by Paula Cox
“No way I’m giving this up.”
His kiss was soft against her lips, and as she blinked through her tears, Lena reached between her legs, touching only a trace of the cock buried around her cunt. She felt certain that she would cum without one more move when he flipped her to her back and drummed her damp folds with a series of smooth strokes, denying her the climax until she strained forward and seized hold of his hair.
“Then what’s taking you so long?” she begged as her eyes darted wildly from his face to the rippling arms holding her in place.
“Let me just look at you,” he said. “And let me do this.”
Jax ran his finger down her cheek and tilted her face his. Holding her close, Jax licked his lips before he smiled.
“Know this,” he started. “I’ll never leave you. Not under my own power.”
He started to hang his head when she could wait no longer and drove his body back into the sheets. The curl of her body set his cock in motion, and Lena bit down on her lip as he started to release inside her. The full force of his lust flooded her veins, drowned her heart, and as she fought the urge to scream, he stretched up and gently gagged her with his kiss.
“Say you believe me,” he moaned. “Promise me you’ll stay close.”
“Nowhere else I want to be, Jax.”
Her cunt burned as he pushed toward her soul. Lena felt faint, but she kept her eyes on his and tingled around him as his cock stayed strong and still pulsed inside her. She tightened around him for another second when her will gave out and she slipped down the length of his chest, her lips dotting his lean frame as he drifted to her side again and curved close to her body.
“Oh God you’re perfect,” he moaned. “I never should have let you go.”
Lena nodded into his chest and winded her arms around his neck.
“It cuts both ways, Jax,” she muttered. “But I’m not running away again, no matter what happens.”
He softened, his cock seemingly reluctant to leave her, and Lena cuddled closer and twisted her legs around his thighs, her contented cunt happy to just keep him with her.
“Good to hear,” he said. “And this isn’t forever.”
“Why would you say that?”
“I mean this place,” he said, speaking fast as he stroked her cheeks. “We finally have some angels on our side.”
“Milo’s an angel?” she asked with a smirk. “Not with that beard. Totally the other end of the spectrum.”
“Maybe,” Jax concurred as he palmed her back and kissed her neck. “But he wants Deerfield. And if I can hand it to him, I think he stays in our corner.”
Lena rested her head to his shoulder, and her mind moved back down the way they had come. Those first moments on his bike? It was just about getting out and hoping that they wouldn’t get caught. No more quiet touches and lingering looks at the bank of the creek. No way of knowing if her uncle stayed out of trouble or met some deadly fate. But then and now, she was with Jax, and while that was more than enough, everything, she pictured them by the creek once more without once having to look over their shoulders.
“If it works, do we get to go home?”
She watched the possibility pour across his brain and flash through his eyes.
“You never really wanted to leave. Did you?”
Lena slowly shook her head as she nuzzled his nose.
“I just want it back on our terms,” she confessed. “Like it was before.”
“We’ll get there then,” he promised. “Might have another emblem on my back, but---”
“A horse is better than all those dead bones.”
She moved to kiss him again when he started to push away even as his cock began to throb once more.
“But one thing stays the same,” he said. “We make this work, I’ll owe Milo. And the rest of them. I’ll have to toe the line and all.”
Lena nodded and knew what came with the decree: moments where he would have to leave her without wanting to, collections and furtive meetings in dark rooms that she would never be allowed to enter. Just the thought of huddling under sheets without him filled her with dread, and she toyed with the idea of taking hold of his hand and suggesting they just keep running when he folded her close and kissed her hair.
“You think you can get down with it?” he asked.
“I can do anything with you, Jax.”
“So you’ll be my old lady then?”
Lena pushed away from his kiss and arched her eyebrow.
“I can try it on for size. Who knows where it might lead?”
“But do you get what it really means?” he asked. “You can’t just hold court whenever you want to.”
He tried to meet her lips again when she did the unthinkable. Leaving his body, she shifted to the edge of the bed and pressed the sheet close to her breasts.
“I thought it impressed you,” she said as she avoided his eyes. “You said you were amazed.”
“And I was, Lena,” he said as he moved to her side and tried to take her in his arms. She shrugged him off and nearly fell to the floor when he caught her and forced her to face him.
“I am,” he swore.
“As long as I don’t show you up in front of them. Have to keep them thinking that your dick is the best.”
“Isn’t it, Lena?”
Jax laughed as he shook his head and eased the sheet from her breasts.
“Jesus Christ, Jax. Don’t ask me that now.”
