Page 147 of Stay with Me

Fury flared and pulsed around the deep, throbbing hurt. “Let me go, Jax.”

“Especially with you standing there, all fired up in my shirt? Yeah. Hot as hell,” he continued, and my anger overrode the hurting.

One hand dropped from my waist and flattened against my lower belly. He pressed and my bottom tipped back against him, and yeah, I totally got that he really did find that hot. The evidence was right there, and my body, because it was a dumb hooch, reacted. My stomach fluttered and the idiotic area between my thighs throbbed.

And that just pissed me off even more.

“If you don’t let me go, I swear to God, Jax,” I warned, squeezing his arms with my hands.

He dipped his chin into my shoulder and said, “Is it wrong that I find that hot, too, because I really kind of do.”

I lost it and shouted loud enough to wake up the neighbors, “Let me the fuck go!”

Jax’s arms dropped like I was a hot potato, and I spun on him, breathing heavy. Our gazes locked, and the amusement in his voice was completely gone from his expression. He stared at me. I stared back. In those moments, I heard what I had when I stood upstairs all over again. I felt what I did when I saw Aimee’s expression when she’d seen me standing at the top of the stairs.

Tension formed around his mouth. “Calla ...”

My feet moved backward. I needed space. I needed time to think about everything that had just happened.

He took a step forward, and I kept moving until my leg bumped into the arm of the couch. He stopped a few feet from me. “I don’t know what you’re thinking right now, but I’m going to wage a guess here, and say what happened is not what you’re thinking.”

In my chest, my heart threw itself against my ribs. “It’s not?”

“I had no idea she was going to show up tonight. She hasn’t been to my house in—”

“A month?” I finished for him. “A whole month?”

The tension around his mouth increased. “It’s been more than a month, Calla. I don’t know the exact time frame, but she hasn’t been here since you came here. You have to believe that. I’ve practically spent every night with you since you’ve been here.”

“Not every night.”

“Every night since she got back into town,” he said, and I had to admit, that was true. “You and I aren’t together every waking minute, but give me a break on that. It’s not like I have all the time in the world to be hooking up with her.”

Another good point. “But you were hooking up with her a little over a month ago.”

“Beforeyou came here, Calla.”

Did that matter? I knew it shouldn’t. I wasn’t even in town and I couldn’t be mad over who he hooked up with before we met, but damnit, I was. I was thoroughly pissed and I was jealous. I was woman enough to admit to my irrational anger over that, but there was more.

“For someone you aren’t seeing, she was awful angry over the fact that a girl was here, Jax. She showed up in the middle of the night like she had a right to be here.”

“Calla—”

“And every night she’s been in the bar, hanging all over you and you let her.” My hands curled into fists again. “The first time my friends met you she was feeling you up.”

Frustration flashed across his face. “We’re back to that again?”

“Yes!” I shouted. “We’re back to that,baby. You know, the whole ‘you need to trust me’ and basically deal with the fact you have a chick hanging all over you in front of me and my friends.”

“I never said you had to deal with it, Calla.”

“You didn’t?” I laughed harshly. “That’s not how I remember the conversation ending.”

Jax drew in a breath and a muscle spasmed in his jaw. “Actually, the conversation ended with you walking away. You didn’t give me a chance to say anything else or even to explain.”

“What’s there to explain? She was all over you, multiple times, and you just smiled at her!” My head felt like it was going to explode off my neck. “And I’m just supposed to trust you and be okay with it? Even when you have her showing up in your house at three in the morning like she belongs here and has no idea you’re seeing someone?”

“Correction,” he growled. “She doesn’t care that I’m seeing someone.”

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