“I just thought we were opting for inconspicuousness.”
“Well, I’m not.”
“And what if it gets back to the Jackals at some point?”
“We’re not going to be here when the Jackals eventually find out,” he snapped. His blue eyes regarded me coolly. Anything to do with the Jackals and he was pissed as hell.
“How do you know that for sure?”
“Because I know what I’m doing.”
“But what if they find out from the Sco–”
“They won’t find out!” he interrupted impatiently.
People looked over at us as they walked by. I glared at Jaxon, wanting desperately to rip that helmet off of his head and shove it someplace tight and dark.
“But what if they do?!” I pressed.
“Then I guess you have some explaining to do to your guy, huh?!”
My guy? Ugh. Ugh. Ugh!
“That was a low blow,” I icily said.
“I don’t care.”
“You should!”
He sighed, exasperated by me already. “Fine, Sara. Just put your damn helmet on before we cause a scene.”
I stared daggers – no, fuck that, machetes! – into his face before placing the helmet over my head. He climbed on the bike and I followed.
“Now make sure you lean with me–”
“You’ve made that clear already, I know–”
“Because this morning you weren’t doing it right–”
“I know, Jax–”
“And the last thing I want is an accident because you didn’t know how to –”
“I know how to ride on the back of a motorcycle!” I interrupted in frustration. “I’ve done it for months now. I know what to do.”
He went quiet. I could see through the visor his back stiffen. Ah, yes, more anger. He was probably mentally picturing me on the back of Remy’s bike now. Great. I reluctantly put my arms around him. It was like hugging a rock, but even rocks showed more affection than this guy.
God, we were dysfunctional.
Twenty One
Though it felt as though I was hugging a rigid corpse on our way back to the cabin, I melted into him, forgetting the mini-spat back in town. Once he stopped the bike, I stepped off and took my helmet off. Anger still rolling off of him, he took it and stuffed it away in the top box and went to make his way up the porch.
“Are you going to sleep with me tonight?” I asked, trying to break the ice.
All that alpha shit back at the bar about me being his woman had felt good. Reflecting on it all the way home, I wanted his words to echo his actions. We had to mend whatever was making him ice cold around me. Now.
“No,” he answered.
“Why?”
He paused on the first step and then turned around. “I’m struggling with you, Sara.”
Struggling? Heart tight in my chest, I whispered, “What have I done?”
I was counting on the light of the stars tonight; otherwise his face would have been completely concealed in the darkness. Branches danced and leaves swayed, but it was eerily silent as death around us.
“You and him.” The words were like venom out of his mouth.
I stilled, unable to meet his eye. “It’s not the way you think–”
“I saw the hesitation when I asked you to come with me. You didn’t even know what you wanted. You probably don’t right now.”
“Of course I do!”
“I don’t believe you,” he huffed. “Back at that house, you swore yourself to me–”
“You broke it off!”
“And for months I’ve had to listen in on them telling me how you’re with the one man that ruined me!” He took a few steps closer to me. “Did he tell you how he put me in jail?”
“Yes,” I answered.
His face ignited in surprise, and then full blown fury. “Was this before or after you fucked him?”
“I didn’t–”
“When exactly did you even find out?” Christ, he was losing it.
“Four days ago,” I calmly answered.
If I thought that might make him feel better, I was wrong. He still looked like a ticking time bomb, and what I would say next would surely set him off.
“He said he did it because I’d disappeared and he thought you had something to do with it. He regrets it and he apologized.”
He laughed bitterly and then nodded scornfully. “Is that right? He apologized? Well, isn’t that fucking fantastic? I’ll just forget the shit I did inside those walls because Remy, the fucking apologetic saint, regrets what he did! I’m sure that made you feel nice and good inside, right?”
“No.” I sighed and rubbed my eyes, exasperated by this already. “I saw you with that girl at the bar and I thought you’d moved on. At that point, Remy hadn’t pushed me into anything. You make him out to be a monster, and maybe he is, but I’ve seen other sides to him. He did bad things, I know. What he did was horrible and wrong and I don’t forgive him for it. He was obsessed with this idea of me being his everything–”
“He trapped you inside a fucking room for four weeks! He would have done it for longer, too. He followed you around your entire life! Obsessed doesn’t even skim the surface of what he really is. There’s no redeeming him, Sara. Stop being so delusional. Your love for him is making me sick.”
“And so what if I love him?” I retorted, throwing my arms up in the air. “I called you and begged for you to save me from them the second I got your message and you left me high and dry!”
