Even though she’d trained in all forms of martial arts over the years, thanks to her absentee father’s monthly stipend, taking down the six-four giant with a body of iron would be hard for her. If he pinned her, would she even be able to get to her gun? Would she even want to? Her thoughts chased themselves around and around until he placed two massive palms on either side of her body, his cool breath smelling slightly like liquor.
Despite her growing apprehension, her body continued to groan in need. She hadn’t been with a lover since Nathan. She needed release, and Jax seemed to want to give it to her. Her nana’s voice echoed through her mind. Don’t give it all away on the first date, Cha-cha.
Ivory’s breath came rapidly. He leaned in close, and his breath fanned her ear, which sent signals of pleasure racing to her brain. She jerked at the torture of him so close, the heat invading her clothes despite the cool night.
“What do you want from me?”
Jax nipped at her lobe. “I think you know want what I want.”
“Doesn’t mean I’m going to give it to you,” Ivory shot back.
Jax lowered a hand to her waist and pulled her against the hard wall of his body. A very specific bulge burrowed against her stomach. Her knees turned to jellyfish. His wide palm splayed against her back, then slid under her jacket to the skin beneath. The heat seared her flesh, and to her horror, she whimpered.
“I’m not going to take you,” he murmured.
He licked the bundle of nerves just behind her earlobe, and Ivory sank her nails into his shirt, astonished to feel the fire and granite of his chest, the ridges and valleys of his pectoral muscles. It had been way too long without sex, and now she found herself ready to give herself over to a stranger, on the docks no less.
“At least, not tonight,” he rumbled seconds before he licked a scorching path up her neck, pressed her harder against him.
Ivory wrapped her arms around his back, tired of the game he taunted her with. “I don’t even know you,” she panted.
“Baby, you’re going to know me, real well. That’s a promise.”
And then he lowered his mouth to hers, then picked her up and crushed her against him. He branded herby sweeping his tongue into her mouth and stealing the breath from her body. The aphrodisiac of alcohol and man went straight to her head, and she lost herself in the hot cavern of his mouth, the nip of his teeth. The world tilted, swayed, and righted itself. His tongue pushed her, played, challenged her to a duel. She responded, sighing as he sucked her bottom lip between his teeth.
“I’ve wanted to do that since I saw you on my doorstep,” he groaned. His free hand followed the curve of her hip, unbuttoned her slacks while the other crept up her shirt to cup one tit. Cool air hit her stomach. She shivered. In the back of her mind, her nana and morals hammered at her actions—letting a man grope her in public—but the ache in her vagina and his tongue wouldn’t let her change her mind. She felt cream soak her thong.
When his hand slid down past her waistband and delved inside her pants, she bit down on the nearest thing to her mouth—his bicep. He jerked against her. His fingers dipped below the waistband of her panties and slid into the moist curls through the drenched slit. She sucked in a cool breath through her clenched teeth. Seeking deeper penetration, Ivory ground against his hand. She felt the roughness of his fingers as they stroked over re-awakened nerves. He toyed with her clit, like a cat with a mouse. When a small cry passed her lips, she closed her eyes in horror. She sold her soul to the devil for a touch, and his name was Jax Morgan.
* * * *
Jax never intended to finger Ivory Black on the dock behind Magruder’s, but the coolness she exuded pissed him off. Beneath that thin veneer of control lurked living flame, and he wanted to touch it. To wipe out the faces in his mind, the cold around his heart. Too many lives he’d taken, never knowing, always wondering if the men he’d killed truly were the enemy, or if he was.
When his fingers slid through the cream of her pussy and caught the little bundle of nerves at her core, then flicked her clit with his thumb, he felt warmth for the first time since his parents’ murders. He sank his finger into her tight, wet channel, and she whimpered. He sucked on the sound with his mouth, claimed her lips, and thieved the sweet taste of Irish coffee off her tongue.
She was so short he had to stoop to kiss her, but Jax couldn’t imagine a more perfect position, body or taste. She felt like heaven, her curves giving and soft yet firm and supple. Her skin felt like silk and the muscles milking his index finger made his cock twitch in time with her body. He had intended to shake her up. He never should have let it get this far.
Jax was half tempted to take her where they stood, his need was so great, but something about Ivory Black held him back. His own sense of self-preservation kicked in, warning him this woman could change everything if he weren’t careful. No one penetrated the control he held over himself or his emotions, wants, and desires. The fact he would do such a thing while the smell of dead fish surrounded them attested to the lack of control he felt around this woman. And he’d only known her for seven hours.
He broke away, pulled his fingers from her body, and buttoned her slacks. He turned, adjusting himself to ease the fire in his balls. He’d lost his ever-lovin’ mind. He looked back at her. The light was dim out here, but her pale cheeks were flushed red, her blue eyes glassy. Her heart beat through her white shirt. Jax cursed himself. “I’m sorry.”
Ivory hugged her jacket tighter around her. “Don’t be. I could have stopped you.”
