When she pulled into the driveway, several police cruisers lined the narrow road, blocking off traffic in both directions. Ivory pulled out her badge and saw Claire in sweats and running shoes, her hair matted to her head. She jogged over, the slight bounce of her tummy warning her to take it slow.
“Hey, what’s going on?” she asked.
Claire pulled her aside. “Did you get out here today?”
Ivory shook her head no. “I was going to come out tomorrow. Why?”
Claire paused, stretched her leg. “Murder-suicide.”
The repercussions of that statement sucker punched her in the gut. She doubled over, gasped for air. “How many?”
“Five altogether.”
Tears streamed down her face as vomit spewed from her mouth. She’d ditched work early to go to Jax’s place. “How long ago?”
“Don’t know yet. A while.”
Ivory wiped her mouth and stared at the red lights as they flashed across the two-story, white house. “Any alive?”
Claire sighed. “A little girl. She hid in a crawl space beneath the floorboards.”
When the adrenaline subsided and the shock of the news wore off, Ivory’s hands shook, and her teeth chattered. Sweat poured down her face. “Think I would have noticed if I’d come out here today?”
“Chances are they were already dead.” Claire drew a cigarette from her pants and lit up. Ivory backed away from the curling smoke. “Neighbors weren’t home, and when they did notice something unusual, it was because the little girl had wandered over to their place.”
Ivory sent a silent prayer of thanks to heaven she didn’t find the bodies of those children. She watched as streams of cops and forensics flowed out the door, their eyes red and puffy or simply drawn and empty. How could humanity be so cruel? “Where is she? The girl, I mean.”
Claire nodded toward an ambulance. “They’re going to check her out and then release her to you. Mind driving her over to Heron House? I’ve already checked with Jenny.”
Ivory headed in the direction of the child when Nathan caught up with her. “Ivory.”
She stopped, stumbled in a crater and went down hard on a slab of ice beneath fresh snow. “Damn,” she mumbled. Nathan rushed to her side.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. Are you hurt?”
“Only my ass,” she said and held out a hand for him to pick her up. “Thanks.”
“Claire give you the details?”
“No, and I don’t want to know. I’m going to take the girl to Heron House and turn in. This is not my case, and I, personally, am thankful for it. I didn’t know those kids.”
Nathan hung his head. “You were supposed to come out here today, though, right?”
She stopped dead in her tracks at Nathan’s accusatory tone. “What are you insinuating, Nathan?”
He paced closer to her, his eyes blue fire in the white wash of headlights. “I know you left early to go see Jax. If you had been doing your job, you might have stopped this.”
Ivory didn’t relish hitting someone. She’d only taken martial arts as a form of self-defense, just as she carried a weapon. She knew how to shoot it, but never fired on a person. So, when she felt her fist connect with Nathan’s jaw, it stunned her. She felt heat and shards of glass radiate up her forearm. She dropped her hand and shook it, but the pain only increased.
“What’d you do that for?” Nathan growled.
“You deserve it.”
He rubbed his jaw. “That’s the second time this week I’ve been punched,” he groused. “I could have you drawn up on charges.”
“Then do it, Nathan. I will gladly spend a night in jail for the chance I just took,” she hurled over her shoulder as she continued on her way. To her dismay, he once again pursued her. “Didn’t you just learn anything? I’m royally pissed at you.”
Nathan grabbed her arm, and Ivory felt her boots skate again. He pulled her against him, and Ivory’s breath rushed out at the impact of his unforgiving chest against her tender abdomen. “I know you’re pissed at me, but you took a leave of absence today that could have derailed the outcome of this incident if you’d just gone.”
Ivory narrowed her eyes on him, his stubborn jaw still red from her fist, and his aristocratic nose. “Oh, get over it. You were screwing someone before we even decided to temporarily end things until I figured out how Jax fits into my life.”
“You never told me you were pregnant.”
Ivory flipped her hair over her shoulder in annoyance and turned on her heel. “Call me when you grow up, Nathan.”
* * * *
Jax paced in front of the window. His side hurt from jumping out of the shower so fast when he heard Ivory’s Jeep pull out of the driveway. When he saw twin headlights shine across his truck, he unlocked the door and yanked it open.
His anger recoiled when he got a good look at the fury she displayed. She cradled her hand and walked with a limp. Jax rushed out in his bare feet. “Where did you go?”
Ivory stared up at him, her eyes glittering like crystal, cold and sharp. “If you want to get decked, too, then go ahead, Jax, mess with me. I’ve still got one good hand.”
Jax hung his head, his hands braced on his hips as he tried to figure out what the hell she was talking about. “Who did you hit?”
“Nathan,” she snapped and ducked past him as she made a move for the door.
Jax felt a surge of triumph and pride for his woman, but the fact she’d had to hit a man at all galled him. He followed her inside, where she jerked out of her coat, kicked her shoes off, and then strutted into the kitchen. When he caught up to her, she had frozen broccoli on her hand. He sat down at the table and gently picked up the bag. “That’s a nasty cut.”
