Chapter Twenty-Three – Laina #2
“That’s exactly the shit I don’t like,” he said.
“Plus, the noise. Doesn’t matter what time of day or night it is, this city’s always so damn loud.
Back in Montana, you can actually hear yourself think.
You can step outside when the moon is high and hear the crickets, the owls. You can actually see the stars.”
I leaned my head back on the cushion and stared at the ceiling. The first floor had higher ceilings than the rest of the house. “It must be nice.”
“It is.”
“I wonder if I’d like it. For so long I thought a city like this was the place to be, but now…” I trailed off. “Now I don’t know. I don’t know if I want to stay here when the smoke clears. This city will always remind me of my dad.”
Jason scooted a bit closer to me, bringing one of his hands to mine, giving me a gentle comforting squeeze.
“It’s not a bad thing to be reminded of who you lost every now and then.
It’ll hurt, it’ll hurt for a long time, maybe even forever, but that’s the thing about life.
It keeps going. There’s nothing wrong with remembering those you’ve lost.”
Slowly, I lifted my head off the cushion and met his stare. “I know. I just… I don’t know if I want to be here anymore. Everything with my old life is gone. It might be nice to start new somewhere. Fang and Mike, though, they were born here. They grew up here. They’ve never known anywhere else.”
“You’re worried they wouldn’t go with you if you decided to leave?” The man was way too perceptive.
“I’m worried I’d be too afraid to ask them.”
His thumb ran over my knuckles. His hand was rough, but it wasn’t the worst hand to have holding mine.
No, in fact, it was the opposite. It was nice, way nicer than it should’ve been.
“I don’t think you have to be afraid of that.
I don’t know either of them that well personally, but I don’t think they’d turn you down.
They care about you, and when you care about someone that much, you do whatever you can to make them happy.
If that means leaving this city, then that’s what it means. ”
Even though I didn’t really feel like smiling, a soft smile still tugged at my lips. “You’re good at this.”
“At what?”
“At making people feel better.”
“I guess I have loads of practice. Not sure what that says about me.”
“It’s a good thing,” I told him. “It’s—”
“If you say something about daddy energy one more time…” There was a new edge to his voice, and those words were practically growled out in a warning. A playful warning, but a warning nonetheless.
I actually chuckled. “What could you possibly have against it? It’s not a bad thing. It’s good. It makes me feel like… you could take care of me.” Once those words were out of my mouth, I had to quickly say, “Not that I need someone to take care of me. It’s just a nice feeling, especially now.”
“You have three men who’d take care of you already.”
“Yeah, but you’re… different. It’s just different with you. They don’t have that daddy energy.” I had to smile when I said those words, now that I knew how much it annoyed him. “It’s sexy daddy energy, if it makes a difference.”
He ground his jaw as he stared at me. I wasn’t sure if he was throwing daggers with those eyes or if he was throwing something else.
“You know what I think?” He didn’t give me a chance to respond; he leaned closer to me, closing what was left of the distance between us as he let go of the hand on my lap.
That arm lifted, curling around my shoulders.
All very deliberate, measured movements, and I was frozen in place, waiting to hear exactly what the man thought.
“I think,” he whispered, his face less than three inches away from mine, “you like getting on my nerves. I think you enjoy it a little too much.”
Who was I to try to argue with this man? He was right. He was one hundred percent, totally correct and there was no point in trying to deny it. He was sexy when he was a little riled up, especially when his voice dropped low and he got all growly.
“Maybe I do,” I admitted with an innocent shrug. “Is that so wrong?”
“No,” Jason whispered, “I guess not.”
“You know what I think?”
A sound escaped him that was like a growl, and it sent a shiver down my spine. “What?”
“I think you like it when I get on your nerves, when I poke the inner daddy bear.” As I said that last part, I poked him right in his chest—and it was just as hard beneath my finger as I thought it was.
The man had overpowered me like nothing when he’d kidnapped me, so it shouldn’t surprise me to know he was built beneath those clothes.
The man might’ve been up there in age, but he took care of himself. There was nothing sexier than a man who treated his body right, not to mention all those tattoos… God, those tattoos by themselves were enough to drive me insane.
