Page 20 of Sins of Seduction
The warning had come from his heart, like it did every time they had gotten back together. He wasn’t going to ignore it this time.
Raven pushed off the wall, handing him back his now lukewarm coffee. “We’re going to be late, and the faster I get this interrogation with Detective Cruz over with, the faster they’ll let me back into Lush to clean and reopen.”
She walked into her kitchen, and Jax trailed behind her, hating how quick the temperature changed around them. The mention of Cruz and what happened last night had been like an arctic blast, knocking him back a step.
“You’re not going to be interrogated.” Jax came up behind her when she paused at her counter, pulling out a travel mug from the cupboard overhead.
She glanced over her shoulder, scoffing under her breath before she made quick work of making herself coffee. “You know as well as I do, Cruz isn’t going to stick to the book, he’s going to be a prick.” She turned to face him, leveling a look that said she dared Jax to deny it, and he quickly swallowed his retort. He knew it would be a waste of his energy trying to defend Cruz when he never hid how he felt about Raven.
“For what it’s worth, he didn’t always dislike you,” Jax mumbled before putting his mug in the sink. “Is your lawyer meeting us there?” Raven nodded, adding a splash of coconut creamer to her coffee. “Are you going to tell me why you freaked out the way you did?”
Jax tried to broach the subject carefully. He wanted to push last night, but Raven had been freaked out the moment the rose petals fell from the vents. He expected the freak out when she saw the blood, and even the message left on the glass of the Paradise room, but her entire demeanor changed the second those rose petals fell against her skin like she had expected it to happen.
“I’ll answer you if you tell me why you gave up being a detective.” She took a sip of her coffee before continuing, “You seemed to fall right back into that role last night. I had a hard time believing that you actually gave that up.”
And a hard time believing that Jax was serious about being in her life again.
She hadn’t said the words, but Jax knew what she meant and couldn’t fault her for being wary.
Jax checked the time and let out a breath, guiding her back to the living room. They had some time before they had to meet Cruz, and Jax wanted to share enough of himself that she felt safe to share the secrets that lurked behind those golden eyes of hers.
They took a seat on her couch, Raven setting the coffee down on the end table before fully facing him. He hadn’t told anyone why he left the force. A career that made sense to him when being a priest no longer did. He always fell into these roles that had been guided to him—the priest was his grandmother and mother, and the cop had been a suggestion by his grandfather, but he wasn’t sure he would pick either of those options if he was ever asked.
“I didn’t want to do it anymore. I quit a little more than a year ago. All my life it was either become a priest, a preacher, or a cop.” He shrugged, ignoring the memories of his mom and grandparents pushing their views on him. He didn’t realize how much had been pushed on him until he’d given up everything, Raven included.
“It was one of the things in a long list of things I needed to do to find myself.” He rubbed the back of his neck, wincing as he spoke the words. He felt silly putting a voice to it, considering he was over thirty and just now getting to know himself outside of what he’d been taught about the world.
“Don’t be too hard on yourself, Jax.” Raven’s hand squeezed his knee, giving him the reassurance he needed. “We are complicated and complex creatures. Forever growing and forever changing. Yes there are some parts that stay with us always, but we weren’t meant to be stagnant. The world before us is vast and never ending. How can anyone be expected to stay in one place?”
Jax laughed, looking at Raven in awe. He never understood how she was able to stay steady in a world that didn’t like their women secure. From the moment Jax met Raven, there was never a question about who she was and what she wanted in all areas of her life. They argued and bumped heads a lot when they were both younger because Jax didn’t understand why she wouldn’t bend to his will, his way of life, but now he understood, partially. He never loved Raven for what she could do for him. He loved her because of who she was outside of him—her own unapologetic self.
“I don’t know how you do it, Rave.” He interlaced their hands together. “You’re like a tree with roots so far into the ground, nothing can knock you down. It’s not like that for the rest of us, stumbling around through life.”
“Oh, God.” She laughed, but he saw the shadows dance behind her eyes. “I am anything but grounded. Please don’t put me on a pedestal. I make mistakes and shit like everyone else.” She shook her head and slowly pulled her hand from his as she reached for her coffee again.
“It’s interesting though,” Raven started. “When I met you, you’ve always been one for rules.” She used air quotes when she said the wordrules. “I honestly have no idea how we hooked up in the beginning because you were very rigid when it came to what you expected from me. The Jax I knew then made sense to be a priest or a cop. Those vocations have their laws they need to follow, but you remember the first fight we had about my lifestyle choices?”
Jax scoffed. He remembered every fight, and he was ignorant through most of them. It was the first fight of many that had broken them up. “I told you that lifestyle was for the devil. I called you a corrupt whore and that you were lawless and there were rules that you needed to abide by to be my woman.” Jax flinched as he stopped talking, wanting to punch himself in the face. He really was a schmuck back in the day.
“Really don’t understand how you ever gave me another chance after that.” Jax looked at Raven, counting his blessings that he was here again.
“You can thank my boredom and your dick for that, but one thing I’ve been really good at has been seeing you. The version of yourself that hides behind what you show the world. I think that’s why I kept taking you back every time you said you had changed because I saw it, but there was always something holding you back.”
She reached for him, and Jax didn’t hesitate to hold her hands in his. The need to touch her and be close to her felt like an important need to his survival—she was the air he needed for his lungs.
“I’m glad you’re working through whatever hang ups you had, but I don’t need you falling into me, my lifestyle, because you think it’s something that I want. I mean, I would love it, but it has to be for you too. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve made myself cum fantasizing about what we did last night, but I’ve never wanted this to be something that is pushed on you. I think you’ve had that done to you enough in your life.”
Jax had this same conversation with himself for the past year. If he was being honest, he probably had this conversation a lot sooner in life. His high school experience aside, he understood where Raven was coming from. It had been the topic of one of their endless fights. Raven wasn’t going to let him stick around unless he was sure of himself. He hadn’t rushed to Lush and back to Raven after his epiphany for that reason, not until he was one hundred percent sure he wanted the same things as she did.
When he was sure of his desires, he signed up for membership with Lush because he had no other reference point to look at—that he trusted—other than Lush to see what he was into and what he wasn’t. He had his own porn collection, but it wasn’t the same as being inside Lush and watching people find their pleasures and in turn Jax finding his.
Jax hadn’t been as turned on as he was last night in all his life. If he pushed his grandparents’ and mom’s voices out of his head, he wasn’t ashamed about what happened between him and the others at Lush, and he was willing to do it again—frequently.
“I want this, Raven.” He unhooked his hands from hers to cup her face. “I’ve spent my entire life fighting the fire I feel inside of me because I was taught it was morally wrong. You may have been the catalyst, but at some point, even if I never met you, it would have come up. You can’t control a blaze like this, especially not one that’s been burning this long.”
Daniel Cruz downed the rest of his coffee before he went over to the coffee pot in the station and poured himself another cup. He was on his fourth one. Exhaustion made it impossible to keep his eyes open, but he hadn’t been able to go home and sleep once he was done with Lush. Something about the crime didn’t feel right to him, and he was sure his need to find a hole that didn’t exist was because of his feelings toward Lush’s owner, Raven Wright. That woman had a chokehold on his best friend, and no matter how many times Cruz told Jax she was the devil incarnate, he wouldn’t leave her be.
Cruz cracked his neck and made his way over to his desk, dumping two days’ worth of mail on his desk. A red envelope caught his attention, his name typed out on the front with no return address. He opened his drawer and grabbed a letter opener to open it. An invitation slipped out. It wasn’t addressed to him, or anyone really. There was an address, though, along with a note:
