What fucked with my head was not being able to tell what kind of sigh it was.
Relief? Comfort? Exasperation?
My money was on the latter, and for a lingering moment, I genuinely wished it was either of the first two instead. Hell, make it both and I’d be a happy man.
But I couldn’t be.
Every time I thought I was beginning to soften for her, I remembered the handcuffs going around my wrists. I remembered being shoved into the back of a squad car like a rabid animal instead of a man. I remembered being tossed in a cell and forgotten by all the supposed people who were supposed to have my back.
And that was the way of my world, wasn’t it?
Some of us liked to pretend there was honor among thieves, but that only applied as long as there was a balance of power. Once that was out of the picture, it became the jungle it always was. Every man for himself and fuck you if you get left behind.
I’d be having words with some of my so-called business partners about that. As soon as I managed to unglue myself from my lingering obsession.
“I want to ask you something,” Jasmine said, stealing my focus as easily as a pickpocket could grab a wallet. “It’s only fair since you get to grill me.”
“You don’t have anything to bargain with.”
“It won’t be personal.” Her lashes lowered, head tilting. “At least...I don’t think it is necessarily. How about this? If you straight up don’t want to answer you can tell me.”
“Are you just trying to avoid what I said about wanting you back in my bed?”
Her cheeks flushed until she was doing her best impersonation of a strawberry. “Since I’ve already told you that’s not on the table and never will be...yes. That’s exactly what I’m doing.”
I scooted my seat closer to her, watching how her eyes fell to my arms and the way she swallowed thickly. “Never is a long time to pretend.”
I’d give her some credit. She chose not to answer instead of lying to my face.
Whether it was the beer giving her courage—she was the definition of a lightweight—or she’d forgotten the type of man I was, Jasmine reached out and tapped the back of my hand where it rested on the table. The contact of our skin shocked me, and the sharp breath she sucked in told me I wasn’t the only one.
“These tattoos,” she said, recovering with a quick head shake. “They’re the only two you have out of all the other available space on your body. Why?”
I chuckled. This woman. Would I ever understand the thoughts she processed before they left her lips? I didn’t think so, but instead of being discouraged, that realization just made me want to try harder.
People were too easy.
Jasmine was anything but.
If there was one thing any real man could appreciate, it was a challenge.
“That’s what you want to ask?”
“The question left my mouth, didn’t it?”
“Smartass,” I grumbled.
Like the dawn breaking across the horizon after a stormy night, her smile lit up her face, directed fully at me for a brief flash before she remembered my threats. Then it was gone, and for a minute, I was back in that boring ass cell and the world had lost its luster.
Then I told myself to stop being a pussy and get over it.
I glanced at my hands, trying to see them through her eyes. There was a skull on the back of each one, the eye sockets wide, gaping, and filled with black ink, but I’d had them for so long that it was impossible to look at my skin and remember a time when they hadn’t been there.
“If it’s personal...” she started, letting her words trail off.
It was my turn to shake my head. “It’s not that,” I said gruffly. “There’s no deep, meaningful story to be had so if that’s what you were expecting, I hate to say I’m about to disappoint you for the first time ever.” I took a breath and let it out. “I’ve done a lot of shit in my life, Jasmine. I’m proud of some things, disgusted by others, neutral to the rest. But I can say one thing about my life that not many people can. And that’s that I’ve never been fake a day in my life. What you see is what you get.”
“So the tattoos are like...a warning?”
I shrugged, careful not to jostle the hand still resting on top of mine. My hand dwarfed hers, yet the soft warmth of her touch was all-consuming. It was yet another reason I had such a hard time leaving her alone.
No one had ever touched me the way she did—without an ulterior motive.
“Some people wear a gun on their hip to make a statement,” I said. “I got tattoos on my hands for the same reason. I don’t bother pretending to be a saint, and people know I’m not one by taking one look at me. It lets me cut through a lot of the bullshit and get right to the heart of the matter.”
Her hand tightened around mine. I wasn’t sure she was aware she was doing it.
“Which is?” she asked.
I flipped my hand over swiftly, catching hers before she could retreat. “That I’m not to be fucked with.” My grip tightened and worry skated across her features. “That people who get in my way or get on my bad side will only live long enough to regret it. That those who betray me pay fucking dearly for it.”
What are you doing, you idiot?
I didn’t have an answer.
I’d wanted nothing more than to forget, even if just for a while. But it wasn’t that easy. No matter how much I wanted to push those angry thoughts into the background, no part of me was on board with being locked away again. Especially not the parts of my brain holding onto one hell of a grudge.
Jasmine tugged at her hand again, eyes flashing as she tried to wriggle from my ever-increasing grip. It had to be uncomfortable by now, if not borderline painful, and I knew that if she said something—if she asked—I’d let her go.
She said nothing, but her lips thinned and her brows drew together.
I let her go anyway.