Jason set his other hand on my outer leg, running that hand up my leg until it reached my waist, where he then grabbed me and scooted me even closer to him—and since we were already close, he pretty much pulled me onto his lap, draping my legs over his.
“Maybe I do,” he mimicked me. “Is that so wrong?”
This man was driving me insane, but in the best way. It took an ungodly amount of inner willpower on my part to continue the game and say back, “No, I guess not.”
“You’re trouble,” he whispered, and we were now so close I could feel his hot breath on my face. “I knew it from the very beginning. You’re the very definition of trouble, and unfortunately for us both, trouble has never scared me.”
I sucked in a hard breath when he said that.
I wanted to say something smart, something witty, but his face was so close to mine anything I might’ve said was pushed from my mind.
All I could see was him. All I could feel was the hand on my waist and the arm around my shoulders.
Everything else, at least for now—all the hurt and pain and uncertainty—faded into nothing.
I was trouble? Nah. He was, for sure. He was the trouble that had come into town while I was blissfully unaware of his presence.
Clearly, this man was where Kieran inherited his stalking skills.
All those times I felt like I was being watched, this man was near, and it was crazy to me I never noticed him before that night in the club.
He really was good.
The finger I poked against his chest flattened so that my entire hand was against him, and that hand moved upward to his neck, curling around to the back of his head.
I was on the man’s lap, we were practically as close as we could be without being inside of each other, and yet it didn’t feel close enough.
Not yet.
I was the one who closed the distance between our lips.
I was the one who brought my mouth to his, wondering what the man would taste like, how his kisses would be.
Would his thick stubble scratch me? Would his lips be as rough as his hands?
Would his kisses be hard and fast and unyielding, or would he be strangely gentle?
It didn’t take too long for him to kiss me back, and when he did the entire room spun.
He took charge, and he was anything but gentle about it.
He held me against him as his mouth devoured mine, swallowing me up.
Everything I was, everything I would be; he greedily took it all, and I gave it to him. I gave him everything.
I moaned into the kiss, and he responded by bringing the hand that was on my waist to my neck, squeezing hard enough to make me gasp but not hard enough to choke.
The man knew what he was doing, oh, yes.
My heart fluttered in my chest, pounding in a whole different way than it had been when I’d first woken up.
Jason was firm, commanding, rough, everything I thought he would be and more. Frankly, the way he kissed me made me wonder how he’d be and what he’d do while doing things other than kissing. My mind was alight with possibilities.
By the time we tore our mouths apart, we both breathed hard.
He leaned his forehead against mine, his eyes half-lidded.
The arm that had been around my shoulders had fallen to my back, while the hand on my neck remained there, firmly planted there, his large, rough hand encircling my throat like I belonged to him already.
Maybe it wasn’t just the stalking that ran in the family. Maybe the possession did, too.
“You are more than trouble,” he growled out. “You’re fucking addicting. How am I ever supposed to think straight again, hmm? When you’re going to be in my head, all the goddamned time?”
“That doesn’t sound like too much of a problem. I haven’t thought straight in a long time. Welcome to the club.”
He practically hummed, and I felt the sound reverberate in my core. “The real question is… are you going to go back to bed, or we going to find a way to keep each other up all night?”
“Sounds like a challenge.”
“Maybe it is. Or maybe it’s a warning that if you don’t get off me right now, I won’t let you go until the sun comes up.”
Even now, after that heated kiss, he was giving me the chance to end this, to stop this here and now, while making it plain he didn’t want this to end.
But, if I chose to, he’d let me go. There was something incredibly sexy about a man who could stop himself like that.
The self-restraint must’ve been strong inside him.
Logic had ceased to be a part of this whole thing a long time ago.
Hell, from the first moment I saw him, I knew I had to find out more.
There was something about him that drew me in, even at that club.
After everything… if there was one thing I’d learned, it was that you could never count on tomorrow being there for you.
Tomorrow might never come, so why not live every day like it was your last?
Such a stupidly clichéd staying, but it was true. Sometimes clichés were cliché for a reason.