“I’ve never hit anyone, and you know, I kind of liked it,” she said, pointing her glare at him.
He rocked back in his chair, settled his nerves on purpose, called on the reserved cool he used when he disciplined insubordinate soldiers. “Want to tell me what was so important you beat feet out of here?”
Ivory covered her eyes with her undamaged hand, and Jax let his chair slap the floor when he saw tears leak from the corners. He stood up, presented with a situation he did not handle well. Women and tears.
“What’s going on? What happened to your hand?” Cecelia’s rapid fire question interrupted Ivory’s crying jag long enough for Jax to get a handle on the need to protect her from the hurt.
Ivory put her head down on the table. “Nana married Mickey, I decked the Chief of Police, I haven’t seen Ashley, and a set of kids I should have interviewed today were killed by the parents before they killed themselves.”
“You hit someone?”
“So Mickey did it,” Jax and Cecelia said at the same time.
Ivory blinked up at both of them, her face white in the yellow kitchen light. She let her head fall to the table with a thud, and Jax smoothed a hand over her hair, kissed the top of her head. “Don’t worry about it, Ivory.”
“Don’t worry about it, Jax? Do you not worry about it when someone you could have helped dies? Do you just forget? I know you don’t.”
Cecelia plopped down in Jax’s vacated seat. “He doesn’t talk about the missions.”
Jax stood back as the two women silently exchanged their agreement, and he crossed his arms over his chest. “It’s classified.”
“Daddy tells Mom about some of the stuff,” Cecelia quipped.
Jax let his head fall against the wall, and he could literally feel Ivory’s cold stare as she assessed him. He breathed out the air in his lungs. Kids murdered. Parents gone. Made him think about his own dead parents, finding the bloodbath inside his house in South Boston. Flashes of his mother’s open eyes and father’s slack jaw crept in.
The familiar ball of dread made his stomach churn with acidic contents, and Jax waited for the barrage, clips of what he fondly called ‘Jax’s worst days’. They wouldn’t let him live in peace. He craved the moment he found
his sanity again. The faces intruded, and suddenly, he felt the heat on his back, the bullet rip through his side . . .
“Jax!”
Ivory shook his arm, and Jax stared down at her, seeing her, and yet not. Her blue eyes filtered through the mass of blood he kept seeing, and he let the guilt go, for the time being. He couldn’t run from it forever, though.
“I’m all right.” He took a deep breath to cleanse his mouth of the metallic taste he associated with the flashbacks and wiped the perspiration off his lip.
“Where did you go?” Cecelia asked, her mouth quivering.
“Back to hell.”
Jax stormed out the back door, needed the cold air and fresh snow to clear his mind, knit back together the hole his demons escaped from.
Chapter Seventeen
Ivory assured Cecilia Jax only suffered from a momentary episode and wandered into the living room. Ashley fell asleep in the middle of the floor, her little hands thrown above her head. Ivory couldn’t imagine what it must have looked like. The girl, Kelsey, didn’t utter a word the entire way to Heron House, and Ivory left her in the safe care of Jenny.
It broke her heart to hear stories of abuse and neglect, but to murder a child, that she couldn’t comprehend. Ashley centered Ivory’s world, and the new baby, when it came would be her focus.
What some adults did to their children sickened her. Her own mother sickened her. How could she abandon a baby? Nana never blamed her daughter for the lifestyle she led, and her death because of it, but what about her? Did she blame her mother? Yes, in some ways. Her thoughts turned to Cecilia. What did the girl run from? She’d never gotten the whole story from Jax, and if any of the teenager’s petulant displays indicated the reason, Ivory would guess broken home.
She closed her eyes. Children were the hope for the future, the gems in rough. She lay on her back, staring at the clock as it ticked off the minutes when Cecilia came in.
“Does he do that a lot?”
Ivory sat up, pushing her hair out of her face. “Sometimes.”
Cecilia curled up on the couch, her long red hair flaming in the soft glow from the lamp like burning embers. “Daddy wakes up screaming sometimes.”
“Who is your father?”
Cecelia rolled her eyes, but Ivory shrugged off the behavior. “Luke is my father. Jax ever talk about him?”
The more Cecelia talked, the more Ivory figured out just how little she knew about Jax. The man could be tortured, and he wouldn’t spill the beans. “No. Is that why you’re here?”
Cecilia nodded, and Ivory got onto the sofa with the girl. “Sometimes parents are buttheads.”
“Was your mom and dad?” The girl studied her nails, trying to give off an air of aloofness. To be so young, and need to be so strong . . .
“My nana raised me, but at times, yes, she can still be a butthead. She got married today without telling anyone.”
“I knew,” Jax interjected.
“And you didn’t tell me?” Ivory cocked her head at him. Snowflakes dusted his shoulders. “Gee, I can’t imagine why in passing you couldn’t have said, oh, by the way, Nana is marrying Mickey.”
“They didn’t want to tell anyone,” he said.