Bringing her back to the bed, she spied his cock hardening as he twirled his fingers through her hair and lightly kissed her cheeks.
“Seems a fine time to me.”
Lena protested for all of a second against his lips when his tongue danced against her teeth, and he seemed to grow lost in the wake of her stare.
“Lena… I don’t make the rules,” he said. “But they exist. And I need to know that you’re down for all of it if we’re going to make this work.”
His old lady. That would make her like his mother and Viv, with the short hair cowering in the corner. One left him, and the other seemed like she would take off at the first chance, brother in charge or not. Both options defined her, and Lena dared to touch his cheek.
“And if I don’t say yes?” she asked. “Is it over?”
Jax’s cock pressed against her thighs, and Lena lamented never knowing it again when he gathered her into his arms and sighed into her shoulders.
“I can’t say that,” he said. “But it will make things harder for us.”
“You mean for me, Jax?”
Lena couldn’t resist his lips as he kissed her quickly, his moan moving down her throat as he dragged her back into his arms.
“Don’t fight me, Lena,” he said. “I want to take care of you. Why can’t you just let me---?”
“Because I can take care of myself, Jax. Don’t you get that by now?”
“Lena…”
He pulled her to his lap and kissed the hair from her eyes as he reached under the sheet and touched her bare back.
“I get all of you, Lena,” he said. “But we both have to fall in line.”
“Jax, I---”
“I don’t want to do wrong by my dad either. But Milo’s going to make his mind up, and we have to---”
She struggled away from him and pressed her fingers to the window, seeing the Silver Horses as they smoked and cracked open fresh beers while the moon poked through the clouds and the rays hit their chrome. Lena couldn’t hear one word that left the men’s lips, but was he right? Were they planning ways to put her down if she didn’t get with the program and simply submit?
“But, Lena…”
Jax turned her away from the window, and she was too weak to fight the kiss he laid on her brow.
“It doesn’t mean that I don’t want you. All of you. I’m just trying to balance this out.”
“Jax, you shouldn’t have to balance me,” she started. “I want to make you brave. Because I know that’s you are.”
He was
on the verge of hanging his head, and she let his chin fall to his chest. Even as she longed to touch him, she kept her hands to herself.
“And I can scream at the top of my lungs… that doesn’t change you, Jax. It doesn’t change us.”
Lena moved close to kiss him, but Jax pushed away from her and ran his hands across his face.
“It changes everything for me, Lena! Can’t you just get that?”
Was this a mistake? Should she have stayed hidden in her dorm and just tried to forget? His bruises and his body beckoned her back to his side, but started to dress as she spoke to his broad back.
“I won’t stay quiet anymore,” she said as she buttoned her blouse. “I thought we were in this together.”
Lena was almost out of the room when Jax grabbed her arm, the force of his touch barring her way.
“Jax, I---”
“We are in this together,” he said.
“It doesn’t feel like it when you talk like---”
“And if we were at your school or whatever… if this were your turf, Lena?”
He took hold of the sides of her head and gazed into her eyes.
“I’d do whatever you asked. Because that’s what you know. And I’d be all kinds of hopeless.”
She pictured him on the quad trying to defect some bit of wit or other and resorting to his gun if the words were not to his liking. Not that that didn’t thrill her, but it was just one in a long line of ways that he could be hurt.
“We’re better off here,” Lena whispered. “But do you really just want me on the sidelines, Jax?”
He laughed as he started to peel her blouse away.
“I want me in you again,” he said. “Isn’t that what you want, Lena?”
He kissed her as he pulled her off the ground. Dangling her in the space of his embrace, Lena started to curl her hands tighter around his shoulders as he danced her back to the edge of the bed.
“You don’t play fair, Jax. I need this.”
Jax smiled as he kissed her hair and eased her body back to sheets.
“We’ll work it all out, Lena. I promise.”
Her lips were about to meet his when a sudden scream from beyond the window pushed them apart. Jax clutched her hand for all of a second before he rolled to the floor. Even without a gun his hands, he still stood tall at the window and motioned for Lena to hang back.
“Like hell I am!”
Buttoning her blouse, Lena crawled across the floor and only breathed when she had his tight arms under her hand. Through the glass, the Silver Horses took aim and called out for one another in curt tones as three figures started to poke into view.
“What the fuck?”
Jax groaned as he took Lena’s hand. Together they left the glass and exited the room. Viv trembled with a cigarette between her lips, and Jax kept plowing forward when his mother blocked his path.
