Jax

by Cristin Harber

  Hawke all but growled at Johnny, and they made their way to a private balcony outside. Jared tilted his head, and Jax stood up, pushing away from the table. They both moved to the corner of the private dining room.

  From their vantage point, they could see that Hernán had a smug look on his face as he popped olives in his mouth and looked at complete ease. The man next to him fiddled with the silverware and barely dared to look at the cartel king. Hawke and Johnny were visibly in a heated discussion, and Jax only shook his head. Both he and Jared knew better than to say anything out loud because there was no telling how the room was wired.

  "Fuck this shit." Jared cracked his knuckles and stormed toward the balcony door.

  Jax should have let him head out there alone, but he was asshole enough to not want to miss the fireworks, and if Jared was going to tell Johnny to man up, he wanted to see it.

  "You mind telling me what you two are bitching about out here?"

  Hawke's face said it all, but he didn't utter one word.

  "Jesus fucking Christ," Jax muttered.

  "Start by telling me what the problem is. Simple. Just spit it out. Johnny?" Jared's ice-cold glare landed on the man causing their headache. "You've got something to say?"

  "Yeah. As a matter of fact, I do."

  Hawke grumbled, shaking his head, and he turned around, pacing a loop before he returned. "This is not about making money. This was a club vote. This is about shutting it down. What part of this do you not understand?"

  "Money talks. We should ask for more of a percentage instead of breaking down the deal. We ask for more money, and everything is justified. We bring it back to the club, and they don't want more money, then we can farm it out. Or we do what we're doing, and we make a better cut. I don't see what the problem is."

  "Unbelievable." Jax couldn't contain his amazement. "Is it stupidity or greed?"

  Johnny took an aggressive step forward, fists bunching. "Excuse me?"

  "Jax is right. What'd she say to you?" Jared asked. "What percentage did she whisper in your ear while she was feeding you corn cakes like she was planning to leave her husband to do nothing but suck your cock?"

  "You don't know shit."

  "What I do know is you're fucking coked out and"—Jared's eyes narrowed—"selfish as fuck. That's not stupidity. That's greed."

  Johnny pulled his right arm back, but before he could make a stupid life-or-death decision, Hawke caught his forearm and whipped him around. "You stupid, dumbass motherfucker. Do you have your face in that candy again?" Hawke grabbed Johnny by his leather cut and pulled him close, studying his face as if he could do a drug test with a hard stare. Coming up with his own determination, Hawke pushed him away, cursing out his VP.

  Boss Man's disappointment registered as a scowl. "You work this out. I'm going back in."

  Jax and Jared moved back inside the restaurant, and it would be a lesson in diplomatic relations. Jax would be interested in watching to see how Boss Man would handle this. Maybe diplomacy was more interesting than Jax had given the subject credit for.

  Jared paced as he cracked his knuckles. "I see what you did there."

  Hernán didn't say anything. He popped an olive into his mouth and smirked.

  "We're going to take a break today. I will contact you when we can sit down again. Sound good?"

  "Excellent. I assume that business will continue as normal in the meantime?"

  Jax was almost impressed at the cartel leader's play. No, he took that back. He was impressed. Hernán had done his research and knew his adversary. He'd gone on the offensive and spiked the play, and it had worked. Hernán's goal had to preserve the production and distribution with the best possible apparatus, and he still had that.

  Today was a good day for the Suarez cartel and, technically, a good one for Titan. Jared and Jax were neutral negotiators. They couldn't make Mayhem behave. All he and Jared could do was flag the problem, but they weren't expected to predict the future. In a way, they had made a friend in a dangerous place, which was always handy.

  Hawke and Johnny came in from the balcony, and Mayhem's president moved to the cartel king. Hawke extended his hand to Hernán. "I'd like to table this. We're still interested in talking about other distribution options, but for now, status quo remains in effect."

  Hernán shook Hawke's hand, and Jax was already walking toward the exit. They would get a phone call when they needed to be brought back in, but he wanted no part in this anymore.

