Chapter 13: Dawn of Devotion
Ellie drifted into consciousness not with a start, but with a slow, luxurious unraveling. She was warm, impossibly so, the thick hotel duvet a soft weight over her legs. A stripe of morning sunlight, thick with floating dust motes, cut across the bed, painting Jasper’s shoulder in gold.
She opened her eyes.
He was already awake, propped on one elbow, watching her. There was no trace of sleep in his clear gaze. He’d been there for a while, just looking. His expression wasn’t possessive, or hungry, or smug. It was something purer, simpler. A kind of quiet awe, as if he’d woken to find a sunrise curled beside him. The naked devotion in his face stole the breath from her lungs.
“Hey,” she whispered, her voice rough with sleep.
“Hey yourself,” he murmured back, his own voice a low, sleep-softened rumble. He didn’t move to kiss her. He just kept looking, a faint smile touching his lips.
The silence stretched, comfortable and deep. Outside, Millrise was beginning its day—a distant car horn, the call of a bird. Inside, there was only the sound of their breathing and the memory of the night imprinted on her skin, a pleasant, full-body ache. She’d slept more deeply than she could remember, her body unclenching for the first time in a decade.
“You’re thinking loud,” he said, his finger coming up to trace the line of her eyebrow.
“I was thinking I’ve never slept like that.”
“Good.” He shifted, rolling onto his back and stretching, the sheets pulling taut over his abdomen. Then he turned his head toward her. “You carry a lot of it in your shoulders, you know.Always have. From the first day I saw you mixing paint, there was a tightness.”
He sat up, the sheets pooling at his waist. “Turn over.”
“What?”
“Just trust me.” His tone was light, but his eyes were serious.
Curious, she rolled onto her stomach, turning her face to the side on the pillow. The scent of him and her and last night’s wine was deep in the fabric.
The bed dipped as he moved. Then his hands were on her—not in a sexual way, but firm, knowledgeable. His thumbs found the knot of tension at the base of her neck, the one she’d accepted as a permanent part of her anatomy, and pressed.
A groan escaped her, half-pain, half-profound relief. “Oh, God.”
“Told you.” He worked in silence for a few minutes, his hands strong and certain. He kneaded the tight cords along her spine, the clenched muscles of her upper back that had taken the weight of every disappointment, every shouted argument, every lonely night in her too-big, too-empty house. Under his touch, the past seemed to soften, then dissolve. It wasn’t erased, but its physical claim on her loosened, siphoned away by the steady pressure of his palms and fingers.
“Where did you learn to do this?” she mumbled into the pillow.
“High school football. Long story involving a very demanding coach and a lot of sore teammates.” His voice was a quiet vibration she felt through his hands. “Just relax. Let it go.”
And she did. She let go of the memory of Richard’s sneer as she’d served his dinner, the cold fear of the empty bank account, the ache of isolation that had lived in her bones. Jasper’s hands were exorcising ghosts she hadn’t known were still haunting her body. He moved lower, working the tension from her lower back with a thorough, deep-tissue rhythm that made her sigh and melt into the mattress.
When he finally spoke again, his voice was closer, a warm breath near her ear. “All that weight you’ve been carrying… you don’t have to carry it alone, Ellie. Not anymore.”
Tears, hot and sudden, pricked at her closed eyes. She didn’t let them fall, but she felt them, a release as profound as the one in her muscles.
His hands gentled, shifting from therapeutic to something else entirely. They swept down her sides, along the dip of her waist, over the curve of her hips. The calluses on his palms were a whisper against her skin. He pressed a soft kiss to the nape of her neck, then another between her shoulder blades, following the trail his massage had blazed.
“So beautiful,” he breathed, the words a vow against her skin.
He urged her gently onto her back. The morning light was full on her now, and she didn’t flinch, didn’t reach for the sheet. His gaze was a physical warmth, traveling over her with unhurried appreciation. He leaned down and kissed her mouth, deep and slow, a tasting. Then he began kissing his way down her body—the hollow of her throat, the swell of a breast, the plane of her stomach. Each kiss was a brand, a promise. Her skin pebbled, her breathing shallowed.
