Jet: A Marked Men Novel

by Jay Crownover

  She kissed me behind my ear and ran her tongue over the spike that decorated the top. Her clever hands did something with the ring at the tip of my dick that made me breathe out her name, and I knew there was no way I was going to hold out for much longer. I bit my bottom lip and thrust a rhythm into her slick hand. Her palm was soft and pliable, like she knew just what I needed in order to get all the poison out. When she clamped her strong teeth onto the cord of my neck that was straining in effort to prolong the pleasure and to wring out every single second of mindless oblivion she offered, I was done for. She laughed in a soft caress against my shoulder and I felt her rest her cheek on my damp skin. She wrung me out dry, while I panted and she patted the flexed muscles on my flat stomach.

  “All better?”

  I shook the water out of my face and reached out to turn off the tap. I turned around to look at her. I saw her pretty eyes get big when they landed on the gash in my cheek and I held up my hands backward so she could see the damage to them as well.

  “Not even close.”

  She reached out to touch my face, but I jerked away before she could make contact. I didn’t want her to have anything to do with all that ugliness, even if it was just a gesture of comfort and care. I pulled her to my chest so we were pressed together, all wet skin and slick bodies, and wished I could have this moment last forever. She put her arms around me and I almost choked on a sigh of relief. There was a part of me that didn’t know where this girl’s head was and I really thought seeing the wrecked shape I was in might be enough to make her say, “It was fun, Jet, but I don’t have time for this.” Instead, she put her hands on my ass and rubbed her soft cheek against the one of mine that was still intact.

  “I was supposed to close, but I was worried about you so I harassed Shaw into staying for me. Everyone was freaking out.”

  I sighed into her hair and pushed open the shower door. I wrapped a towel around her first, which was a shame because there were very few things in life I liked more than a naked Ayden, then hooked one around my own waist. I wasn’t sure if she wanted to go to my room or hers, so I followed her out of the bathroom, which had the added bonus of me getting to watch those long, bare legs the entire way. She picked my room, which wasn’t a surprise. She liked when I played the guitar and worked on songs, and I think she knew that after the way today had gone, I was no doubt going to need to get something out and on paper before the night was over. I don’t know how she got it the way she did, but regardless of where we went with our relationship—or nonrelationship—Ayden Cross was the one person who simply understood me. That alone was enough to make me care for her like I had never cared for anyone else. It would be so easy to fall in love with her, secrets and all.

  She let the towel drop and crawled up on the dark red comforter. Those legs, that dark cap of hair and those eyes that just burned with furtive stories and every kind of enticement held me entranced, and all I wanted to do was stare at her. She watched me steadily for a long minute. I didn’t know what to say to her, so I looked at my torn-up hands again and frowned as I flexed them open and closed.

  “You didn’t have to leave work early. I would have made it until you got home.”

  One of her sable-colored brows went up and the side of her mouth kicked up in a sexy grin. She leaned back on her elbows, which made her breasts do things that any red-blooded male on the planet would give his left nut to see.

  “Stop it, Jet. I was worried about you. I debated all afternoon about coming down to the station, but figured if you wanted me there you would have called me. I knew the boys would take care of you in their own way, but I needed to get to you in order to take care of you in mine. I’m going to ask you what happened and we’re going to talk about it for real, because I see your hands, Jet I’ve had them all over me and I know that whatever got you to this point is bad. I don’t see any reason for us to have that conversation before we work out some of that nasty stuff floating around in those eyes, though, so get that fine ass in gear and get over here.”

  She tapped the bed next to her and it was enough to startle a laugh out of me. I dropped the towel and let her molten gaze travel over me. There was appreciation there and something deeper that hit me hard when I grabbed her ankle and pulled those long legs apart. She hissed out a breath and it was my turn to raise an eyebrow. She was pretty and polished all over. Everywhere I touched, she was smooth and silky, and I knew she tasted like cinnamon and sugar. She looked so right in my bed, I had a hard time remembering what it was like before she became a regular fixture there.

  I ran my hands up one of her smooth legs and tickled her knee. She narrowed her eyes at me and I grinned down at her.

  “What?”

  “Stop playing with me.”

  She had a flat tummy that curved delicately in between her hip bones. I bent down and kissed her right below her belly button, and then I trailed a wet path to right above her slick folds and stopped and heard her swear at me. She threaded her fingers through my still-wet hair and bent her legs up to my ribs.

  “I want to take care of you the way you took care of me.” I kissed her again, this time lower, and I heard her gasp and swear at the same time. Her thighs tensed next to my head, and I ran the top of the barbell that was in the center of my tongue over her clit and felt her entire body spasm under the delicate contact. It made me chuckle, which had her pulling at my hair.

  “My God, Jet, you’re going to destroy my idea of what sex should be like.” Good. She didn’t need to know what sex was like with anyone but me from now on, and I wanted it to be better with me than it had ever been with anyone before.

