Most Wanted - A Fantasy Romance Novel (The Shadow Blade Series)

by E. L Friel

  ‘Bounty hunters. There’s a bounty on your head,’ the kid gasped.

  The boy scowled, eyeing Jax’s enormous shoulders. Jax took in the news about the bounty. He guessed walking in here wasn’t the best plan in that case. Too late for that though.

  ‘I’m looking for Ariel,’ he said, glancing over his shoulder. Someone had opened the door from what he assumed was the betting lounge and a flood of noise had followed him into the corridor. Over the top of it he heard footsteps heading their way.

  ‘She’s gone looking for you,’ Felix told him.

  Jax let him go, stepping back. Looking for him why? To catch a bounty or to warn him?

  ‘Hey!’

  Jax heard a heavy footstep behind him and labored breathing. He turned, confronting a bearded – actually more like furred – beast of a man.

  ‘Who are you?’ the thing asked.

  Felix had collapsed against the wall, his hands around his neck, desperately sucking in oxygen.

  Jax sighed, angled his body, and then smashed his fist into the guy’s gut. He went down like a sack of hay. Jax didn’t hang around to follow through. He sprinted towards the door and kicked it open. He had to find Ariel.

  Chapter 22

  Ariel scaled the fence and dropped down onto the gravel driveway. Taking a few seconds to adjust her senses to the outside she started to edge up the driveway. The moon was easing in and out of the clouds. She felt the urge to dissolve into the shadows but resisted it. She needed to save her energy for when she might need it

  She was being extra careful in case Aaron was hiding, lurking somewhere in the darkness. Her instinct was telling her though that Jax wasn’t home and that no one else was around. She couldn’t sense anyone and she couldn’t feel Jax either. The tugging in her gut that she normally felt in his presence, the quickening of her pulse, was entirely absent. She searched for it but no, disconcertingly there was nothing.

  She stared up at the house. A light was on in Jax’s bedroom and another in the downstairs hall. A thought crossed her mind that maybe she couldn’t feel him because he was already dead but no, she was certain, however strange it might sound, that if Jax was dead she would know that too, in her gut.

  At least she told herself that as she crept closer to the house, praying that she was right. She jogged up the steps to the front door. It was locked. She rang the doorbell and still there was no response. His bike was gone too from the driveway. Had he gone out? Had he gone after her? The thought had occurred to her. Maybe he had gone to her apartment wanting to find her? It was the kind of thing he would do.

  Ariel turned around and jogged back down the steps. She didn’t know what to do next. Go to her apartment and see if he was there? Go back to Jimmy’s and start betting? Wait for Jax here? But no, she couldn’t just wait here. She was antsy enough as it was. She needed to find him. She ran back towards the gate and her van, but before she’d gone even fifteen meters she heard the full throttle hum of Jax’s bike roaring up the driveway.

  She jumped out of the way as he rounded the bend. His headlights swept across her and he suddenly swerved, kicking up gravel as he came to a flying halt.

  He jumped off the bike and strode straight towards her. Ariel froze. His expression was fierce, almost terrifying. He stopped right in front of her and she noted the way his eyes glimmered, as well as the fact his hands were coiled into tight fists at his side.

  He glanced down at the Shadow blade she was clutching in her hand. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked. His voice was as gruff and aggressive as she’d ever heard it, but the look in his eyes belied it. He seemed both suspicious and hopeful.

  She shook her head. ‘I’m here to warn you,’ she said, anger making her voice gruff.

  He cocked his head to the side. ‘Warn me?’. His voice had softened.

  ‘There’s a bounty on your head,’ she told him, the anger of his betrayal now starting to take over. Now she had seen he was still alive, was OK, her fury at him was starting to build.

  ‘I came to tell you. I tried to pay it off.’

  ‘Pay it off?’ he cut in. ‘What do you mean?’

  She swallowed and glanced away. She hadn’t meant to tell him that part. ‘I,’ she stammered. ‘I went to Jimmy and tried to pay it off but he wanted more than I have.’

