by KB Winters
“Are you okay?” He asked, a strange expression on his face as he followed my gesture. “Why are you hiding in here? I thought we figured our shit out. Friends, remember?”
“I’m not hiding,” I lied. “I was taking a timeout.”
Jace was standing close enough that his body heat warmed through my thin T-shirt. The smell of his aftershave clung to him, and although it was subtle, I couldn’t help but flash back to the way it had smelled on his bare skin, mixed with sweat, and excitement, as we’d tangled together in my bed. I pressed my eyes closed, blocking out the forbidden memory. “Kat, what happened at the meeting?”
Crap, I was hoping he’d forgotten about that.…
“Not so good.” I sighed. “The woman was nice enough, but very clearly overworked and overloaded with other cases. She flat out told me that against my ex’s lawyers, I don’t stand a chance.”
“What?” Jace boomed, his voice carrying down the hall.
“Shh!” I hissed. “Come here,” I said, tugging him by the hand into the room so I could shut the door behind him. Once the door clicked shut, I instantly became aware of just how small the storage room was, or, maybe it was how large Jace was. Either way, the room suddenly felt too close, too intimate to the point where I could hear Jace breathing and the sound of my own heightened pulse.
“Can lawyers even say shit like that?” Jace asked, his irritation evident in his clipped tone.
I shrugged and stepped over a couple boxes in the center of the room that were waiting to be unpacked. I had to find some space between me and Jace’s wall of muscles. “At least she was honest, I guess. Anyways, the lawyer she recommended is crazy good, but also has a pretty crazy price tag. There’s no way I can afford to hire him.”
“So, what, that’s it? You’re just giving up?”
I swiveled around so fast, I caught my foot on the edge of a box and stubbed my toe. “How dare you!” I snarled. “I’m doing everything I can think of to get my son back!”
“Yeah, everything except swallow your pride long enough to admit that you need help.” Jace threw back, crossing his arms.
“Fuck you, Jace.” I grit my teeth, locking my jaw.
“You don’t mean that. You can try to push me away all you want, it won’t change a thing, Kat,” Jace said, his voice infuriatingly calm as he stared me down, testing my resolve. “My offer stands, and I think you need to take a good, hard look at your reasons for not taking it.”
“I know why I’m not taking your money Jace, because I don’t even know you! You’ve been in town, what? A month or two? We hardly know each other, and I can’t take money from you, especially not the kind of money I’d need to hire this lawyer. He’s got a twenty thousand dollar retainer, Jace! That’s not like borrowing lunch money or something!”
Jace didn’t even flinch. “Say the word, Kat, and I’ll write you a check.”
I gaped at him, speaking no longer an option. The longer I stared at him, the more it sunk in that he was serious. If I asked for it, he’d give me anything I needed.
“I told you the other day, it’s going to be okay. We’re in this together, whether you like it or not.”
“We’re not! Jace, I know you’re trying to be a nice guy, and everything. And I appreciate it, really, I do. But I can’t accept this offer, so please, can we just drop it?”
“Then what are you going to do?” He countered.
“I don’t know.” I shook my head, fighting back the helpless tears that sprung to my eyes. I was so sick of crying, of feeling lost and helpless—and alone. Jace’s face hadn’t changed, he was dead serious, he wasn’t playing a game with me, but the fears running rampant inside me wouldn’t release their grip of anxiety. “Money, especially money like that, doesn’t come without expectations. I don’t know what you think is gonna happen here, but I can’t give you anything in return.”
“I’m not asking for anything in return. I’m not putting any conditions on my offer. Listen to me—you said you want us to be friends, right?”
I nodded slowly, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“All right, well if you wanna just be a friend, that’s fine. Consider it one friend helping out another. That’s what friends do, right?”
“I hardly think friends give friends twenty thousand dollars!” I paced three steps and then back again before looking at him again. Hilda had offered to help me come up with the money, and I hadn’t for a moment questioned her motives or whether or not she would hold it over me somehow, so why was it so much harder for me to trust that Jace was only trying to help. Was it really the amount of money, or something else?
