Jax and Jokers: A Demented Sons MC Texas Novel

by Kristine Allen

  “Then what were you referring to?” I asked with a bit of snark.

  “How about the Raiven look-alike you have living in your house?” was his softly spoken question. I’d wondered how long it was going to take for him to say something, Honestly, I was surprised it had taken this long. “Because if you’re going to be here full-time, then that kind of changes things. Don’t you think?”

  “I don’t see how,” I lied. He scoffed at my lame response.

  “Dude. Seriously? What the fuck is going on with you?” Flicking a glance toward the kitchen, I noticed that our family was paying attention to us even though they couldn’t hear us.

  “Can we take this outside?” I finally asked.

  “Sure.” He stood and walked outside without waiting for me. Dread pooled in my guts, but I followed him.

  When I stepped outside, I noticed he had walked to the back of the property. Feet like lead, I trailed behind him. Once I reached the spot under the tree where he waited, I stopped and faced him.

  “Is that why you’re never around? Is it because of Raiven?” My brother confronted me. Briefly, I looked away and squinted as I stared into the distance.

  “It’s complicated,” I started.

  “Then explain it to me. Because I’m feeling like a real dumbass that I didn’t figure this out sooner.” Irritation simmered below the surface as he clenched his jaw. “Did something happen between you and my wife?”

  “No! God, no,” I burst out as my gaze snapped back to his.

  “If it happened when I was held captive, I still deserve to know,” he said quietly.

  “Don’t you think she’d have told you if it had? Come on, man.”

  “But you wanted it to?” he continued as he fixed his narrowed gaze on me and folded his arms over his chest.

  “I’m really not sure.” My first instinct was to never admit it, but my conscience got the better of me. “No, that’s not true. Yeah, I did. Until I realized she was head over heels for you. Then I backed off and let my feelings lie. Do you know how shitty I felt?” Self-disgust curled my lip.

  His shoulders drooped. “Bro, there’s no shame in having feelings. Hell, you can’t tell me it didn’t cross your mind that you may not see me again back then. Besides, you never acted on those feelings.”

  “Fuck no, I didn’t! She was distraught, and at first I only wanted to comfort her and help out with Presley. Raiven was so worried about you. Then….” I swallowed with difficulty.

  “Jax, I believe you,” he calmly announced as he dropped his head. Raising his eyes while his head still hung, he asked, “Do you still feel that way?” Wariness crept into his blue eyes as he waited my response.

  Analyzing what was rolling through me, I steadily met his gaze. Surprise mixed with conviction as I shook my head. “No. Not at all. I mean, I love her, but not like that.”

  Relief filtered over his features.

  “Then what about Avery?” His eyes narrowed as he studied me.

  “I don’t know.” And that was the honest-to-God truth. Because I had no idea where I was with her other than my dick still wanted inside her. Guilt over my fucked-up decisions weighed me down.

  “Well, you might want to figure it out, because like I said, things just got more complicated. Have you thought about if either of you start dating?” At his words, I bristled. His knowing gaze studied me.

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “So thinking about it, how would it make you feel if she told you she was dating someone? What if she said she met someone and was moving in with them?” His questions made my hackles rise. My right hand fisted, and my jaw ticked. My brother suddenly laughed.

  “I think that’s my answer right there. But now you need to ask yourself if your feelings are because of who she is or who she looks like,” he said with a wry grin.

  “What are you? My fucking therapist? All this talk about ‘feelings’ is making me grow a goddamn twat.” My brother laughed again at my grumbled response to his stupid ass question.

  “Let’s go inside. I’ll make sure Mom and Dad are out of here soon so you and Avery can talk.” He gently clasped my shoulder, knowing I was still pretty battered.

  “Hmpf!” was all I said, because I couldn’t promise I’d be able to talk about this with Avery.

  If I said I wanted to fuck her or maybe see what a relationship would be like, she might balk. I’d promised her I wouldn’t try to mess with her when I’d asked her to move in with Tristan.