He settled between her legs, his broad shoulders nudging her thighs apart. He looked up the length of her body, his eyes meeting hers, holding them. There was a question there, and a silent assurance.
“Jace,” she whispered.
He answered by lowering his head.
The first touch of his tongue was a lightning strike of pure, undiluted sensation. She cried out, her back arching off the bed. But it wasn’t a fast, frantic hunger. It was deliberate. Devotional. He explored her with a painter’s meticulous attention, learning every contour, every secret response. He lapped at her with a languid, worshipful rhythm that built the pleasure not in sharp peaks, but in deep, rolling waves.
It was utterly different from anything she’d known. This wasn’t being taken from; this was being given to. Every flick of his tongue, every soft suckle, felt like an apology for every time she’d felt used, and a pledge for something infinitely better. The tension he’d massaged from her back was replaced by a new, glorious tension coiling low in her belly, pulling tighter and tighter with each deliberate stroke.
He built her up with astonishing patience, bringing her to a shimmering, trembling edge, then easing back, letting her float before drawing her up again. The world dissolved into sensation—the slide of his tongue, the scrape of his stubble on her inner thighs, the sound of his own ragged breathing, the desperate, soft little cries she couldn’t seem to stop making.
When the first orgasm hit, it was less a shatter and more an unspooling, a deep, resonant vibration that rolled through her in long, warm pulses. He didn’t stop. He gentled his touch, letting her ride the aftershocks, then began again, building a second peak atop the first.
“I can’t,” she gasped, her fingers fisting in his hair, not to push him away, but to anchor herself. “Jace, I can’t again.”
“You can,” he murmured against her, the vibration tipping her over another brink.She lost count. Pleasure became a landscape she was moving through, each peak higher, the valleys between softer. He was relentless in his generosity, his only goal seeming to be the total, trembling surrender of her body. He was rewriting her history with his mouth, replacing every cold, transactional memory with this searing, selfless heat.
Finally, when she was boneless, drenched in sweat and sensation, her nerves singing a chorus that left her breathless, he lifted his head. He crawled up her body, kissing her stomach, her sternum, the pounding pulse at her throat. He tasted of her, and of salt. He looked down at her, his own face flushed, his lips slick.
“Okay?” he asked, the same word from last night, but layered now with a new, profound depth.
She could only nod, her eyes swimming with unshed tears of overwhelming release. She pulled him down for a kiss, sharing the taste of herself, a intimacy more shocking and binding than anything that had come before.
He settled beside her, pulling her into his arms, tucking her head under his chin. Her body hummed, utterly spent, utterly satisfied in a way she hadn’t known was possible. She understood, in her bones, what he was doing. After all she had been through, he was making sure sex didn’t feel like abuse. Making sure she didn’t feel used. He was building a new foundation, stone by careful stone, ensuring she was fully, completely, gloriously satisfied with him.
They lay like that as the sun climbed higher, the stripe of gold on the floor widening. No urgency. No next move. Just the two of them, breathing in sync, in the quiet aftermath of his gift. The unfinished mural waited. Richard’s lawyers waited. The hidden truth of who Jace was waited. But for now, in this sun-drenched bed, there was only this perfect, weightless peace, and the certain knowledge that she was cherished.
But for now, in this sun-drenched bed, there was only this perfect, weightless peace, and the certain knowledge that she was cherished.
She traced the line of his collarbone with a fingertip, the skin warm under her touch. “I don’t think I can move,” she murmured, her voice still thick with sleep and satisfaction.
“Then don’t.” He kissed her temple, his arm tightening around her. “We’ve got nowhere to be.”
Across town, in the stale, beer-smelling quiet of his dying mother’s cluttered study, Richard Davies scowled at his laptop screen. The glow lit his face in garish blue, highlighting the new lines of bitterness around his mouth. He typed ‘Jasper Thornton Millrise’ again, for the tenth time, and got nothing but the same local news clip about the mural project.
He almost slammed the laptop shut. This was a waste. The guy was a nobody, some artsy-fartsy contractor blowing smoke up Ellie’s ass. But a nagging voice, the same one that had always suspected everyone was cheating him, whispered to dig deeper. He tried just ‘Thornton Georgia.’
