Chapter 7: Mirror's Witness
The knock on his door was soft, three tentative taps. Jaxon knew it was her before he turned the knob. The smell of rain clung to her, dampening her wild curls into dark, coiling tendrils that framed a face pale with sleepless anxiety. Her eyes flicked past him, scanning the room.
He’d just gotten back. The knuckles on his right hand were split, the skin raw and gleaming under the lamplight. A faint, coppery scent of blood and outdoor cold still lingered on his jacket, which he’d tossed over his desk chair.
“You’re hurt,” she said, her voice flat. It wasn’t a question.
“It’s nothing.” He stepped aside to let her in, locking the door behind her with a definitive click. The room felt smaller with her in it, charged. The clutter—the coffee cups, the textbooks, the swim team trophy—seemed to recede, leaving only the space between their bodies.
She didn’t move toward the bed. She stood in the center of the room, hugging herself, watching him. “Did you find him?”
Jaxon walked to the small fridge, pulled out a water bottle. He took a long swallow, his throat working. “Yeah.”
“And?”
“We had a conversation.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his uninjured hand. “I explained that pictures were a violation of campus policy. That unwanted contact constituted harassment. I suggested he reconsider his communications strategy.”
A flicker of something—fear, relief, dark amusement—passed over her face. “He just listened?”
“He required some… persuasion.” Jaxon flexed his hand, winced at the sting. The memory was clear, visceral: the shabby living room on Derby Street, the stunned outrage on Leo Garza’s face, the two broad-shouldered shapes of Jaxon’s former teammates blocking the door. The first punch had been a statement. The rest had been punctuation. “He’s reconsidering. Strongly.”
Maya exhaled, a shuddering release of breath she seemed to have been holding for days. The rigid line of her shoulders softened by a fraction. Her gaze dropped to his hand again, then travelled up his arms, his neck, settling on his mouth. The fear in her eyes was slowly being replaced by something hotter, more urgent.
“You’re bleeding on your floor,” she whispered.
“I’ll clean it later.”
She crossed the space between them then. She didn’t kiss him. She took his wounded hand in both of hers, brought his knuckles to her lips, and touched her tongue to the broken skin. A slow, deliberate lick that was more claim than care. The shock of it, the wet heat, went straight to his gut.
“Maya,” he growled, a warning and an invitation.
She looked up at him through her lashes, that familiar, defiant spark igniting in the amber depths. “You fought for me.” She said it like she was tasting the idea, finding it potent and addictive.
“I told you I would.” He cupped her jaw with his good hand, his thumb stroking the high curve of her cheekbone. The possessiveness he’d felt in the library was back, multiplied, honed by violence. She was his. His to protect. His to ruin. “Now I need you to do something for me.”
He guided her backwards until her calves hit the edge of his bed. He reached for the full-length mirror leaning against his closet—the one he used to check his tie for formal events—and hauled it in front of the mattress. He positioned it carefully, angling it so the reflection of the bed, the rumpled sheets, was perfectly framed.
“Sit,” he said, his voice low.
She sat on the edge of the bed, watching him, her breath coming quicker. He toed off his shoes, stripped off his shirt. The muscles in his abdomen tightened as he undid his jeans, pushed them down. His cock sprang free, already thick and heavy. He didn’t touch himself. He looked at her in the mirror, then at her real form.
“Take that off.” He nodded at her sweater.
She pulled it over her head, let it fall. Her breasts were bare, the nipples tight and pebbled from the cool room air, or from anticipation. He closed the distance, stood between her parted knees.
“Straddle me. Face the mirror.”
She moved with a fluid grace, rising up on her knees, guiding him down to sit propped against the headboard. Then she swung a leg over his hips, lowering herself slowly, taking him inside her with a seamless, wet glide that made them both gasp. She was already so ready for him, her cunt hot and slippery, clenching around his thickness.
She settled, sheathed fully, her back to his front. In the mirror, he saw her face over his shoulder, her eyes wide and fixed on their joined reflection. He wrapped his left arm around her waist, anchoring her to him. His right hand, the bruised and bloody one, came up to cradle the line of her throat. He didn’t squeeze. He just held it there, his thumb resting on the frantic pulse beneath her jaw, a silent reminder of his grip on everything—her pleasure, her air, her safety.
