drowning man desperate for rescue, would be my undoing. I squeezed my eyes closed for a second and took a deep breath. When I opened them again, it was even worse.

He was standing over me again, face contorted and shoulders stuff. “It wants—” Jax brought both hands up to his head, tangling them into his hair as he dropped to the ground beside the couch. “Fuck!”

Suddenly the idea of being cuffed and helpless wasn’t as appealing. “Jax?”

“I can’t keep it—” His body convulsed twice, and when his head rose a moment later, both eyes were the color of coal.

“This body burns for you,” he said. It was Jax’s voice—only it wasn’t. A deep breath. Azirak. “I can taste its desire to touch you, and yours to touch it.”

It took every ounce of self-control to stay as still as possible. Here I was. Face-to-face with the thing that lived inside Jax again—only this time I knew who I was talking to. “And you?”

Jax—or Azirak—blinked, tilting his head to the right. Every movement was fluent. Controlled. So inhumanly graceful that it was eerie. “You speak to me?”

“Should I not?”

A grin. So familiar, yet so wrong. “Please do. I like it. The sound of your voice is—oddly pleasant to these ears.” His eyes traveled down the length of my body, then up again. “You are pleasant to look at, as well, Samantha Merrick.”

Creepy. “So, then it’s safe to say you don’t want to kill me?”

“Accidents happen, but no. I have no wish to harm you.”

“Good. That’s good.” I was afraid to say anything else in fear that I’d piss it off somehow.

He laughed. “Though I have no doubt you would be a rare delicacy, to harm you would be detrimental.”

I suppressed a shudder. “Detrimental?”