Chapter 6 Jax
JAX
I finally force myself to roll off Raelynn, bringing her with me onto her side, needing to keep her close. My semi-hard cock still buried inside her twitches, and she squeezes around it, eliciting a low groan from deep in my chest.
Dark hair tumbles over her face, and I brush it back and use my thumbs to wipe away the tears streaming down her cheeks. “Why are you still crying?”
Given the circumstances, she has any number of reasons—all my fault.
She opens her eyes, and the haunting beauty staring back at me makes my breath hitch, just like it always did when we were young, dumb teenagers who didn’t know how to handle the feelings filling our hormone-fueled bodies. “Because I want to stay.”
So much uncertainty weighs on her words that guilt claws at gut. “Fuck. I’m sorry, Rae. I shouldn’t have—” I squeeze my eyes closed and shake my head, dragging her more firmly against me, so there isn’t even a centimeter separating us. “It wasn’t fair of me to do this, to put you in this position.”
“I was a very willing participant, Jax.”
I open my eyes again to find the corners of her mouth twitching as she fights a smile.
Even with the heaviness of the topic of conversation, she still manages to find the humor in it. She waggles her eyebrows. “Very willing.”
Despite the melancholy suddenly settling over what was, only moments ago, the best experience of my life, I return her grin because it’s impossible not to appreciate life with this woman in my arms. I just need to figure out a way to keep her.
“You can stay, you know. As long as you want. Forever.”
Her bottom lip quivers, and she shakes her head. “My parents are leaving. They’re not coming back. This isn’t my home anymore; it hasn’t been for a long time. I have a job; I have friends in Milwaukee. I have a career. I have—”
“You don’t have me there.” As soon as the words leave my mouth, I want to take them back because her tears immediately start again.
I never could stand to see her cry, and now, I’m the one causing it.
“Fuck, I know it isn’t fair, Rae, to even ask this, but come back to Hayes Creek.
Now that I’ve had you like this, now that I know that everything I’ve ever felt was real, I can’t let you go again. But…I also can’t leave here.”
Even I can hear how fucking selfish it sounds, and I sigh and roll onto my back, scrubbing my hands over my face, instantly regretting the loss of contact with her. But I feel like such a fucking asshole right now that I can’t even look at her.
As if she can sense it, she shifts over and drapes her arms across my chest, resting her chin on my pec. “Why can’t you leave? Why can’t you come to Milwaukee with me?”
For the same reason I didn’t chase after her that night…
“Because I belong here, Rae. This place, these woods, the people. This is always where I was meant to be. Things have happened since you’ve been gone that you probably don’t even know about.
When my grandfather passed away, the land, the lumber company, the construction company, they all went to my father and my uncle.
Well, my uncle died last year, and my father took over running everything himself.
Which means I’m running everything because he’s damn near eighty years old and is going to give himself a coronary if he keeps trying to do it all. ”
She gives me a tight smile, and I consider how to say the next words without it sounding like arrogance or some way of bribing her to stay.
Her light fingers feather across my forehead. “What is it? Why do you have this furrowed brow?”
I lean into her touch, savoring it, wanting to memorize it in case she disappears from my life again. “The companies have gotten a lot bigger than when we were kids.”
“What do you mean?”
It feels strange discussing business with her, but if she doesn’t understand why it’s so important, she won’t understand why I can’t leave.
“Well, my dad and my uncle, they expanded into commercial construction instead of just residential. They got a lot of government contracts over the years. There aren’t a lot of qualified companies up here that can handle the government projects. ”
“That’s good.”
“It’s very good, Rae.” I tighten my grip on her. “All the companies together, the land, the buildings, all the family-owned properties. All of it is worth billions now.”
She freezes. “Billions with a B?”
I nod. “Yeah, with a B. Add the festival on top of that, and the money it brings in every year, walking away from all of this would be…”
Her kiss-swollen lips droop. “It would be stupid.”
I take her face between my palms. “No, I would give it all up for you. All of it. Every single fucking penny. If it were only about me. But there are hundreds of employees who depend on me running these companies, and I still need to take care of my mom and dad. Plus, I don’t know what the fuck I would do in Milwaukee.
” I bark out a humorless laugh. “I know how to work with my hands.”
She leans up and presses a soft kiss to my lips. “You sure do.”
The compliment briefly lifts my spirits, but I know what I’m asking her and how impossible it will be for her to say yes. This brief respite from the world outside and the things pulling us in opposite directions will end soon. A reality we’ll both have to accept.
“I wouldn’t fit in there, that place. Your life. It’s not who or what I am. But up here isn’t you anymore, either, Rae.”
Rae considers my statement for a moment, twisting her lips as she swirls little circles with her fingertip across my chest. “I’m not so sure about that anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
She sighs and rests her cheek over my heart. I let her be for a moment, thinking through whatever it is she has going on in that beautiful head of hers. This isn’t the time to rush any conversations, and I want to enjoy having her in my arms for as long as possible.
