Chapter 35
Jax
Dakota’s distress had knocked me out of my own.
Yes, it was still terrible to think that one of my oldest, closest friends would see me going through a shit time, and rather than offer support, turn into a duplicitous piece of shit who tried to take advantage of my downfall.
That was always going to suck, and I was always going to wonder why he’d done it.
Everyone ate, and watching my pack nourish themselves with food I provided helped too.
Admittedly, my inner wolf wasn’t all that concerned with the nutritional value of macaroni and cheese. We just enjoyed that everyone was eating it.
But I’d felt Dakota’s horror when he realized that Grant wanted him. He’d felt a swell of guilt that had me squeezing him tighter, even when he was already on my lap.
We talked it through and realized that, while Kent didn’t want to lead the pack, he had wanted more of a say in Crescent.
For a flash of a moment, I worried that I hadn’t given him enough responsibility or had held him back in some way, but no. I stood by the decisions I made. Any company I ran was going to be scrupulous, even to the detriment of profit.
This had been coming for a long time, and the idea that Kent was willing to negotiate using my mate—
Well, it was a good thing he’d fled the house when he did, because as that washed over me, I wanted to rip his fucking throat out.
No, I wouldn’t. We weren’t beasts. But I fucking wanted to.
We stayed up late, no one keen to be the person to leave the pack first. For the first time since we’d developed enough distance from our roots not to feel the fear of those first years on our own too keenly, we reminisced on them.
Eating ramen packs in the house we were squatting in.
Trying to figure out how to navigate the bus system so we could get out of the city to run and hunt.
Finishing school while old pizza boxes were as likely to become coffee tables as they were to make it to the recycling bin.
The next person to speak up startled me.
“I thought you all were so brave, when you left.” Cash’s voice was soft, but it was so unexpected that every person in the room had turned to blink his way.
“Why didn’t you come with us?” Maia asked gently.
Cash shrugged. “Scared, I guess. And—”
When he broke off and looked away instead of finishing, Jillian finished for him. “You still have family back there, right?”
Cash nodded. “Dad and Uncle Tommy and now his daughter Evie.”
I’d . . . forgotten about his family.
Jill’s and my parents had died when we were young. It made leaving the pack a hell of a lot easier. Maia had come from a pack ours had—well, incorporated was too nice a word for it. Seth had always been there, but he hadn’t gotten along with his dad.
But there was Cash, and he’d had a family.
When he’d stayed behind, it hadn’t had anything to do with me. At least, it hadn’t had half so much to do with me as I’d thought.
Cash hadn’t doubted me, but to my teenage brain, that’d been the only excuse for him staying behind.
I’d been a shortsighted, selfish, idiot.
It wasn’t like we could’ve found out about his cousin from halfway across the country, gone back, kidnapped a kid, and dragged her across the country just so Cash could keep an eye on her.
Having Maia there was hard enough, and she could basically take care of herself when she was fifteen.
When I looked at Cash now, he seemed less twitchy and afraid than I’d seen him as the past weeks, and I had no idea if that was because Aleks’s visit made him feel stronger, or if I’d been looking at him wrong all along.
“A new cousin, huh? Evie? How old? How is she?” I asked.
Cash smiled, broad and warm, and ducked his head.
“Good. She’s . . . good. Or was good when I left.
She’s fourteen. Grant was talking about—” The way his eyes flicked toward Jillian made my stomach twist. “But she was still, ah—” He shook his head, and I recognized the doubt that had his cheeks hollowing as he stared down.
Had he done the right thing, coming here?
I’d do whatever I could to make sure he had, and that he could see his family, safe and sound, as soon as possible.
“She’s so smart and doesn’t take shit off anybody,” he went on. “Gets her in trouble sometimes, but she’s good. Knows how to run.”
Right—because that was one of the most useful skills a girl in the pack we’d come from could have.
Horrifying. No way in hell was I going to leave it like that now that I could do something about it.
I caught Cash’s eye and held it. He wasn’t part of our pack, and now I knew, he wasn’t ever going to be. “I bet she’ll be glad when we can get you home.”
Nervously, he laughed. “Yeah, yeah, I bet she will.”
Cash was the first one to get up, and he started gathering empty dishes from people.
Maia hopped up to help him. “I’ll wash, you dry?”
Cash nodded at her.
And that’s what broke the tension in the room so people could finally go to sleep. Dakota slipped off my lap, but he hadn’t made it a step before he was reaching for my hand.
