by Jory Strong
They passed the salvage box. The shirt and underthings were gone.
He imagined Eliana's eyes softening with pleasure as he presented her with pretty underthings to replace the ones he'd taken. His cock hardened with the thought of her wearing those things, the silky material against her skin becoming saturated with her warm scent, the panties getting wet in the moments before he told her to strip.
It wouldn't cost him much time. It wouldn't cost him answers. It might even make getting those answers easier on both of them.
He altered course and entered a tiny store that catered to women. Hesitated at realizing how quickly rumors that he might be settling on one particular woman were going to spread then shrugged it off.
He was warlord. He could do what he fucking pleased.
The shopkeeper was a gray-streaked blonde with kind eyes and a generous smile. She came toward him.
"Do you need something for the woman you were with last night?" she asked in a warm voice.
He couldn't tell if she was hiding the thrill at being minutes away from becoming the source of gossip and having a stampede of customers, or if she didn't care that he'd chosen her shop. He liked that about her.
"Bra and panties," he said, ignoring Rand's snort and mumbled comment about catching up with Noah and placing a bet.
The shopkeeper cocked her head as if mentally determining the appropriate sizes. "Did you have a particular color in mind? Or would you like a suggestion?"
Jax flashed on Eliana beneath him, her eyes heated with desire and pleasure. "Green."
"This way."
"Stay," he told Rand, half-smiling when he heard Rand's woof woof coming from behind him.
Jax followed the shopkeeper past racks of slinky things to a section of back wall composed of square, wooden holes filled with color.
The woman pulled a mass of panties from an opening and put them on the wide wooden shelf that stretched the length of the wall. She said, "I can't be absolutely certain since I'm basing this on moonlight alone, but this color might look good with her skin tone. What do you think?"
That the green matched Eliana's eyes. That it made him remember the way she'd peeled scraps of blue downward to reveal her pussy, that it made him remember the first touch of his cock to her opening.
"Perfect," he managed without panting or gripping his dick.
Graceful hands quickly sorted by size and design, creating a row of possibilities and a pile to be shoved back into the square wall space.
"Any of these should fit," she said, hand sweeping from panties meant to do what they could to enhance attractiveness to nothing-scraps of material meant to drive a man so crazy he'd remove them with his teeth if that's what he had to do to get at the pussy they covered.
Heat flushed through Jax. He snagged the panties to the far right, accepting that he must be a fucking masochist.
"Let me get the bra that matches those," the shopkeeper said in a voice that didn't even hint that she'd noticed the raging hard-on or had a pretty good idea what was going on inside his head.
She moved off to the left. He adjusted his dick and followed, ignoring the amused sound that came from Rand's direction.
The shopkeeper pulled a wad of green from a square opening. She sorted through the bras, dropping the rejected sizes into a pile on the shelf and finally holding up a single item. "Does this look about right?"
Jax's hands twitched. He'd be hearing about it until the day a bullet or a knife took him out, or took Rand out, if he reached out to gauge the fit of those bra cups by imagining Eliana's breasts filling them.
"Should work," he said, pulling a gold piece from his pocket. "This cover it?"
The widening of the shopkeeper's eyes and quick, flickering emergence of her tongue said yes.
Jax put the coin on the table next to the discards, took the bra and panties from the woman's unresisting hands and jammed them into his pocket.
"The help was appreciated," he said, and started to add silence would also be appreciated, but a glance in Rand's direction sent a flock of women scattering on the other side of the window, including a couple who spent time on their backs and knees at the bar.
Fuck.
"Let's go," he told Rand.
Rand grinned and opened the shop door. "Almost feels like I owe you a couple of silver pieces for the entertainment."
"Just keep it to yourself," Jax said.
Rand laughed. "Little late for that, don't you think?"
Jax didn't answer.
"Hard to miss you're putting her in green."
For a second time Jax's footsteps faltered.
"Matched her eyes." That's all.
Rand snorted.
Jax headed for the house, his strides purposeful, like a man on a mission, not one hurrying home so he could get his cock inside his woman.
He fucking was on a mission. Just happened that getting answers from Eliana didn't exclude getting inside her, didn't exclude feeling all that warm skin against his and reading her eyes, tasting the words coming out of her mouth and deciding whether they were truth or lie.
They damn well better be truth. All truth from now on.
He got to the front gate and stabbed in the code. The lock clicked open.
Jax opened the gate and had to fight to keep from breaking into a jog. Before he and Eliana left the bed, he'd know who she was running from.
Nothing said he didn't have to enjoy the process of getting answers from her. Nothing said she couldn't enjoy the process of giving him her trust.
The front door opened as he reached it. Samuel stepped out of the house with a different woman than the blonde he'd been boning on the couch in the back room.
"You talk to Noah?" Samuel asked.
"Yeah."
Jax kept going.
"Anything?" Samuel said to his back.
"Nothing that doesn't lead to Diego."
"Fuck."
