Chapter Nine
JAX
I WATCHED her quickly retreat into the stable after Hallie walked away from the kitchen window.
After the visit we got at the wedding, it doesn’t matter what she’s doing or where she’s at, I’m keeping an eye on her.
So, I made my way to the painted white structure that Marley’s diligently taken care of.
Watching her cry against the wall as she suffers alone is more than I can stand.
I always try to keep my distance, give her the space she needs, but there’s no fucking way I’m going to give her space when she’s like this.
I’ll give her everything I can, but I will not leave her to go through this alone.
Her body molds to mine when I pull her into me, and I feel her hands twisting my shirt as the sobs rack her body, each one lancing pain through my chest because I can’t do a fucking thing to stop the hurt that is tormenting her, it’s like a fucking knife to my heart.
She feels so small, and all I can do is hold her to me.
But she’s letting me. I may be a bastard for it, but the happiness I feel because she is letting me hold her in her time of need is indescribable.
Her head is right under my chin and the smell of coconut is drifting into my nose, she always smells like coconut and something floral. Her hair is soft as silk and I pull the loose strands that have fallen around her neck through my hand as I stroke my palm down her back.
Then I realize my thoughts are not just thoughts anymore, I’ve started crooning them out loud to her as I stroke her to help calm her.
“Imam te.” [I’ve got you]
“Uvek.” [always]
Turning my head, I rest my cheek on top of the messy pile of hair on top of her head and take a deep breath.
“Pusti to na mene, moja lepa devojko.” [Let it out on me, my beautiful girl]
“Ja c?u to nositi za tebe.” [I’ll carry it for you]
It only takes a few minutes for her sobs to turn to hiccups. She makes an adorable squeaking sound when she hiccups and I smile to myself.
“What can I do?” I ask, keeping my chin on her head, not letting go.
Her shoulders go rigid, and the muscles harden under my hold as the ache that was weighing so heavy on her starts to lift and she realizes our closeness. Praying I won’t regret it, I tighten my grip around her. “Please don’t pull away. Tell me, what can I do?”
For all of five seconds, she stands frozen against me, her hands still gripping my shirt. And then she surprises me when she mumbles, “You don’t make my skin crawl.”
I know she doesn’t like to be touched, and I always try to respect that, but fuck, it’s hard not to touch her every chance I get. And right now, she fits perfectly against me in every way.
A chuckle escapes my chest at the declaration, her shoulders relax just slightly, and I recall the comment she made the day of the wedding which has been on repeat in my head.
‘I’m not your next conquest, Jax’. It crushed me when she said it, that she thinks I would use her, or worse, intentionally hurt her.
Does that explain her hesitation in my arms right now? Or is it just the habit of having no contact with other people?
I have to show her what she means to me. She has no use for words. Actions will always speak louder than words.
And that will only take time.
“The highest of compliments,” I say, keeping the humor in my voice.
A tinkle of a laugh reaches my ears before the tension in her body is back and she lifts her head away from my chest. She opens her hands and presses her small palms against me as she pushes away. I reluctantly loosen my hold so she can step back.
Her red-rimmed eyes lift to meet mine and her cheeks flush on each side of her pink nose. “What are you doing in here?”
Lifting my hand, I reach for her face to wipe the wetness from her cheek and she pulls her head back a little in surprise.
But I don’t lower my hand, I wait until she is still and cup her face to swipe my thumb across her soft skin.
“I saw the horse being dropped off this morning and wanted to see without spooking him.”
It’s a lie. Sort of. Since that asshole crashed the wedding, I haven’t wanted to go too far from her. I don’t trust that he is going to play nice. When I heard them dropping the horse off early this morning, I used that as an excuse to come down and check on her.
I don’t want to make her uncomfortable, so I drop my hand, and her gaze moves toward the big double doors of the stable, toward the round pen.
“I didn’t know you’re interested in horses.” She wipes her hands across her face before she crosses her arms over her chest, looking at her toes before bashfully looking back up at me through her eyelashes.
Keeping my eyes locked on hers, I tilt my head a little. “I am interested in a lot of things.”
