21. JAX
JAX
“You look like shit,” were the next words that spewed out of the dickhead’s mouth. My brain still felt like it was deflating, so all I managed was a weak glare.
I did a quick inventory. The cargo doors were shut. I wasn’t dead, but my thigh and abdominal muscles felt like they’d been murdered. My mouth was so dry that my teeth felt foreign. I licked them absently and was rewarded with a delicacy of dried blood. I was still frozen to the core.
“Those hands look gnarly, dude,” Nate said, looking down between us. Slowly, I unclenched my fists. Damn.
The frozen ladder had removed whole chunks of skin from my palms. Looking at them made them burn, like my brain didn’t feel the nerves until it saw the damage.
Apparently, I was taking too long to respond because Nate shuffled forward nervously. “You, uh, probably need to say actual words, dude. So I know you don’t have like…permanent brain damage, or something.”
“Dickhead,” I croaked out.
He grinned. “Still yourself, then.”
I swallowed, my throat felt like it was coated with shards of ice. “You—” I started, then hunched over into a violent coughing fit.
I wouldn’t be surprised if half my fucking organs came up.
Nate slapped my back, waiting for me to either recover or die.
He rambled on: “Look, I know I wasn’t supposed to get involved.
I know you told Zola to keep me out of it unless it was an emergency.
But it got bad up there, dude. Masks came down.
People were sobbing and praying and doing some weird kumbaya shit. ”
I rubbed my face, then slapped my cheeks to get some feeling back into them.
“One dude even started stripping off his clothes and screaming about how he wasted his life. Man, lawyers are grim—”
“Stop,” I grunted, slapping my raw hand over his face. “Fucking. Talking.”
My head was pounding like a jackhammer.
Nate zipped his lips, which lasted about ten seconds before he stage-whispered: “Okay, we’re still not good. I get that. Let’s just find Madoc and get the hell out of here, yeah?”
Madoc.
The reminder was a sledgehammer to my system. I shot up too quickly, then stumbled on my butchered knee. I didn’t care. I half-stumbled, half-jogged down the cargo hold, Nate scrambling to keep up. When my stupid feet got tangled up in someone’s bathrobe, he steadied me without a wiseass crack.
Look at that. Growth.
“Jax.”
I stopped at the sound of her voice. I turned and found her. My chest cracked all over again. “Come here.”
Olivia threw herself toward me. I lifted her and crushed her against me. She was ice cold, like a corpse. I wasn’t much better.
Her face tucked into my neck. “God,” she whispered. “That was so close.”
“I know.” My throat burned, but every word was important. “Where is Madoc?”
Olivia sniffled.
Panic jolted through me, reigniting my blood. I lowered her to her feet and cupped her face. My ruined hands burned at the contact, but I didn’t release her. “Where is he?”
“He…”
My throat closed. Was he sucked out? Was he fucking dead?
My heart sank. He couldn’t be dead. Madoc was invincible. He was the fucking Terminator on crack. He couldn’t be.
I couldn’t let myself believe Madoc was dead.
I wouldn’t—
“Idiot.”
I twisted around, ignoring the fresh stab of agony that speared through my ribs.
Madoc was standing a few feet away. Face blank and bloody as usual.
His ink-dark hair stuck up like he’d shoved his finger into an electric socket.
Mine was probably no better. His shirt was half open, like the wind had nearly torn it clean off his torso.
He should’ve looked ridiculous. But instead, he looked goddamn glorious.
I didn’t waste another second.
I charged at him, bum leg and all. He didn’t move, his face unreadable as I slammed into him, crushing him into a bear hug.
“You dickhead,” I growled into his temple. I breathed him in, which was a weird thing to do. He smelled like sweat, blood, and hair gel. I did it again anyway.
I felt more than heard his quiet sigh. I wasn’t sure if it was a resigned sound or an annoyed one, but then he lifted his arms and wrapped them tentatively around me. He didn’t squeeze. He just let me.
That was enough.
Behind me, someone coughed pointedly. Madoc and I sprang apart. I didn’t look at him; instead, I turned to glare at Nate. “You got something to say?”
Nate’s brows shot up, then his hands. “Nope. Nothing.”
It was never nothing with Nate.
Face cracking into his usual, shit-eating grin, he added: “Just good to see Jadoc is still going strong. I’m so winning this bet.”
“What fucking bet?”
Nate zipped his lips again. I imagined my fist loosening them up.
My eyes flickered to Olivia. She was staring at the ground, her face blank with shock.