Jax took the stairs two and three at a time. Long strides got him to the bedroom door. He pushed it open.
The punches Noah had landed were nothing compared to the punch that came with stepping into an empty room.
The shirt he'd tossed on the bed was gone. The jeans he'd told her to strip out of were gone. Her socks and shoes were gone.
She was fucking gone. That's what the tightening of his chest and the frantic pounding of his heart told him.
His hands curled into fists. In his mind he heard her husky voice ask, Can I stay here until you come back?
She'd fucking played him.
Anger streaked through him, along with hurt.
Not hurt, he told himself, pressing his knuckles into the chest wall over his heart. Wrong word.
She had not hurt him. No woman was capable of that.
It didn't mean he didn't want Eliana back.
She wasn't in the house. He knew it. He searched it anyway.
She wasn't in the kitchen or any of the common rooms. Wasn't out back in the garden or beneath the trees.
Jax didn't bother pounding on bedroom doors. None of his men had a death wish.
Let her go, he told himself. She might already be off his turf. Chances were good some other tracker had run her down while he was dicking around with Noah.
Jax shoved his hand into his pocket and encountered the nothing scraps of material that masqueraded as a bra and panties.
He fisted the underthings. Want shuddered through him and he couldn't shake the possessive feelings that'd raged through him even before he'd become the first man to have her and those feelings had tripped into protectiveness.
The pleasure between them had been real. The desire had been real. His mistake was in not being clear that she belonged to him until he said she didn't.
Samuel entered the house without the woman. His eyes made contact with Jax's face and he straightened out of the saunter. "What gives?"
"Meeting in five. Tell the men."
"On it."
Samuel bounded up the stairs yelling, "Hey,
Rand! Leon!"
Jax's hand tightened on the things he'd bought for Eliana. He'd find her, or his men would, and she wouldn't run from him again.
Chapter 6
The shirt clung to Eliana's skin. Her thighs burned. Her lungs burned. Her throat burned. Her heart beat so hard and fast it would obliterate any sound of the man who'd been chasing her.
Her sides and chest ached but she kept going, though she was no longer sure of where she was, except too far away from New San Jose.
Glancing upward, she read the sun and altered her course in the direction that should allow her to glimpse the city. If she could see the wall, then following it would lead her to the railroad line. And the train would take her home.
If she evaded capture.
If she managed to get on the train and avoid discovery.
If she didn't die jumping from the train or looking for her family.
But better to risk that death than to be caught and returned to New San Jose. By now Stefan's spies had probably carried word to him that she'd spent the night in Jax's bed.
A burst of fear gave her added strength, added speed. Stefan had invested too much time and money in her to let her go just because she'd been with another man.
He might set her up as a whore to visit and use until another future wife was found. He might marry her, exacting his retribution daily and rewriting at least a part of the past by getting her with a child that survived, unlike the one who had taken his first wife's life. Either way, in the end he would kill her.
Reaching a wide road where the rubble and trees and buildings no longer hid New San Jose's wall in the distance, she allowed herself to stop running. She thought she remembered seeing pictures of this road from the days before the Final War.
It'd been crowded with cars and lined with shops. Now it was cracked and cratered.
The majority of the buildings this far out were piles of rubble. She'd gotten too far away from the city wall.
The train would be moving too fast by the time it reached this distance. She'd never be able to climb aboard and hide in the private car being sent to New Salt Lake to retrieve an intended bride.
Eliana shuddered, wondered if that woman anticipated the trip or dreaded it, if she'd been born into the elite, or been stolen from one of the tribes, her origins hidden or ignored—just as Eliana's had been—because it was important to refresh the gene pool.
Eliana shook off thoughts of life behind the wall. She'd escaped. Just as she'd escaped Jax.
A twinge went through her heart with thoughts of that escape.
Think of him as the warlord, she reminded herself. Nothing good would come of thinking it had been more than a night of casual pleasure for him, like a hundred other nights, a thousand other nights.
She touched the green bandanna she'd taken from his room to contain her hair, then stroked the place on her neck where he'd marked her.
Shivers of remembered pleasure radiated from the spot. She hadn't wanted to leave. Even knowing that in the end he'd hurt her in ways no one behind the wall ever could, she still wanted him.
Her hand slid downward, to the shirt he'd exchanged for the one he'd taken. When she'd encountered his men in the hallway and in the kitchen, they'd treated her with respect instead of like a whore to be passed around.
Because of the shirt. Because of the mark. Because both were a warning against trespassing.
She might go a lifetime without experiencing the pleasure she'd experienced with Jax.
He's had a lot of practice, she told herself, forcing herself to remember he'd been with another woman when she entered his bar. He'd probably made hundreds of women feel the way he'd made her feel, as if they were right together, perfect together, meant to be together.
She shook her head, forced thoughts of Jax out of it.
Her heart had slowed so its beat no longer pounded in her ears. The ache and burn from running had subsided and the sweat had begun to dry on her skin. She needed to head toward the walled city and resume her search for the rail line.
