Sin's Flower

by Carlene Love Flores

  Then stopped.

  Wanting her was one thing, but hurting this young woman was not okay.

  Standing back, he took another couple minutes to contemplate what could happen tonight. What he could control and make happen.

  He knew they should talk. He just hoped she didn’t mind how close he intended on being to her while that happened. His grip loosened and one of the folding lounge chairs fell to the sand. There would be plenty of room for the both of them on the one. He walked until he made it back to her side and unfolded the chair to its full length.

  “Uh, hi,” she said shyly, her brow furrowing in concentration.

  “Hey.” He sat down and held his arms out to assist her. “Sit with me?” He hadn’t given her much of a choice and caught her eye scanning the sandy trail where he’d come from. “Yeah, I figured we didn’t need that one.”

  “Oh, okay. Wait, just so we’re clear here. You want me to sit, where exactly?”

  God, she would kill him tonight. That amount of cute couldn’t be faked. “Here, with me.” Her eyes widened in disbelief so he scooted until he was flush with the back of the nylon chair and then opened his legs, letting one straddle each side. “There’s room.”

  “You’re crazy,” she said shaking her head.

  He let out a faked huff. His quick decision had been too fast for her and she wouldn’t believe this was his way of comforting her. “I’ll go fetch the other chair.”

  She gouged her hand into her hip. “Wait. It’s just…I really don’t think I’m gonna fit.”

  A hurricane couldn’t have swayed her decision to stay put. But she eventually bent her knees, bracing herself with strong hands, and lowered herself until her squeezable bottom met the chair. Because he wanted her closer, he took the liberty of placing his hands at each side of her waist and scooted her back until she was flush with his chest and his lap.

  On second thought, that was way too close.

  Someone would kill him for the throbbing going on so close to their little sister. He wiggled an inch of space between Lily and his now obvious and straining erection. The last thing he wanted to do was leave her thinking he was incapable of a conversation without sex ending up front and center. He had amazing amounts of control in that department. It came along with all the years he’d practiced on the road. Tonight, plainly put, he just wanted to be close to someone, to Lily. And this was the way he knew how to do that.

  “So what did you want to talk about?” he asked.

  “I, I don’t know.” It sounded like nerves had her.

  They didn’t have to start with words. Fuck him for his appetite but he could say more by doing this anyway.

  Hey you, horny fucker. This is the part where you pat her on the head, say you’re sorry, and send her back to her big sister. This is not the time for indulging. Pack it up, Jaxon.

  Yeah, no questions about it. That’s what he should do.

  He leaned in to her back until his nose brushed up against her sweet neck, nuzzling little circles in her fine baby hairs. Tiny goose bumps rose across her skin so he breathed his warm breath in an effort to chase away the chill. She squirmed, sending his muscles into tight spasms. God, this was so wrong but he needed it so bad. Fucking bananas karma.

  “Oh, I, uh, so you met Tris when she was sixteen. How old were you?”

  “I was twenty-six,” he said, dropping into her neck a fraction more with each word.

  “And you never wanted to kiss her?”

  He should pull back from her, at least an inch or two, to answer but he was so close to finding the exact right spot. “No, I can honestly say I didn’t.” He waited to plant his lips in the sweet spot since tickling her with his nose seemed to be so pleasing. He should not be doing this. The craziest part was that he knew it. But just like during the talk they’d had in his room, he couldn’t seal himself off from her right now and she wasn’t saying no.

  “Well knowing my sister, I bet there were times when she wanted to kiss you.”

  “There may have been a couple times but she quickly got over it.” Even he could hear the haste in which he’d delivered that one. To keep the slow rhythm he refused to lose with her, he slowed to a pause and then answered. Hell, maybe he was just trying to scare her straight. This is the real me, I will take you and you will regret it. Here’s a little taste.

  “You know I never wanted to kiss your sister, but you on the other hand. I’m not gonna lie, I could definitely kiss you. I won’t, of course.”

  “You won’t?”