Or maybe it was exhaustion. She looked thoughtful, and that never boded well for me.
In fact, it usually landed me in a whole new world of trouble.
“Come on,” I said. We needed to leave before we all croaked from hypothermia.
Olivia made to step forward, then winced, her eyes slipping closed in pain.
“What’s wrong?” I asked her, then I caught sight of her feet.
Shit.
They were bare. She’d lost her shoes at some point, probably while clinging on for dear life. The floor was barely warmer than dry ice, and she’d been standing on it for too long.
I limped toward her. “Come here.”
She thrust up her hand stubbornly. “No. I can walk.”
“Don’t be stupid. Your feet are bleeding.”
She scoffed at me. “Your everything is bleeding. Seriously, Jax. You need to take a minute. You’re going to crash hard when you feel all of this.”
What I was feeling was my usual dose of frustration when it came to her. I reached for her waist and tossed her over my shoulder. She squealed in protest, then kneed me hard in the ribs.
I groaned.
“Not sorry,” she said like a brat, but she didn’t knee me again.
I carried her across the cargo hold, Nate leading the way and Madoc at my flank. The cargo hold was a disaster zone—the containers were gone, and most of the luggage, but what was left was a debris of clothes and belongings, including a stray butt plug.
Funny what survived.
Madoc said something quietly to Olivia, who huffed over my back, clearly offended. My mouth twitched.
Those two had it bad.
Should I be jealous of that? Probably. But my head was a graveyard. I wasn’t sure I was even blinking properly. My vision was fuzzy, and my mouth tasted like copper.
Nate went first up the cargo hatch, making sure the coast was clear. I forced Madoc to go next, who gave me an unimpressed look. I flipped him off and carried Olivia up with me.
Returning to the economy cabin was surreal, like stumbling into an alternative dimension. The masks had been deployed from the overheads, with some passengers still using them to manage their panic attacks. The turbulence had stopped, but the sour tang of terror lingered.
Nate glanced back at me knowingly. “Bat shit,” he mouthed.
I gestured for him to come closer. He did so eagerly. “Clear a path for us,” I told him. “We need to get to the first-class cabin. We’re not exactly conspicuous.”
“No shit,” he said, looking at the three of us, bloody, beaten, and bruised. “On it.”
Olivia wriggled on my shoulder. “Put me down. I can walk. And people are staring.”
"So? Let them fucking stare."
"I'm not a damsel." She twisted, knees jabbing into my ribs. "I'm serious, Jax. Down. Now."
I rolled my eyes and lowered her carefully to the ground. She winced, but moved forward determinedly. I smirked at her back.
With Nate taking the lead, we headed down the aisle. My limp worsened as my adrenaline started to wane. Damn. The priss was right. Feeling it was going to suck.
Our first obstacle was the flight attendant, Marcus, who took one look at us and dropped what appeared to be ten grand worth of laptops.
“Jesus H,” he said. “What happened?”
Nate took point. “What happened? This flight happened. Look around, dipshit. You call this mild turbulence?”
Marcus paled, glancing around. Nate went in for the kill. “My father owns a law firm and you can fucking bet we’ll be suing. Not just the airline, but you. Personally.”
Marcus balked and stepped back. He was still apologizing as we limped on by him. Olivia shot him a remorseful look.
Nate’s threatening-to-sue bit worked like a charm as we navigated our way to the first-class cabin. I was dragging, my eyelids drooping. Every muscle in my body hurt. Madoc pretended he wasn’t hovering, ready to catch me when I crashed.
I refused to crash. Not until I knew we were actually safe.
There were still too many unanswered questions. Like what did the Viper mean about Olivia being claimed? Claimed by who?
What really happened down there?
My body had other ideas.
My knee gave out. Madoc caught me like I knew he would. His hands were cold as ice where they wrapped around my biceps. He lifted me, then slung my arm over his shoulder.
That was when Ryle appeared, bursting into the cabin from wherever he’d been hiding to avoid the air marshal after he’d broken out the handcuffs.
“Jesus,” he said, skidding to a stop. “What the fu—”
“Hush, puppy,” Madoc said, his voice quiet but firm. Ryle’s mouth snapped shut obediently. Then Madoc turned to Olivia. “First aid kit.”
“Yeah,” Olivia said, looking at me. I didn’t like that look. Concerned. Worried. “I’ll find one. Just take him to one of the suites.”