Jace cocked his head as he stared at me, as though he was looking at a complicated math problem. “Is it because we slept together?”
“No!” I shouted, hating the raw defensiveness in my tone. “No,” I repeated, my voice softer. “That has nothing to do with this.”
“Then what’s the deal, Kat? You need the cash, I have it, and I’m offering it to you, no strings attached.”
He was chipping away at my wall, and with each chunk he stripped away, my heart raced a little faster inside my chest, knowing it was about to be exposed. “Jace,” I started, my voice dropping into a low whisper, begging him to stop pushing.
His blue eyes were boring into mine, searching, inspecting. I closed my eyes, unable to take any more of his scrutiny. “Kat, look at me,” he ordered, his voice calm, but commanding.
I hesitated, pressing them closed more tightly instead, but they snapped open when I felt Jace’s fingertips on my arms. I hadn’t even heard him cross the small storage room, but he was standing inches away, looking down into my face with an almost sad look. “Let me help you.”
I bit my lower lip to keep it from trembling as Jace gently took me in his arms and held me against his solid chest. I closed my eyes again, breathing in his calming scent, and waited until my heart beat slowed to match the even beats of his own, and then whispered, “Okay.”
Chapter Seven — Jace
“Okay?” I repeated, unsure I’d heard her correctly. I placed a finger on her chin and tipped her face up to look at me. Her green eyes were watery and I knew she was on the verge of tears again. In the past, I would’ve run for my life, far away from a woman in tears, mostly because I was scared and had no idea what I was supposed to do. Seeing Kat cry ripped my guts into tiny little pieces, devastating me every single time, but I didn’t want to leave her. I couldn’t.
She nodded, confirming that she had given in to me. “I’ll call the lawyer and set up a consultation.”
I smiled at her. “Thank you, Kat.”
She lifted her eyebrow at me. “Why are you thanking me? I didn’t do anything, other than drag you into this whole mess.”
“Hardly!” I said, feeling a sear of guilt in my gut. “It’s my fault you’re even in this position. If I hadn’t come around—or maybe if I hadn’t gone to the hospital with you to see Jax that night—maybe your ex wouldn’t have even had the ammo to go after you like this.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “Is that what you think?”
“That’s what I know, Kat. You don’t have to pretend this isn’t my fault to spare my feelings or something. I’m well aware of the role I played in getting you to this point.”
She backed up a step and my arms ached for her body as she got out of my reach. “Jace, that’s insane. This has nothing to do with you. Is that the reason why you’re helping me? Because you feel guilty? Like you’re the reason Jax isn’t with me anymore?”
I released a short, frustrated puff of air. “Kat, you said your ex found out who I am, and then what? A month or something goes by and then suddenly, poof, he has full custody and is dragging you back to court? You really think the two aren’t related.”
“Mitch has been trying to get full custody since the very beginning, Jace. This isn’t a new development in my life.”
“Maybe so, but I’m the foothold he needed to go to a judge and get t
hem to listen and take his side.”
It hurt to say the words out loud, especially since Kat clearly hadn’t been having the same thoughts, and now I was voluntarily putting them into her head. With every word, I could feel myself getting closer and closer to losing her again. And I knew this time—it would probably be for good.
“Jace, that’s insane. Why would you be some kind of bargaining chip with a judge? Because you have tattoos? Who gives a shit?”
I rubbed the back of my neck, my mind warring with my heart over what to say next. I didn’t know how to answer her question without driving her away. “Kat, there’s parts of the story you don’t know.”
“What? The whole breakdown thing? I know…” She paused, looking at the door of the storage room. “People in this town talk, Jace, and working here, I hear it all. I swear, it’s worse than working in a hair salon! I don’t care that you went off the rails, drank a little too much, partied a little too much, practically everyone does that! Hell, just the other night you caught me in the middle of my own little meltdown.”
I shook my head—there was no way she could understand. She had no idea the deep, dark places I’d gone, and the even darker things I’d done. “Listen to me, Kat. It was more than just drinking and some property damage.”
Her eyes went wide. “What are you talking about?”
