God damn it. Why the hell was he out here looking over the railing of the ship rather than being back down on the BDSM deck with the lovely Alexandra Silver in his arms?

She'd been absolutely fucking amazing in the scene. God, watching his dick slide into her tight ass... knowing she'd given him permission to do the same thing in that sweet pussy of hers soon? He was getting hard again just thinking about it. 

He'd fucked her so hard in there tonight he knew she would have bruises on her hips where his fingers had gripped her. Hell, from what they'd done to her, she was going to be sore from top to bottom. Jackson liked the thought of her thinking of him every time she sat down, from where he'd both pounded into her and where he’d spanked her until she was red and heated.

Even holding Alexandra as her mind floated in sub-space for a couple of hours had been a pleasure. Not that Jackson generally minded holding subs after a scene — he considered it an important part of being a Dom — but usually it was just to make sure they were physically and emotionally okay.

Holding Alexandra had been more than just his responsibility, it had been the only place he'd wanted to be. If Donovan had tried to take her from Jackson, he might’ve growled at his friend like some sort of feral, territorial animal.

Everything had been great. And then with one sentence, one word — his name on her lips — he'd completely lost it. All of a sudden it wasn't Alexandra Silver there with him on his lap. It was sweet, soft Lexi. And all he could think of was her.

Knowing he was being totally unfair to Alexandra after how she'd just so publicly entrusted him with her body in front of a room full of people, Jackson still hadn't been able to do anything about it. He'd had to get away, from her, from the scene, from the whole room. Couldn't stand the thought of touching someone else, even though he was so fucking attracted to Alexandra, when sweet Lexi was on his mind.

He rarely allowed himself to think about her. Never allowed himself to check up on her. He had measures in place to make sure he would receive word if she needed anything, but besides that he kept himself firmly out of her life.

She'd been thirteen years old when he'd met her for the first time ten years ago. Her brother Scott had invited Jackson to his parents' house during their temporary leave from Special Forces, since Jackson’s mother had died the year before. Lexi had been shy and skinny with huge glasses. Scott had doted on her, being twelve years her senior. Jackson had just joined in on the doting; the kid had been easy to like. 

Jackson wasn't sure exactly when she'd become a beautiful woman. Every time Scott had invited him to the house it seemed like she was a little less shy, a little more pretty. Got rid of the glasses. Put on enough weight to not look like she was starving. 

By the summer after she'd turned eighteen, both he and Scott had been out of the service for a few years. Jackson's investments and business savvy had already made him a millionaire. Scott had started a successful security firm. The invitation to spend the Fourth of July weekend with Scott's family hadn't been unusual or unwelcome.

His feelings for Lexi when he'd seen her had been both unusual and unwelcome. At that moment Jackson knew he wasn't going to be able to come around Scott's house any more. He'd been much too aware that eighteen-year-old Lexi was in fact a woman. A beautiful, desirable woman.

A very young, innocent woman. Nearly a decade and a half Jackson’s junior.

Jackson and Scott had both played at BDSM clubs. Scott knew what Jackson liked, his need to control a woman's pleasure, provide bites of pain to enhance that pleasure. Scott had no problem with what Jackson liked sexually, but he sure as hell would've had a problem if he'd known that Jackson was thinking about sweet Lexi.

Not that he’d ever acted on it — she’d only been eighteen years old, for God’s sake, to Jackson’s thirty-two — and wasn’t willing to risk his friendship with Scott anyway.

And then the next year Scott had died. His car t-boned by a drunk driver. 

Jackson wiped a hand over his face. God, he still missed Scott, even four years later. Had loved that man like a brother. Which was why his actions a few months after the funeral when Jackson had taken a grieving Lexi out to lunch in what should've been a friendly gesture, but then hadn't stopped her when she'd kissed him, had felt like such a betrayal. 

Jackson had left, the taste of her lips more erotic than any of the explicit acts he'd taken part of in his whole life. He left knowing he had to stay away from her. 

Then a few weeks later she'd showed up at his house in Los Angeles. Beautiful, sexy, innocent Lexi had come to find him. Wanting him. His sweet Virgo.

For the rest of his life he would never forget how she looked standing in his front doorway in jeans and a red sweater, all beautiful green eyes and blonde hair. The very picture of perfection.

He'd tried to do the right thing. The gentle thing. To help her with her grief, but then turn away from anything sexual. He'd let her sleep in his guest room, jacking off twice in the shower to make sure he didn't do anything monumentally stupid like go check on her. 