“Watch,” he murmured into the shell of her ear, his voice a rough vibration against her skin.
His other hand came up to cover her breast, palming the full weight of it before his fingers found her nipple. He pinched, rolled the taut bud between his thumb and forefinger, applying a steady, escalating pressure. A sharp, breathy “oh” escaped her lips. Her hips gave an involuntary little rock, grinding her clit against the base of his cock. In the mirror, her breasts moved with the motion, a hypnotic bounce.
“That’s it,” he coaxed, his own breath growing ragged. He switched to her other nipple, giving it the same deliberate, rough attention. Her head fell back against his shoulder, her eyes squeezed shut.
“Open your eyes,” he commanded, his fingers on her throat applying the faintest hint of pressure. “Watch yourself take it.”
Her eyes flew open, locking onto the mirror. He saw the flush spread from her chest up her neck. Saw the dazed, fucked-out look begin to glaze her expression. He slid his hand from her breast, down the quivering plane of her stomach, through the coarse, damp curls at the junction of her thighs.
He didn’t plunge his fingers inside her. He knew she was full of him, stretched around him. He sought the swollen, throbbing nub of her clit instead. He found it, slick and hard as a pearl, and began to circle it with a firm, wet pressure that matched the shallow, rolling rhythm of her hips.
“Fuck, Jaxon,” she whimpered, the sound broken.
“See how fucking pretty you are?” he gritted out, watching her reflection. Watching her mouth go slack, her lips glistening. Watching the way her tits swayed every time she rose up and sank back down on his cock. “See what you do to me? What I do to you?”
She was nodding, a frantic, helpless motion. Her inner muscles began to flutter around him, a frantic, milking pulse. The coil in his own belly pulled taut. He increased the pace of his fingers on her clit, a relentless, circular torture.
“I feel you,” he groaned, his hips bucking up to meet her downward stroke. “You’re gonna come. Do it. Come all over my cock. Let me see it in the mirror.”
His words tipped her over the edge. A sound, raw and guttural, tore from her throat. Her body arched against him, her back bowing, her hips stuttering. Her cunt clamped down on him in a series of brutal, rhythmic spasms that ripped the air from his lungs. Her eyes in the mirror were blind with pleasure, her face a perfect mask of stunned surrender.
It was the sight of it—her total, visible ruin—that undid him. With a choked, savage curse, he drove up into her one last time, burying himself as deep as she could take him. His own release was a white-hot eruption, pumping into her in frantic pulses that seemed to sync with the last shudders of her climax.
For a long minute, the only sounds were their ragged breaths and the faint creak of the bedsprings. He kept his hand on her throat, his fingers on her clit, until the sensitivity made her flinch. Slowly, he softened inside her. She collapsed back against his chest, boneless, her skin slick with sweat.
In the mirror, their reflection was a tangle of damp limbs and sated exhaustion. He looked at his own face—the wildness in his eyes, the grim set of his mouth, the blood dried dark on his knuckles against her pale skin. The responsible RA was gone. In his place was someone else, someone who would break knuckles on a stranger’s face and then fuck his girl raw in front of a mirror.
Maya’s hand came up, covering his where it still rested against her neck. Not to remove it. To hold it there.
“He’ll still try,” she said softly, her voice hoarse. The post-coital haze was clearing, letting the fear seep back in at the edges.
Jaxon turned his head, pressed his lips to her damp temple. He watched their reflection as he spoke, the words a cold promise in the warm, sex-heavy air.
“Let him.”
They stayed like that, tangled and silent, until their breathing evened out. The adrenaline from the confrontation on Derby Street and the frantic sex drained away, leaving a deep, hollow exhaustion in its place. He felt her go heavy against him, her fingers loosening their grip on his wrist.
“I can’t move,” she mumbled into his skin, her words slurred with fatigue.