I sighed, knowing I was on the high dive, about to jump. “I get flashbacks, sometimes, from the war. The terrible things I’ve done…seen. Sometimes it catches up to me, and it feels like I can’t breathe…and I…well, I just do stupid shit. They call it PTSD.
If she was surprised, she hid it well. “And you think that’s what Mitch found out? I mean, you’re a SEAL, Jace, isn’t that always a risk?”
I shrugged. “Maybe so, but when it first started, I didn’t handle it well. I’ve gone to some counseling, learned some stuff about what triggers it. You know—the stuff that makes me tick. Now, it’s to the point where I can control it, at least a lot better than I used to.” I pressed my eyes closed, taking a moment to gather my thoughts before forcing myself to continue, knowing I’d only get one chance to tell her my side of the story.
“Before, when it was new, I used to lash out…violently. One night, after filming the show, I got really drunk, trying to get the craziness out of my head. You know, just for one fucking night. Some buddies and I went out, and at some point, we ended up getting high, and I don’t know how, but someone had made their own hybrid drug, and it fucked me up.” I shook my head, the memories of that night still haunted me and here I was, spilling it to a girl I wanted to fall in love with me. Probably not the best conversation starter, but I’d already started to tell her— couldn’t stop now—so I continued.
“I started having flashbacks right there in the club, and got up and started swinging and attacking people. I hurt a lot of people Kat, and when they got me restrained and to the hospital, I was coming down and had a panic attack. The hospital found the drugs in my system, and combined with my blood alcohol levels, I was lucky to be alive.”
Kat was watching me, and to my surprise, when I finished the story, she didn’t run from the room. Instead, she took a small step to close the space between us and wrapped her arms around my waist, her fingers running up and down my back. “I’m so sorry, Jace. I had no idea.”
I breathed in her soft scent, holding her tight, letting the silence linger as we both processed through what I’d said. “Well, luckily, the people I attacked all agreed not to press charges once my lawyer spoke with them, explaining my background, and I paid for all of their medical care. The club buried the footage, and the hospital couldn’t say anything because of confidentiality policies. So, it all went away, but that was just one night, the worst night, there were other times where I did get drunk, break shit, get into stupid bar fights, and unfortunately, in all of these cases, there were witnesses who all ran to the media to report they’d seen Jace Winslow go berserk, so if your ex’s legal team is worth anything, they’ll find that, and probably more than a few videos that don’t exactly paint me in the best light.”
Kat looked up at me, her eyes wide as she listened. “But that’s not fair! You’re not some kind of monster, you have trauma, from serving our country!”
“I know,” I said quietly. “But that’s not what most people see. They see some tatted up guy on the loose, breaking noses and drinking too much. If your ex takes that to a judge, and tells them that I’m around Jax,” I couldn’t bring myself to finish the thought.
Kat nodded slowly, understanding what I’d left unsaid. “Wow. I’m sorry, Jace. That’s not right.”
I shrugged and ran my fingers through her hair. “No, but it’s the stigma I have to live with, and I’m sorry that I dragged you into it. The thought that my past has come back—not only to haunt me—but has now hurt you so deeply…that kills me Kat. So, no, it’s not the reason I’m helping you, but I need you to understand that I do have a part in this. You have to understand that if we’re going to be able to move forward.”
“Remember what you said the other night?” She said after a beat. “About being a team?”
I nodded, giving her a small smile as a rush of relief filled me. “Still an open offer.”
She opened her mouth to reply, but before she could decide what to say, she jumped up on her tippy-toes and pressed her mouth to mine, melding our lips together in a hot, emotionally charged kiss, that stole the air from my lungs
I clung to her tighter, running my hands down her sides, grabbing her hips, and pulling her flush against me so that I could feel every inch, every curve, of her body. Her lips were full and warm under mine. I parted them with my tongue, seeking out the sweetness of her mouth, tangling with her tongue as we frantically explored each other with greedy hands.