  He paused again to consider the green light she’d just given him with that hopeful lilt tagging the end of her response.

  “You have a great accent,” he said. As much as he’d love to keep her talking just so he could hear her southern quirky drawl, it was time to start winding down.

  “So do you,” she said.

  “I really like your voice, Lily.” He was about to say But I can’t lick and talk at the same time so let’s shush now and we’ll get to that talk later, when she made a tiny movement that pressed her neck into his lips. Their little word play was helping her relax so he held off on asking for her silence.

  “I like yours too.”

  “I like your mouth,” he said.

  “I like your…lips.”

  “Lily, I changed my mind. I am going to kiss you.”

  “Jaxon, what are we doing?”

  “Talking.” He blew another breath into his favorite little place on earth right now.

  * * * *

  There was no way she could possibly talk and make any sense if he kept doing that blowing thing on her neck. How had they ended up here again? As hard as it was to pull away, she did it. And then pivoted so that she was still seated in his lap just in a sideways kind of way. So this was why Lucky and Tris wanted her to stay away from Jaxon. The man couldn’t help himself when it came to women. She wasn’t surprised given his occupation. At least he wasn’t trying to hide the fact.

  Lily needed to see his face if they were going to talk. At least that’s what she thought at first. Now she wasn’t so sure. Under the moonlight, with the waves sounding off behind them, and wrapped in a blanket on the same chair, she could see Jaxon’s appeal to the masses. He was handsome. No, scratch that. He was striking mixed with the rawest, natural sexuality she’d ever dared to imagine existed.

  In all the years she’d been a fan of Sin Pointe, this was the first time she’d ever noticed Jaxon over Stefan. All the anxiety of coming here washed away for the moment. Her lips found their way to the very outer edges of his. Her eyes closed. She waited. They could talk later.

  * * * *

  “Open your eyes, Lily. Please.”

  “Wh-what?”

  Tracing her lip with his fingertip was his way of telling her he wanted the kiss she offered. He outlined it softly until she opened her eyes back up for him.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “I don’t understand. I thought—I just thought you wanted…”

  “Shh. I do.” He did. Strangely, more than anything he’d wanted in a long time. But in the second she’d taken control of the situation by offering him her kiss, he realized there wasn’t a right way to do this. He’d find a way to fuck it up. Sadly, he knew that wouldn’t stop him.

  She looked doubting as her chin started to fall. He caught it with his hand. And then gave her a quick peck on the nose. “I want more of these from you. Believe me. But not yet. And we need to talk first.” Mmm, the countdown was on and he fought not to slide her under him and make her his. God, what was he thinking? “Lily, please, talk.”

  “Okay. Um, well, I guess I need to be completely honest with you.” Her voice started off shaky but the more words that spilled from her perfect pink lips, the more confidence she regained. Good girl.

  “So you obviously know the reason I came here is to ask you to come back to Tennessee with me.” Yes, Benny had done that bidding for her. She took in a big mouthful of cool air and let it back out, which sme
lled incredibly good gusting over his face. “Tris has been all over the place lately, happy one day, sad and in tears the next. Lucky’s tried, I’ve tried, Luke, Bear. We’ve all tried but it doesn’t last long. I know she’s pregnant and has all those hormones to deal with, but there’s just something else I see in her eyes.” She stopped and stared directly into his, like she was trying to find out whether or not he had an answer that would explain her sister’s behavior.

  Unfortunately, he did. And he had no idea how to talk about it with Lily.

  He gathered his thoughts before going any further. “Lily, I want you to know something. Okay? If there was anything I could do to help your sister, I would. My showing up there isn’t gonna make anything better for her. You’ve gotta trust me on that one.”

  “But you’re her best friend. You know her better than any of us.” Lily’s eyes saddened to a shade closer to Trissy’s ocean blue.

  “I was.” He couldn’t bring himself to say he’d hurt Trissy so badly that he couldn’t think of himself that way anymore.

  “She hasn’t forgotten about you. And before you say it, yes, she has Lucky now.”

