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Jax releases me, scrubbing his jaw. “You don’t trust me.” He shoves back his jacket, settling his hands on his hips. “What? No. No, Jax. That’s not—”
“Of course you don’t. How can you? I came to you out of bitterness, and my damn brother tried to fucking kill you last night.” His expression tightens. “Let’s go back to the castle.” He actually starts to turn away from me, but not before I see the cut of emotion in his eyes. I’ve hurt him without meaning to hurt him. This man has put everything on the line for me, asked me to live with him, even, despite all that is stacked against us. He cares. I care, and I need him to know how much. I need him to know how vulnerable I’m willing to be for him.
I catch his arm and turn him to face me. “You’re right if you assume what you saw in my face just now is about you. It is. It was.”
“You don’t trust me,” he repeats.
“I do trust you, and you matter to me. You.” I step into him, close, aligning our legs. “I’m falling,” I swallow hard, biting back a confession he might not be ready to hear, “I’m falling hard for you, Jax.”
He doesn’t ease. In fact, every muscle in his body tenses beneath my touch. “Then what do I feel right now, Emma?”
“I just—I don’t want to be a trigger that sets someone off like I did Brody last night. That Echo thing wasn’t what you think. I felt something in him. I feel like we’re in a garden of poison roses, and one wrong turn and a thorn will rip us to pieces.”
He catches my hip and cups my face. “No one is going to rip us to pieces.” His thumb strokes my cheek. “I won’t let anyone rip us to pieces.”
“Jax—”
His lips brush mine. “Let’s take a time out from the rest of the world. I want to show you something special.”
His voice is warm, and when he leans back to look at me, his eyes are warmer. Now, I’m warm, too. And God, how I want that timeout. How I want to just pretend there are no thorns. Suddenly, all the problems we’re facing fade into the garden. All the poison fades into the darkness of the past. He matters. The pause matters. That something special he wants to show me does, he does.
“Yes,” I say. “I’d like that.”
The warmth in his eyes seems to expand and wrap around me, a magnet pulling us together. We turn and start to walk, and that’s when the odd sensation of being watched washes over me again like we’re not alone. Someone is watching us and that someone is a poison thorn.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Emma…
I can’t take it.
“Jax—”
“Savage’s team is in place. Yes, we’re being watched.”
The very idea that he feels what I feel, more so, that he’s connected to me enough to read me, is both intimate and comforting. I tell myself my imagination is going wild. There is no malice in the eyes upon us. There’s protection. Jax motions to the edge of the walkway. “Follow the line of lights,” he says. “They’re on the main trails where there are cameras, and all lead to the beach or the castle.” He lifts my knuckles to his mouth and kisses my fingers. “Better yet, stay with me. I’ll take care of you.”
Old demons flare with his well-intended comment, the idea of being taken care of actually creates a recoil in me, a fear of being vulnerable that I understand all too well. It comes from my father’s head games, and it comes from another place, another experience, another man. A man who doesn’t deserve to be in the same room as Jax.
Almost as if Jax is proving that protection he’s offered, his arm slides around my shoulders, and he pulls me close, sheltering me with his big body. And he does feel like a shelter from a storm that rages around us. The problem is that the storm is perhaps a storm of blood, his blood, caused by my family. I should be sheltering him. And I will, I vow silently. I will.
We turn right down a path, and to my relief, the sense of being watched fades into the wind, perhaps aided by the hard lines of Jax’s body next to mine. Tension eases from my body, and after a short walk, we stop at a stairwell that is ironically framed by rose bushes. “I promise there are no poison thorns,” Jax says, catching my hand with his and winking.
That wink twinkles I laugh, because this is Jax, and the man has a way of making me laugh at the most unexpected moments. I love this about him. He gives me a little tug, and we start walking again, our destination easy to spot in the stunning white beach house we’re now making a beeline for. “What is this place?”