  As Jax stalked out of the private dining room, he passed by an alcove where Esmeralda was propped against the wall, shining. Her job as Hernán's number two had been executed flawlessly.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The long day in the unknown city had been never-ending, and Jax walked along the busy street in the humid night. He tossed back a beer with Jared and Winters but didn't feel the crowd at his hotel bar.

  Maybe the main strip was the problem, so Jax turned off at the corner and took a deep breath as the crowd thinned. Nightlife still existed. Restaurants and bars dotted the blocks as he powered his way through the late night, but he didn't have to deal with work friends or tourists on vacation.

  A line of motorcycles parked in front of a no-name bar piqued his interest, and Jax slowed long enough to decide that heading inside was a bad mistake he wanted to make.

  Life was easier when he had an enemy to focus on, and whether that was some random motorcycle gang to get in trouble with or sharing a few words with Johnny, Jax was in the mood.

  He pushed through the worn wooden door into the neon-lit smoky room and saw more Mayhem than he'd expected. The men wore leather cuts in case anyone needed a primer in who they were, but it was the lone female holding court in the middle of the bar that made Jax slow his angry steps.

  More shocking than the amount of Mayhem members, he simply hadn't expected Seven to be in Colombia. She was a grown woman, and if she wanted to travel with her friends and get into MC business, that wasn't his problem. But there she was, a beauty in the sea of ugly, and even if she had been one of a thousand women dressed like his fantasy, he still would have been drawn to the sweetness that danced in her eyes.

  Jax walked straight to her, slowing only to give Hawke the respect of a handshake.

  Seven had her back pressed against the bar, her elbows leaning on the bartop. She turned her head as he walked up, and the two Mayhem members she was talking to took a walk.

  Jax planted in front of her so there was no question who she should be looking at. "Seven."

  "Aren't you supposed to be with the rest of the stick-in-the-mud soldiers? Don't you guys debrief or something into the middle of the night and then get shut-eye?"

  Tonight she was a tough girl. And angry at that… Titan hadn't come through. Mayhem had screwed up, and Jax couldn't tell if her smirk and tone were because she had a general distrust of the world or only of him. Did she blame him because the meeting had gone so bad so quickly? For whatever reason, she was in a sour mood, similar to him. "I'm not a soldier, sweetheart. I'm a SEAL."

  Seven formed her lips into an overexaggerated O then followed it with an accompanying "Oh."

  He chuckled, tossing his head back, and turned, leaning against the bar like she did.

  Acting annoyed, Seven inched away. "What's so funny?"

  "That's not the normal reaction," he said.

  "Of course not." She tilted her head and erased the inches she'd put between them without leaving the too-cool-for-school lounge against the bar. "Pray tell, hot shot. What's the normal reaction?"

  There were a million things he could tell her about what women did when he said he was a Navy SEAL. But Seven didn't do any of those things. She was impossible to predict, and even when he thought he knew something about her, he was far off base.

  Her elbow touched his. The only thing Jax knew about normal reactions was his to her, and he pushed from the bar, wrapping around her chest and caging Seven to the bar with his forearms.

  "Normally,"
Jax said quietly, tilting his lips close to her ear. "If I say that I'm a SEAL, it sets off a chain reaction that can't be seen."

  He pulled back enough to hold her eyes, and Seven didn't flinch. "Tell me."

  "The reactions I can't see?" Jax eased closer, dropping his voice low. "Fantasies. Wet panties. Needy clits. Tightening, begging pussies." He raked his gaze from her head to her tits as slowly as he could possibly manage, lingering over the outline of her nipples in her T-shirt. "But you wouldn't know anything about that, would you?"

  "Not a thing," she whispered.

  His chin ducked to her ear, brushing against her skin as the stubble from his chin connected with her neck. "Liar."

  She smelled like sweet perfume and addictive flowers, as though she had spent her time shopping in Colombia's flower markets today rather than doing anything with the drug cartel.

