“Jax, I always believed in you,” I say softly. “But I need to hear this. All of it. There’s no other way for us.”
“I have an uncle,” Jax says and then turns back around to stare into my eyes. He shakes his head again and I can see deep pain in his eyes.
“An uncle?”
“Yeah,” he says. “An uncle that no one should ever have. He’s the kind of guy you never want to come across. The devil himself stays clear of him.”
“The devil?” I repeat. “Jax, you’re not making any sense.”
He exhales before he continues. “My uncle Lucius is a kingpin, a boss in the underworld, a guy who traffics violence, who has enemies stacked as high as redwoods. Both dead and alive.”
“Forgive me, but this seems fanciful,” I say, doubting his every word.
“I have been exposed to these people my whole life,” he says. “I have even been a part of it.”
“Okay,” I say, not knowing what to think. “You and your uncle make the devil blush. I get it, but what’s this have to do with Madison’s death?”
Jax scratches his jawline. “My uncle thinks an opposing organization framed me.”
“I need to sit down,” I say and plop down in an armchair. “That was a lot of bad movie lines in a row.”
He opens his arms in surrender. “I swear, Ella, it’s all true.”
“So they killed Madison? These other guys?”
He nods. I can see his eyes beginning to water. He cared about her.
“Why?” I say as my stomach becomes queasy. Madison was caught in the middle of a mob war? None of it makes any sense. How can I tell Madison’s father he lost his precious daughter because of the uncle of a boyfriend who wasn’t a boyfriend?
Jaxson looks at me, saying nothing.
“What about the man she was seeing at the club?” I say. “Was he part of all this?”
“He’s worked for my uncle before. I don’t know. He’s a lone ranger. He’s not a man you want to cross, I’ll tell you that.”
“So what now?”
“My uncle thinks he can get my case dismissed.”
“Can he?”
“I don’t know. All I care about is you believing me.”
Our eyes connect, unblinking, my mind racing and my heart beating loudly. I’d never be able to think of Jaxson Cole as a cold-blooded murderer, even if undeniable facts stared me in the face.
“Jax,” I say, almost whispering. “You’re not telling me everything, but I believe the part about you not killing Maddy.”
He closes his eyes and I win the staring competition. My brain has the strangest thoughts at the strangest times.
“Your faith means everything to me,” he says.
“Not so fast,” I say. “Is it true that you’ve been stalking me?”
An unexpected shyness overtakes him. “I’ve never stalked you.” He says the words emphatically, stressing every syllable.
“I saw the photos. Hundreds of them. Even photos of me I’ve never seen.”
“The photos are nothing.”
“Then you won’t mind telling me where you got them. Brad said you had some long-term fixation on me.”
“Brad’s a dipshit,” he says. “I thought you knew that. I assure you there was no stalking involved.”
“Brad has nothing to do with this,” I remind him. “You’re the one who has explaining to do.”
“Fine. Here goes. I stole the older photos a long time ago. We knew each other before, Ella. My mother and I actually stayed at your house when we were young. I just wanted to have something to remember you.”
“Yeah, I know that part, Jack.”
He furrows his brow. Everything he does when he’s vulnerable is fucking delicious. I want to taste his lips.
“You do?” he says.
“You’re little Jack. I know that. Jack Caleb, the boy who talked me down from a tree with weak branches.”
He falls back on the couch like a ragdoll, arms stretched out lifelessly to either side. “This is the best way,” he says with relief oozing out of him. “When you saw the scar, I hoped it would jar some memories. You once asked to touch that scar when I was ten at the hospital.”
“Did I actually touch it?”
He smiles. “No, you chickened out. You were so sweet, Ella Wade, with your adult-like concern and all your big words. You overwhelmed me. Every detail of you became the light in my lonely world.”
A smile forms on my lips, I can’t help it. “We were just kids.”
“You told me it’d be best not to touch the scar to keep it germ-free and hygienically maintained,” he says, ignoring me. “You were only eight, but you seemed like the wisest being in all of God’s creation.”