  Then again, I’d highly underestimated the effect she’d have on me.

  “Tears Don’t Fall”—Bullet For My Valentine

  By the time Gunny’s family had left, I could see he was exhausted. I was worried his club would come by to see him too, but as time went by and no one showed up, I had a feeling Lock told them to wait. The quiet was nice and he really needed to rest.

  “You look tired. Do you want to go lie down? I can make a late supper while you rest,” I offered as I sat at the opposite end of the couch.

  He shook his head and stared blankly at the playpen I’d moved to the living room for the day. “I’m really not hungry.”

  “Are you sure? You haven’t had anything all afternoon,” I coaxed.

  He frowned. “I said I’m not hungry.”

  Taken aback by his gruff tone, I fidgeted with the end of my hair as my knee bounced.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be a dick, but I’m having a hard time with shit right now,” he grumbled.

  “Are you hurting? Do you need a pain pill or something?”

  “No.”

  “Is there anything I can do?” I was a little at a loss.

  “No.” His answer was abrupt, and I bit my lip trying to figure out what to say or do. Having him back in the house was strange. I’d gotten used to talking to him every night while he was gone, but in person it was… different.

  My gaze flickered in his direction, and I considered turning the TV on, but I didn’t really want to watch anything. The quiet was a lot though.

  Things I shouldn’t be thinking about were plaguing me. Things that he’d made clear wouldn’t happen. Things that were making it hard to keep my distance.

  “I might get kicked out of the club,” he said quietly after several minutes of silence. His good hand clutched the couch cushion. For a brief moment, I stared at it, then looked up and frowned.

  “Why would you get kicked out?” Confusion filled me. My head tipped, and I studied his profile. His jaw clenched a few times, causing his short beard to move. The reddish-blond was darker than his hair and fascinated me. My fingers itched to touch it again.

  “If I can’t ride again,” he finally replied.

  “Why the heck wouldn’t you be able to ride again?”

  “When my arm broke, it was bad. The bones broke in multiple places and came through the skin in one area. Between that and the surgery, I ended up with nerve damage.” His eyes closed. “They don’t know if I’ll ever regain all of my feeling or movement. If that happens, I can’t ride. If I can’t ride, I can’t be in a motorcycle club.”

  That’s when it clicked. Why he wouldn’t hold Tristan outside, and why his mom propped his arm when he was on the couch with him. They were afraid he might drop him. Even though I may not know everything about him, I knew that his club was important to him. Even though he was gone for a month at a time. They were his family.

  I didn’t know what to say that wouldn’t sound like I was minimizing or placating him and his fears.

  “But you don’t know that for a fact, right? You said they didn’t know how things would turn out.” There was no sense in worrying about something that may not happen. If there was anything I’d learned in my life, it was that unnecessary worry never got me anywhere.

  He sighed. “Yeah, but it still worries me.”

  Gathering my thoughts, I chewed on my lip. Finally, I stood up and walked over to sit across from him on the coffee table, much as I’d done when he’d held Tristan. Leaning
forward, I carefully gathered his fingers in mine since his cast-like brace swallowed most of his hand. The heat that contact caused had me wanting to do crazy things.

  His blue, blue eyes stared at me. Worry swam in their depths.

  “Look, we’re going to think positive. Okay? You have physical therapy scheduled?”

  The movement of his Adam’s apple drew my attention. He nodded, and I returned my attention back to his eyes. It was safer than the irrational desire I experienced every time I looked at a part of his body. It was his neck, for fuck’s sake, but that was how bad he affected me.

  “After I get the sutures out and the brace off, yeah,” he said gruffly.

  “Then we’re going to take things one day at a time. No negative thinking allowed.” Letting go with one hand, I waved over toward where our son slept in the playpen. “Tristan forbids it.”

  A devastatingly sexy smile quirked the corner of his lush lips up. “Is that right?”

  “Yes. He hates negativity. Makes him scream like a banshee.” I nodded solemnly.

