Page 21 of Axle
She opened her mouth—probably to get one last jab in—but I cut her off by placing my hand on her jaw, thumb skimming just shy of the split in her lip. The skin there was silky, warm, and it seemed fragile under my calluses.
“Come here.” It wasn’t a request.
She came. No hesitation, no coy games. She closed the inch between us, and I met her halfway, then the taste of her erased everything else. She didn’t kiss like she was hedging bets—more like she’d slammed the throttle open and thrown the map out thewindow. The small, desperate sound in her throat lit me up like a match striking flint. My mouth slanted over hers, heat licking between us, her hands fisting in the sheets before one slid over my shoulder, the other gliding down my ribs to my waist like she was claiming territory.
My brain turned to white noise when she made that little sound again. I shifted us until she was on her back and I was half over her, careful of her ribs, though less careful of anything else. She tasted like joy. Like the first time I’d seen chrome catch sunlight—beauty and power wrapped in the same skin.
“Fuck, angel,” I breathed against her mouth, reverent and ruined. “You don’t even know.”
She trembled under me, not with fear but with something deeper. Desire. And need.
“Then show me,” she whispered shyly.
That nearly broke me. Would have, if her body hadn’t flinched the second my palm slid lower. Not the kind of reaction that said no—just the kind that told me where the bruises were. That tightened the leash I’d looped around my own throat the second I saw her and decided to be the man who made sure she healed.
I pulled back an inch. Then another. Her mouth followed mine like she couldn’t help it, and the sound she made when I finally broke the seal would haunt me for the rest of my fucking life.
“Not like this.” My voice was rough with restraint. “Not when you’re hurting. Not when you don’t trust me enough to tell me who I’m about to bury myself inside.”
Her eyes shone, frustration bright in them. “I do trust you.” It came out small and fierce. “I don’t know why. I just…do.”
“Good.” I dragged a hand through her hair, letting it spill over my knuckles. “Then trust me when I say I’m not wreckingyou worse because I don’t know how to keep my hands to myself.”
“It’s not my ribs I’m worried about,” she said, too raw and honest to be teasing. “It’s…everything else.”
“Everything else,” I echoed, pulling her with me as I rolled onto my back, “is mine to worry about.” I settled her against my chest, her knee hooked over my thigh, and her cheek finding that spot above my heart like it’d been marked for her since long before I knew her face. My arms locked around her, keeping her exactly where I wanted her. “Yours to sleep through.”
“I should argue.”
“You can,” I replied with a yawn. “In the morning.”
I bent my head, breathing her in. Citrus shampoo, fresh air tinged with the scent of an oncoming storm. And something pure that had no business smelling this good to a man like me. “Close your eyes and sleep, angel. I’ve got you.”
She exhaled, the sound broken and beautiful, and something in me fused together around it.
“Okay, Mason,” she whispered, so soft it might’ve been a dream if I hadn’t felt her breath on my skin. Then her hand slid under my shirt, a warm palm flattening against my ribs, and I went still because I knew what that meant. Trust not earned but offered.
The machine under my ribs throttled down from redline to a steady hum. I lay there, listening to the building breathe—the distant hum of tires, the creak of settling wood, her inhale matching mine—until the only thing left was her weight in my arms and the fact that I’d kill anyone who tried to take it from me.
9
ASHLYNN
The rumble of engines on the flat screens blended with the low hum of voices in the common room. I sat curled into the corner of one of the oversized couches, my knees tucked under me, watching the race with Savannah and a few of the guys.
It wasn’t my usual kind of entertainment, but this was Mason’s world. If I was stuck here, I figured that I might as well learn something about it.
The drivers on-screen leaned into the curves like they were an extension of the cars themselves, and for the first time, I understood why people called it an adrenaline rush.
It looked like it could be fun—if you didn’t end up in a heap of twisted metal the way I had three days ago.
“See that?” Nitro leaned forward in his chair, pulling me from my thoughts as he pointed at the screen where two drivers jockeyed for position in the last stretch. “He’s hugging the inside line. It forces the other guy wide, kills his speed, and that’s the race.”
“That’s allowed?” I asked.
“Yeah, there’s no rule against knowing how to use the track.” Nitro smirked. “And patience pays off for the best drivers.”
I thought about a particular driver who I wished was a little less patient. For the past two nights, Mason had slept in bed with me close enough to touch, but he hadn’t tried anything. It was maddening.