“They call that precocious,” I say. “I grew out of that.”
“Maybe,” Jax says, “but I still see the wisdom and the light in you.” He takes my hand and pulls me onto the couch. I let him do it, giving into his will, and it feels so good.
“I remember, Jax,” I say softly. My voice breaks. I do remember now. Everything. Clearly. It all comes rushing back like summer rain.
“I wanted to stalk you,” he says, “but I stayed away. I just needed to know you were okay. To me you were everything good.”
He laughs nervously, turning once again into the little boy who followed me everywhere fourteen years ago during his brief summer vacation in Santa Barbara. Everything in me wants to believe in the purity of his story, let him wrap his arms around me and lock away all the ugliness in the world.
“I like that story,” I say sweetly. I didn’t plan that tone.
“There has to be a way to start again,” Jax says. “Tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it. Being with you makes me whole.”
“Honesty, Jax. Always.”
He wraps an arm around me and kisses my forehead. “Always.”
I rest my head on his chest, counting the lustful beats of his fierce heart against his ribcage. One, two, three… and then one last question pops onto my lips. “Were you ever lovers?”
His chest rises and falls faster now. I put one hand on it to keep it from escaping his body. “Madison and I? No, baby, we were something more. Kindred spirits. Lost souls. We understood each other. We could mess it up with sex. Even when drunk as skunks we knew never to jeopardize that bond.”
“I’m so sorry, Jax,” I say. “She meant a lot to you.”
“I miss her, Ella,” he says, admitting it for the first time. His chest becomes rigid now, almost as if his lungs have quit him.
I lift my fingers to catch a tear at the edge of his eye. My heart slows, the room spins and I bury my head in his lap weeping. “I miss her too,” I sob. “I miss us, the sweet children we all were. I miss my father and I missed you so terribly much these last few days. I thought you didn’t exist. I thought you were a cruel joke in a long line of cruel jokes.”
My whole body lets go. Every muscle relaxes as I kiss his pants where my tears have dampened. His hot lips land on my neck, hungrily. They are wet and desperate. He lifts me up so he can find my lips with his own.
“Ella,” he says through thin breaths as he kisses my entire face. He says it again and then a third time. Three whispers from my sweetest dreams. I want him to keep saying it.
I want him to say my name until I am the only word he knows, until all the cruel world falls away and the darkness fades into endless light.
—six—
Jaxson
Even as I kiss her, I feel numb. Worse, I feel like a fraud. She thinks I’ve told her everything and I should tell her everything—I want to so badly, but I can’t bring myself to do it. I don’t know how to tell her that her life is in danger because her poor excuse for a father has angered a murder syndicate.
I’ll keep my mouth shut for now even though if I tell her everything, I would be able to explain it was her father who gave me her photos. He’s the one stalking her. Maybe it’d do her good to know her father never stopped caring for her
in his own fucked up way.
Ella’s lips taste so good. She trails her little hands along my shoulder blades and I’m losing my mind. I’ve never come close to feeling anything so sweet before, this desperate need for contact with a woman’s body and soul, the need to keep her close and make sure she’s mine. It’s devotional. My spirit entwines with her life force and everything in me asks for more.
Despite all the messed up emotions, despite the feelings of guilt, the dark, needy part of me wants nothing more than to rip her shirt open and take her soft nipples in my mouth until they stiffen and get so aroused they send panicked messages all the way to her sweet pussy.
I yearn to taste her. I ache to feel her inviting curves. I want to fuck her soft and tender and then rough like a savage. More than anything, I need to hold her safe in my arms.
“What’s wrong?” she says, sensing my frustration. Her breathtaking brown eyes slay my soul.
I can’t tell her what’s wrong but I can tell her my deepest truth. I lick my lips, delaying the inevitable like a wretched coward.
“Say it,” she commands, climbing off my lap. I have to wonder if she can read my mind.