  Though he tried not to and even looked away from me while covering his mouth with his good hand, a huge grin spread, lighting up his entire face. He’d wiped it away by the time he returned his attention to me. With a small shake of his head, he studied me.

  “What?” I asked when I wanted to start squirming.

  “Nothing. Just you,” was his enigmatic reply.

  Disengaging my hand from his, I lightly slapped my hands on my thighs. “Okay, since I’m not sure how to reply to that, I’m going to make us something to eat.”

  I stood to go to the kitchen, but it brought me between his spread legs. His good hand reached out and snagged the back of my knee before I could move. The roughness of his hand against my skin was sending shockwaves through me that went directly to my core. Unfortunately, my body remembered all too well how skillfully he’d worked it. My breath caught in my throat.

  “I’m not sure if I’ve thanked you enough.” Those crystal blue eyes of his stared into my soul.

  My heart raced and my lungs ached. Releasing the breath I’d been holding, I swallowed. “For?”

  “For everything. Not fighting me about moving in here with Tristan. Well, not too much, anyway. And though we weren’t planning on him, you’ve been doing an incredible job with him. Let’s just say I wasn’t expecting any of it.” His fingers remained curled around my leg where they were searing my skin.

  “My son will never want for love. I won’t let him live like that.” The words came out harsher than I intended, because he had my emotions all jumbled.

  His brow furrowed as he studied me. “I never thought you would, but where did that come from?” When I didn’t answer, he appeared to be searching my face for the truth. It was unnerving. Then he asked, “Does that have anything to do with you being in foster care?”

  Shock shot through me. Wracking my brain, I tried to remember if I’d ever told him about that. Most of our conversations since Tristan was born were about him or general life stuff.

  “What do you know about me being in foster care?” I hedged. Every molecule in my body trembled in trepidation.

  For a brief second, he appeared contrite. Then he steadily met my gaze. “When you told me you were pregnant, I had one of the guys look into you.”

  Anger erupted, and I jerked backward, causing his hand to fall away and my legs to bump the coffee table. “You had me looked into?”

  “Come on, Avery. A woman I slept with once suddenly tells me she’s carrying my kid. Surely you have to understand that had me feeling a little nervous. One of the guys did a background check on you. That’s all.” He seemed like he really believed it was no big deal.

  “That’s all?” I asked, deceptively calm.

  “That’s it.”

  “Hm, so if I had someone ‘look into you,’ that would be okay with you?” My arms crossed in front of me defensively.

  “Avery, I think you’re blowing this out of proportion. I only wanted to make sure you weren’t a con or something. I didn’t even know you, and there you were saying you were having my kid,” he pleaded.

  “Yet you expected me to move in with you, with my newborn son, when I knew nothing about you,” I countered.

  “Touché,” he conceded.

  My anger began to ebb as logic prevailed. What he said made sense. Didn’t mean I liked it any better, but I understood.

  “What all did they find out?” I couldn’t meet his eyes, so I dropped my gaze to the pale green polish on my toes.

  “Just that you were placed in foster care when you were six, that you bounced around to several families, then joined the air force when you aged out and graduated from high school, that you were working for Lisa and going to school for your master’s in social work. That you had no criminal record that they knew of and you seemed like a legit person.” He tugged his bottom lip between his teeth as I glanced up at him.

  “They didn’t find out about my parents?” I asked hesitantly.

  “I didn’t really ask them about that. He just said your mom didn’t list a father on your birth certificate. I didn’t think your mother was pertinent, since she was out of most of your life,” he said.

  I snorted. “That’s putting it mildly. So you don’t know who she was?”

  “No. Should I?” he asked warily. I sighed.

  “She was a whore to the Demented Sons down south somewhere,” I spat with disgust. He started to cough, and I looked at him. I’d obviously shocked him.

  “Excuse me?” he choked out.

  “You heard me. I about shit myself when Lisa told me you were one of them. I honestly couldn’t believe fate was such a twisted bitch. I’d become my mother without having a clue.” The truth of my situation had hit me harder than he could imagine.