Veins popping out he screamed, “You sold me out!”
“I didn’t! I had no choice but to tell him and by then I thought I was doing it to protect you! He’d already known it was you and he would have done anything to kill you. And yet you stand here in all your hate when I love a man who would go to the ends of the earth for me.”
He suddenly gripped me hard by the arm and shook me. “And what did I just do?”
I squirmed from his grip. “You’re hurting me. Let go.”
“Still, I want you. Even though I know the second I’m out of the picture, you’re fucking some guy.”
My eyes widened and my anger bubbled to the surface. “Don’t you dare talk to me about fucking people! How many were there before me? After me? How many, Jaxon?!”
“I get out of prison and you’re fucking some guy. I give myself to you again, and you’re fucking another guy! You don’t like it cold in there, do you? You gotta keep that pussy warm all the fucking time or else you’re–”
“Stop hurting me!” Tears fell from my eyes. It took everything in me not to slap him. I’d burned that bridge ages ago, but the twitch in my palm entertained the idea. “You know it wasn’t like that at all!”
“Do you love him more than me?” His angst-filled eyes bore into mine, searching desperately for an answer to the most important question I knew he needed to hear.
“If I did, I wouldn’t be here.” I shut my eyes tightly, ridding the tears away as I spoke. “All I ever did with him was kiss him, Jaxon. Nothing more.”
I opened my eyes and watched his anger wash away in a blink of an eye. Now he was stunned.
“What I feel for him doesn’t even skim the surface in comparison to you,” I continued. “You’ve always been it for me. Always. No one can hurt me like you do. No one can love me like you do. No one can handle my bitchiness like you do. But one day in and we’re already at each other’s throats.”
“That’s the way we are,” he replied, steadying his voice to a softness I’d yearned for. “We’re dysfunctional as fuck. We fight. We bicker. We hate. We love. That’s what we are and I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”
I felt his hand against my cheek and I opened my eyes to see the warmth in his. “You really didn’t…?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Really?”
“Really, Jaxon.”
He went quiet, processing the words in shock. “I thought you did.”
“No.”
“I was so fucking angry and hurt by it,” his voice broke, tinged with pain that made my heart break. “I really thought you did. The idea of you touching someone that put me in such a dark place… It killed me.” He shook his head and closed his eyes. “I spent so many nights trying to figure out how to get you back, but then I saw you with him at that birthday party, and you were smiling at him like he was your world. It was worse than all the beatings I’ve ever taken combined. I felt sick. I should have let him have you. I shouldn’t have told you to wait, but I’m selfish and I want what’s mine. And my heart is telling me you’re mine, no matter how much I try and convince it otherwise.”
I took his face into my hands and whispered, “I’m yours, and you’re mine.”
He leaned into me with closed eyes, pressing his forehead against mine. “You can’t take that back.”
“I never will.”
“There will no one other than me after this.”
“Never. I want no more of this back and forth shit, Jaxon. I just want us.”
I felt his nose brush over mine. “I want it, too, Sara. What you said, it changes everything. I’m so fucking relieved.”
He breathed hard against me for a few moments. The shock on his face slowly receded. He looked hopeful now, his eyes sparkling as they roamed my face.
“I’m sorry for being an asshole,” he whispered. “I swear to God, I’ll stop. I won’t ever react that way again.”
“It’s okay, Jaxon. It’s okay.”
We breathed each other’s air. Anticipation built as soon as the ugly feelings washed away into a darkness I was sure we would never revisit again. His lips brushed against mine, and it felt like a buzz of desire every time I tasted him, building and building until I couldn’t wait anymore.
I pressed my lips pressed more firmly against his mouth. The taste of him had been tattooed into my memories, but the physical experience was another thing entirely. I felt my body come alive, and the sadness ebbed away into nonexistence.
This is what I lived for. The things he did to me! They were worth enduring the dysfunctional moments; I’d crawl over grass and fire and knives and… and fucking anything just to have a taste of him.
I wrapped my arms around his neck, pressing him harder against me, and then… everything just happened. I hadn’t realized we were moving until my back hit the spine of a tree. He was all around me. His hands roamed everywhere; over my shoulders, down my arms, gripping tightly at my hips. He pushed his chest into me and I could feel the hard and fast beats of his heart drumming to the beat of mine.
Drenched in two seconds flat with need, this man was my trigger, and all we had done thus far was kiss and rub against each other.
“I want you so bad,” I whimpered against his lips. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t push deeper into his mouth. I just wanted every inch of him. “Please let me have you.”