“Then don’t.” He shifted them carefully, pulling the rough dorm comforter over their cooling bodies without ever letting her go. He kept her backed against his chest, his arm a solid band across her ribs. The lamp cast long shadows, but the room felt safer now, a cave against the world. Her quiet soon turned into the deep, rhythmic breaths of sleep.
He didn’t think he’d sleep, but the warmth of her and the total spentness of his muscles pulled him under into a dark, dreamless void.
He woke to the gray, directionless light of very early morning. The candle had burned out. The silence was absolute. Maya was still wrapped in his arms, but she’d turned in her sleep, now facing him, her forehead pressed to his sternum. Her lips were slightly parted. He watched her sleep, studying the fan of her dark lashes against her cheeks, the faint freckle just below her right eye.
A possessive ache, sharper than any hunger, twisted inside him. It was quieter than the fury that had driven him to Leo’s door, but deeper, more fundamental. He needed to mark this, to wipe away the ghost of any other claim.
Moving slowly, he slid down the bed. He nudged her legs apart with his shoulders, his hands spreading her thighs wide, exposing her to the cool air and his gaze. She stirred, a soft noise of protest escaping her lips as the comforter fell away. Her eyes fluttered open, amber and blurred with sleep.
“Jaxon…?” Her voice was thick, confused.
He didn’t answer with words. He lowered his head and put his mouth on her.
She was soft, swollen, and tasted of both of them—a musky, intimate salt. He licked a slow, broad stripe from her opening to her clit, which was still tender and prominent. She jerked, a full-body spasm, her hands flying to tangle in his hair. He held her hips down, pinning her to the mattress, and did it again. And again. He ate at her with a singular, focused intensity, fucking her with his tongue, circling her clit with the flat of it, then sucking the stiff little bud between his lips.
“Oh, god, oh fuck,” she chanted, her hips trying to buck against his relentless hold. Her thighs trembled against his ears. “Right there, please, right there.”
He drove her to the edge quickly, ruthlessly, using everything he knew about her body from the library, from the mirror. He felt her tense, felt the first flutters against his tongue. Then he pulled away, leaving her gasping and empty on the precipice.
She cried out in raw frustration. Before the sound faded, he was moving up her body, his weight settling over her. He shoved his cock into her with one brutal thrust, burying himself in her wet, clutching heat so deep she gasped.
He braced himself above her, his arms caging her head, his face inches from hers. Her eyes were wide, wild, fully awake now.
“You’re mine,” he said, the words a low, graveled snarl in the silent room. It wasn’t a question or a romantic plea. It was a fact, carved into the air between them, as undeniable as the feel of him inside her. “Say it.”
She stared up at him, her breath hitching. He began to move, a hard, driving pace that stole the air from her lungs. “Say it, Maya.”
“I’m yours,” she whimpered, the confession torn from her.
“Again.”
“I’m yours!” The words became a cry as he pistoned into her, the bed slamming against the wall with a frantic, rhythmic bang. He fucked her with a consuming fury, each slam of his hips a punctuation to his claim. She wrapped her legs around his waist, heels digging into the small of his back, meeting him thrust for thrust.
The climb was instantaneous, a violent surge that bypassed all slow build. Her orgasm ripped through her, a seizing, silent scream that contorted her features and made her cunt clamp around him in vicious, rhythmic pulses. The sheer tightness of it, the raw feel of her coming apart beneath him, detonated his own control.
He drove into her one last, final time, grinding his pelvis against her as he emptied himself with a guttural roar, his release hot and seemingly endless. He collapsed, his body shuddering through the aftershocks, his face buried in the sweat-damp pillow beside her head.
For a long time, there was only the sound of their wrecked breathing and the pounding of blood in his ears. The gray light was strengthening, defining the messy contours of the room. He slowly rolled to the side, taking her with him, keeping her close.
Her finger traced the scabbed-over split on his knuckle. “He’s going to call the police,” she whispered, the real world, with its consequences, rushing back in.
Jaxon stared at the water stain on his ceiling. He thought of Leo Garza’s frightened, bloody face. The threats were just words. The photos were just images. What he’d done in that house, what he’d just done in this bed, were actions. Solid. Real.
“No,” he said, his voice flat and certain. “He won’t.”