Kat moaned into my mouth and I damn near lost my mind. I pushed her back against a stack of boxes, pinning her between me and the solid wall. I took her hands in mine, bringing them above her head, gripping both of her wrists in one of my hands, letting the other explore every inch of exposed skin. Her neck, collarbone, cleavage, the sliver of skin where her T-shirt pulled away from her jeans. I slipped under her work apron, and up the front of her shirt, my body hungry with desire as she trembled and shivered while my fingertips ran over her smooth, taunt skin. I dragged my lips away from hers, and watched her face, her eyes dark with pleasure and lust, as I caressed over the thin fabric of her bra, tracing and circling her hard nipples.
“You’re so fuckin’ hot, Kat,” I whispered into her ear, dragging my fingers around her to toy and tease the clasp that would release her bra. “I want to fuck you…right here…right now.”
She paused, her eyes alive with heat and desire, but there was a moment of hesitation. I flicked the clasp, releasing her bra, and ran my fingers around her rib cage, to grab a nipple, the feel of her hot skin on my fingertips driving me to the edge of my own sanity. Kat shuddered against me, closing her eyes, and releasing a purr from the back of her throat as I twisted and caressed her nipple between my finger and thumb. I smiled, watching her lose herself. “What do you want, Kat? Do you want me to fuck you? Right here. Right now.”
Her eyes fluttered open at my question, and she licked her lips slowly, thoughtfully, before nodding. “Uh-huh.”
I tore off her apron, throwing it to the floor, her shirt and bra quickly following. “Fuck, you’re amazing.” I groaned, taking her in. I ran my fingers over the gentle swell of her perfect breasts, and gave her a wicked smile before flicking each nipple. Kat inhaled sharply and her fingers went to my belt buckle, stumbling to get it free.
I couldn’t wait any longer—I needed to be inside her. I’d been dreaming about her body since the moment I’d met her, and the two times I’d been able to get my hands on her, hadn’t been nearly enough to satisfy me.
Not nearly enough.
She stilled, my belt halfway undone, and let go of me long enough to flip the lock on the storage room door. For a moment, I
was afraid she was going to come to her senses, realize her surroundings, and back out, but the smile on her face as she crossed back to me, carefully stepping over the pile of unopened boxes in the center of the small room, told me she was just as ready to go as I was. Her eyes were on fire and my cock stirred, getting uncomfortably tight inside my jeans. I released my belt and Kat smiled at me with a wicked hunger before reaching for my fly. When she had my jeans undone, she stroked the length of my cock over the top of my boxers and I bit back a groan watching her slender fingers rub on me. When I couldn’t take anymore of her slow torture, I grabbed her and pushed her back up against the boxes, ducking to suck and tease her nipples with my tongue. God, she’s sweet. Her fingers dug into my shoulders as she arched back, stifling her own moans of pleasure as I nipped the tender flesh with my teeth.
“Jace,” she sighed when I left her, a hint of begging in her tone.
“Don’t worry, baby, I’ll get you there,” I growled into her ear.
She damn near killed me, looking up and nodding, her lips parted, swollen from our rough, hungry kisses. She stripped my shirt off and went about exploring my chest, shoulders, and back, her hands desperate for my flesh in a way that thrilled me to the core. My cock was throbbing, screaming at me to be set free from the cage of my—now tight—boxers. I worked to remove Kat’s jeans first, swearing under my breath at the sight of her pretty pink panties that showed a dark pattern where she’d soaked through them.
“Fuck, Kat,” I slipped a finger over the dark patch, feeling her wetness on my fingertips. She smelled amazing and I wanted to devour her. My fingers were hungry for her silky center, and I couldn’t help but tear the panties down in a swift flick, not patient enough to take my time and unwrap her properly. Kat didn’t seem to mind, panting and clawing at my bare back as I knelt down before her, easing one thigh over my shoulder to part her. I sucked in a harsh breath at the sight of her, fully exposed. Her pink lips were dark and swollen with desire and I dove in, licking up and down, getting every drop of her pussy with the tip of my tongue. Kat arched and bucked, her nails digging deeper into my back as she tried to keep from crying out as my tongue worked faster and deeper.
