He leaned down and whispered, “Are you following me? Is this part of your job?”
Ivory pressed back against him, her back meeting the soft cotton of his black T-shirt. His jeans abraded the back of her thighs. “I’m here with a friend.”
“Right.”
A spark of anger ignited in her stomach. “How dare you assume I would follow you. What makes you think I would want to?”
Jax pressed her harder against him, and his fingers dug into her hips bones and bunched the material in his fists. “Think your dress is short enough?”
Ivory bit back a retort. The sexual tension caused by his raw power and the inducing music tumbled through her mind and created a frisson of excitement. She liked fighting with him, liked to push him, to break that veneer of deadly calm he wore like a shield.
“No, it’s not,” she said in reference to her black ensemble.
“I didn’t think you owned anything that gave away the fact you have assets, Ivory,” he growled in her ear.
His hands wandered up her rib cage, just below her breasts. She felt shame infuse her at how much she wanted his hands on her body. She was addicted to him. A stranger. A killer. “A woman can be sexy without showing the world what she has.”
She turned in his arms and looked up at him. The strobe lights created vicious shadows along his hard jaw. His eyes seemed to glow in the light, the green lasers hitting him directly. He looked otherworldly. A warrior of old. She pressed against him, front to front, felt the need to rub her body up his like a cat would its owner.
“You’re sure as hell showing the world what you have right now,” he muttered, his voice stone cold.
Ivory balked at his slightly jealous behavior, his hands gripping her hips. “Tonight is a special occasion.”
“Ah, I see. So, on special occasions, the room gets a good look at the little black thong you’re sporting,” he spat. “Do they pay you as well?”
She reared back, connected her hand with his cheek, and the sting traveled from her palm to her wrist and up her forearm. His eyelids dropped, shading his thoughts from her, but his lips pulled into a snarl, curling slightly.
“You’re an asshole.” Her chest heaved with anger and exertion.
He lifted her up until her toes barely touched the floor. “Don’t I know it?” he muttered just seconds before claiming her lips. She moaned at his taste, the slight hint of bourbon, the familiar feel of his tongue gliding over her lips. I could get lost in his mouth, she thought. He ravished her, the unrelenting plunder of his mouth on hers, sucking the will straight from her body, her resolve not to get involved with this man gone. He stole her common sense, her self-preservation, made her feel like a weakling. She hated it.
She pressed her palms against his chest and pushed. “No.”
Satisfaction infiltrated the haze in her mind to see his heavy breathing, proof he wasn’t as unaffected by their volatile chemistry as she thought. She turned away, squeezing past the crowd of dancers. She made her way back up the stairs to the cushioned seat of the sofa and signaled a waitress. “A double shot of Patrón,” she told the young girl.
She disappeared, and just as the woman left, she saw Jax standing there at the top of the stairs. Ivory’s heart beat in time with the music. The way he watched her, stared, his gaze touching on her throat, her chest, up her bare legs was unnerving. How had he known the color of her underwear anyway? Where did he come from?
Instead of following her to the couch, he went to the bar. Ivory was disturbed to find she was disappointed at his retreat. How sick was that? The waitress returned with her shot, and Ivory gulped it back, not caring the harsh liquid’s sting. She kept her eye on Jax as he made his way up to the bartender, leaned suggestively against a blond bimbo with double Ds.
She watched him, a smile forming on his lips. A charming smile, if she could name it nothing else. Ivory narrowed her eyes. The man was flirting with the girl! Ivory reminded herself she didn’t care and that he could do what he wanted. When he smoothed a palm down the blonde’s bare back and his fingers dipped into the low-cut of the dress near her bottom, Ivory saw red.
Jenny reappeared. “Where did you go?”
Ivory laughed, a wry sound that escaped her lips despite her efforts to keep her bad mood from ruining her night. “I got jerked around.”
Jenny raised an eyebrow at her. “I don’t get it.”
“See Jax?”
Jenny turned around, her eyes wide when she faced Ivory again. “Where did he come from?”
“Fuck if I know,” she muttered. “Asshole.”
Jenny giggled. “I think you’ve got a crush on the man.”
“Don’t be silly. He’s a jerk of the worst kind,” Ivory huffed. “Do you see the way he’s all over that woman?”
“You’ve got it bad for the hard-ass uncle from Manchester.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I just want to find Ashley a good home and be done with him.”
“And you want him to take you home tonight, strap you to his bed, and ride you all night long,” Jenny accused.
Ivory blushed. They were social workers. Well, she was and Jenny worked with children. They couldn’t be talking like this. “We’re being very improper.”
“Improper-shmopper.”
Ivory noticed Jax looking directly at her as he leaned over and ran his tongue up the bimbo’s neck. She watched as the girl melted like putty in his very capable hands. “Asshole,” she muttered to herself.
