13. Chapter 13
One minute I’m standing in my bedroom wearing nothing but a towel, aggravated that X is invading my space, telling the crazy little trespasser that I’m not interested. The next, I’ve got her in my arms, kissing her like I’ve never kissed a woman before. I expected her to return my assault with a passionate attack, but instead, her hands steal slowly up my chest as if she’s suddenly shy.
My dick grows painfully and I press it into her belly to get some relief. I’ve never wanted to fuck a woman like I wanna fuck her. The devil in my head tells me to roll with it. She’s pliable, eager and willing. And she’s lush, so lush as my hands wander over her. Her ass is round and squeezable, her tits, full and soft. And I know that hot body is a bundle of dynamite ready to explode.
She moans as she kisses me back, pressing closer into my body, scraping her nails on my chest as she folds her fingers into fists.
It makes me wild. She makes me wild. I don’t get it. Casual Chrissy’s face flits through my mind and then disappears. I know with X, there’d be nothing casual about us together. I see the future as it unfolds in front of me and take her deeper, my hand holding the back of her neck, my arm around her waist, tightening possessively.
Then I see Paulie’s face in my head, dark and disapproving. He’d never accept me, and X is too much of a good girl to go against her father’s wishes, even if her hands have wandered down to the edge of the towel. He’d insist I marry her. He’d want me to quit the Jury. Marriage - no, I’m not that guy. And the Jury. They’re my home. If we take this further, I’m gonna break her heart.
I release her with a jerk, pushing her away from me as I step back. We’re both breathing hard, both staring at one another. There’s confusion in her deep dark eyes, and if I could look at mine, I think I’d see resolve. “You’re gorgeous, X, but it’s lust. And I’m not gonna do something that’ll get your pop pissed at me.” I blow out a breath, then add belatedly, “Or hurt you.”
The confusion turns to anger. “Right.” She steps backwards out of the bedroom. “Liar,” she mutters and stalks out of view.
When I’m dressed and settled down, I head into the kitchen. She’s lounging against the wall, arms crossed, her eyes strolling over me. Spot’s inside, chowing down on the cheerios and wagging his tail.
I feel like I should say something but she gets out in front of me. “Listen, Reaper.” She pauses. “Do you have a real name?”
She confuses me. The swift change of her moods. “Jax Kincaid.”
Her eyes glaze over. “Even your name is sexy.”
My ego swells at her assessment of me. “I prefer Reaper,” I tell her.
“Why? Because it makes you sound badass and Jax Kincaid makes you sound like you’re January on the fireman’s calendar?”
God, she’s a nutcase. “Because Jax Kincaid is my past, which I’d like to move on from.”
She nods. “Okay. Listen Jax.”
“Stop it,” I order her.
“Pops won’t call you Reaper, you know. I mean, when we’re dating.”
I throw my hands in the air as I stalk to the closet in the hall and get my gun. “Do you ever stop?”
She’s right behind me, so close I can smell me on her. “Yes, I do.” Then she actually stops and I bump into her as I step back.
“For fuck’s sakes,” I mutter. I stick the gun in the shoulder holster I have on under my cut. “Let’s go.”
She grabs her pack and struts by me as I open the door for her. Spot scrambles towards me and I try to shut the door on him, but he squeezes through. I manage to get the tip of his tail and he yelps, but that doesn’t stop him from hopping in the truck as X opens the door.
“We’re not taking the truck,” I growl as I stand beside my bike. “We’re riding.”
“And we’re gonna put the box where?” she asks with a sarcastic edge to her words.
“Watch your tone, X. I’m not above throttling you.”
“Right,” she replies as she hops up on the driver’s seat but faces towards me, her legs dangling as she grins. “I’ll wait here.”
I stalk back inside, remove my cut and hang it back in the closer. Then I throw a jacket over my T-shirt and return to the garage to find X on her belly, ass in the air, slapping around Spot as he growls and pretends to bite her hands.
Fuck me. My dick thinks so too.
“Hey,” I say feeling grouchy as I yank her up and turn her around in her seat. “That’s the problem right there.” I slide in the truck and slam the door shut. “The fucking dog would quit following us around if you’d stop making him think we like him.”
She narrows her eyes and scrunches her nose. “The dog’s not following me. He’s following you. There’s no accounting for taste.”
Ouch. I start to worry about the powder keg next to me. She doesn’t seem to have any survival instincts.
By the time we get to the Western Nevada College, it’s buzzing with students. The college itself has several buildings spread out all over the place, paths leading to and from them, students wandering up and down. It’s a maze. Nothing makes sense.
X directs me to a parking lot. “We’ll need to pay in advance,” she tells me, pointing at a parking pay station that several students are lined up in front of.
“Why don’t you get a pass?” I grumble as I get out of the truck.
As she hops out, she says sternly to Spot, “Stay!” Spot seems to know who wears the pants in the family because he curls up on the passenger seat and stays. She turns to me and says, “Because passes are expensive.”
The fucking idea of her on a bus sets my heart racing again. My reaction to all things X is pissing me off, which makes me more jittery.
She takes my hand as if it were the most natural thing in the world and leads me over to the parking pass dispenser.
Her hands are rough. I can feel the callouses. Not a surprise given the work she does at the bakery. I imagine them jacking me, the slide of her rough skin adding an element of pleasure. Then I frown at myself for being such a selfish prick. She’s working herself to death and I’m thinking about fucking her.
