Chapter 13 Miranda
MIRANDA
The passage of time is blurring. Yesterday was a blur of adrenaline and terror.
Someone, or something, tested the door handle at three in the morning.
Just a rattle. A vibration of metal against metal that woke me from a dead sleep.
I spent the rest of the night curled up in the nest with Jax, his arm heavy over my waist, his body a solid wall between me and the door.
I didn't sleep, but I didn't shake, either.
Today, the terror has been replaced by a suffocating, wet heat.
Heat is an energy transfer. It moves from a hotter object to a cooler one until thermal equilibrium is reached.
The air conditioner—a rusty window unit that sounded like a lawnmower choking on gravel—died three hours ago. It gave a final, rattling gasp and seized up. Since then, the cabin has transformed from a shelter into a kiln.
I am sitting on the floorboards with my back against the wall, legs spread wide in a desperate attempt to ventilate.
I’ve shed the oversized flannel. I’m down to a ribbed white tank top and my underwear.
The sweat pools in the hollow of my throat and slides down between my breasts in a slow, maddening trickle.
My hair is piled on top of my head, held in place by a pencil I found in the junk drawer. Damp tendrils escape, sticking to my neck like wet cobwebs.
"It’s ninety-eight degrees," I announce to the room. "Humidity is near saturation. We are essentially steaming like dumplings."
Jax doesn't look up.
He’s sitting at the table, cleaning his gun.
He’s shirtless, of course. He’s been shirtless for three days, a fact that my logical brain is trying to categorize as 'tactical' and my lizard brain is categorizing as 'problematic.
' His skin gleams with sweat, highlighting every ridge of muscle, every scar, every vein that traverses his biceps like a roadmap.
He moves with a terrifying economy of motion. Click. Slide. Snap. He disassembles the mechanism, wipes it down with an oily rag, and reassembles it blind.
He’s agitated. I can feel it. The atmosphere in the cabin is thick, charged with a static tension that has little to do with the storm outside. It’s the proximity. We are two animals trapped in a cage that is getting smaller by the hour.
He tracks me. If I walk to the sink, his eyes follow. If I stretch, I hear his breath hitch. It’s a heavy, predatory weight that rests on my shoulders.
"Stop fidgeting," he growls, though I haven't moved in ten minutes.
"I’m not fidgeting. I’m ventilating." I fan myself with a piece of stiff cardboard torn from a cereal box. "Can't we fix the AC? We fixed the generator."
"Compressor's blown," he says, racking the slide of the pistol. Clack-clack. "Piston seized. Need a new part. Can't get parts when there’s a sniper watching the driveway."
He sets the gun down and finally looks at me.
His eyes are dark, the amber swirling with something thick and heavy. He looks at my bare legs. He looks at the damp spot on my tank top where the sweat has soaked through.
Then his gaze locks onto my neck. Onto the starburst birthmark right on my throat.
His nostrils flare.
"You smell," he says.
"Excuse me?" I bristle, pulling my knees up slightly. "I smell like Dove soap and desperation. You’re the one who smells like a wet animal."
"You smell like heat," he corrects. His voice drops, rough and low. "Like burnt sugar. It’s... loud."
He stands up.
The sudden movement sucks the oxygen out of the room. He walks toward me. He doesn't walk like a man; he prowls. Heavy footsteps. Fluid hips. He stops right in front of me, looming, casting a long shadow that swallows me whole.
He reaches into his pocket.
I flinch, my muscles locking up, expecting a weapon.
Instead, he pulls out the iron railroad spike.
He grips it in his right hand. His fist clenches. I watch the muscles in his forearm bunch and twist like steel cables under the skin. He squeezes hard. Harder. His knuckles turn white.
A drop of blood, dark and heavy, falls from the bottom of his fist and hits the floorboards. Splat.
"Jax!"
I hastily scramble to my feet, forgetting the heat, forgetting the ache in my ankle.
"Stop it! Why do you keep doing that?"
I reach for his hand.
He tries to pull away, twisting his torso, but I’m faster. I grab his wrist with both hands. His skin is scalding hot, fever-hot.
"Let go," he warns.
"Open your hand. Now."
He glares at me, his jaw working. He looks like he wants to shove me away, but the fight drains out of him slowly. He uncurls his fingers.
The spike drops to the floor with a heavy thud.
His palm is a mess. The rough iron has sliced deep into the calloused skin, reopening the wounds from yesterday, and the day before. It’s an ugly, jagged gash, oozing blood mixed with rust.
"Why?" I whisper, staring at the wound. "We talked about the war. We talked about your dad. But you never explained this. Why the self-sabotage?"
"It ain't sabotage," he rasps. He’s looking at the top of my head, refusing to meet my eyes. "It’s a governor. A breaker switch."