  “And you,” he pointed out.

  “And me. But something’s still missing. The way her eyes lit up when Lucky came back from the airport and then got all sad again, it dawned on me. It’s you. You’re what’s missing. She was hoping you’d flown in with Maryella.”

  God, was there any turning back from that? “You see a lot,” he finally said.

  “I see what’s laid out in front of me.”

  She made him want to share the safer parts of it with her. Those eyes of hers. Fine, let it be a lesson. Let her hear his truth and let any decision she made tonight be based on what he was about to share.

  “Lily, you have to understand something. When your sister moved out here and took the job with the band, she was only sixteen. I was too young and stupid to realize it then, but she had no business touring around with us. We didn’t know what to do with her, so we treated her like one of the guys. I didn’t find out until a couple years later that she’d…well, she’d come to us from a really fucked up situation. We all loved her by that point, but the best thing that could have happened would have been for her to leave then and there. Instead she stuck around, became our family. Sixteen years later, we’d…I—I had ruined her. If Lucky hadn’t come around…”

  “What do you mean, you ruined her? Why do you feel that way?”

  “You won’t understand this because you’re obviously a good person.” He paused and shrugged, debating whether or not to take her hand into his. He decided not to. “She was my best friend. Always there for me, always ready to help me when I got in trouble. I started expecting that constant attention from her. But never gave her anything in return.”

  “That’s not what she says. That’s not how she talks about you.”

  “No. Lily, listen to me. I was a dick to her. Okay? Yeah, things were great for a long time. Then I started doing my own stupid shit and then Maryellie’s mum came into the picture. So I had less and less time for Trissy, but I never let her off the hook. You know? I never let her go to find her own happiness. That’s just what I do to friends.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “Don’t be that girl, Lily. Please. Be smarter than that.”

  “I’m not going to say that you couldn’t have been a better friend and made better decisions. It sounds like you could have. We all could stand to do that. Okay, but you have to know that you weren’t the monster who hurt her.”

  He watched Lily swallow around a giant spasm that nearly shook her whole body. Her evident pain invaded his heart, leaving him at a loss. Words were his specialty and he knew the times when they’d be useless. This was one of them. “I don’t know what to say to that.”

  “It’s okay. It’s not exactly the easiest thing to talk about for me either. But I’d rather be up front and honest than running away from demons my whole life,” she said.

  Shit. Trissy had some badass demons. He hated thinking Lily shared them. “Like your sister.”

  She nodded yes. So she did know what had happened to Trissy when she was a little girl. He wouldn’t push any further on that topic. He didn’t want to hurt Lily and had no idea what to say. But she continued.

  “I showed up at Tris’s door this summer, with my basket full of questions. Why I’d found her bleeding by the creek by our house the way I had when we were kids. Why she’d left me when she did. What she remembered of our momma and our brother. Soon enough, she sat me down and I had all my answers. It was the absolute worst I’ve ever felt in my entire life.” He could see that in her face as she took a second to compose herself. “But, I know there’s no way we could have become close again if we hadn’t gotten it out. There were things I had to hear, no matter how horrible they were.”

  “You’re an easy person to open up to, Lily.”

  “Really? Am I?” She tried tucking a few stray pieces of long cinnamon bangs behind her ears but they wouldn’t stay against the will of the ocean’s night breeze to keep them freed.

  Jaxon helped secure the longer pieces on the left. “Obviously or we wouldn’t be sitting here together,” he said to her as he caught her hand in his once they’d both given up on her hair.

  He felt the sting of his words as they left his tongue. She curled back from him. He remembered how he couldn’t get a word out of her earlier when he’d found her with the wet bed.

  “Do you trust me, Lily?”

  “Obviously or we wouldn’t be sitting here together.” She rolled her eyes. “Sorry.”

  Shit. That mocking comment told him she needed to get something off her chest. “It’s all right. Hey, so those answers you got from Trissy, did they include, um, those times she was abused as a kid?”

