“Motherfuck ...” he yelled looking over his shoulder.
I glanced that way and saw a large man barreling down the hill on a bicycle.
Jax whipped back around to me where I was caged underneath him. “Are you fucking blind?”
“What ... of course not ... excuse me?” I stammered.
He pounded his hand down into the grass and then leaned closer. “You heard me, Whitfield. That bicyclist almost took you out.”
“So, instead you took me out?” I screamed back at him and shoved him in the shoulder. My hand connecting with him shot pain up my arm and I winced.
His hardened gaze shifted to my hand, and somehow, he gripped my wrist and examined me before I could even examine it myself. “Shit, you tried to catch your fall on the cement before we hit the grass.”
It wasn’t a question so I didn’t answer. Instead, I huffed and tried to pull my wrist back but of course we were doing this the Stonewood way.
“We need to clean this up, Peaches.” His voice was soft and his eyes were back on mine, vivid blue with concern laced in them.
That look—the one he reserved for reading people and seeing into their soul—had me shivering under him.
I tried to move and get up, to get away, to put some distance between us. “I’ll be fine.”
His body on top of mine was stone, immovable.
“Whitfield,” he growled. Then, he ran his tongue over his teeth and I just knew.
“Jax, we should get up,” I whispered.
I just knew.
He gave me that calculating look and then mumbled, “Fuck it.”
I. Just. Knew.
His lips crashed down onto mine. As I gasped, he shot his tongue in my mouth, reclaiming it as his like he’d never lost the title. He staked his flag on the territory and not even I could fight the war and win. We weren’t equal opponents here. It was predator meets prey. I couldn’t survive because he’d already ripped me open.
He kissed me like he was ravenous, like I was his first meal ever, like he’d consume all of me. I would never be able to outrun him.
I wish I could say I shoved him back right away. That I thought about jeopardizing my friendship with Jay or who was waiting for him back in the city.
I didn’t.
I held onto him for dear life because he might have ripped me open and fed on me like he was ravenous but I needed his kiss just as much. It was the blood in my veins, the oxygen in my lungs, and the water in my body.
He tasted like he used to and of so much more than he used to. This was Jax grown-up, primed, and aged perfectly.
His hand snaked up my shirt, and finally I realized where we were and what we were doing.
I shoved him back. “This isn’t right.”
He just looked at me. “We’re always right.”
He said it like we had our own reality and nothing before it mattered.
I cleared my throat and looked away from him, waiting, hoping he’d move because I wasn’t sure I could keep pushing him away.
He sighed and rolled off me.
We both stared up at the sky for a beat. Then his lethal control was back in place, the one that looked effortless, like I couldn’t cause even the smallest reaction in him.