His hands moved to my ass, still wet from Slob’s beer, and then he lifted me. I wrapped my legs reflexively around his hips as he moved away from my mouth and down my neck. He rubbed his pelvic into me and I gripped him harder, shutting my eyes in delirious need. I felt his hand grab at my breast and trail down my abdomen and to the buttons of my jeans.
“No one knows you like I do,” he whispered into my neck, releasing the buttons and pulling the zipper down. He brought his hand into my jeans and rubbed my clit like he’d never been away from it. “No one knows your spots like me.”
He kissed my mouth again and pulled away an inch, watching my face react to the pleasure he was undoing. I panted hard against him while his breaths remained at ease, circling my core in a slow rhythm before he pushed his long finger inside me.
I moaned shamelessly, rocking myself against his hand, seeking the peak.
“Did he touch you like this?” his voice, rough and tight, demanded an answer. “Tell me.”
“No.” My eyes rolled to the back of my head. No, we’d never taken it that far. I should have been concerned Jaxon was asking me this, but it felt okay in the moment. Like it was essential for him to know how much I’d reserved for him.
“You gonna kiss another man again?”
“No.”
“Make me believe it.”
I searched his eyes in the darkness, and what looked back at me was an ardent need in him that bordered primal. Continuing to rock against him, I breathlessly repeated, “I will never kiss another man again. I want you. Just you. I don’t want anyone else. Just you.”
When he pushed another finger inside of me, I nearly lost it right then and there. I tilted my head up, eyes open, taking in the web of leaves overhead, while my senses magnified with his every stroke. I felt his tongue up my neck, his small bites along my jaw-line as he worked me long and slow. I tightened my hold around his neck, begging him silently to give me my release.
The roughness pressed against my spine disappeared suddenly. Jaxon was walking backwards, still stroking me, still working me hard; my head spun, aching for him to go faster. He knew my triggers and he was purposely prolonging it.
The second he reached the steps, he tugged my shirt over my head and threw it on the ground. My bra went off next. He grunted in appreciation, burying his face into my breasts. I spasmed when he bit and sucked my nipples, swirling his tongue in between. Glorious jolts of pleasure flowed to the pit of my stomach. I tangled my hands into his hair and gripped him hard, lolling my head to the side as he left marks around my breasts.
“Well, I’m not.”
“And what if it gets back to the Jackals at some point?”
“We’re not going to be here when the Jackals eventually find out,” he snapped. His blue eyes regarded me coolly. Anything to do with the Jackals and he was pissed as hell.
“How do you know that for sure?”
“Because I know what I’m doing.”
“But what if they find out from the Sco–”
“They won’t find out!” he interrupted impatiently.
People looked over at us as they walked by. I glared at Jaxon, wanting desperately to rip that helmet off of his head and shove it someplace tight and dark.
“But what if they do?!” I pressed.
“Then I guess you have some explaining to do to your guy, huh?!”
My guy? Ugh. Ugh. Ugh!
“That was a low blow,” I icily said.
“I don’t care.”
“You should!”
He sighed, exasperated by me already. “Fine, Sara. Just put your damn helmet on before we cause a scene.”
I stared daggers – no, fuck that, machetes! – into his face before placing the helmet over my head. He climbed on the bike and I followed.
“Now make sure you lean with me–”
“You’ve made that clear already, I know–”
“Because this morning you weren’t doing it right–”
“I know, Jax–”
“And the last thing I want is an accident because you didn’t know how to –”
“I know how to ride on the back of a motorcycle!” I interrupted in frustration. “I’ve done it for months now. I know what to do.”
He went quiet. I could see through the visor his back stiffen. Ah, yes, more anger. He was probably mentally picturing me on the back of Remy’s bike now. Great. I reluctantly put my arms around him. It was like hugging a rock, but even rocks showed more affection than this guy.
God, we were dysfunctional.
Twenty One
Though it felt as though I was hugging a rigid corpse on our way back to the cabin, I melted into him, forgetting the mini-spat back in town. Once he stopped the bike, I stepped off and took my helmet off. Anger still rolling off of him, he took it and stuffed it away in the top box and went to make his way up the porch.
“Are you going to sleep with me tonight?” I asked, trying to break the ice.
All that alpha shit back at the bar about me being his woman had felt good. Reflecting on it all the way home, I wanted his words to echo his actions. We had to mend whatever was making him ice cold around me. Now.
“No,” he answered.
“Why?”
He paused on the first step and then turned around. “I’m struggling with you, Sara.”