  Jax stared at her speechless. She had tried to pay his bounty? She would have done that for him? He didn’t know what to say. She was glaring at the ground, scowling, her beautiful lips pursed.

  He took a step towards her, reaching for her, but she glanced up sharply and with a single look froze him in place. ‘Don’t touch me,’ she said in a voice so quiet and laced through with danger that he stepped back, holding up his hands in defensive as though she was holding a gun to his chest.

  His breathing sped up. ‘Ariel,’ he said. There was so much he needed to tell her, to explain and he didn’t know where to begin. He just knew he had to make her understand.

  ‘Don’t,’ she hissed. ‘I don’t want to know.’

  He took a deep breath. ‘Is this about my wife?’ he asked.

  Ariel threw back her head and laughed. ‘Well, at least you’re owning up to having one now,’ she said. Her eyes were flashing with lethal fury. He would have felt stung by it but he was more concerned with making her understand.

  ‘Ariel,’ he said again, sadly, softly, his shoulders sinking. He took a deep breath and met her gaze head on. ‘She’s dead.’

  Instantly Ariel’s expression faltered. Her lips parted and her eyes widened. He saw the relief travel across her face, followed swiftly by a wave of shame before finally she fixed her usual mask of indifference back in place. She might try to hide her real feelings but he could see them anyway, could see her eyes swimming with tears.

  ‘Come in the house,’ he told her, turning and leading the way.

  For a moment he didn’t think she was going to follow him but then he heard her footsteps dragging behind him. He narrowed his hearing and tried to focus his senses on the garden, checking to see if they were alone. But it hardly seemed to matter. All he knew right now was that explaining everything, having Ariel understand about Neve, was more important than the fact there was a bounty on his head and that his life was in danger.

  He dealt with danger every day, had killed enough demons who had wanted to kill him that he wasn’t afraid. He was afraid however of losing Ariel. This woman he barely knew and yet who he did know, in the most intimate way. The woman whose mind remained in many ways a mystery to him, but whose body he had fully explored and already had committed to memory. He wanted to know everything there was to know about her, to get past that prickly surface layer and have her open herself to him in the same way she’d opened her body to him.

  Maybe though that was too much to ask.

  ‘It’s not safe to stay here,’ he heard Ariel say as he shut the door behind her.

  He rammed the bolt across. ‘I’ll be fine.’

  She glowered at him. ‘You don’t get it,’ she said. ‘There are probably half a dozen bounty hunters out there right now trying to find you. They’ve probably worked out where you live already and are on their way. You need to leave.’

  ‘I’m not leaving,’ he said, holding her gaze steadily.

  She huffed angrily and put her hands on her hips. ‘Don’t you get it? You won’t be able to fight them all off. They’ll kill you.’

  He shrugged. ‘Why’d you offer to pay it?’

  Her lips parted. He watched her trying to calculate her answer, her gaze dropping to the floor. ‘I just…’

  ‘You need the money. I know how much you need it. You could have just come to me and told me. You know I’m good for it. I can’t believe you were going to use the money you earned. Why?’

  ‘Because…,’ she spat angrily. She was like a panther, a caged one, pacing the hallway searching for her exits. He kept his eyes on her as she strode to the door, glanced out the window and then spun around to face him. ‘It was my fau
lt that they even knew who you were. I took you to Jimmy’s. I shouldn’t have. I put you in danger, so it’s my responsibility to make it right.’

  He stared at her, trying to puzzle her out. That didn’t make it her fault. Why did she always need to shoulder the blame for all the shit that went down in the world? He wished there was something he could do to change that about her.

  He shook his head at her. ‘You didn’t put me in danger, Ariel,’ he said softly and when he saw the look of skepticism on her face he added, ‘You need to stop taking responsibility for everything bad that happens. The world is a shit place, a lot of awful stuff happens to good people, and none of it is your fault.’

  She frowned at him then huffed loudly. ‘What happened?’ she suddenly asked.

  Jax frowned.

  ‘To your wife?’ Ariel asked. She had stopped pacing and was standing by the door. Her shoulders were slumped. She was watching him through the tangle of her hair. Jax felt the usual stab of pain in his gut at the mention of Neve.