“When my parents told me they were moving and asked me to come back to help them pack up the house, I didn’t want to…”
“Because you didn’t want to see me.”
She shakes her head. “It wasn’t just that.
I knew it would be hard to leave again once I came up here…
leave for the final time and cut all ties with Hayes Creek.
The few times I did come home during college over holiday breaks”—she shrugs slightly—“I realized how much I missed it. I missed the town. I missed the people.”
“I never saw you when you were home.”
Tilting her chin up, she gives me a sad, apologetic smile. “That was intentional. Even years later, I felt like an idiot for kissing you like that and leaving. The thought of facing you again after that was too much for me to bear.”
“It was pretty dumb.”
She smacks me playfully on the shoulder. “Don’t get me wrong, I love Milwaukee. I love my life, my friends, my job even…”
The silence hanging between us speaks volumes. Rae may not want to say the words, but I know what she’s thinking—because I haven’t been able to leave, either.
“But it isn’t Hayes Creek.”
She nods. “But it isn’t Hayes Creek.”
It’s the opening I’ve been hoping for—a glimmer of hope that this might all work out. “You could come back, do HR for me, for the various companies…”
Rae pushes up on her elbows. “Are you serious?”
I nod and drag her across my body so she’s fully covering me again. Her wet cunt presses over my cock, stirring it back to life. I’d give anything to plunge back into her and lose the world around us again, but this is too important to brush aside for another round right now.
“Rae, if you think there’s any chance of you being happy here, really, truly being happy, I will make anything happen that needs to, in order to get you here.”
Her soft brow furrows, worry lines forming. “Won’t there be other people who have something to say about that?”
I shake my head. “No, I’m running everything now. I’m the boss. Which means if my girlfriend needs a job, she gets one.”
Rae pulls her bottom lip between her teeth. “Your girlfriend, huh?”
“For a little while, at least.” I lift her hand and brush my lips across her fingers on her left hand. “People would think it was weird if we got married right away.”
Her jaw drops. “Jax, stop it. That’s not even funny.”
I lean up and press my lips to hers, pulling her down onto me, and rolling until she’s under me again, pinning her in place.
“I’m not joking, Rae. We wasted years. I don’t want to waste any more time.
So, you tell me, are we going to do this?
Because I don’t want you to resent me later if you come back home.
I don’t want you to wonder what would’ve happened if you had stayed there.
I don’t want you to hate me for making you come back to this place you outgrew a long time ago.
” I stare into her hazel eyes, imagining what it would have been like to be doing this for the last decade.
“I always thought you were better than this place, that you deserved more. But goddammit, I’m selfish, Rae.
And I’ll take it if you’ll give it to me. I’ll beg you to come back.”
Tears well in her eyes again, but these don’t seem to hold the same uncertainty or sadness of her earlier ones. “I was never too good for Hayes Creek, Jax. I was just young and thought I wanted something that wasn’t important in the end.”
“What is important?”
She presses her hand over my chest where my heart beats rapidly against my rib cage, waiting for her to say what I long so badly to hear. “This. You and me figuring this out.” A little laugh slips from her throat. “And to think, Mom sent me out here on a little break from packing up the house.”
I grin at her. “I think your mom had other plans when she sent you over here.”
Her eyes narrow on me. “What do you mean?”
My laugh floats between us, and I grin. “I ran into her at the store last week, and she told me you were coming back. I may have told her I was interested in seeing you, that I’ve missed you.”
Rae’s eyes widen. “Jax, you didn’t…”
I smirk.
“So…”—a slow smile spreads across her face—“this was all a setup?”
Shrugging, I lightly drag my finger down into her bra and flick her nipple, earning a little twitch of her body under mine. “I wouldn’t call it a setup, more like a happy reunion that was potentially, slightly, sort of arranged. Though, I wish you had come to see me because you wanted to.”
Rae’s light laughter fills my room and my heart. “I did want to. And Jax, my mother did not send me to get laid.”
I shift my position to slip between her legs again, slowly pushing my cock inside her slick core on a languid slide designed to make her feel every inch. She groans and arches up into me again, clenching around me to draw me even deeper.
“Maybe not, Rae, but since you’re here—and you’re not going anywhere—I’m going to make use of every moment I have with you.”
She scores her nails across my back, angling her hips to take me all the way to the hilt before she clamps down hard enough on me to make me gasp. “My own big, strong, determined lumberjack.”
I crush my lips to hers as I pull back and plunge into her again. “You have no idea how determined I can be, Rae. This is happening. You and me. You can’t kiss me and run again.”
Digging her heels into my lower back, she locks us together. “I won’t make that mistake again.”
* * *
I hope you enjoyed Billionaire Lumberjack’s Brawn, a short story set in my Lumberjacks in Love Series. Check out the full novels in the series available now at all retailers: