Page 40 of Jax

I felt my hair, the light threads loose from my ponytail, catch the wind and begin to stick to the slick of sweat growing on my skin. I watched his eyes trace the inconsequential movement but did nothing about it.

A girl knew better than to occupy herself when being stared at by a predator. A smarter girl would have brought the shotgun hidden in the pantry.

“I’m here to give you a message,” he said but made no attempt to come near me. “I tried to pass it on before but looks like my message wasn’t clear enough at the motel.”

The motel?

He’s the one who broke into my room!

My body ran cold as I realized how close I had come to this man before. It unnerved me, and I fought the urge to escape.

The man may have been staying near his bike, but unfortunately, it wasn’t enough freedom for me to make a break for the house. It was stand firm or run, and this time, I had no choice but to do the former.

“Who for?”

“They know who they are. So, do you.” His lips quirked not in joy or satisfaction but in knowing.

I kept my face passive, but my eyes were another story as I glowered at the stranger. “What’s the message?”

A single step was all it took for him to invade my space. The stench of sweat and oil hit my nose like a punch in the face. I tried to take a step backward, but he caught my arm and dragged me near him, my weak leg faltering against the pull, leaving me slamming hard into his chest, and only seconds later, into the lips against my cheek.

It was like everything moved in slow motion. The course hair of his beard grazing my skin, the rough, dry lips pressing into the bones of my cheek, the cool heat of them making my body turn to ice.

“That,” he whispered, pulling back just enough to steady me. With a gentle touch, he pushed aside the hair stuck to my cheek and tucked it behind my ear, “is my message.”

He turned on his heels, not minding showing me his broad back before mounting his motorcycle and turning away, disappearing like a shadow sweeping over a field on a clouded day.

I couldn’t say how long I stood there, feeling an iron taste on my tongue as I bit down on my own skin. He was gone, but the burn of that touch was still sinking its way under the surface, as if it may permanently be tattooed on there.

My numbness, however, didn’t recede as I moved back through the house, scrambling for my phone, going to the one person I needed.

Jax.

* * *

Eight was a big number.

Especially when it was referring to the number of nefarious motorcycle gang members crammed into the little kitchen.

Calling Jax had made this happen.

When I had called to tell him I had a message for his group, I had expected maybe him and the big guy. I hadn’t expected all of them. And then some.

The little blonde sat at the table to the side of me, a wall of huge towering men with their arms folded, brows drawn, and mouths set in firm lines, closed in around us. “Um,” I breathed, looking to the blonde for help.

She ignored me. Red nails flew over the keyboard of her laptop with speed I’d never seen before. I could barely find the Google search bar never mind whatever not-so-legal stuff it looked like she was doing. Not that I could tell—I just assumed.

I looked down to the surface of the table. My hand reached to smooth over the ridges and notches in the wood, comforted by their rough touch under my cold, shaky fingers. All the blood had drained to my legs by the time I found my cell phone. It took three attempts to get Jax on the line, because I couldn’t get my hands to stop shaking and press the right buttons. I wasn’t sure exactly what I said to him, but all of a sudden, I was being bulldozed by a dozen men and a woman leading the march.

Jax hadn’t said anything since he’d found me with my shotgun hiding behind the door, but when I’d almost blown his head off, he hadn’t been pissed. He’d just sworn and walked straight back out the door. Then his teammates came in, all branded in leather and stern faces, and sat me down on the table to reiterate my story to the blonde who had yet to introduce herself yet.

Although I wasn’t sure if I wanted to get to know her.

She was intimidating.

“Anatoli Ivanov,” she said, a sharp grin on her lips as she gave one last click of the computer.

The humongous Russian man who dwarfed the rest of the large men in the room sucked up the rest of my breathing space as he leaned over the girl’s shoulder, his brown-greying beard just brushing the bare skin of her arm. I tried to ignore the bright pink hair and the fact that a few of the men had fresh bruises on them. Jax was sporting a war wound on his jaw—one that hadn’t been there this morning—and I didn’t feel the inclination to ask where they came from.

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