“Go tell him.”
“I already did,” Ivory sighed. “It doesn’t work on him. He likes being an asshole.”
Jenny frowned. “In my opinion, men who like being assholes usually aren’t. They’ve just been hurt one too many times.”
Ivory suspected as much and maybe, just maybe, besides his crude manor and dirty words, beneath all the steel lurked a heart as soft as her own, susceptible to pain and anguish of the worst kind. Jax’s eyes hid something beautiful inside of him and she had a feeling it was a soul. If she wasn’t careful, the man could take more than just her body if she let him. “Jax is someone I could spend the rest of my life trying to figure out and never accomplish a damn thing.”
Jenny turned to look at him, and they both watched as he led the blonde girl down the stairs. Ivory felt a pinch of jealousy cramp her stomach. Jenny turned back to her. “I was wrong. The man is just an asshole,” she said. “So, how was seeing Nathan today?”
“Like being stuck in a cage covered in blood with a starved tiger.”
“Ouch.”
“He ended things with Emma,” Ivory confided to her best friend. “He got jealous when Jax showed up.”
Jenny looked at her watch. “Let’s catch a cab. Go home. I think this night calls more for ice cream than tequila.”
“I think you’re right,” Ivory agreed.
They caught a cab and headed back to Ivory’s house. Her nana kept the fridge stocked with Rocky Road. When the cab pulled up to her two-story brownstone, Ivory cussed a blue streak. “How the hell did he get my address?”
Chapter Five
Jenny peered over Ivory’s shoulder. “Whose truck is that?”
“Jax.”
“And he’s in there with your nana? Oh, no.”
Ivory paid the cabbie and both women scrambled out of the car, racing up the short side-walk to Ivory’s front door. She opened the door and held her breath. She could hear her nananana talking and the low rumbling responses from Jax. She sent a silent plea to Jenny, but her friend merely shrugged. They were five-two, barely one hundred pounds. They were no match for Jax.
Ivory felt around for her 1911 in her clutch, just in case. She led the way to the kitchen and nearly burst out laughing at the scene before her. Her nana, in curlers and a bathrobe, sat at the small kitchen table, a cup of tea before her.
Jax, on the other hand, had squished his long legs beneath the table and was hunched over with his own cup of tea in the delicate china cups, his f
ingers too large for the small handle. In her nana’s very pink kitchen, the man looked as out of place as a gun in church. “Nana,” Ivory said.
Her Nana looked up and blinked. “Oh, there you are. You have a visitor,” she said, her tiny voice singsong in the room. Ivory and Jenny stood perfectly still, their attire as strange in the kitchen as Jax playing tea party with her nana.
“I see. And how did my visitor get my address?”
“I have my ways,” he said. “I’ve been talking to your grandmother for a while now. About an hour.”
She could feel Jenny’s need to skedaddle, but Ivory clutched the other woman’s hand, her fingernails digging in warning. “What happened to Bimbette?”
Nana raised her gray eyebrows. “I think I’ll go to bed now. Jenny, dear, will you help me up the stairs? My knees aren’t as good as they used to be.”
Jenny nodded, took Nana’s hand, and extracted herself from Ivory. Ivory felt bared before him alone, with the harsh kitchen light shining down on her. Jax stood, careful not to tip over the table or spill the tea. “Alice and I are old friends. She had a fight with her boyfriend, and I put her in a cab before leaving.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
Jax shrugged into his leather bomber jacket. “Believe what you want, babe. Come on,” he said, taking her hand and pulling her along. “We’re going to talk. I want to know more about you and Nathan.”
She locked her knees in effort to keep him from pulling her out of her own house. “I’m home, and Jenny needs a ride. I’m not going anywhere with you tonight.”
“Hey, Jenny. I’m borrowing Ivory. We’ll be back.”
Jenny appeared at the top of the long staircase, her head bobbing. “Okay,” she said, winking at Jax. “Have fun.”
Ivory cursed her best friend under her breath. Jax continued to pull her along until, for the third time that day, she found herself being hoisted into his truck. “This is becoming way too familiar,” she muttered.
Jax climbed in. “We’re not going far. Just a few blocks over. To the park,” he said. “I wanted a place to talk to you. I’ve got a lot of important decisions to make. I think you’d be happy at what I’ve decided.”
“You’re going to take in Ashley?”
“No. Yes. Don’t rush me.”
They drove to one of the state parks that stayed open to night runners, parked, and got out. They walked along the track, and Ivory wished she could have at least put on tennis shoes. “What are we doing out here?”
Jax grinned then, an honest-to-God smile, and Ivory stumbled on her heels. It transformed his face, and she understood the power of the male smile, how it raked in women, seduced them. She felt her body flush, her folds tingle. “Oh, no you don’t.”
“What?”
