Page 44 of Jax

I took my defeat with a pinch of salt, glowering at him as I reclined back into my seat. “And it’s Veronica,” I punctuated before going back to thinking.

“Why?”

My thinking didn’t get far as I turned to look at the frowning face. It seemed all he did was frown at me nowadays. “Why what?”

“Why call yourself Veronica? You hate it.”

“I don’t hate it,” I said, and from the quick look Jax gave me, he knew I was bullshitting him. I did hate the name Veronica. Not that much, but enough that dislike didn’t quite cover it. “It’s what everyone began calling me after you left. If I wanted to be taken seriously, I couldn’t have a child’s name like Ronnie.”

“Says who?” Jax grunted, not happy. “I like Ronnie.”

“You should tell that to Jacob, he would—”

I froze.

“Jacob?” he repeated, narrowing down on the one conversation topic I didn’t want to lead him to. “Is he the one running the farm now?”

“Uh, yeah,” I said, needing to change the flow before he started asking too many questions that I wasn’t ready to answer. “But what about you? I told you one fact. Now you need to tell me one about you.”

For a moment, as Jax regarded my obvious deflection, I thought that he was about to call me out on it.

“I have forty-seven tattoos.”

I gasped. “Forty-seven?” I screeched, forgetting to feel relieved by the topic change. “How on earth do you have the time to get forty-seven tattoos in eight years?”

“I had a lot of spare time.” He gave me a wicked grin, and I figured I knew what he spent the rest of his spare time doing. Or rather who.

“Which one’s your favorite?” I asked instead, not wanting to touch that with a ten-foot pole as my eyes showered his arms. The tribal tattoos that I had seen before were made up of some smaller, simpler tattoos that made it seem like one great mandala across his tanned skin, only interrupted by the pinkened skin where the rope had burned him over a month ago.

“My club tat,” he said, patting his left shoulder.

I stared at him, waiting until he reached for the hem of his shirt and tugged it up around his neck. I saw the other tattoos, the bikes, the flames, shadows, and chains, all of them different and unique across his hips, muscles, and spine. It was the huge skull, splintered and cracked sitting in the center of his shoulders, that wasn’t hard to figure out why it was his favorite. Unlike its leather counterpart, the expanding wings were a dark black, highlighted not with white lines, but a deep, rich purple. It stared back at me, intimidating and captivating at the same time, like looking the devil in the eyes.

“It’s… amazing,” I whispered, my hand pressing against the soft skin, feeling the ridges over his pronounced muscles. They grew taunt under my touch, but it didn’t stop my fingers from feathering across each line, cautious and timid, as if the tattoo might come to life at any second.

I pulled back my hand, a tingling sensation in my fingertips traveling back to my body. “Does everyone have one?” I asked, saddened when Jax pulled back down his shirt, covering the masterpiece.

“Well, I’m not sure about everyone, but most of us do. Just a black-and-white one, though. Mine is the only one with purple on it.”

I hummed, leaning back into my seat. “Is there any place on you that isn’t tattooed?”

“Yep,” Jax popped, looking back at me.

“Where?”

“Nu-uh,” Jax tutted, wagging his finger at me, a small cross on the inside of it. “Tit-for-tat. I’m not telling unless you can think of anything else.”

“What if I can’t think of anything else?” I retorted, my eyes skimming over him, seeing if I could spot his uncovered spot. My eyes drifted down his front, and I was sure I’d seen tattoos covering his stomach, though I had yet to see him topless. My eyes moved further down to his hips and gravitated down toward his crotch.

I paused.

Would he…?

He wouldn’t.

What kind of man would get his—

Just as the thought was crossing my mind, I caught Jax’s face. His smirking face. He wagged his eyebrows at me, and I felt my jaw drop.

---