  I used my tongue on her again, this time deeper and harder and curled it around her, and sucked on her until she bowed underneath me and her skin quivered everywhere we touched. Her nails dug into my scalp and I brushed my bruised and torn knuckles across the velvet peak of her breast until she whispered my name again and started to come apart under my hands and in my mouth. Ayden came like she did everything else, sweet and smooth. I could eat her up all day long for the rest of my life, but she was impatient. Clearly, the taking care of each other portion of the night was over, because she wiggled out from under me and I let her shove me over so that I was on my back. I stacked my hands behind my head and watched with heavy eyes as she leaned over me to fish a condom out of the bedside table.

  She was always extra careful when she worked the latex over me. I think the metal down there still kind of intimidated her. I knew she enjoyed it, loved the way it made her feel, but she was always extra gentle when she touched it, like she still wasn’t sure exactly what to do with it. There were no words for how badly I wanted her to put her hot little tongue around it, to taste it, feel the metal in her mouth. Not that I could complain; she wasn’t shy and I loved what she did to the rest of me. I liked it when she lost control and dug her nails into my back, when she forgot to keep a lid on all that passion and hunger that boiled and frothed between us and used her teeth just a little too hard or pulled my hair a little more roughly than I think she meant to.

  She swung a long leg over my waist and rose above me. All I could see was amber glowing down at me. She dug her teeth into her bottom lip when I grabbed her hand and squeezed it hard around the tip of my dick. Both her eyebrows shot up and I saw concern flash across her flushed face. The ring throbbed in the best way possible and I smirked up at her.

  “Giddy up, cowgirl.”

  She flushed a light shade of pink and sank down on me, which made both of us groan. We fit. That was all there was to it, we just fit. She leaned down to kiss me, and the contact of her pointed nipples on my own made both of us hiss out in pleasure. She pressed her forehead against mine and found a rhythm that had me digging my fingers into her hips and swearing under my breath. Every time she lifted up, her swollen flesh pulled and tugged against mine in a way that made me want to explode. We were both pretty sated from all our earlier fooling around, so this slow build up, this tenuous climb toward
orgasm had us watching each other intently.

  It was far more intimate, far more personal than any sex act I had ever been part of before. I could see it filling her, could feel her inner muscles flutter and drag against me, but it was her eyes—those eyes I wanted to drink in over and over again—that pushed me over the edge. For once I could see her, see that there was something there for me, and I pulled her over into a climax that had both of us sweating and scrambling for air and boundaries as soon as it was over.

  She collapsed on top of me, crossed her hands over my heart and propped her chin on them. I moved one hand to her hair and threaded the dark strands between my fingers.

  “I beat the shit out of my old man today.”

  I saw her eyes go to the cut on my face and linger.

  “Why?”

  I couldn’t meet her gaze, so I looked up at the ceiling and let the events of a lifetime drift through the pleasant aftermath she had woven around me.

  “He sucks. He sucks as a parent, he sucks as a husband, he sucks as a man, and he sucks as a human being in general. He has it in his mind that knocking my mom up somehow derailed the awesome party his life was before we came along, and has spent years and years blaming both her and me for it. He wants to drink and party and act like he’s eighteen, all while making her feel worthless and awful. I left home to get away from it and I’ve always tried to keep him in some kind of check, but today he was drunk and he hit her. I lost my goddamn mind when I saw it. He hit me first, but then I saw her with a black eye, and all I could think about was killing him. I’m pretty sure I broke his nose and he had to get hauled off to the hospital, for a second I thought I might have killed him, but the cops told me I wasn’t that lucky. But, the worst thing . . .”

  She didn’t say anything, just watched me talk and listened to my heart beating under her hands.

  “The worst thing is that she got in the ambulance and went to the hospital with him, while I got carted off to jail. She took his side and told the cop I started it, she blamed me. I just can’t do it anymore and that makes me feel like shit.”

  She lifted one of her hands and used the edge of her nail to trace a line around my mouth, which had turned down in a hard frown.

  “The extent to which we can sacrifice our own lives for our families has to have some kind of end point, Jet. You can’t be angry and hurt forever because she won’t let you help her. At some point, you need to recognize that she made her choice, and it clearly isn’t you.”

  Ultimately, that was what hurt the most.

  “I have a court date in a couple of days. He pressed assault charges.”

  “He hit you first. Claim self-defense.”

  I would, but the fact of the matter was, had the police not shown up when they did, there was a good chance I would be facing a homicide charge instead. I sighed when she pulled my fingers out of her hair and placed a delicate kiss on each of the raw knuckles. I didn’t know what it felt like to heal, but I knew enough to know that was what she was trying to do for me. It tempered some of that angry blaze that always hovered so close to the surface in me.

  “We can’t pick our families or where we come from, Jet. All we can choose is who we want to become in spite of them, and because of them.”

  I curled my palm around her cheek and ran a thumb over the pronounced bone. To me, she always looked elegant and refined, like she was something expensive to be savored and enjoyed as a reward for really good behavior. I never understood when she hinted that it might all just be a carefully crafted front.

  “Why don’t you ever talk about where you’re from or your family? I don’t mean just to me. Cora says you hardly ever say anything about what your life was like before college. Was it that bad?”