The second night, his defenses lowered after spending another entire day around her, when she'd shown up in his bedroom in the middle of the night, he hadn't had the strength to send her away.

“Jackson?” Even four years later he could still get hard at the memory of her voice.

He'd known she was there from the moment she'd opened his door.

“You okay, sweetheart?”

She walked closer to this bed. “I can't sleep.”

He would’ve offered her a glass of wine, but she wasn't old enough to drink. She was a goddamned teenager. Fuck his life. She continued to walk closer.

“Lexi, you should probably—”

And then her delicate hand had reached out and touched him on the chest, cutting him off. “I want you, Jackson.”

He groaned, making one last-ditch effort to resist. “Lexi, I—”

When he felt the covers move back and her slight form move in bed with him, he was lost. She reached over to kiss him, tentatively, her soft lips so sweet and gentle against his. He heard her tiny gasp as he thrust his tongue into her mouth, very much the way he wished he could thrust other body parts. 

He rolled her all the way across the bed so he was on top of her. Felt the hem of her sleep t-shirt rise as his hips found hers, settling between her legs. Then he properly kissed her. The way he'd wanted to since that Fourth of July barbecue a year ago. 

His hands gripped her hair, holding her head still for his plunder. His tongue thoroughly devoured her mouth, licking deep into it. She moaned, her hips thrusting up into his. He reached down and hooked her leg up over his waist, his hand grabbing onto her ass. His other hand lowered to pinch her nipple through her shirt.

God, he wanted to tie her hands to the headboard. Then flip her over and take her from behind until she was screaming, begging him to let her come. 

“Jackson.” His name whispered with such love against his lips was what brought him back from his lust-induced haze. Jesus. This wasn't some girl from the club. This was fucking Lexi.

And he was a hair's breath from fucking her. His hand was already under her panties. 

“Lex.” He breathed her name, his lips moving to her throat. She smelled impossibly good. Nothing clingy or fake. Just her.

“You're a virgin. I know you haven’t had any boyfriends.”

She smiled against his lips. It wrecked him. “That's okay. I want this. I want you.”

She didn't truly want him, not how he actually was. There was no way she would want to be a part of dark aspects of his sexual nature. No way she could even know, much less want, the things he couldn't seem to live without. Spanking and controlling. Anal and oral sex. Sharing her and having others watch them fuck.

Sweet, innocent, just-a-little-shy Lexi wouldn't want any of those things. Jackson wasn't bastard enough to even give her a choice.

She could see he was about to turn her away. “Please, Jackson. I love you. I want you to be my first.”

He closed his eyes. God, he loved her too. He really did. Loved her honesty, her intelligence and her giving nature. Loved how she wouldn't turn away from a challenge until she figured it out. Loved how fucking gorgeous she was in a way that would never try to be obvious or cloying. 

And he had absolutely no right to feel this way or to encourage her in this way either. There was no way he was going to take her virginity. She would save that for a man who could offer her a future. Someone her age. She was a fucking teenager from Christ's sake. A legal adult, but still a teenager.

Her arms wrapped around him. “Please, Jackson.”

He kissed her again. He wouldn't take her virginity, but he wasn't a saint.

He smiled down at her. “How about if we start with something else tonight? I want to taste you, Lexi.”

Her eyes widened and mouth formed a small ‘o’. She nodded and he grinned, kissing his way across her jaw, down her neck, stopping to move the collar of her t-shirt and spend some time at that sensitive place where her shoulder and neck met. She moaned.

He continued down her chest, kissing those perky nipples through her shirt. Sucking on them, wetting the fabric. He brought his fingers up to help tease them, loving the sound of Lexi gasping, her hips thrusting against him.

His lips reluctantly left her nipples and moved down to her waist, his fingers reaching up and pulling her panties down her legs before she kicked them off the rest of the way. He bent her knees, spreading her legs wider. 

God if that wasn't the prettiest pussy he'd ever seen. He gave it a soft, almost reverent kiss, then held her apart with his fingers and licked from the bottom of her slit all the way up to the top. 

“Oh my God, Jackson.”

She tasted like heaven. He wanted to bury his face inside her and never let go. His tongue swirled around her clit and he slipped one finger inside her tight, greedy wetness. Not very far, just enough to get a feel. To know what heaven felt like around his finger, since he was not going to ever feel it around his cock.

“You taste even better than I ever could've imagined, Lexi,” he murmured, removing his finger and taking another long stroke of her with his tongue. Loving the way she cried out.

“How do you like it, baby? What do you want me to do?” It went against everything in his nature to ask rather than force a response out of her.