Struggling? Heart tight in my chest, I whispered, “What have I done?”
I was counting on the light of the stars tonight; otherwise his face would have been completely concealed in the darkness. Branches danced and leaves swayed, but it was eerily silent as death around us.
“You and him.” The words were like venom out of his mouth.
I stilled, unable to meet his eye. “It’s not the way you think–”
“I saw the hesitation when I asked you to come with me. You didn’t even know what you wanted. You probably don’t right now.”
“Of course I do!”
“I don’t believe you,” he huffed. “Back at that house, you swore yourself to me–”
“You broke it off!”
“And for months I’ve had to listen in on them telling me how you’re with the one man that ruined me!” He took a few steps closer to me. “Did he tell you how he put me in jail?”
“Yes,” I answered.
His face ignited in surprise, and then full blown fury. “Was this before or after you fucked him?”
“I didn’t–”
“When exactly did you even find out?” Christ, he was losing it.
“Four days ago,” I calmly answered.
If I thought that might make him feel better, I was wrong. He still looked like a ticking time bomb, and what I would say next would surely set him off.
“He said he did it because I’d disappeared and he thought you had something to do with it. He regrets it and he apologized.”
He laughed bitterly and then nodded scornfully. “Is that right? He apologized? Well, isn’t that fucking fantastic? I’ll just forget the shit I did inside those walls because Remy, the fucking apologetic saint, regrets what he did! I’m sure that made you feel nice and good inside, right?”
“No.” I sighed and rubbed my eyes, exasperated by this already. “I saw you with that girl at the bar and I thought you’d moved on. At that point, Remy hadn’t pushed me into anything. You make him out to be a monster, and maybe he is, but I’ve seen other sides to him. He did bad things, I know. What he did was horrible and wrong and I don’t forgive him for it. He was obsessed with this idea of me being his everything–”
“He trapped you inside a fucking room for four weeks! He would have done it for longer, too. He followed you around your entire life! Obsessed doesn’t even skim the surface of what he really is. There’s no redeeming him, Sara. Stop being so delusional. Your love for him is making me sick.”
“And so what if I love him?” I retorted, throwing my arms up in the air. “I called you and begged for you to save me from them the second I got your message and you left me high and dry!”
Veins popping out he screamed, “You sold me out!”
“I didn’t! I had no choice but to tell him and by then I thought I was doing it to protect you! He’d already known it was you and he would have done anything to kill you. And yet you stand here in all your hate when I love a man who would go to the ends of the earth for me.”
He suddenly gripped me hard by the arm and shook me. “And what did I just do?”
I squirmed from his grip. “You’re hurting me. Let go.”
“Still, I want you. Even though I know the second I’m out of the picture, you’re fucking some guy.”
My eyes widened and my anger bubbled to the surface. “Don’t you dare talk to me about fucking people! How many were there before me? After me? How many, Jaxon?!”
“I get out of prison and you’re fucking some guy. I give myself to you again, and you’re fucking another guy! You don’t like it cold in there, do you? You gotta keep that pussy warm all the fucking time or else you’re–”
“Stop hurting me!” Tears fell from my eyes. It took everything in me not to slap him. I’d burned that bridge ages ago, but the twitch in my palm entertained the idea. “You know it wasn’t like that at all!”
“Do you love him more than me?” His angst-filled eyes bore into mine, searching desperately for an answer to the most important question I knew he needed to hear.
“If I did, I wouldn’t be here.” I shut my eyes tightly, ridding the tears away as I spoke. “All I ever did with him was kiss him, Jaxon. Nothing more.”
I opened my eyes and watched his anger wash away in a blink of an eye. Now he was stunned.
“What I feel for him doesn’t even skim the surface in comparison to you,” I continued. “You’ve always been it for me. Always. No one can hurt me like you do. No one can love me like you do. No one can handle my bitchiness like you do. But one day in and we’re already at each other’s throats.”
“That’s the way we are,” he replied, steadying his voice to a softness I’d yearned for. “We’re dysfunctional as fuck. We fight. We bicker. We hate. We love. That’s what we are and I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”
I felt his hand against my cheek and I opened my eyes to see the warmth in his. “You really didn’t…?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Really?”
“Really, Jaxon.”
He went quiet, processing the words in shock. “I thought you did.”
“No.”
“I was so fucking angry and hurt by it,” his voice broke, tinged with pain that made my heart break. “I really thought you did. The idea of you touching someone that put me in such a dark place… It killed me.” He shook his head and closed his eyes. “I spent so many nights trying to figure out how to get you back, but then I saw you with him at that birthday party, and you were smiling at him like he was your world. It was worse than all the beatings I’ve ever taken combined. I felt sick. I should have let him have you. I shouldn’t have told you to wait, but I’m selfish and I want what’s mine. And my heart is telling me you’re mine, no matter how much I try and convince it otherwise.”
I took his face into my hands and whispered, “I’m yours, and you’re mine.”
He leaned into me with closed eyes, pressing his forehead against mine. “You can’t take that back.”
“I never will.”
“There will no one other than me after this.”
“Never. I want no more of this back and forth shit, Jaxon. I just want us.”
I felt his nose brush over mine. “I want it, too, Sara. What you said, it changes everything. I’m so fucking relieved.”
He breathed hard against me for a few moments. The shock on his face slowly receded. He looked hopeful now, his eyes sparkling as they roamed my face.
“I’m sorry for being an asshole,” he whispered. “I swear to God, I’ll stop. I won’t ever react that way again.”
“It’s okay, Jaxon. It’s okay.”
We breathed each other’s air. Anticipation built as soon as the ugly feelings washed away into a darkness I was sure we would never revisit again. His lips brushed against mine, and it felt like a buzz of desire every time I tasted him, building and building until I couldn’t wait anymore.
I pressed my lips pressed more firmly against his mouth. The taste of him had been tattooed into my memories, but the physical experience was another thing entirely. I felt my body come alive, and the sadness ebbed away into nonexistence.
This is what I lived for. The things he did to me! They were worth enduring the dysfunctional moments; I’d crawl over grass and fire and knives and… and fucking anything just to have a taste of him.
I wrapped my arms around his neck, pressing him harder against me, and then… everything just happened. I hadn’t realized we were moving until my back hit the spine of a tree. He was all around me. His hands roamed everywhere; over my shoulders, down my arms, gripping tightly at my hips. He pushed his chest into me and I could feel the hard and fast beats of his heart drumming to the beat of mine.
Drenched in two seconds flat with need, this man was my trigger, and all we had done thus far was kiss and rub against each other.
“I want you so bad,” I whimpered against his lips. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t push deeper into his mouth. I just wanted every inch of him. “Please let me have you.”
His hands moved to my ass, still wet from Slob’s beer, and then he lifted me. I wrapped my legs reflexively around his hips as he moved away from my mouth and down my neck. He rubbed his pelvic into me and I gripped him harder, shutting my eyes in delirious need. I felt his hand grab at my breast and trail down my abdomen and to the buttons of my jeans.
“No one knows you like I do,” he whispered into my neck, releasing the buttons and pulling the zipper down. He brought his hand into my jeans and rubbed my clit like he’d never been away from it. “No one knows your spots like me.”
He kissed my mouth again and pulled away an inch, watching my face react to the pleasure he was undoing. I panted hard against him while his breaths remained at ease, circling my core in a slow rhythm before he pushed his long finger inside me.
I moaned shamelessly, rocking myself against his hand, seeking the peak.
“Did he touch you like this?” his voice, rough and tight, demanded an answer. “Tell me.”
“No.” My eyes rolled to the back of my head. No, we’d never taken it that far. I should have been concerned Jaxon was asking me this, but it felt okay in the moment. Like it was essential for him to know how much I’d reserved for him.
“You gonna kiss another man again?”
“No.”
“Make me believe it.”
I searched his eyes in the darkness, and what looked back at me was an ardent need in him that bordered primal. Continuing to rock against him, I breathlessly repeated, “I will never kiss another man again. I want you. Just you. I don’t want anyone else. Just you.”
When he pushed another finger inside of me, I nearly lost it right then and there. I tilted my head up, eyes open, taking in the web of leaves overhead, while my senses magnified with his every stroke. I felt his tongue up my neck, his small bites along my jaw-line as he worked me long and slow. I tightened my hold around his neck, begging him silently to give me my release.
The roughness pressed against my spine disappeared suddenly. Jaxon was walking backwards, still stroking me, still working me hard; my head spun, aching for him to go faster. He knew my triggers and he was purposely prolonging it.
The second he reached the steps, he tugged my shirt over my head and threw it on the ground. My bra went off next. He grunted in appreciation, burying his face into my breasts. I spasmed when he bit and sucked my nipples, swirling his tongue in between. Glorious jolts of pleasure flowed to the pit of my stomach. I tangled my hands into his hair and gripped him hard, lolling my head to the side as he left marks around my breasts.