Jax stared out at the ocean pounding against the pillars of the dock. “No. You couldn’t have.”
He started walking back to his truck. He heard her small feet struggle to maintain pace with his ground-eating strides.
“Wait, just a damn minute,” she said.
When Jax reached his truck, he hopped inside, and she stopped him from shutting the door with a palm against the door frame. Jax sneered at her feeble attempt, but she’d placed her other hand so if he slammed the door, it would break her fingers. Damn woman. “What?”
Anger lived in his veins, fed off his soul. The faces of kills taunted him, the pleas of children as their father fell to his death. He shut his eyes, and sweat coated his brow. He clamped down on the intrusion, searched for the steel resolve and usually dormant conscience.
“What?” She asked. “You tell me what the hell that was?”
Jax turned the ignition. SlipKnot blared through the stereo speakers. She winced, and he put the truck in gear. “That was being stuck in the jungle for the last year, without a warm body in my bed at night.”
A red flush climbed her cheeks. Jax knew it wasn’t from lust or pleasure. Anger made her blue eyes glow. “You’re a piece of work, Captain.”
Jax smiled at her, a grimace followed. She made him remember why he killed for a living. Why he soldiered. Why he gave up his soul. Hope shone in her eyes earlier when she told him about the child, about Ashley. She made him remember the real reason he stayed in the services, working in black ops. He killed because he had to—if the children of America were to have a future. And if he kept on killing, kept on sniping, running missions and taking out the bad guys, his conscience had to go, which meant the woman standing before him had to go. It was a rare day, indeed, when someone other than his team could make him feel anything other than cold fury. Ivory Black possessed that something.
“I’ll be in town for a month, Miss Black.”
She stepped back from the truck, planting her hands on her hips. “I think it’s safe for you to call me Ivory, Jax,” she sneered. “And I’ll certainly be seeing you, asshole.”
Before Jax closed his door, he took one last look at the minx standing before him, her black hair caught up in the breeze like a dark halo over her head.
“Looking forward to it, Ivory.”
She slammed the door closed. Jax backed out of the parking lot, abnd the tires squealed as he drove away. He chomped metal, ran from the faces in
his head, the number of hits yet to make and the woman who made his blood boil.
* * * *
Ivory was tempted to slam the front door of the house she shared with her nananana but knew her grandmother probably was asleep already. Instead, she tiptoed inside, slipped her shoes off, and avoided the creaky stairs as she made her way into her bedroom.
Shame and heat crawled up her body, her folds still smoldering from his sensual seduction, which was abruptly cut off. She craved release now more than ever and that made the embarrassment all the worse. She’d practically begged him to continue, nearly given herself up to him. Without any sort of protection, without knowing the man’s middle name, for goodness sakes!
How could she be so demented? She was twenty-five years old, a responsible woman, a solid social worker, and she kept her nose clean with the law. One gun-toting, tattooed bad boy walks into her life, and she melts like a snow cone on hot day. She couldn’t even blame it on alcohol considering she never even finished her drink.
And in public, she raged at herself.
When she looked at her reflection in the upright cheval mirror in her bedroom, she didn’t recognize the woman who stared back at her. Flushed cheeks, swollen lips, and her hair mussed. She looked like a wanton whore. A thrill shot up through her core when she thought about the way his fingers massaged her clit, then filled her. She undressed and turned the shower on. God, how she wanted his hands on her again, his lips questing, seeking. She could imagine how it would feel to move beneath him, have him pound into her. With the pulse of blood against her clit, Ivory sank her own fingers into her core and worked her body as she sought the relief she needed. Only, it never came. She needed Jax to do it for her.
Ivory knew the signs of addiction, and with a little taste of Jax Morgan, she feared she’d become an addict. She showered, changed into her pajamas, and climbed into bed, but she didn’t sleep, remembered the way he possessed her, the way he felt against her.
She groaned. She never got involved with anyone from work, and now she felt like she’d been hit over the head by lust, and her body demanded relief. She remembered the way his eyes became darker, the horror she glimpsed there. What did he fear? What had he seen to make shadows so ominous cross his glassy eyes, make him pull away so quickly?
Like one of her lost children, Ivory knew the man hid from the world, kept his pain locked deep inside where the light of day never touched, in the darkest corner of his soul. She feared for him as much as she did for Ashley. The poison infiltrating his spirit would soon blacken his heart. Ivory knew there was no coming back from that place. Once he slipped, he’d never escape the shadows.
When she finally gave into sleep, she slept like the dead. When her alarm went off at six, she stumbled out of the bed, her pajamas twisted around her waist. She shoved her arms into her robe, the memory of the night before searing a path across her mind. Something so out of character for her warranted further investigation.
She smelled fresh coffee, even from the second floor, and followed her nose to the kitchen where her nananana sat, reading the paper. The same blue eyes as Ivory’s peered at her over the edge of the Boston Herald. “Well, well. Late night, Cha-Cha?”