"For what? The Wolf?"
"For the man," he says. "Iron burns the magic out. It clears the fog. When I hold it... I remember that I got ten fingers and a name. I remember that I ain't just a set of teeth waiting to bite."
"You aren't just teeth, Jax."
"You don't know that," he says, looking at me now. "You see me cooking steaks and fixing lights. You don't see what’s scratching at the door inside my head. The Wolf don't care about the Truce. He don't care about collateral damage."
"And hurting yourself stops him?"
"Pain focuses the mind," he says simply. "It’s the only thing loud enough to drown out the scent of you."
I stare at him. "My scent makes you want to hurt yourself?"
"Your scent makes me want to do things that would make you run into the swamp and take your chances with the gators," he says.
The admission hangs in the humid air, heavy and terrifying.
"You're bleeding," I say, forcing my voice to remain steady, pivoting back to the problem I can fix. "Infection risk is exponential in this humidity. Tetanus. Sepsis."
"I heal," he says dismissively.
"Not if you keep ripping the sutures open."
I pull him toward the sink. He follows, surprisingly compliant, like a large, dangerous dog allowing itself to be led on a leash.
I turn on the tap. The water is lukewarm, but it’s wet. I push his hand under the stream.
He hisses, a sharp intake of breath through his teeth, but he doesn't pull away.
I grab the bar of soap. I lather my own hands, then gently wash the blood from his palm. My fingers slide over the rough ridges of his calluses, tracing the life line, the heart line. His hand is massive. My hand looks like a child’s toy inside his.
"Does it hurt?" I ask softly.
"Yeah."
"Good," I say, drying it with a clean rag. "Pain is a reminder. It tells you that you’re alive."
I look up.
He is watching me. His pupils are blown so wide his eyes are almost black. He is staring at my mouth. The muscle in his jaw is jumping, a rapid-fire tic.
"You have gentle hands," he says. The words sound like they were dragged out of him over broken glass. "For a mechanic."
"Precision work requires a steady grip," I murmur. "You can't force a gear into place. You have to finesse it."
I look at the wound. It’s clean now, the blood slowing to a sluggish ooze. It looks angry.
I lift his hand.
I don't know why I do it. It’s a glitch. A short circuit in the mainframe. Maybe it’s the heat. Maybe it’s the fact that he hurt himself to keep from hurting me.
I press my lips to the center of his palm, right over the cut.
I kiss the wound.
Jax freezes. His whole body goes rigid, turning to stone against the counter.
I taste the iron. I taste the salt of his skin. It’s primal. It’s an acceptance of the violence he carries.
For a second, he doesn't move. Then, a tremor runs through him, violent and shuddering.
He rips his hand away.
"Don't," he snarls.
He backs me up against the sink, his hands slamming onto the counter on either side of my hips, trapping me. He leans down, his face inches from mine. I can just feel the heat radiating off his chest, searing through my thin tank top.
"Don't do that," he breathes, his voice wrecked. "Don't touch me like you care. Don't taste me."
"Why?" I challenge, breathless. My pulse is a manic drumbeat against my ribs. "Because you might like it?"
"Because I'm barely holding on!" he roars.
He presses his hips against mine. There is no mistaking the ridge of him against my stomach. He is hard. Painfully, impossibly hard.
"You have no idea," he whispers, his nose brushing my neck, inhaling deeply right over the birthmark. "You're standing here half-naked, smelling like sugar and heat, fixing me up like I’m a broken toy. You don't know what the Wolf wants to do to you."
"Tell me," I whisper. The request is irrational. It’s dangerous.
"He wants to claim you," he says. The words are crude, blunt. "He wants to mark you. He wants to bite this spot on your neck and knot you until you can't walk. He wants to fill you until you smell like nothing but me."
My knees go weak. The air leaves my lungs.
Knot?
I don't know what that means. Not in this context. To me, a knot is a tangle in a wire or a way to tie a rope. But the way he says it—guttural, heavy, and final—makes it sound like something that destroys you and puts you back together different.
And the rest... Fill you. Until you can't walk.
That part, I understand.
It should revolt me. It should make me run for the wrench. But instead, a hot, heavy liquid sensation pools in my belly. My body responds to the threat before my brain can process the mechanics of it. My hips rock forward, just a fraction, seeking the friction.
Jax squeezes his eyes shut. A groan tears out of his throat, vibrating through my chest.
He pulls back abruptly, putting three feet of distance between us. He looks at me with wild, tortured eyes. He looks at his hand—the one I kissed—and curls it into a fist, but he doesn't reach for the spike.
"Don't touch me again," he says, his voice shaking. "Unless you want me to finish it."