  A hand clamped down on Jax's shoulder, and he swung around, fist balled, only stopping when Seven snapped at the other man's name. Skull.

  "This guy bothering you?" Skull had crossbones stitched on his leather cut where others had a name, and he snarled as though still looking for a fight.

  Seven blew him off. "You need to chill out."

  Skull. The names this group had… Jax worked hard not to laugh.

  Skull twisted toward Jax. "What's your problem?"

  "No problem," Seven reiterated. "He's a friend."

  "Doesn't seem like much of a friend," Skull said.

  Jax was one drunk biker away from having enough with Mayhem. "Neither do you, jackass. But you don't see me running my mouth."

  "Both of you, stop," Seven ordered, pushing her way in between them. "Don't be stupid."

  Skull looked down at Seven as though she needed to reaffirm that Jax wasn't bothering her. "You sure?"

  "I'm positive," Seven swore and made a cross over her heart. "Don't worry about him. He's like the annoying little brother that just needs attention. Good or bad, I handle Jax how I handle my kids when they misbehave. Similar to how I'm about to handle you. Read me?"

  Did Seven just say 'my kids'? He opened his mouth but thought better of it.

  Skull sneered but listened like Seven told him to. "You change your opinion on this one, you find me."

  But Jax was far past the alpha standoff with the dickhead. Seven had kids? And she said he needed attention? Nope. He didn't want attention; he just wanted her.

  His eyes narrowed, wondering what else he'd missed about her. Not knowing if her nips were pierces was one thing, but this was like being blindsided. How did somebody have children and a friend not know? …Because they weren't really friends.

  Jax ran a hand over his face. "I gotta go. See you."

  Too much spun in his mind, and Skull grumbled behind his back that he shouldn't have walked into a Mayhem bar to start.

  "Right." Jax grabbed an abandoned beer bottle and tossed it over his shoulder, listening to it shatter on the ground as he kept walking. It didn't make him feel any better.

  Seven's cold laugh carried through the biker crowd. "Bad attention for the win."

  Yeah, said the woman who needed just as much attention as he did with her pink hair and piercings.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Fifteen minutes of Hawke and Tex giving Seven hell was about fifteen more minutes than Seven could handle. At least Skull had wandered off to be with his group of drunks.

  She popped another piece of fried sweet dough into her mouth. She had no idea what it was, but once she started, she couldn't stop eating it. "You both realize that you're not my keeper, right?"

  "Yeah, but then what fun would we have?" Hawke asked and bumped fists with Tex like they were twelve and not the leaders of Mayhem.

  "If I was interested in Jax, I don't need your thumbs up."

  "You're not." Tex snorted then guzzled down the rest of his beer. "Piss poor match."

  Hawke nodded. "They go together like bikes and oil slicks."

  "Unfinished chrome and a week in the rain."

  "You guys are dicks." Seven pointed her finger at Hawke then Tex. "And not dicks in the cool 'I want to hang out with you and grab a beer' kind of way. The kind where you're giving me a headache and I want to get out of here."

  "Fine, go, get outta here. You're a buzzkill, anyway."

  If Seven hadn't thought that Hawke would get some satisfaction out of her tossing the bird at him, she would have thrown up both middle fingers. But that would've only made him beam. "I'm calling the night. Try not to bring home anything that will give you scabies."

  She turned on her heel and left to the sound of the two drunkards ribbing, their poor match comparisons getting worse and worse.

  The last thing Seven wanted to do was go to her hotel room, sit there, and think about Jax and his attitude problem and all the ways he had nailed how she might react to him. It had nothing to do with the fact that he was a Navy SEAL and everything to do with him walking up to her in a bar full of bikers and giving no fucks as he wrapped his arms around her and make her melt.

  He had to have known what a dominant act like that would do to her inside, and she hated it. Hated him? Yes, hated him for reading her so well.