“Come on, big guy.”
He led the way upstairs. As he wandered into our room, his shoulders were still slumped and defeated.
That wouldn’t stand.
I grabbed his arm, spun him around, and lifted him up with my hands under his thighs. Dakota’s breath caught as I dumped him to sit on the dresser.
He gripped my shoulders hard, even when he was on a stable surface again. “What are you doing?”
I flashed a grin at him. “Showing you that sometimes, shit happens, even when we don’t choose it.”
Without backing up, I slid to my knees between his.
He swallowed. “I don’t know what part of you thinks I wouldn’t choose you getting on your knees for me, but—”
“But you didn’t.” I turned my head to nip up the inside of his leg. He spread them wider, his work slacks straining over the bulge in his pants. “I chose it. Now, it’s happening, no matter what you choose next.”
He arched a brow. We both knew full well if he told me to stop, I would.
He didn’t. Instead, as I kissed my way to his crotch, he combed his fingers through my hair and gave it a soft pull.
I growled, pressing my open mouth to the outline of his cock and nuzzling in.
“Fuck, Jax,” he whispered.
I opened his belt and his trousers, and he pushed on my shoulders for the leverage to shimmy himself up while I pulled his pants down.
His cock sprang free, and I closed my mouth over it. He wasn’t fully hard yet, and I could fit the whole thing in my mouth, curling my tongue to cushion it. I rolled my tongue and sucked, and Dakota whined. His hips twitched with the desire to fuck into my mouth.
The more I worked him, the harder he got, until I was swallowing around the head of his cock and he was panting sweet words above me like, “So good. Do it again. Fuck, Jax.”
When I thought he was right on the edge, I pulled back and grinned up at him with slick, swollen lips. He groaned. His dick flexed toward his stomach. His shoulders pressed into the wall and he made the prettiest arch with his back.
Then, he glared at me.
Next thing I knew, I was tumbling to the floor and trying to catch him too.
His mouth was on mine, his hands in my hair. He tugged hard as he worked out his frustration, thrusting against me until the annoyance of my clothing was too much for him.
He tore into it, unwrapping me like I was that Christmas present he’d been hoping for all year. Once the strip of my torso was bare to him, my pants shoved down around my knees, he crawled up my body and rocked his cock against mine. Skin on skin. Pleasure sparking between us as I gripped his hips.
He cursed, biting my lips and pulling back.
He shrugged out of his shirt and tossed it aside, looking around the room with his eyes narrowed.
“What?”
Frustrated, his nose flared as he huffed.
“Kick your pants off,” he demanded. I squirmed, toeing at my shoes until they clattered to the floor.
He was still looking for something, weighing some choice I didn’t understand.
I tried to draw him down into another kiss, but he braced a hand on my chest and stayed upright. “I don’t want to come rutting on you,” he grumbled. “Don’t even want your mouth. I want you deep in my ass.”
“So you need lube.”
He groaned. “I need lube.”
Or maybe what we needed was to make that shit more accessible. Stick a bottle in every drawer, in the shoeboxes beneath the bed, everywhere.
After a moment’s hesitation, he sighed in defeat.
“Stay right there,” Dakota insisted, holding up both hands, his fingers trembling above me like he was trying to decide where to press to glue me to the floor.
I laughed, leaned up, and nipped at them. He jerked his hand back, biting his bottom lip against a smile.
“I won’t move a muscle,” I promised.
He looked at me, eyes narrowed skeptically for just a minute, but I’d promised him, and in the end, he’d never doubt me.
Admittedly, when he leapt up and rushed to the bedside table, and I got a view of his pert ass and heavy, bouncing cock, it was hard not to leap after him, catch him up in my arms, and pin him to the bed.
I’d promised, so I stayed put.
No promise kept me from letting out an appreciative growl, though.
When he turned back around, the tips of his ears were every bit as red as the flushed head of his cock.
He dropped to the floor on top of me, kneeling with his legs on either side of my hips. He slicked up his own fingers and I watched, lost as he twisted to get his hand behind himself.
“If you don’t let me do that, this second, I’m going to have to gnaw my own arm off to stop myself.”
Dakota scoffed, but it was more amused than anything else. “Have at it then.”
His hole was a little more relaxed when I sank a slick finger inside him, but nice as that stretch was, it wasn’t what I wanted.
I crooked my finger, searching, and was rewarded by a low groan and Dakota, sinking back into my hand.
Dakota nodded, gasping. “Just like that. Fuck, keep going.”