“I never got over you,” I begin, for better or worse. “I fell in love the way a ten-year-old falls in love. It was pure. Joy and breathlessness. I didn’t know the implications of that feeling, how it would survive when everything else in the world and in me changed.”
I pause. Her eyes are fixated on me, her breathing slowing. “My mother took us to London after my father was killed,” I say. “We started over. Things were good for a couple of years. I grew taller and stronger, I became more confident. Everything was changing for the better until my mother died suddenly of a lung infection. It happened so fast I didn’t know what hit me.”
Her hand squeezes mine. “Sweet boy,” she says.
“Uncle Lucius, my mom’s brother, took me in. He brought me back to the States. He sent me to private schools and made sure I had everything. I was miserable. Lucius is the most demanding motherfucker on Earth. He never allowed me the slightest weakness. He demanded I excel at sports. He insisted I eat lean protein and vegetables. He said I need a pair of brass balls. I started thinking about you again. With my mother gone, you were the one person left who hadn’t tried to judge or change me. In my memory you were the most adorable, yet determined creature that had ever been created.”
“In the mind we can be so much more,” she says.
“No,” I say, kissing her lips. “You are so much more here in my arms.”
She brings my hands to her face, kissing them one by one, leaving tiny wet spots on my fingers. My words come out faster now, crushing against both our defenses. “I loved you then and I love you now, Ella.”
Her eyes look stunned as her lips part slightly and then shut again. She can’t say the words back. It’s okay. It’s too soon for her. I’m probably freaking her out with my passionate confessions. I wish I could tell her where the urgency comes from, what makes me rush.
I glance at my big hands, still nestled with her small hands, and a grin pops up on my lips. “I wish you could believe me. I know it’s too soon.”
Her eyes sparkle in the gloom of the room. “I believe you, Jaxson,” she says, searching for my lips.
I bite her softly and then slip my tongue inside her mouth, my blood pounding in my ears. This is real. She’s still here. She’s not freaking out, she’s not running. The world spins in an ecstasy and an agony all at once. She wants this as much as I do, but it’s all at a terrible risk.
The thought of being absolved exhilarates me. I get greedy and rough, getting as much out of her as I can, sucking on her lips, bruising them, as my hand tugs at her hair forcefully.
We break off kissing finally and I pull back to gaze at her lovely face.
“Jax, you’ll eat me alive,” she says with a raspy, breathless voice.
I move my lips to her soft neck, leaving a hot, wet kiss there. “I’ve lived in denial, thinking I was over my childhood crush and then you showed up at the fucking agency of all places like a vision from heaven and having absolutely no clue who I was. The way you looked at me when I first took your hand, fuck. Hottest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
“Really?” she says, laughing. “Because I felt like a complete idiot, ogling you like you were filet mignon and I was a hungry kitten.”
“Ah, you mean your little pussy wanted,” I begin to say and she slaps me so gently it feels like a butterfly wing brushing against my cheek.
“Behave,” she says, “or the little pussy won’t come out to play.”
“Fuck, you’re so bad. I love it.”
“No one is as bad as you, Jaxson Cole. You make a girl a hot mess.”
“You give me a run for my money,” I whisper as I go straight for her earlobe, nibbling on it. “Did you really like me the first moment?”
“I can answer for every woman that breathes,” she says, squeezing my butt cheeks. “Hell, yes.”
“I don’t care about any woman but you.”
“That doesn’t count,” she whispers. “You just got out of jail. You must be terribly horny.”
“You dork,” I say. “I was in jail not prison and for a couple of days.”
“Did you make a boyfriend?” she says and laughs wildly, falling into my lap. Unintentionally her cheek presses right against my thickening wood.
“Ella,” I say, suddenly shy about my vulnerability.
She lifts her head and then reaches her hand down to squeeze its girth, pinching it until it grows instantly under her touch.
“Goodness,” she says. “What exactly is this?” She traces her delicate fingers along my length as it keeps stretching out.
“Proof,” I say.