She says, “Hi,” to a guy standing in line and he nods as his eyes flick to me.
Without my cut, I’m just a guy, albeit one with a granite face and cold eyes, which I tend to use in a ‘fuck off’ kind of way.
“Who is he?” I hiss, unreasonable jealousy hammering me.
“Michael,” she replies, distracted by the young girl at the front of the ticket line, who can’t seem to figure out how to work the fucking machine. “Good grief.” She pauses as if having a conversation in her head, then adds, “This is why the machines will eventually take over the world.”
Finally, the girl gets her ticket, throws a vacant apologetic glance over her shoulder and moves on. The next in line, two guys, are carrying on an animated conversation that seems to be more important than getting the pass.
The people in the line murmur to each other, some crane their necks, a few shift from foot to foot. No one says anything to the assholes.
Me, I’m less subtle. I yank my hand from X’s grip and stalk up to the front. “Get your fucking ticket and move on.” The tone of my voice is deadly.
One of the guys turns to me with a protest on his lips.
I interrupt before he digs his own grave. “One fucking word out of you and you’ll need a dentist.”
Asshole’s an idiot. “You can’t?—”
I grab him by his jacket and slam him up against me. Our faces are so close I can smell the banana he ate for breakfast on his breath. “Yeah, pal, I can do whatever the fuck I want.” I look at his friend, whose mouth is gaping. “Back of the line with you two assholes. You’ve wasted enough of our time.”
I practically throw the guy down the line. His friend says nothing as they flee towards another parking meter on the other side of the lot.
The next guy in line says, “You go first,” in a respectful voice that makes me proud of him.
I shake my head. “I ain’t cutting in, kid. I’m in a hurry though.”
I return to X, whose expression is a mixture of adoration and irritation. “No more manhandling the students or they’re gonna call security.”
I tilt my head at her. “Yeah. That’s got me shaking.” But logic kicks in. I’m supposed to be keeping a low profile, not attracting attention from anyone who can look up my record.
The line moves remarkably fast after my encounter with the two assholes and five minutes later, we have our parking pass. We move along with the flow of students, X once again holding my hand.
I don’t know why I’m letting her be so publicly intimate with me. It’s not something I do. Ever. I’ve never been over-involved in a relationship and this one with X is making me wary. I don’t want to hurt her but I’m letting her set expectations that aren’t gonna play out the way she imagines.
I gently untangle my hand, pretending I’m rubbing my chin, then tuck my fingers into the pockets of my jeans as we walk. I keep telling myself to be straight with her, to quit sending mixed messages, but I’m struggling. Despite her outward shell of the feisty little Latina, I see a vulnerability inside her that I can’t get beyond. She rallies quickly, but back at the house, when I told her that we couldn’t be together, the hurt in her eyes was genuine. I don’t want to see that hurt again, and it’s not just guilt, it’s protectiveness. Hard to reconcile when I’m the asshole who’s messing with her head.
It seems like we’ve walked a mile before we finally reach the building where her locker is. The sign in front of the massive concrete monstrosity declares that it’s the Business and Economics Department. Inside, the walls are painted a baby-shit yellow and the floor is covered in fading linoleum that harkens back to the 1970’s.
I point out the irony. “Are you sure you should be taking business courses at this college? Compared to this place, Mother Theresa looks like a teenager.”
“The decor represents the age-old institution of business,” X protests unconvincingly.
“Sure it does.”
She leads me to a row of battered lockers, then opens the combination lock on the one half-way down from the end. Inside is a tornado of shit. Books dumped carelessly. Loose papers shoved in the overhead compartment next to what appears to be a pair of mismatched socks. There’s an empty champagne bottle sitting upside down in one corner next to an unopened jug of orange juice. Inside the door is a picture of a guy, smoldering blue eyes, blondish hair.
“There’s the box.” She points at the decent-sized box that is indeed squished into the confines of the locker.
Fuck the box. Jealously flares and I struggle and fail to get it under control. “Who the fuck is that?” I growl as I point at the picture.
“Good God.” Quick raise of her eyes towards the ceiling. “Sorry God. Do you not watch movies? It’s Ryan Gosling. He’s my muse.”
I do watch movies, but clearly none with this asshole in them. “He’s fuckin’ ugly,” I tell her as I rip the picture off the locker. “Get a new muse.”
She grins as she takes the picture out of my hand, balls it up and tosses it on top of the socks. “Box.” She points again.
“That’s all you had at the boyfriend’s?” Once again, my mood shifts from anger at the dead bastard to protective of X and to frustration because I can’t control the crazy emotions inside me.
My fists clench when she replies. “He doesn’t really… didn’t like too much stuff of mine at his place. He thought it would be like we were living together and if my pops saw it, there’d be hell to pay.”
“He’s a liar and an idiot.”
“So we’ve established.”
She tries to tug the box out of the locker, but it’s a struggle, so I elbow her aside and yank. It’s stuck and it takes me a couple of tries to force it out. “How’d you get it in here?” I ask.
“It wasn’t easy.” Her eyes have settled on my hands. “They’re big… I mean, the box.” The intimate, teasing grin she shares with me lights up her face in a way that makes my heart skip a beat.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I see my orderly world crumbling in front of me.