The pink in her cheeks deepens to a darker shade, and she toes the floor. Her shyness is the cutest fucking thing I’ve ever seen. She recovers quick, squaring her shoulders and sliding her fingers in her back pockets, pushing her chest out and sending all sorts of sordid thoughts through my head.
The adorable part is that she’s so demure that she doesn’t even realize what she did.
“He’s pretty skittish. I haven’t been able to get him to eat anything yet.
” Just as she says that, the sound of a bucket being dropped clatters outside of the stable.
We both walk out to find an empty feed bucket on the outside of the pen and the horse on the other side, watching us, like he didn’t just drop that bucket over the rail to get her attention.
Scooping the bucket up, she leans on the metal rail with a smile. “Is that your way of telling me you want more, boy?” The horse just stands there, watching her. “I can already tell you’re gonna be ornery, bring it on, boy, ornery is better than scared.”
I think I may be jealous of a horse.
Her eyes are shining as she looks at him, and the smile on her face is breathtaking. Turning on her heal, she walks back into the stable with the bucket, her big rubber boots flopping against her toned, golden legs.
I’ve overheard her joking with the girls about not liking her ‘bubble butt’, as she calls it, but I think she has the most perfect ass I’ve ever seen.
When she walked into the kitchen for breakfast this morning wearing the worn cut-off jean shorts, with the fringe hanging against her thighs, and a t-shirt, I nearly choked on my coffee and then had to step behind the island to hide my giant fucking hard-on.
Leaning against the tree by the front door of the stable, I look out at the horse in the pen. His dark eyes watch me with no amount of trust, in fact, he looks at me like he would rather kick me in the fucking head than let me close to him.
Maybe that’s why the horses trust Marley so much, she’s had her own trauma and can understand their pain, a shared fear.
I sometimes wonder how some people can still carry that fear, holding their feelings so close to the surface, when I turned everything off.
After I watched them slowly kill my mother and then my sister, the part of me that felt grief and pain was put into a dark place and left there.
The day I walked into the Harlow’s living room and my eyes fell on Marley, my heart started beating like it had never beat before.
It was like a shock to my system, the part of my system that only saw life as something to get through.
Until that day, I lived life as shallow as possible, avoiding anything that might touch my heart.
Marley’s comment about me and Mason wandering, I knew she was talking about women, and I know she probably questions my motives.
Rightfully so, I’ve never cared what other people thought of me.
Until now. What she doesn’t know is that the day I met her, there were no other women.
My heart burst out of my chest, taking my dick with it, and wrapped itself up in a fucking bow, laying itself at her feet.
She’s far from my next conquest.
She’s it.
It’s been her since that day and I don’t think I could ever go back to my empty life, jumping from woman to woman and looking for any kind of stimulus to make me feel alive. She makes me feel alive. I’ll walk through fucking fire to make sure she’s happy.
An enormous crash accompanied by clattering comes from inside the stable and I run to find Marley.
She’s sitting on the floor like she fell backward onto her ass with small bags of feed, canisters of supplements, and toppled feed buckets all around her.
At her feet is one of the two shelves from the wall by the feed stall, the screws still in the anchors that secured them.
“You okay?” Squatting behind her, I loop my arm around her waist and pull her onto her feet, her back pressed against my front, and take a step back. I don’t think she realizes it, but her fingers have wrapped around my forearm as she looks at the damage in front of her in shock.
“It just fell when I put the supplement canister back on it.” Her eyes are wide as they move over the mess in front of her and then up to the wall.
“Marley!” Gray, Mason, and Mr. Harlow are yelling as they run across the yard to her stable.
Without looking away from the mess, she yells, “I’m okay, in here.”
When she realizes I’m holding her to me, she looks down at her hands on my arm. I haven’t loosened my grip on her, and then her head swings to the side to look over her shoulder. Her head tips back as she looks up into my eyes and whispers, “I’m okay.”
Giving her a nod, I let go of her just as Gray, Mason, and Mr. Harlow run into the stable. They seem to move in unison as they all look over Marley to make sure she is okay, and then their gazes move over the mess on the floor.
“What the hell happened?” Mr. Harlow growls as he is looking over the jumble on the floor. If you didn’t know that he thinks smoking is a disgusting habit, you would think by the sound of his voice that he smoked two packs a day his whole life.