She nods. “It is,” she says with a sexy grin. “Proof that you’re a bad boy.”
“You’re impossible,” I say. “You are so fuckable. The first time I saw you at the agency I wanted to drive my cock deep inside you in front of everyone.”
“Now that would have been a reunion.”
I kiss her again, slipping my hand under her shirt, chewing on her shoulder lightly.
“Jax, you should have told me you were Jack from the beginning. We could have saved ourselves so much grief,” she says, her eyes melancholic and her lips crashing hard against mine.
I pull back to put my thoughts in order. “I didn’t know how to tell you who I was, Ella. I had loved you for years. How can you say that without sounding pathetic? And it was the least romantic moment with the murder and the investigation consuming us.”
She puts a finger on my lips to hush me. “I just thought of something,” she says. “Maddy showed you a picture of me from when I was fourteen or something. You said that. Did you know it was me?”
“When Madison showed me that photo, I almost lost it. I had no idea you two were connected. You had slipped away so long ago. It blew my mind that you were so close to my reach. I struggled for months with fantasies of contacting you. I hoped Madison would invite you to a show so we could meet casually.”
“And, yet, you never showed up on my doorstep,” she says with a pout.
“When it comes to you, I was always terrified.”
“You,” she whispers. “The big man on the billboards? Afraid?”
“Petrified,” I tell her, “but now I’m over all that. I want you naked, Ella Wade.” I growl it again, “Naked.” I nip at the skin of her sweet neck.
She turns her back on me and then she sits on my lap, curving her body to mold into mine, her spine and ass and thighs rubbing against me, making me savagely hard.
I tug at the hem of her shirt exposing her tight sports bra. I slide my knee between her thighs, spreading them, and the skin tightens on my raging shaft as we both gasp.
My plan to move slowly collapses. Instead of teasing her and making her beg for my cock, my body devolves into primitive animalistic urges that want to ravage her hot flesh right this second.
&nb
sp; I drag my zipper down, biting her bra strap. She shivers under my touch, lifting her ass lightly off me so I can pull my jeans down. This is going to be the sweetest feeling ever, to splash into her tight lusciousness so hungrily.
And then her phone rings. She hesitates but I know the moment has lost its immediacy. “Do you want to take that?” I say, to make it easier for her—and harder for me, no pun intended. Sweet Ella always comes first.
She considers my words for a second. “I’ll just check who it is,” she says, jumping off my lap to grab her phone.
After she checks the number, she immediately brings the phone to her ear. “Jim?” she says. And then after a short pause, “Yes, we can meet.” She frowns to me. “Yes, of course, I’ll be there as soon as possible.”
There’s sadness on her face as she looks back at me. “That was Madison’s father,” she says. “He’s at the Daily Scandal and he wants to talk to me right now. He says my boss gave him a crazy story about me not being there and he wanted to make sure I’m okay. Mark’s trying to get him to sign some release form he’s not comfortable signing.”
I lean forward to kiss her forehead. “I’ll call you a cab.”
She’s too distraught to be curious why I’m using cabs instead of either of our cars. But she’s too fucking smart and she’ll come back to me with that question very, very soon. And I don’t know if I will be able to lie to her again about the fact that even driving our own cars could get us killed.
“I don’t want to leave you,” she says, trying to grab my cock as I struggle to get it back in my pants. “Promise you’ll wait for me.”
“You can’t get rid of me,” I say, squeezing her ass with both hands.
I have no idea if I managed to fool the security team Carter Wade has on her—or Lucius for that matter—when I scooped her away like that, hidden in the back of a cab with tinted windows. They might be outside the mansion as we speak, waiting behind bushes and in parked cars to shadow Ella the moment she leaves. Maybe I should be thankful for that.
A scary thought hits me as I close the cab door and watch her drive away. What if everyone’s right and I’m the fool? What if I’m the worst thing that ever happened to the woman I love, the exquisite Ella Wade?
Scandal: The Complete Series Page 12