Jasmine ran her teeth along her lips. While I couldn’t read the look in her eyes, I had the distinct feeling she was either about to slap me or kiss me. Since we weren’t exactly on the best of terms even before that little explosion, I knew which it would be.
The slap never came.
Her words did instead, ringing just as hard against my ears as a physical blow. “It always comes back to that, doesn’t it? You’re never going to be able to let it go.”
I brought my fist down on the table hard enough to make the plates jump. She didn’t so much as blink.
“Of course it does,” I barked, glaring at the few heads that turned our way until they went back to minding their own fucking business. “You’re the reason I lost three years of my life, Jazzy. You’re the reason I got woken up by police barging into my fucking home and beating the shit out of me.”
Her eyes widened, sorrow mixing with surprise, and I immediately hated that I’d opened my big fucking mouth.
“What are you talking about?”
I turned my head, ignoring her.
“Hawk.”
Fuck, why did I tell her that? Fucking. Fuckity. Fuck.
“Hawk Andrew Mason if you don’t—”
My voice cut into the air like a whip, crackling with fury. “Drop. It.”
But if there was ever someone crazy enough to stand in a lightning storm, it was her. I had scarcely a second to realize what she was doing before she’d lunged from her seat and into my lap, straddling my hips as her hands caught my face and tried to turn me toward her.
My hands went to her hips automatically, and I barely kept my groan contained as my dick stirred. Three years, and she still fit against my body like she was made for me. Like she’d always been meant to be mine and mine alone. I was so distracted that I forgot to keep my head turned.
When I found myself face to face with hazel eyes and pink lips close enough for my breath to kiss them, I thought I might go clinically insane with pure need. My fingers pressed into her flesh, squeezing tight. I spread my legs, bringing her closer. Through it all, he
r stare stayed locked on mine.
And it was so damn earnest and hurt that I didn’t doubt her for a second when she whispered, “I didn’t know.”
A vein throbbed on the side of my neck. “What did you think would happen?” The bitterness in my voice was so thick it could’ve dripped from my tongue to stain her lap. “That I’d be given a kind invitation to turn myself in? The police in this town have been waiting years to have a go at me, and they took their chance when it appeared.”
“Was it...” She squeezed her eyes shut and forced them open again. “Was it bad?”
“Not the worst I’d ever had. A few broken bones don’t mean a thing in the long run.”
I’d thought downplaying it would ease that tortured look twisting her face.
If anything, it made it worse.
Her lower lip trembled. I watched in absolute shock as tears sprang to her eyes, glistening beneath the sun’s light. One tracked down her cheek, and like my body knew exactly how to handle this, my hand found its way to her chin, thumb catching the drop and wiping it away.
I stared at the wet spot on the pad of my thumb before looking at her. She sniffled, letting my face go long enough to wipe at hers with the hem of her camisole.
“You’re crying,” I said slowly. “For me?”
She rubbed at her eyes and nose until they were red. “No. The hot sauce must’ve had a delayed kick to it. Or I got some in my eye. Or— Fine!” Jasmine pushed at my shoulders. “Am I not allowed to be sad? I never would’ve wanted you hurt, Hawk. Not for any reason. Not after what you did for me.”
For some reason, I believed her. Either she was being genuine with me right now or she’d become the greatest liar in the world while I was gone.
Too bad for us both her honesty didn’t magically make it any better.
I sat up, bringing our faces that much closer. She tried to lean away, but there was no room. I kept her trapped in place as my cheek brushed against hers and my lips settled on the shell of her ear.
“You should’ve thought of that before you stabbed me in the fucking back,” I whispered, chuckling when another of those telling shivers racked her slight form. That was something else I’d forgotten. For all her height, she was still tiny in comparison to me. Defenseless. “You have no one to blame but yourself.”
Instead of trying to get away from me, Jasmine leaned into my touch and wrapped her arms around my neck.
“You’re right,” she said, blowing my mind. “But I can make up for it.”
My loud bark of laughter had her jumping. “How are you planning on doing that?”
She put a hand to my chest. Jasmine made a point to stare into my eyes as she said, “Don’t take your anger out on my life. It won’t be enough.”
Her deep inhale brushed her chest against mine, and I was fairly certain it wasn’t my imagination when I noticed the heat between her legs, the heavy slant to her lashes, and the slight part to her lips.
“Use me instead.” Her hips rocked against mine, the motion minuscule enough to go unnoticed by anyone around us.
Not to me though. I noticed.
Every part of me that sparked to life like I’d been plugged into a nuclear reactor noticed that seductive roll.
“Take it out on me,” she repeated.
Maybe for the first time since I’d stepped out of the prison and into open air without a barbed wire fence in sight, my body, mind, and heart were all on the same page, saying the same thing at the same time.
Yes.
Chapter Eight
Jasmine
Bad Ideas should be my new middle name.
While Hawk drove my car—looking like a giant sitting down for a kid’s tea party—I sat in the passenger seat questioning the decision I’d made.