  ‘She died five years ago. Cancer,’ he added when he saw the question forming silently on her lips.

  ‘But…her clothes,’ Ariel whispered.

  He shrugged, a solid lump forming in his throat. ‘I never got round to throwing them away. I just couldn’t do it. I never had a reason to.’ He paused and waited until Ariel locked eyes with him again. ‘Until now.’

  He saw the flare of understanding in her eyes, the blood rushing to her cheeks. He heard her heart start to race in time with his own.

  ‘And the underwear?’ she asked him, a tremble in her voice.

  ‘It was for you,’ he told her, trying not to smile.

  She looked at him askance, suspicious once more. He shrugged. ‘I wanted to buy you something nice. To say sorry for tearing your underwear off you the other night.’ He looked away, embarrassed, but glanced up when he heard a soft chuckle.

  Ariel was smiling at him. It made his heart slam against his ribs, hope igniting inside him. ‘And I have to admit to the selfish desire to want to see you wearing them,’ he admitted.

  Ariel’s smile lit up her face. He smiled back, relief flooding through him like ice water, bringing clarity.

  She took a step towards him then, that seductive glimmer back in her half-closed eyes. He felt the heat of her body even from this distance, the magnetic pull of her lips. His gaze dipped to her hips. The desire was instant, flaming red hot in him. He had to force himself not to move, to let her come to him, to keep his arms at his sides.

  ‘No one’s ever bought me anything before,’ she said, when she was standing right in front of him.

  ‘Well,’ he said, finally lifting his hand to stroke a strand of her hair behind one ear. ‘That’s about to change.’

  She frowned at him and he winced. He knew she was sensitive about him offering to pay for things, that she was proud, but some things she was going to have to get used to. He took her face in his hands. ‘Ariel,’ he said, ‘it makes me happy to buy nice things for you. I know you’re a fiercely independent woman and that’s what I…’ he broke off abruptly seeing the surprise flare across her face, ‘like about you,’ he finished. ‘But I’m old-fashioned, I have a lot of money, more than I can possibly spend on myself and I would very much like to see you naked, in my bed, wearing just lace. Can you deal with that?’

  Ariel considered him for a beat, then nodded, her cheeks warming beneath his hands. He took hold of her hair and twisted it in his fist then pulled her head towards him. She gasped slightly, her gaze dipping to his own mouth, and he felt the heat rising between them. When her lips were just millimeters from his own he stopped and held her there. ‘I want you Ariel,’ he murmured. ‘I want you in my bed, in my arms, in my life. Can you deal with that too?’

  Chapter 23

  Ariel gazed into Jax’s eyes, feeling the heat of his lips and the pull of his body. She ran her hand up his chest and traced her fingers along his jaw and then his lips. She thought about Saul and about Rikon Fayette and all that she had planned. She thought about the airplane she was meant to be on by now and the life she’d promised herself, and then she stared into Jax’s eyes for a beat longer and realized that the only thing she really wanted was Jax. The rest was just white noise.

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered.

  His grip tightened, his other hand coming around her waist. He drew her against him and finally kissed her. Ariel’s breath left her body in one long sigh. She melted into him, feeling every cell in her body dissolve. Light pulsed behind her eyelids and butterflies multiplied and took flight in her chest.

  As she wound her arms around Jax’s neck and ran her fingers through his hair she felt the world beyond this tight embrace slip away. It was just the two of them; Jax’s tender kisses, her name falling from his lips, his body encircling hers, holding her and tethering her to the ground. Without his arms around her she thought she might float up to the ceiling.

  As their kisses became hotter and more frantic, Ariel felt as if the oxygen in the room was running out, that she was going to faint. ‘Jax,’ she murmured, drawing back and looking at him. ‘Jax,’ she said again, just because she liked to say his name. He slipped his tongue into her mouth and she groaned at the feel of him as he started exploring her mouth and lips, teasing her tongue with his own.

  The dull pain between her legs became sharper. She wasn’t sure she could bear to make love to him again, but she also knew she couldn’t bear not to. Suddenly an idea occurred to her. There was another way to give and receive pleasure.