  I saw the walls go up and the gates close, even though we were still naked and intimately connected. Her mouth got tight and all the warm fuzzies I had put in her eyes dwindled. I thought she was going to try to pull away from me, so I locked my hand around her neck, under her hair and held her in place. She scowled at me but didn’t try to leave. She dropped both her hands and let her head fall, so that her cheek was pressed against the snarling face of the death angel on my chest. She put her hands on my rib cage and answered the wall instead of me.

  “It wasn’t that bad, but I was.”

  “What does that even mean, Ayd?” I soothed my hand up and down the curve of her spine. No matter where I touched this girl, there was no place I felt it more than in my dick.

  She huffed out a breath that made my skin pebble.

  “It means I wasn’t a very good person not too long ago. There were too many boys for too many bad reasons. There were drugs and a general disregard for the law and the only use I had for anyone was what they could do for me. I used whatever—and I do mean whatever—it took to get what I wanted, and I didn’t care who it hurt or how it made me look to anyone. I was a mess, and the only real reason I had for being that way was because that’s what folks there expected. No one thought I was smart. No one thought I was going to ever get it together enough to leave, and if one teacher hadn’t taken an interest in me and forced me to get my act together before it was too late, chances are they would probably have been right.”

  She was describing a stranger. That person sounded so far removed from this dynamic girl draped all over me that I couldn’t even picture them in the same room, let alone the same body.

  “I don’t even know what to say to that. I don’t know that girl.”

  Her thumb was skating along my ribs and rubbing at the skin stretched in between each one. It was soothing; she was soothing, and all I wanted was for her to be the balm that put out the fire in me once and for all. I could tell by her tone, tell by how she still couldn’t look at me, that forever and me didn’t go hand in hand in her mind, no matter how hot we were in bed, or how deeply we affected each other out of it.

  “No, but she knows you. She knows you make me feel wild and out of control and that I don’t ever want it to stop. She knows that because of you I feel like I’m willing to do whatever it takes to have you, and damn the consequences and whatever gets in my way. Because you get to me like no one ever has and you’re more addicting than anything illegal I ever messed with in the past. Mostly, she knows that when I’m with you, all I think about is you and me, and how quickly we can find someplace to get naked, or how long it will be until I can curl up in your arms and let you sing to me. I don’t think of the future, or school, or all the other important things I need to work on to have a life for myself. You could own me, Jet, and I don’t want that to ever happen.”

  I curved my hand over her ass and pulled on her thigh so that she was sprawled over me. I needed to get up and take care of business, but I didn’t want to move. The arm that had Dali’s clocks on it was wrapped around her shoulder, and once again I couldn’t help but think that every minute I spent with this girl was a minute that was going to have to last me a lifetime when she was gone.

  “What if it doesn’t matter? What if I cared about her as much as I care about this version of you? I don’t want to own you, Ayd, I just want to be with you.”

  She sighed and kissed my breastbone. “I couldn’t even care about her, Jet, and I don’t think you would be able to help it.”

  I wanted to tell her none of it mattered. I wanted to tell her how important she was to me. That no one besides Uncle Phil and the guys had ever taken care of me before, and that I didn’t know what to do with her worrying about me. I felt like that was huge enough to make me think that I could possibly fall in love with her and want to hold on to her forever.

  I wanted to tell her I couldn’t see a place in my life or in my bed for anyone but her now, and that she made me feel that every love song I had ever written or sung made no sense until she came into the picture. But I didn’t, because I knew she wasn’t ready to hear it, and I wasn’t sure what it meant to me that I was feeling it.

  Just like my melting time, I was going to hold on to her for as long
as I could, until the fire got too hot and burned me alive from the inside out, and she would have no choice but to watch it smolder.

  Chapter 11

  Ayden

  Thursday night was girls’ night and had been ever since Shaw, Cora, and I had shared the house. Some nights we just got together with a bottle of wine and watched sappy movies, some nights we got all dolled up and went to a club, and then there were nights like tonight when we all just wanted to forget about whatever it was that had been crawling all over us during the week.

  We went out with the sole intent of ending up destroyed and sloppy. I had learned my lesson long ago and no longer took an early class on Friday morning, because nights like this led to terrible morning-afters, and I wasn’t stupid.

  Shaw had picked a dive bar off Thirteenth Street that was pretty close to where she lived on the Hill. Cora and I took a cab, because it was clear that tonight wasn’t going to be pretty and we both knew there was no way either of us was going to be in any shape to drive by the time the party was over. We started with a pitcher of beer, and I blamed the boys. There had been a time when we would have started with wine or margaritas, but after spending so much time with the guys, I think it was just ingrained that we now started with a cold pitcher of Coors Light. One pitcher led to two, and by the time the third one hit the table, Shaw was ready to add shots to the mix. I was a tequila girl, Shaw liked whiskey, and Cora stuck with Jäger. It didn’t take long for the conversation to devolve to ridiculous topics and for our laughter to get loud and obnoxious.