We shuffled forward. Some of the passengers openly gawked at us, but Nate was quick to shut them down. I was still pissed at the idiot, but he was proving to be useful.
I blacked out for a hot minute and came back to life when I felt myself tipping back. I grappled automatically at Madoc, but then my back hit a mattress, and I groaned.
Exactly what the doctor ordered.
A bed. Dim lights. Minimal noise.
I was so tired, I’d probably slip into a coma and wouldn’t be mad about it.
Then I realized I still had my fist in Madoc’s shirt and forced myself to release him. He stood at the foot of the bed, between my knees, looking down at me.
“What?” I asked him, groggily.
He rolled his eyes. He stared at me for a beat longer, like I was a new puzzle for him to solve.
He’d seen me in worse conditions. It wasn’t even the first time we’d shared a bed, if that was what was about to happen.
But I made a point of not remembering that threesome we had a few years ago, or the fact that I had completely choked halfway through it.
Madoc’s attention was too much. Even in the dark—no, especially in the dark.
I opened my mouth, but then I felt the mattress dip and nearly swallowed my tongue. Madoc knelt over me, his movements careful, like I was easily spooked.
Had I already slipped into a coma?
“Stop thinking so much,” he said drily.
Then, like the asshole he was, he challenged my broken brain by reaching for my undershirt and lifting it over my head.
I’d never had someone undress me before, at least not like this. Usually, I was the one doing the undressing. I wasn’t a patient man, and it was always my intention to get naked as quickly as possible.
Then his hands reached for my pants. I caught his wrists, stopping him. My dumbass mouth couldn’t find words.
Slower, I wanted to say.
I needed to savor this shit.
Madoc pulled back, all the way, so he was no longer on the bed. I groaned again. That wasn’t what I meant.
“Don’t go,” I said, my voice gruff. Goddamn petulant.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“You’re all the way over there.”
He was silent.
I craned my neck up so I could gauge his expression. He was closed off. Not blank but buried. He was feeling something, but whatever it was, he wasn’t going to let it out.
“I won’t touch you like this,” he said, leaning on the wall by the door.
“You can.”
“I won’t.”
My head thumped back in disappointment. I didn’t realize I’d passed out again until I felt hands on me. My eyes cracked open hopefully.
“Hey, princess.”
“Still alive. Good.” She was perched beside me, an open first aid kit spread across the bed. There was already a bandage on my ribs. She was working on my hands.
I craned my neck, searching. Madoc was still by the door. His arms were crossed, green eyes alert and bright. Keeping watch.
When Olivia finished dabbing wrapping my hands, she sat back. “Okay. Pants off.”
I rubbed my eyes, forcing myself to stay awake. “You sure you can handle it?” I teased her. Nothing got my blood pumping like pushing her buttons.
She rolled her eyes. “I’ll try to control myself,” she said, deadpan.
I caught Madoc’s mouth twitching.
It all felt like a surreal dream. Her. Them. Me. Together and still alive.
I hoped the lightheadedness wasn’t a symptom of brain damage.
I unbuttoned my pants and shoved them down my thighs, hissing when I knocked my mutilated knee. When I was free of them and my shoes, I fell back, breathing hard.
Olivia tried, and failed, not to gawk at my body. Bruises and stab wounds aside, I was in pretty good shape. I lifted six times a week, mainly to manage my anger.
“What’s the verdict, nurse? Am I going to make it?”
Olivia scoffed. “Stop it,” she said, and shook her head as if to clear it. “Yes. Let me just…” She fussed with the supplies, then shot me a furtive look. “I’ll have to get closer.”
“So get closer.”
She sank to the floor, kneeling between my legs. That wasn’t what I expected. Not that I was fucking complaining. My eyes flicked to Madoc over the top of her head.
“You’re bleeding too, asshole,” I said, noticing his brow.
He gave me a flat look.
Olivia glanced over at Madoc, then reached out and offered him a gauze pad. His eyes drilled into her coldly. She didn’t back down.
Then, miraculously, after almost a full minute, Madoc took the gauze and pressed it to his eyebrow.
Olivia made no comment, likely knowing it was poking a dangerous animal. But I caught her smirking when she turned back toward me.
Then she dipped her head, and her warm breath brushed over my inner thigh.
Shit. Don’t get hard.
In just black briefs, there would be no hiding that.
Of course, when had my dick ever listened to me?
I made the stupid mistake of looking up.
Madoc’s eyes daggered into me. Unblinking.
And suddenly the danger wasn’t me bleeding out. It was whatever happened next.