“I-I don't know. I've never...” He looked up at her and her face was flaming. 

“A virgin in every way.” He smiled tenderly. “Then you just lay back right there, sweetheart. Let me make it good for you.”

By God, he wouldn't be the first person to fuck her, but she would damn well never forget this first experience of a mouth on her. He set his lips back on that sweet flesh, sucking, licking, exploring with his lips, fingers, tongue. Every time she moaned he lingered and it wasn't long before she was screaming his name.

He was bastard enough not to even let her come down from the high before he said, “Again.”

And brought her right back up. By her third orgasm, her hips were fucking his face, thrusting against him. Her fingers clutched his hair and she sobbed. 

He was tempted to force her towards a fourth — knew he could — but then took a moment to really look up at her face. It was red, stained with tears, her eyes glassy, overwhelmed. He'd taken her too far. 

Even trying to do the right thing he'd taken her too far. Jackson climbed up her body, and pulled her to his chest, throwing the covers over her trembling form.

“I-I…” she tried to get words out. 

“Shhh, baby. Just go to sleep.”

“I liked it,” she finally murmured.

“I did too.” He kissed her hair. Liked it way too much.  

She eventually stopped trembling and fell asleep. Jackson didn't sleep a wink, just held her, knowing he had to let her go. Her response, if nothing else, showed him she truly was too young, too innocent for him. If he'd pushed her too far in this, how much more might he scar her if he was really trying to push?

She wasn't for him.

Jackson sighed, looking back now over the railing of the ship towards the shore of Italy far in the darkness. The only thing he'd screwed up more than that night was the way he'd handled the next morning. 

He'd made her breakfast, calmly explained to her why they couldn't be together. She'd watched him with those big green eyes as he'd told her he'd been looking for someone older, with more experience to be with.

There'd been no tears from her, no histrionics. Almost as if she'd been waiting for him to point out she wasn't enough for him. He wanted to punch the wall, curse every fate and circumstance that had made him a man whose sexual nature was too dark and rough for her.

But mostly he'd wanted to take her back upstairs and make love to her until that shattered look in her eyes went away. But he hadn't. He'd let her go. And he hadn't seen her since.

So why the hell was Lexi so heavily on his mind tonight when he'd just thoroughly fucked Alexandra Silver’s — very attractive — ass? He had no idea. He'd been absolutely fine right up until Alexandra had said his name. She'd thought he'd been pissed that she'd left off the “master,” but that hadn't been it at all.

Her soft voice had had sounded so much like Lexi's that for just a moment he would've sworn he had the wrong Alexandra. As a matter of fact, until that second, it hadn't even occurred to him that Lexi's full name was Alexandra also, not that anyone had ever called her that. 

Jackson walked back to the elevator. He knew he needed to get back down to the BDSM deck. Leaving Alexandra like that, even though she'd been completely recovered, was in bad form. But he couldn't, even given her invitation to join her privately. To have sex without the masks. 

He just couldn't bring himself to fuck that Alexandra again, when Lexi consumed his mind. It didn't seem fair to any of them. Not tonight.

He’d been out here for a long time. Hours. Alexandra would’ve already left anyway, probably pissed. Rightfully pissed.

He'd clear his head, have some flowers flown onto the ship to give to Alexandra to make up for the way he'd disappeared, then fuck her tomorrow night. Right now, he’d lose himself the way he had for the last four years since he’d walked away from Lexi: by throwing himself into work. He had a tiny private office set up near the server room. There was plenty to concentrate on there that didn’t involve women.

He had just slipped into the door of the tiny office when he saw someone hurry by. If he had been ten seconds earlier he wouldn’t have seen her at all. The flash of a long blonde braid escaping from under the wearer's hoodie was what first caught his attention. But the trim hips and legs let him know that the ass he'd just been fucking down on the Dungeon deck was currently sneaking into the server room.

There weren't many reasons why Alexandra Silver would be sneaking into the server room at this hour. None of them were good. She had access to it all she wanted during the day. Coming here at night could only be for criminal purposes. Looked like she was the thief after all. 

He wanted to proceed in there and confront her, demand she explain how she could’ve been so sweetly submissive just a few hours ago and then stealing from him now. But his time in the Special Forces and years of business had taught him nothing if not patience.

Jackson would let this play out. Let Alexandra do whatever she’d come to do in the server room. He'd bring in Donovan and computer specialists after she was gone, see exactly what she'd done. But no matter what, she was caught.

One way or another, whether she could explain her actions or not, Alexandra Silver was fucked.