  “By my father, yes. It’s not a secret.”

  “Ah baby, I wish that wasn’t the case.” Where did he touch her now? Every place seemed inappropriate but he longed to give this girl some comfort.

  “Me too.”

  “Are you okay? I mean, if you need to talk….”

  “Jaxon, one of these days, I think I might need a friend to talk to.”

  “But not tonight?”

  “No, not tonight.”

  Had her bastard father fucked her up too? Too bad that asshole was dead. He took a breath to calm down and be there for her now. “It’s all right.” He pulled her face into his chest and held her like one of Maryellie’s precious baby dolls. Time for another quick decision. He wouldn’t make her beg for that favor she’d traveled forty-eight hours on a bus to ask him. “Baby.” Yes, she’d become baby to him. He whispered into her hair. “We should try and get some rest. It’s gonna be a long trip to your sister’s place.”

  A shuddered breath tumbled out onto his chest as he gently rubbed circles into her back.

  Chapter Ten

  She still couldn’t believe he’d agreed. Like it hadn’t taken her a secret trip out west and then nearly two full days to even get a hello from him.

  “We should probably go inside,” he said while rubbing her back and arm.

  “Well first I think I should say thank you.”

  He just nodded and parted his pompadour styled bangs with his fingers.

  They’d walked halfway back up the beach toward his house before he answered. “Don’t thank me.”

  “Okay.”

  His tone had changed. She was sure of it. Like she was getting her wish but losing the connection they’d made in exchange. They walked quietly back to his house and went inside through the back patio doors. Waiting for them, sprawled out on the couch, was the man she’d dreamed of marrying since she’d turned sixteen.

  Holy cow, Stefan Calderon was six feet from her. In the flesh. She should be hyperventilating right now but someone’s hand in the small of her back seemed to have control of her breathing. And it was unusually calm.

  “Stefan, what the fuck are you doing here, mate?”

>   “Well hello to you too, sweetie,” Stefan cooed to Jaxon in rhythm with his waggling brows. Lily tried to step out of the way so they could talk but Jaxon kept her situated just off to his side. She nearly laughed when Jaxon flipped Stefan off. “I told you I was coming by. B-a-n-d business to discuss. Remember?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Well, you suck at follow through,” Jaxon threw back.

  Stefan coughed while Jaxon’s chest made full contact with Lily’s back and he scooted them closer to the lead singer of Sin Pointe.

  “Hi there, Red. I’m Stefan, nice to meet you.”

  “Hi,” she grunted out.

  Not that she could have come up with another syllable, let alone word, but she didn’t have the chance because Jaxon pressed his hand to her back again and guided her right past Stefan and to the stairs then took a couple steps back. He plunged his hands deep into his zippered jeans. “Remember we’ve got an early start tomorrow. Get some good sleepies.”

  And with that she was evidently dismissed. Lily made her way in shock up the stairs to Jaxon’s room. She hoped that’s what he’d meant but he’d all but yellow police-taped off the room with the peed-on mattress which she had to somehow replace for him.

  Her feet gave out and she fell onto his giant bed with the absolute absurdity of the last few hours and the insane curiosity of whether Stefan ever slept over scattering her thoughts. She sighed and hoped the next few hours would pass by at lightning speed. And that she’d wake up still feeling like Lily in Wonderland.

  * * * *

  Jaxon was busy thinking about how Stefan had just saved his butt again with the miraculous perfect timing of his showing up when Stefan managed to bring him back to the real world where nothing they ever did involving a girl could be considered good. “She’s cute. Spicy red heads are my specialty though.”

  “She’s a no-no.”

  “A no-no for me or for you?”

  “Next,” Jaxon said with a knife sharp tone.

  Stefan made a smacking sound. “Fine. So hey, I, uh. I wanted to make a suggestion.”

  Stefan’s suggestions were always worth a listen especially when Jaxon needed a laugh. But his band mate and dear friend was all clenched up looking. Ah shit, he better not be here to get all “let me help you past that fucking night” again.