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I have her dress down, and my mouth is on her mouth, before she can object, and the minute her tongue touches mine, I know she’s all in. I know she’s given up the fight. She’s kissingmenow, and when my fingers drag down her bra and pinch her nipple, she’s panting into my mouth. The minute she’s unleashed, I’m fucking unleashed, when I am never unleashed. That’s not who I am. That’s not how I operate, but Emma—Emma is every answer to every question I’ve ever needed answered. Why did my mother leave? Who fucking cares? I’m about to be inside Emma. Why did my brother jump? Did my brother jump? I don’t have to think about it right now. I’m about to be inside Emma. Who taunted her and tried to scare her tonight? I need to calm down before I find out and hurt someone. I’m going to do that inside Emma.
In about sixty seconds, my fly is down, her panties are shoved aside, her leg is at my hip, and my cock is inside her. The rest of the world is gone. I lift her all the way off the ground, intending to set her on the counter, but it never happens. I hold onto her, dragging her down against me, and her fingers are in my hair, twisting and tugging.
“God, Jax,” she whispers, curling into me, her face buried in my neck, her body trembling in my arms, against me.
It undoes me. She undoes me. I’m on the edge of sanity, barely holding onto control. Her sex clenches around my cock and drags me over the edge. I lean against the wall, drive into her, and all but fucking black out with the quaking of my goddamn body. I come back to the world with Emma whispering, “We didn’t even get undressed.”
“No,” I say. “No, we didn’t, but we needed that. At least I did.” And in that statement is the storm of shit that drove me to drinking and fucking to keep from punching someone. “Hold on. I’ll take you to the bathroom.”
She wraps her arms around my neck, and I push off the wall, walking us through the house to the spare bathroom. Once we’re there, I set her on the counter, grab her a towel and fix my pants. By the time I’m put back together, and I’ve turned on the light, she’s tossed the towel into a hamper.
She grabs my shirt. “I need you to listen to me. There was more than a note left for me.” She swallows hard. “I don’t even want to tell you. Now that it’s time to tell you, I wish I could just pretend I didn’t know.” She presses her hands to her face, and I catch her wrists and ease them between us.
“Someone is just trying to fuck with us, Emma.”
“No. I shouldn’t have thrown it away. It was a stupidly rash move, meant to protect you and Chance.”
“Chance?”
“Two people with motives to kill Hunter, who now I believe was murdered. Those two people are you and Chance.”
“Because I’d inherit.”
“Yes, but so might have Chance.”
“What the hell are you talking about, Emma?”
“There was a DNA test included with the note, Jax. Hunter was my father’s son. He was—he was my half-brother, too.”
Those words rip through me. “Too? No.” I release her and step back. “He wasn’t myhalf-brother,Emma. He wasn’t your brother at all. The test was a fake.” I turn and leave the room.
Chapter eighty-five
Emma
What just happened?
Is he leaving?
I tug my dress back in place and hurry out of the bathroom. “Jax?!” I call out, rushing down the hallway and entering the living room to find him pacing in front of the fireplace, his phone to his ear. “Just see what you can do,” he says, before he disconnects and shoves his cell back into his pocket, his jaw hard, his expression tight, a raw, rough edge about him that I’ve never seen. He doesn’t look for me, and the idea that this is his rejection cuts. He walks to the chair framing the couch, where he sits down, tilting his chin downward, fingers spiking into his hair, a man tormented, a man lost in that torment.
I don’t care if he’s rejecting me, even blaming me in some way for all of this. I close the space between us and sit down on the end of the coffee table just in front of him. I know he knows I’m here, but he doesn’t look at me.
“Jax?” I whisper.
He drops his hands to his powerful thighs, his gaze lifting to mine, and there is no blame there. His blue eyes are nothing but unbridled torment. “Hunter wasmy brother.”
“I know that,” I say, catching his hands. “Nothing that happened tonight, and no DNA test, changes that. You grew up with him. You were—”
“His brother,” he says, his voice roughing up, his mood shifting, sharpening like a blade ready to strike. “This is all a game someone is playing, and I’m going to find out who that someone is. And I’m going to make them pay.” There is something I can only call brutality in those words, his need for revenge back, and it’s a living, breathing being all of its own. His words “make them pay” stirring memories of when we first met. When he’d wanted someone to pay for Hunter’s murder. I understood that need then, as I do now. If it were Chance that had died, I’d want answers; I’d want peace. Maybe I’d even want to make someone pay.
A muscle in his jaw flexes. “I told Savage I need a copy of that test.”
He wants the test. I shouldn’t have destroyed it. Of course, my father would say, “Regret not what makes you look like an ass. Just don’t do it in the first place.” Based on that DNA test, he lived a life of being an ass, and so am I right now. I’ve denied Jax answers. I’ve made this worse for him.
Feeling as if I’m suffocating in my own decisions, I try to stand up. Jax catches my legs. “Emma—”
“If someone told me that Chance wasn’t my full brother, I wouldn’t believe them. I’d want proof. I should have known you would, too. I just—I wanted—”