  “Stop it!” he growled angrily, causing me to jump. I glanced over to make sure Tristan was still sleeping. “You. Are. No. Whore.”

  “Yeah, well, my life coupled with the night we were together might speak differently of me.” The guilt sat heavy in my stomach at what I’d become. To make it worse, I still wanted him, despite his very clear promise that he would never touch me again. I was no better than the woman who’d birthed me. Fuck, I needed to find my own place. Being in the same house as he was without being able to have him would be a whole new torture.

  “We’ll discuss that again later. Which of my brothers is your father?” He looked like a storm about to rain down on me. Anger colored his expression, and his good hand clutched the arm of the couch.

  “Well, if I could tell you that, we’d both know. She never said. All I ever got from her was that I’d ruined her life. That I was such a piece of shit that even my father didn’t want me.” Saying it out loud burned in my chest and throat. Willing myself not to cry, I swallowed hard and glanced away as I blinked rapidly.

  “Do you know what chapter he was in?” he persisted.

  “No.”

  “Where were you born?”

  “South Padre.”

  “Fuck,” he muttered. I didn’t like the sound of that.

  “What the hell does that mean?” My voice came out much less solid than I’d hoped.

  “We have some pretty scary brothers down there with even scarier connections.” His eyes held mine. A shiver skated down my spine.

  “Well, he didn’t want me then, so it doesn’t really matter now. For all I know, he could be dead now.” I shrugged like it was no big deal, but old hurts resurfaced as I remembered feeling unlovable.

  “Because you didn’t like me looking into you without you knowing, do I have your permission to look into it a little?” he asked warily.

  “I’d rather you didn’t because I don’t care, but knock yourself out. Just… if you find him and he says he doesn’t want to know anything about me… please don’t tell me? I’d rather continue living in ignorance than to have that rubbed in again.” I scrubbed my hands over my face. When I went to step past him to go to the kitchen
, his hand grabbed my leg again. At the contact, I shuddered.

  His fingers dug into the back of my thigh as we stared at each other. Eyes locked, his hand slowly slid up until his fingers slipped under the edge of my shorts. When they curved over the bottom of my ass cheek, my breath stuttered.

  “What are you doing?” I whispered.

  He licked his bottom lip, then whispered back, “Something I shouldn’t.”

  My chest rose and fell as his hand stroked my skin. Inside, I was screaming at myself to stop him, but I couldn’t get the words out. Slowly, his fingertips moved forward until he flicked them under the edge of my thong. As they feathered over the top of my pussy and tickled through the soft curls, I whimpered softly.

  Fighting an obvious inner battle, he continued to tease me. Then, with a heavy exhale, he pulled his hand free. A quick glance at his lap told me he wasn’t unaffected by what had just transpired.

  “I shouldn’t have done that, but I’m not sorry,” he finally admitted.

  Panting, I wet my lips before I said, “Me either.”

  “Fall Apart”—Deadset Society

  I wasn’t going to apologize for something I certainly wasn’t sorry for. The second my fingertips touched that silky patch over the top of her pussy, I could smell her. That night so many months ago slammed back into me, and my jeans got incredibly uncomfortable.

  If I wasn’t all banged up, I would’ve pulled her to straddle me. The problem was, I didn’t think either of us was ready for that. Physically, or mentally.

  Pushing myself to stand, I winced slightly at how sore I was—everywhere. Once I was on my feet and mere inches from her wide-eyed self, I ran a thumb over her full bottom lip.

  “I don’t think I’m going to be able to keep my promise,” I whispered before leaning down to skim my lips over hers. Knowing how fucking wrong I was didn’t stop me. When her mouth parted and her warm breath huffed into mine, I slipped my tongue in to lightly tease hers.

  Deciding it was best I not overdo things or push her too far, I pulled back. She sighed with her eyes closed. I grinned and told her, “I think I’ll take that pain pill now and lie down for a bit.”