  The night was unexpectedly cold and quiet. She slowed in front of a swank hotel. Their clientele would cater to anyone but Mayhem and military rogues, and there wasn't a motorcycle in sight. Only a bellman standing outside even at the late hour and a Mercedes awaiting valet service. She mentally willed there to be a menu of drinks inside in which somebody had put considerable thought into. Even if that wasn't the case, this wasn't the kind of place where anyone could toss a beer bottle and let it shatter without security being called.

  Seven took a deep breath that was straight out of a meditation chant and changed her path from wherever she was going to straight inside that hotel.

  "Good evening, Miss." The bellman graciously opened the door. "Can I help you?"

  What was the matter with her life when she smiled merely at manners. "Could you point me to the bar?"

  He smiled and nodded with a sweeping directional. "Straight past the registration desk and then make a right. You'll see a grand chandelier before you walk in."

  Just what she needed and didn't know—a chandelier. A grand one, at that. "Thank you very much."

  "My pleasure."

  She glided through the lobby, following his directions. At the sight of the grand chandelier, Seven paused. He wasn't joking. It was maybe the size of an SUV, with glittering, gorgeous crystals that shimmered in pinks and ambers and purples. They stole her breath and instantly relaxed her.

  This was precisely how she wanted to end her night, someplace where no one knew who she was and everything seemed soft and beautiful.

  Swank music played in the background, a refreshing difference from the dive bar she had been in. Hell, it was a fresh difference from the dive bars she was used to when she spent the night out with Mayhem. Candelabras glittered, and the plush barstools and well-cared-for bartop might have been as old as the one she'd just left, but there was a difference in how the place was maintained. This was where she needed to be to get away from all of that.

  The bartender walked over and handed her a menu on a thick cardboard printout that had today's date. It was nothing like she was used to and everything that she was searching for, at least tonight. The drinks had names, and her goal of a liquor concoction that was more of a masterpiece than a drunken old standby awaited her.

  "What do you suggest?"

  Two people next to her stood up, pulling her attention from the bartender patiently awaiting her order, and there was Jax. He looked over at the same time but didn't hide his dismay, tossing back his head and laughing.

  "Seriously," she muttered and went back to her drink order. "What do you suggest?"

  "Smoky Aguardiente."

  "What's that?"

  "Aguardiente, very Colombian. Anise-flavored, but you might call it firewater, and it's mixed with our house specialty of smoked teas and spices."r />
  "Fancy."

  "Is that a yes?"

  "Yes." Mostly because Seven refused to look over and needed a distraction. She could tell Jax's attention hadn't left her as the gaping hole of barstools between them remained open.

  The bartender made her drink and arrived with the tall, skinny glass, waiting for her to try a sip. "Let me know what you think about the smoked teas."

  It would take far more than smoked tea analysis to ignore Jax. She held the well-made concoction to her lips and took a small sip. It was everything she had been looking for and completely unfamiliar. "This is amazing."

  The bartender tossed a clean rag over his shoulder. "Thrilled you love it."

  Seven didn't have to look at Jax to feel him mocking their conversation silently.

  They bantered for another few minutes, and the bartender left. Seven sipped her drink and acted far more preoccupied than she was.

  "Hey, you over there." Jax's rough voice raked over her better than any specialty drink could. "I thought I was bad attention for the win."

  She fought the urge to ignore him and twisted on her barstool, taking great lengths to cross her legs. "Did you think that I came here looking for you?" Seven arched her pierced brow with as much attitude as she could muster. "Ha."

  "Didn't you?"

  "Not a chance. I came here to hide."

  Jax smirked as though he didn't buy that, and it got under her skin.

  "If you don't believe me, I'm blissfully unconcerned." She used her hair as a curtain to block his handsome face then gracefully scooted a barstool farther away and slid her drink over.

  Cocky jerk. Did Jax think she was going to troll the streets of a strange country, hoping to run into him? She took another sip, thankful when a small group of businessmen took the empty seats between her and Jax.

  The bartender approached with a shot in hand, bypassing the new men, and she glanced up, obviously not finished with her drink. "I didn't order that."