Jax took the wing chair placed close to the hearth. It was the first time Ivory realized he didn’t own a television. She studied the brooder while he stared into dead ashes. His jaw went tight, relaxed, went tight. “They told you.”
He swung his lazy stare toward her, rubbing his neck. “I got waylaid. Sorry.”
Cecelia broke the tension in the room with a loud yawn and swift exit. Ivory giggled at the girl’s attempt to leave them alone, but Ivory knew the baby would need to sleep with her, since they didn’t have a crib. Which left no room for fun. Jax arched an eyebrow at her, stood up slowly, and unfolded his arms.
Ivory’s mouth went dry at his expression, intent, lust. She couldn’t breathe by the time he took the few steps it took to reach her. When he held out his hand, Ivory accepted it, against her better judgment.
“Get the baby. I have a bassinet upstairs,” he said. Ivory shivered at his rasped words and hungry eyes. She felt heat begin to flow from her cheeks to her nipples as they spiked, through her belly, spread over her womb.
Ivory gently tucked Ashley into the bassinet he’d put in the spare bedroom and waited until she fell back to sleep before she stepped away. Ashley’s soft snore filled the quiet room.
Jax pulled her toward the bedroom, pushing her blazer off her shoulders the second he had her behind closed doors. “I hate that thing.”
Ivory thrust her chin out at him. “I like it.”
Soon followed her shirt, her weapon, her jeans. She felt bared to him, and something akin to wanton flowered inside of her. She wanted to feel alive, erase the reality she arrived too late to help those children, and Jax could pound it away.
He climbed in beside her, silent as a cat as he stretched out beside her, pulled her body toward him. Without words to break the spell and magic of the night, Ivory let him love her body, the tender kisses on her breasts, the gentle nips lulling her. He prodded her over on her stomach and began to massage her shoulders with his deft fingers.
When he moved to her buttocks, Ivory jerked as he swiped his fingers through her slit. She felt his lips against her skin above her ass, the flick of his tongue in the hollow of her back. She groaned when he tapped her butt, the little slap zinging straight to her clit.
He continued the soft smacks until he reached her entrance. The sting of his hand on her outer lips made Ivory cry out into her pillow, her teeth digging into the feathers. When he finished with the slaps to her pussy, she thought he’d enter her then and waited, silently begged for it, but instead, he leaned against her back, the coolness of his breath passing her ear as he whispered, “Payback’s a bitch, little lady, and I’ve got a whole lot to give for your little game earlier today.”
She closed her eyes when he tied a blindfold over them, the silky material soothing her achy lids. She pushed up when he lifted her enough to slide a chain beneath her belly. “What are you doing?”
Jax slapped her ass in retort, and Ivory bit down on her lip, anxious to find out what he would do next. When she felt a cuff around her wrist, followed by the metal snap, she let out “Ohhh.”
The same metallic grind clipped her other wrist to the headboard, and Ivory held her breath as Jax smoothed a hand over her back, down her hips, his short nails grazing her skin. Goosebumps followed in his wake. She arched when he nipped her cheek. He positioned her thighs with his hands, pushed them wide as she rested her weight on her elbows.
“No noise, Ivory, or I’ll stop,” he said seconds before she felt his tongue swipe through her juices. She held in the moan that nearly burst through her lips. He delved deep with his tongue as her thighs began to shake from the shock.
His arm snaked around her waist as she pushed back against his face. His fingers found her button, squeezed. She whimpered softly in the pillow, and Jax stilled. She lifted her face, the lack of sight making the sensations seem so much stronger, not being able to see what came next. She felt his palm against her stomach gently as he lifted her higher.
She cried out when he entered her with his fingers before he lapped at her core again. She heard his rough words clearly when he warned he would stop altogether if she did that again. Ivory swallowed the small cries that built inside of her as he worked her into a frenetic state of mind. Her legs quivered, and she felt the tendons and muscles of her lower stomach tighten. When the relief seemed imminent, Jax pulled out of her.
“Good girl,” he murmured.
Ivory relied on her hearing to tell her what might happen next, and she felt the weight of the bed shift as he got to his knees. The slide of his shaft triggered her release, and she felt his breath on her back as she rode out the spasms.
“That’s it, babe, just let it happen,” he crooned. He started to pump into her, but Ivory’s exhaustion from the wire-tight muscles and
nerves left her mindless as he took his fill of her. When she had enough strength to give back, she pressed back, meeting him as he pushed into her. Soon, they both spiraled toward something bigger and higher. He released a cuff to knit his fingers with hers as they rocked together, her body demanding more from his as her core captured him for one last surge of pleasure.
He pulled the blindfold from her eyes, and Ivory wiped the tears that leaked from beneath her eyelashes when the pleasure grew too intense. He carefully undid the other cuff, and Ivory let her weak arms and legs go. She fell to the mattress in a spread eagle reverse position, and Jax chuckled. She lifted her head to glare at him, though the dark prevented her from actually seeing his expression.
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