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“It’s a little tight, but it’ll do,” he says and I turn to find him with the shirt unbuttoned and the outline of his hard cock clearly visible through the taut fabric of the sweatpants. He’s gained some weight. In muscle.
And a part of me wants him to grab me right now, force that touch and that kiss I’m reluctant to give him and show me exactly what I’ve been missing. But that thought is quickly eaten up by the memory of Manny’s bony, tatted up hand around my throat, and black anger in his eyes as he prevented me from breathing.
But Jax would never force himself on me, no matter how much he wanted me. None of the men in my world would. That’s why Manny’s actions took me completely by surprise.
“So you are happy to see me,” he observes with a grin on his face as he sees me checking him out.
And that’s more than I can take.
“Happy? That’s what you’re worried about,” I snap though it comes out croaky and hoarse, because Manny’s fist on my throat clearly did some damage. Maybe I should try not to speak. “If I’m happy to see you?”
He nods, his own happiness to see me still very clearly there in his eyes.
“Of course I’m happy to see you,” I say angrily. “If it were up to me, you’d never have to come back, because you’d never have been gone in the first place. But the last time I saw you, you were in prison. And telling me to leave the moment I walked in, so—”
He walks over and his hands jerk up like he wants to hold me. I stopped talking because I was sure he was about to stop me with a kiss, but he didn’t. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing, or the thing that’s making me even angrier than I already was.
“I’m sorry, Harper,” he says quietly. “I’m sorry for leaving you, I’m sorry for chasing you away when you came to visit me, and I’m sorry for being such an idiot that I didn’t figure any of that out while there was still time to change it.”
“And what? I’m supposed to just fall into your arms now that you’re sorry?”
I want to. He wants me to. I can see it in his eyes. But it won’t happen.
“I had hoped,” he says and grins. “But that’s just more proof that I’m an idiot.”
“Don’t deflect,” I say.
We’re standing so close I can feel the hot shower-enhanced heat rising off his body, carrying the musky, deep forest scent that reminds me of being happy. The air between us is charged with so much pent-up lust, desire, regret, loneliness and love that it’s hard to draw a full breath and impossible to walk away.
“Did you escape from prison just to tell me that?” I ask. “Because that was a bad idea.”
Romantic as hell. Wild and free and completely something that would impress me no end and does. But dumb too.
He averts his eyes and the tension between us lessens a little.
“I’m here because you’re in danger,” he says.
Well, of course he wouldn’t escape from prison just to be with me. What was I thinking? Why was I even thinking it? That would be the stupidest thing he could’ve done. He’s not stupid, even if he keeps saying he is. Of course, this could be more of his trying to deflect, so he won’t have to admit his real reasons for being here.
“What kind of danger?” I ask.
His face changes expression a couple of times and I can’t follow it all, let alone read anything into it. But his eyes turn harder and darker and I know what that means. He’s about to lie to me. His eyes always turn to hard glass when he does that.
“Danger from the club that helped me escape from prison,” he says. “They want revenge for what the Devils did.”
All that’s left of the love slash lust charged air between us is a slight, mostly annoying tingling sensation along my arms. My chest feels like it’s filled with rocks.
“Someone always wants revenge for something, don’t they?” I say as I walk to the bed and sit down. “I’ll never get away from it so I have to face it if I want to be on this tour.”
He doesn’t respond and the silence begins to drag before it’s broken by the floorboards creaking as he walks over and sits on the bed next to me, making it wobble and shake. But then it’s silent again.
“You didn’t have to break out of prison just to tell me this, Jax,” I say.
And if you can’t tell me that at least part of the reason you’re here is because you couldn’t stay away from me and that you will never leave me again, then there’s no point in you staying.
I don’t say that. I’m not even completely sure I mean it.
“I want you to know that I’m here now and that you don’t have to worry about a damn thing. We can figure out everything else later,” he says.