Ivory grinned at her nananana’s nickname for her. When she’d been a little girl, the character from Grease, Cha-Cha, had been her favorite. Ever since, Nana called her Cha-Cha. Ivory poured a cup of coffee, black—the way she liked it—and settled at the small kitchen table. A plate of toast already buttered sat before her. Her stomach growled as she picked up a piece.
“New case. Baby girl, at Heron House. Only living relative is a bullheaded soldier who is only here for a month.”
Nana stared at her, and Ivory held in a giggle at the sight of her grandmother’s pink curlers smattered across her head. The Irish in her came from her mother and her nananana. The Greek in her came from her absentee father. Nana’s gray eyebrows shot up. “I don’t think so. You were with a man last night.”
Ivory chewed on the toast and washed it down with scalding coffee. “I just said I was.”
Nana smiled, her false teeth not in yet, and Ivory couldn’t help but compare her nananana to Ashley. Nana sipped her “white” coffee. She put so much cream in the stuff that it didn’t even taste like coffee.
“No. I mean, you were with a man. Do I know him?”
Ivory tossed piece of toast at her nana, and the woman caught it, her arthritic hands still useful. “I wasn’t with a man, Nana. I was with Jax Morgan, the baby’s uncle.”
Nana narrowed her blue eyes at Ivory. “This Jax is a good kisser then, huh?”
Ivory blushed, hid behind her coffee mug. “Nana!”
Her grandmother chuckled. “I know that look, child. You’ve got bitten by the lust bug.”
“Nana.”
Ivory scampered out of the kitchen, her nana’s chuckle following her all the way up the stairs. She rushed around, tried to drink her coffee and put on her work shirt at the same time, buttoned her jeans for casual Friday, and pulled her hair up into a clip. She studied her bag of makeup, thought about putting on the whole deal, but instead, she just swiped two coats of mascara on. It was the one thing she could not go without. She jetted out the door before her nananana could ask her any more questions about her encounter with Jax.
When Ivory arrived at her office to report in for the day, she informed Claire of Jax’s resistance but left out the part about their spicy encounter on the docks. She headed over to Heron House to see Jenny and Ashley and when she arrived, a very familiar black Dodge sat in one of the three parking spots. Ivory parked her car, contemplated just turning around, but decided to face Jax Morgan with head held high.
In the house, the hour of the day meant the majority of the children were either in school or taking naps. She stepped lightly into the house and careful to shut the door behind her slowly. She unwound the scarf around her neck and took off her gloves. Jenny was digging out the decorations for Halloween and smiled when she saw Ivory. Jenny stood knee deep in ghosts, plastic pumpkins, and skeletons.
“You should get a load of the hunk in the nursery,” Jenny whispered.
Ivory’s smile felt cheap and plastic, so she discarded it. “I’ve already got a load of him,” she said dryly. “So, he’s still back there?’
Jenny nodded, bopping along to the “Monster Mash” as she worked. Ivory followed the familiar hallway, the majority of the doors closed, but when she reached the nursery, she hesitated. On the other side stood the enigma named Jax. Ivory took a deep breath for extra fortification. She didn’t have any alcohol to blame this time if she did something stupid, like kiss him.
She pushed on the door. It creaked, announcing her presence. Jax swung around, his green eyes pinning her to the spot where she stood. Ivory’s mouth watered at the sight of his muscled chest snuggled by a cotton sweater and the oh-so-sexy jeans he wore. The man didn’t seem to care how he looked, and that made him all the more enticing, right down to his shit-kicker boots.
Ivory swallowed past the hesitation in her throat. “So, you’ve met Ashley.”
He looked back down at the baby. “She’s beautiful. Looks just like my sister.”
Ivory stepped into the room and up to the crib within a hair’s breadth of him. His scent wrapped her in a sensual cocoon of wanton desire and comfort. Safety. She watched as he leaned down and placed a hand over the sleeping baby’s stomach before he turned to go.
Ivory backed out, following him. Jax didn’t say good-bye to Jenny. Ivory scrambled to keep up with him. She waved at Jenny on her way past, but didn’t hesitate. She needed to talk to Jax whether he liked it or not, and about more than one thing.
Outside, she realized she’d forgotten her scarf and gloves indoors and regretted it, but Jax was already climbing into his monster truck. Ivory jogged over to him, careful to avoid any icy patches on the ground, her heels not allowing for any misstep.
“We need to talk,” she called out, just as he shut the door.
Jax rolled down his window and leaned his head out. The sun caught the natural blond highlights in his hair. “Get in.”
Ivory wanted to thumb her nose at his tone, but then again, the man probably grew used to ordering people around being a team leader and all that. She climbed into the high truck, her foot slipping on the door runner. Jax reached a hand out, took her by her bicep, and pulled her in. She found herself facedown in his lap.
With her cheeks on fire, she straightened, glaring at him. No expression gilded his face, and Ivory wondered if anything set the man off. “We need to talk,” she repeated.
Jax put the truck in drive before she even had the passenger door closed. “And I need to eat. So, you can talk on the way back to my place.”
Ivory's Addiction Page 3