She listened for signs of a pursuer but heard only birdsong.
Taking a quick breath, she darted toward the closest structure. Stopped. Listened.
Nothing. And she didn't feel watched.
She crossed the wide street. Sprinted from rubble pile to tree cover, from tree cover to rubble pile.
Ruin gave way to housing, most of it constructed of scavenged material and wood.
She began cutting through narrow alleyways, trying to remain parallel with the city wall miles away.
A glance over her shoulder and she saw a lean dog with short brindle-colored fur and a torn ear slide through a hole in a vine-covered metal fence. That dog was followed by a black dog and then a brindle with patches of missing hair.
She sped up without breaking into a run, not wanting to tip them into an attack, though there was no mistaking she was their intended prey.
Two more black dogs joined the pack and all of them slunk after her, slowly closing the distance and making her think this was the first time hunger had driven them to target a human.
She searched for a stick or metal pole she could use to defend herself. But there was nothing. Everything even remotely useful had been scavenged.
Ahead of her the alleyway ended in a pile of rubble. It was low enough she could climb over it, but scrambling on loose stone would put her at a disadvantage.
She reached the end of the fence and turned right. Raucous male laughter somewhere ahead of her had her desperately searching for a way to get away from the dogs before reaching the men.
She wheeled and faced the pack, threw up her arms to make herself appear larger and more threatening. "Go! Get! Run!"
They halted. The brindle dog with the missing hair and milk-heavy teats spun to retreat but regained her courage at the back of the pack and showed her teeth.
"Go! Get!" Eliana lunged forward a step.
The larger brindle and the two black dogs on either side of him held their ground.
The slinkiness left their bodies, replaced by the rigidness that came with boldness and impending attack.
Fear spiked through Eliana. She didn't dare turn her back on them now.
Small chunks of brick and concrete littered the pathway. She bent, grabbed a piece of brick and hurled it at the pack. "Run! Go!"
The dogs dodged.
She grabbed a chunk of concrete, threw it and took a step backward. "Go!"
A black dog yelped but didn't flee.
She tossed the remains of a red brick. Shouted. Took a step backward.
The pack crept forward, less confident but still hungry.
Another yelp. Another step. But she could see them gathering courage.
Eliana hit the milk-heavy brindle female hard with a larger chunk of red brick.
The dog spun and fled, two of the black dogs following her.
A strike between the eyes of the bolder of the remaining dogs opened a gash and he turned away.
Eliana fired another piece of brick, hitting him again.
He yelped and ran, accompanied by the remaining black dog.
Relief poured into her. She doubled over, hands going to her knees.
Footsteps registered a heartbeat before a man said, "Well look what we got here, Walt. Some afternoon pussy."
His voice catapulted Eliana after the dogs.
He shouted, "Head her off!"
Footsteps pounded after her, gained on her.
Reaching the pile of rubble that had originally kept her from remaining parallel to the city wall, Eliana veered and began scrambling over shattered brick and mortar.
She heard a second pair of feet slapping against concrete and coming toward her. Heard the shift of rubble behind her as the first man reached the debris and began climbing. Heard his breathing as he continued to gain on her.
She reached the top of the pile and tried to run down it. Stumbled and had to slow. Scanned desperately for a weapon, for a place that offered
safety, even if it was only temporary, for someone, anyone who might help.
There was nothing she could use to defend herself other than rocks, and they wouldn't be effective against one man, much less two. There was nowhere she could climb out of reach, no defensible space she could squeeze into. There was no one outside.
She screamed, praying there was someone inside one of the houses willing to get involved.
She shouted, "Help! Someone, please help me!"
The rubble beneath her gave. She leapt, landed on the ground unbalanced and stumbled forward, going down on a knee and her palms.
Vicious hands grabbed her ankle.
She jerked but couldn't get free.
She heard the second man coming down the pile. Twisted to look backward.
The man who'd grabbed her ankle grinned, revealing broken, brown teeth surrounded by a filthy beard.
She tried to kick him in the face with her free foot.
He grabbed her other ankle and flipped her onto her back, standing above her.
Terror lent her strength. She thrashed with her legs, trying to free them, trying to drive them into his groin.
She sat, ready to defend herself by gouging his eyes and clawing at his face.
He jerked her legs upward and the back of her head slammed into the ground. His grin widened. "Play nice and we'll let you go after we've all had some fun."
The second man reached them. The bearded man said, "Hold her hands down and I'll get her jeans off so we can have us some pussy."
She thrashed harder.
The second man moved behind her head and leaned over.
She tried to evade the grimy hands with long, dirty nails.
Fought against them when they locked around her wrists and jerked her hands above her head and pressed them against broken concrete.
A knee pinned her lower legs to the ground. Her ankles were released, but only so rough, dirty hands with hairy knuckles could unknot the hoodie tied around her waist.
"Told you something good was going to happen today, Walt."
Spittle came from his mouth and glistened on his unkempt black beard.