“Let them handle it, Jackson. This isn’t your call.”
He started to relent when Lena peered through the crook in his arm. The shadows started to take form, and as Artie and Brutus loomed large, the sagging figure at the sides tugged at her heart.
“Oh no.”
She dashed away from Jax’s side and barely felt his fingers against hers as she ran down the porch.
“Lena! Stay put!”
Jax’s voice was a million miles away, and she kept moving forward, past the bikes and the men that still seemed to regard her as something of an alien as she pierced through the shadows. Artie’s chrome dome lit the way, and Lena paused to meet his eyes, ignoring Brutus as she reached between the men.
“Uncle Tom?”
Chapter Thirty
Sully was beaten and bloodied, his tongue flopping out of the side of his mouth as he registered her stare and formed a painful smile.
“I know I should have stayed away, Lena.”
She pulled him into her arms and gently kissed his battered face when he pushed away and shook his head.
“And you shouldn’t go making me into a hero or something,” he continued. “I was almost out of Dodge.”
That made sense. When push came to shove, this was a man who would run. He’d only stuck close to home once. And that was because of…
“You came back for me,” she said.
Artie and Brutus still held their guns at attention, but Lena forgot her place and pushed the barrels back as she stepped closer to Sully.
“He’s off limits,” she said. “And don’t you forget it.”
Brutus snorted, but Artie took the chance of ordering the other man off as Jax raced into view.
“Lena, I thought I told you not to---”
“It’s my uncle, Jax. Don’t even try to tell me that you think he’s a plant.”
As soon as the words tripped off her tongue, she imagined all the ways he could have bought a few spare seconds. Selling Jax out was at the top of the list, and she trembled against him when Sully grabbed her hands and wildly shook his head.
“That much is true, Lena. Thank you.”
He clumsily kissed her cheek and took hold of her back as he peered into her eyes.
And Brutus cocked his trigger.
“Don’t do that!” she screamed.
“Maybe he’s in it with you,” Brutus sneered. “It was some sad story.”
Lena abandoned Sully, her toes touching his as she balled her fingers into a fist.
“And you really think I would lie about that? Endure it all over again?”
Artie tried to tell him that the words were real when he shoved the bald man aside.
“Could still be a long con.”
Brutus pushed Artie back and aimed his gun again.
She saw Sully quail at the prospect of a bullet ripping through his flesh, but when he started to hang his head in surrender, Lena pushed her body over his, the tip of the gun just meeting her breasts as she looked into his eyes.
“I would never sell my family short,” she said. “I told you how I came to be here.”
Brutus smirked, the gun still in his hand, and Lena stretched to her knees and took the barrel between her lips.
“Is she crazy or something?”
All she had to do was sigh, and Brutus’ finger would go happy and send the bullet into her brain. She had no desire to die, but they needed to see she was on their side. If she were going to be an old lady, she would do it under her terms and no one else’s.
“Drop the gun.”
Artie took aim and wiped the sweat from his brow as he kept Brutus in his sights and looked like he was ready to fire. Lena was ready for a bullet one way or the other, and she closed her eyes and prayed Jax would forgive her when his sweet voice hit her back.
“Leave her alone!”
Lena heard what had to be Artie push back, but Brutus’ gun was still in her mouth as Jax’s scent wafted towards her brain.
“She might still be fooling you, too” Brutus insisted. “Don’t be an idiot!”
She pictured Jax fuming and sputtering just over her head, and she left Brutus’ gun as she pushed to her feet and flung her arms against his chest.
“He’s not! He’s the heir apparent, and he’s here to help you, you fucking fool!”
Sully raised his fists as a stray voice in the distance called him to a halt.
“What the fuck do we have here?”
Milo stepped into view and surveyed the scene carefully, his gaze settling on Brutus.
“This is her people,” Brutus hissed. “They just like keep showing up from out of nowhere. Don’t tell me that ain’t all kinds of suspicious.”
Milo nodded, and Lena swallowed as she reached behind her back for one of Jax’s hands. When she failed to find his fingers, she drank in the loneliness of a world without him and wished she had stayed inside as Milo pushed his finger to her chest.
“How about it?” he challenged. “This all part of your plan? Sway us to your side so you can pounce?”
Lena took note of the smirk in his eyes as Sully groaned
at her feet. Again she tried to find Jax’s hands. But there was nothing but the night air.
“I told all of you what Eric Sties did to me,” she started. “Why would I make up a story like that if it weren’t true?”