“Don’t go fooling me into thinking you’re a nice guy,” she warned him.
“I’m not a nice guy,” he said flatly. “I just like the park at night because there are no people here. In Manchester, I go to Pebble beach. It’s deserted, and I get some good exercise in.”
She imagined him as he swam alone at night and her core flushed wet with need. She wondered if he swam in his birthday suit. “I see.”
He guided her toward a bench. She thankfully sat down, took off her shoes, and let her feet sink into the cool grass. The air nipped at her bare shoulders. Jax took off his jacket and handed it to her. “Put this on.”
She shrugged into the oversized coat, the warmth and smell of Jax surrounding her. “Thanks,” she mumbled, baffled by his behavior.
“Tell me about Nathan.”
“What do you care?”
“Ivory, I heard you talking today,” he confessed. “Sounds like you’re not over him.”
Her hair obscured his view, afforded her a semblance of privacy. “Nathan and I met in college. We dated on and off for five years, got engaged, and then he left me for one of my friends. End of story.”
“That’s a long time to be in a relationship with someone.”
She wished she’d just stayed home. “I loved him, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Do you still love him?”
She looked at him, his eyes captivating her once again. The green depths pulled her in, made her wish she knew and understood him better. Then again, Jax Morgan only passed through her life. By his own admission, he would leave and forget her. “Sometimes.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means sometimes I wish we still had what we did,” she said, her voice wistful. “Someone to hold me, make love to me. Take me on romantic dates. Surprise me with flowers. Get silly with every now and again.”
“Is that what you really want from a man?” he asked, his brow furrowed.
She stared out at the trees. They were losing their leaves, the golds and reds scattered across the lawn. Everything died. Everything renewed itself in the end. Life never stopped. Death never stopped. Now she understood. At least Jax’s profession, anyway.
“I want a man who wants me enough to come back,” she whispered.
Lifting a hand, he pushed the tendrils of her black hair behind her ear. “I don’t understand how he ever left you for someone else.”
Her eyes going wide at the lost look on his face and the sudden tenderness she saw there, she openly stared at him. “You’ve never met Emma.”
He leaned in, kissed her jaw, and nibbled at her ear. Ivory shivered, not from cold but from the sudden heat that flooded her. He turned her face to him. His lips came down on hers, and his tongue slipped inside her mouth. Tentatively, not sure how to deal with a tender Jax, she cupped his face, and his rough stubble sensitized her palm. She scooted closer to him, to the inferno, to the insanity of Jax.
He ended the kiss, and his lips lingered a hair’s breadth from hers. “He’s still in love with you.”
Pulling back to stare up into his eyes, she asked, “How do you know?”
His lips quirked up in a half smile, a dark current running between them. “Because he got pissed when he found out about us.”
“How did he find out?”
“Guess I’m not as good at hiding some things as I thought,” he said, guiding her hand to his rock-hard erection, his leather pants butter soft and pliable beneath her fingers. “I get like this every time I see you.”
She inched closer until her legs touched his. “Tonight, did you follow me?”
He pushed more of her hair off her face, lightly circled her throat with his fingers, and squeezed. A rush of fear pulled her out of her aroused state until he began massaging the cords there. “I didn’t follow you.”
“Then how did you know?”
“I went to Rayon to pick up a woman, and instead, I found you,” he said. “You turn up everywhere I go, all over this town, reminding me of what I want.”
Ivory’s breath hitched. “What do you want?”
“You.”
His other hand slid up her thigh, disappeared beneath her short skirt, and teased the soft skin there, just inches from her aching center. She didn’t dare move for the hand around her throat, the look in his eye. “And what’s wrong with that?”
“I don’t want any ties to this place when I leave, Ivory. My job . . . it would be detrimental to my psyche.”
She understood, at least she thought so. He began drawing little figure eights on her upper thigh, which made her restless. “Don’t do this here,” she pleaded.
“Why not? There is no one here. We’re alone.”
“It’s a public place,” she whispered, inhaling against his neck.
“And that makes it hotter,” he said back, his fingers travelling upward, pulling on the band of her panties. Involuntarily, she spread her thighs, seeking a closer, more intimate touch. “Little Ivory, so uptight, so hot, wet, and tight.”
She jerked when he grazed her core with his finger and pressed the fine film of her thong against her middle. She sighed. “Jax, what do you want from me?”
“This,” he said
, sliding his fingers beneath the fabric. “I want you in my bed, writhing, begging, and making me alive. I feel alive when I’m inside of you.” Grazing his thumb across her weeping core, she moaned softly. Had a man ever said that to her? Wanted her to make him alive?
“Take me to your place.”
Jax shook his head no. “We won’t make it.”
“Then take me somewhere, as long as we’re in your truck,” she said, pressing her hips upward to meet his questing touch. “I can’t do this in public.”
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