There was more to hold under a microscope than the choice to let him take his frustrations out on my body. Surprisingly, that was the easiest thing to decipher. When he told me that he’d been beaten before he was arrested, pieces that had gone hidden deep in the recesses of my brain surfaced and began making sense.
It was easy to think back on that day in the courthouse when he’d been escorted by me before delivering his threatening promise. There’d been a fading bruise around his right eye then, but I hadn’t given much thought to it in the face of accepting the consequences of what I’d done. Now, it was all I could think about.
I snuck a glance at his profile, taking in the muscle jumping in his jaw. The corded bulges that made up his forearm. The huge hand clamped around the wheel while he manipulated the vehicle through traffic like he’d explode if he didn’t have me alone soon. The single-minded focus on his face was enough to keep me locked in the tight vice of arousal that had refused to go away after I’d climbed into his lap, but it didn’t stop my mind from wandering.
Hawk had made it clear that he was out to get me. So why, when it came time for him to fling something in my face that would’ve hurt me to my core, had he gone easy on the details? And I knew that’s what he’d done. He was sparing me from the full image of what his body must have looked like beneath the prison garb, and I didn’t understand why.
“What?” he growled, sensing my gaze.
Why are you being nice to me?
I didn’t speak those words aloud. He’d look at me like I was crazy, and maybe I was. Nothing about his treatment so far could be considered nice. More than anything, every word and touch and look were loaded with the threat of all the things he might do.
Except therein lay the kicker.
Might do.
Other than a bit of manhandling here and there, he’d yet to do anything truly harmful to me. He’d been imposing and a bit scary for sure, but so was every horror movie ever. That didn’t stop me from taking my butt back to the theater time after time, waiting to be scared out of my socks again.
And maybe that was why I’d thrown out what I did. I had to put myself out there. I needed to at least try and make amends for the part I’d played. Whether or not it mattered that my decision had been influenced by how badly I wanted him, I hadn’t decided.
“Nothing,” I muttered when I found him glancing at me.
His lip curled, but I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a smile. “Having second thoughts already, Jazzy?”
I rolled my eyes. “No, but I’m going to be drier than the Sahara if you keep calling me that.”
“I doubt it.”
He was right.
No, I wasn’t going to let him know that.
“Keep it up then,” I said. “See what happens.”
“I don’t think you understand the position you’re in, Jasmine.”
“I think I do.”
He blew out a hard breath. “Have you always been this contrary and I never noticed?”
“Have you always been this talkative?”
His mouth closed and that muscle in his jaw started jumping around again.
Antagonizing him more than my existence already did was a bad idea. I knew better. I just couldn’t seem to help myself. The more time I spent in his presence, the more it sank in that he was back for real. And when I considered that, I also found myself wondering how long I’d have him to myself like I currently did.
Hawk would reclaim what he’d lost. The man didn’t know the meaning of defeat.
What I wanted to know was where would that leave us?
Listen to yourself. There is no us. You two aren’t a thing. Get it through your head.
My brain was right, and I would’ve given anything to be able to hogtie my heart and make it agree.
We lapsed into a strained silence that was barely interrupted by me cranking up the air conditioning. It didn’t help as much as I hoped. His anger was a living wall of pressure that wrapped around me like a blanket, and there was already enough heat in my system from being in his lap to make me think I was having a hot flash if I was a little older.
I barely noticed when we pulled to a stop. A gasp slipped out of my mouth when I tuned into the
rest of the world and looked out the window.
“Why are we—”
Hawk was already shutting the driver’s side door then opening mine, yanking me out by the arm when I didn’t move fast enough for his taste. He pushed us through the lobby of my apartment building and into the elevator before I could pull my arm from his grip and try again.
“Why are we here?”
Gray eyes found my hazel ones. “You’re not the only one who knew when I was released,” he said. “Anyone who has business with me is going to be looking at my house and my old haunts. Until I’m good and ready to grab this city by the throat again, I don’t want them in my business.”
“Shouldn’t you be forming a battle plan instead of...” I waved a hand between us as the elevator climbed.
His brow lifted. Hawk captured my chin between his fingers and pulled me closer so that his breath danced across my lips. Did he know how weak it made me when he showed such obvious displays of strength? I was sure I’d never told him, but he certainly behaved like he had inside information.
There was something about having a guy act like your weight meant absolutely nothing to him. As a girl that had been taller than average since puberty, and an athlete on top of that, I hadn’t had the best luck in that department before Hawk Mason. Guys I found myself interested in were usually shorter than me and had an issue with my heels, or taller than me but almost as skinny.
That meant I hadn’t been fucked against nearly enough walls or in the air or dangling against a balcony before I came across the man currently staring down at me like I was a full course meal and he was going to gorge himself until he was sated.
“They can wait,” he said roughly. He released my chin, fingers skimming down the front of my body. “Nothing matters more to me than this. Not right now.”
My elevated heartbeat wanted to replace those words with, Nothing matters more than you. To keep from allowing that to happen, I stood on my tiptoes, brushing my lips across his so that he would distract me.
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