The screen filled with links. Business journals. Society pages. Philanthropy announcements. A name kept appearing: Thornton Consolidated. He clicked on an image from a charity gala in Atlanta.
His breath hitched.
There, surrounded by men in tuxedos and women dripping in diamonds, was Jace. Not ‘Jace-the-mural-guy’ in worn jeans and a paint-splattered shirt, but ‘Jasper Thornton’ in a flawlessly tailored tuxedo. His smile was the same, but colder here, more practiced. The caption read: Jasper Thornton, heir apparent to Thornton Consolidated, with associates.
“No fucking way,” Richard whispered to the empty room.
He fell down a rabbit hole of search results, his heart pounding with a sick, gleeful rhythm. Thornton Consolidated. Real estate. Finance. Warehouses. Banks. It was an empire. A photo from a historical society archive loaded slowly. A faded color image of a formal dinner, the style decades old. There, at a lavishly decorated table, was a stern-looking man and woman flanking a young boy, maybe four years old.
The boy had Jace’s eyes, even then.
At the head of the table sat an older woman in a pearls and a bright blue dress. The caption made Richard’s blood sing. ‘Farewell dinner for the Thornton family, advisors to the Crown, hosted by Her Majesty Queen Mary, 1957.’
A raw, barking laugh erupted from him, echoing in the dusty room. It all snapped into place—the easy confidence, the way money never seemed to be an object, the vague backstory about ‘moving around for work.’ The bastard was hiding. He wasn’t just rich; he was from a different fucking planet, a world of queens and dynastic wealth.
And he was slumming it in Millrise.
Ellie, his mousy, pathetic Ellie, had left him for this. She thought she’d won some grand prize. The irony was so beautiful it hurt. She was just a temporary distraction for a bored prince, a bit of small-town tail before he went back to his real life.
The initial fury, the desire to call her and scream the truth into the phone, faded into something colder, sharper. A plan crystallized. Shattering Ellie would be fun, but it was small-time. The real payout was standing right beside her in those society photos.
He could get his life back. All of it. The money, the respect, the power Jace’s family clearly wielded. He just needed leverage. Evidence. Photos of them together. Something to prove Jasper Thornton was here, under a fake pretense, entangled with a local woman amidst some secret project. The Thornton name dripped with old-world propriety; a scandal, even a small one, would be a toxin they’d pay a fortune to contain.
He began downloading every image, every article, saving them to a hidden folder. His fingers flew over the keys, a new energy coursing through him. This wasn’t an ending. It was a beginning.
Back in the hotel suite, the sun had climbed higher, warming the rumpled sheets. Ellie finally stirred, stretching her arms over her head with a contented sigh. “I’m starving,” she announced.
Jace grinned, swatting her playfully on the backside. “I did some significant work. Fuel is required.” He rolled out of bed with a predatory grace. “Pancakes. The diner’s blueberry ones. I’ll go grab us a feast.”
“You don’t have to go out,” she said, sitting up, the sheet pooling around her waist.
He was already pulling on his jeans, buttoning them with quick, efficient movements. “I want to. Stay right there. Don’t move a muscle.” He leaned over the bed, cradling her face and kissing her with a soft, lingering possessiveness that made her toes curl. “I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”
He shrugged into a t-shirt, grabbed his wallet and key, and was gone. The room felt larger, quieter without him, but the warmth he’d left behind lingered in the sheets and on her skin. She hugged her knees to her chest, a slow smile spreading across her face. The peace wasn’t fragile; it felt earned. She believed, utterly, in the man who had just gone to fetch her pancakes.
Downstairs, Jace stepped out into the crisp morning air, a lightness in his step he hadn’t felt in years. He fished his phone from his pocket, saw three missed calls from a blocked number—probably his father’s assistant—and silenced it. Not today. Today was for maple syrup and the woman upstairs whose laughter felt like coming home.
He turned the corner towards Main Street, oblivious to the hungry eyes watching him from a parked car down the block. Richard watched him go, a slick smile on his face. He noted the easy stride, the casual confidence. Enjoy your little game, Richard thought, starting his engine. Your pretty secret is my new business plan. He pulled away, already composing the email in his head, the one he’d send to the official Thornton family media address, with a few very interesting attachments.