  She pulled away, though Jax’s grip on her didn’t ease off. She nudged him backwards towards the living room and when he saw the fire in her eyes she saw the smile spread across his face. But, she grinned to herself, he had no idea exactly what she had in mind.

  At the thought of what she was about to do she felt a warmth spread between her legs. She pushed Jax down onto the sofa and stood over him.

  ‘You’re so beautiful,’ he said in a strangely anguished voice as he stared up at her. ‘I could just stare at you forever.’

  She smiled at him and then sank to her knees in front of him.

  What was she doing? Oh God. Jax drew in a deep breath, filling his lungs. His head started to spin. Oh holy shit. Ariel’s fingers were stroking up his thighs. He felt himself swell and bulge in response, his erection pressing painfully against his belt buckle. As if realizing how uncomfortable he was her fingers worked nimbly to free him.

  Jax stared at Ariel’s lips, the full bottom one that tasted just as sweet as the lips to her pussy and he felt himself jolt as she took him in her hand. He threw back his head and stared at the ceiling, trying to force some control over his reactions. But before he could even take another breath he felt Ariel’s tongue swirl over the tip of his cock and then her mouth swallow him and he knew he was no longer in control of anything.

  His hips jerked and he heard the moans shattering the silence in the room as Ariel dipped her head once more and took his whole thick shaft into her mouth, running her tongue across the head and squeezing him hard at the base. She had no idea how incredible it felt. His hand rested on her head, stroking her hair. She glanced at him, her eyes dancing. Yeah, she knew. His reaction was telling her everything she needed to know, and the heat of her tongue, the heat of her mouth was everything. Stars danced across his eyelids as she sucked and licked and her hands stroked and squeezed, coaxing him on.

  He didn’t need any coaxing. Just watching Ariel tease his cock with her tongue was enough. He had so many plans to make this up to her but right now he sensed she just wanted to give him pleasure, and he was more than happy to accept.

  He threw his head back and gave into the ecstasy of her mouth, recognizing in the depths of his consciousness that this moment in time was everything, that it would be everything going forwards, that Ariel was now bound to him in some unspoken yet very real way. This pleasure she was giving and that he would soon return to her was going to be his for the taking, every single
day for the rest of his life.

  Ariel suddenly started sucking harder, her mouth and hand working in unison to bring him to the very edge of orgasm. She groaned as she swallowed him, almost to the hilt, seeming to be enjoying the experience as much as he was.

  Ariel ached. She ached to straddle him and feel him thrusting into her to spend his seed, but she also wanted to show him just how much she loved to see him orgasm and she wanted him to come in her mouth so she could taste him as he had tasted her. With increasing frenzy she licked the head of his cock and sucked on his rock hard shaft. The tip was so smooth and the taste of him drove her on. She concentrated on his reactions, sensing how he liked to be touched by the minute trembles in his muscles and the depths of the groans she was eliciting. He liked it when she swirled the tip of her tongue across his slit and he liked it even more when she drove down onto his shaft and swallowed him whole, her lips sucking gently as her hand softly squeezed the base of his shaft.

  Keeping up a rhythm she felt him grow even harder, the top of his cock swelling between her lips. The thighs of his muscles clenched, and she moved her lips faster, having to suppress her own groans.

  ‘I’m going to come,’ she heard him say, in a tone caught somewhere between agony and bliss, and she flicked her tongue and took his whole cock into her mouth. He let out a thundering cry and come spurted hot and salty onto her tongue. She sucked him, coaxing more and more from his pulsing shaft, swallowing it all hungrily.

  Tracing her tongue up his still engorged shaft she kissed the tip and he jolted violently, letting out another cry. He opened his eyes and stared at her glassily. She licked her lips still tasting him there.

  ‘Holy shit,’ he murmured. ‘Next time you’re going to do that, warn me so I can prepare myself. I’m not sure I’m going to be able to walk for a day.’

  Ariel grinned at him and then hopped onto his lap. ‘That’s karma,’ she laughed. He drew her close and she sighed contentedly as she rested her head against his hammering heart.