27. Raegan
Chapter twenty-seven
Raegan
The long walk—because neither of us owns a car—gives me a lot of time to think and stew over what I will do when I get there. Jackson doesn’t say a word the entire time.
I almost get on his case for it, until I look over at him and notice how his eyes are constantly moving around us. He seems relaxed walking beside me, but a tension in his face gives away how alert he is to our surroundings.
My words die on my tongue, and I settle more into the quiet between us.
Even now, on our way for me to do who-knows-what to his brother, he’s watching out for me. I was just too busy rampaging within my head to notice.
We’re not even halfway there when I admit to myself that I’m not on my way there to attack Dane. At least not physically.
I was blinded by anger with the news of what he’d done when it first hit me, thinking that the only way to protect the others in this city was to get rid of him, but who was I kidding ?
As furious as I am with the stupid decision he made, I could never consciously hurt him. I’m the one who hurt him this badly in the first place.
I still care about him.
I miss what we used to have and who he used to be.
If anyone is to blame for why he is who he is now, it’s me.
My temper and gift cool and fizzle out and are replaced with annoyance and surface anger at his stupidity. Jackson gives me a look as I take a deep breath and I wonder if he somehow sensed the change in me.
While I’ve decided that I’m not going to kill or maim Dane, I’m no pushover and have plenty of anger I can still throw his way to make sure he doesn’t do something so foolish again. And I’ll throw some Aiden’s way if he knows about it.
I shove the door open when we get there. Jackson stands just behind me like an ominous shadow for anyone who may try to get near me and it bolsters my confidence.
The three others are seated around the dining room table, having a meeting since there’s no food on the table, and they all snap to attention when they see me. Kellan looks at Jackson over my shoulder and then back to me. He looks annoyed and broody. Whether that’s still from me running away this morning or at this sudden intrusion with Jack at my back, I can’t tell.
Aiden just looks confused, and Dane looks pissed by my appearance in his home.
Perfect.
I storm up to the table and focus all of my attention on Dane .
“You’re a rat bastard and a real piece of shit, you know that?” I grab a pen off the table and chuck it at him.
He swipes it away and sneers at me. “Oh yeah? You finally ready to tell everyone the truth about how you feel?”
“What’s this about?” Aiden tries to interject, but I ignore him and lean over Kellan to point my finger at Dane.
“How about you tell everyone the truth about what you did? How you told GE that I’m here and how I’ve been getting followed and attacked for weeks , because of you ? How you put everyone else in this city in danger by drawing GE here?” I bang my fist against the table in emphasis.
A chair screeches back on the floor and Kellan’s suddenly towering over me. “You did what ?!” he snarls and grabs Dane by the collar of his shirt.
“Let him go, Kellan,” Aiden orders and stands from his seat.
Kellan and I turn our heads simultaneously to look at him.
“Did you know?” Kellan whispers threateningly.
I step back out of Kellan’s way as he holds Dane in one hand and Aiden’s glare on his other side.
“Of course not. But I want to hear it from Dane if it’s even true before you go trusting her over your own brother,” Aiden counters back.
We all look at Dane, who isn’t even trying to break free of Kellan. He slashes a hateful look at Jackson. “You’re a motherfucking traitor, Jack. I knew she would be trouble from the moment she showed up here, and that’s all she has been. Look at us!” He waves his arms out at the room .
Even I can see the divide between them. Kellan and Jackson defending me on one side, Aiden and Dane on the other.
They’re looking at each other with distrust, hate, and contempt. Nothing like how we all were together on the island. Was this all because of me? Because I’m in the same city as them?
I’m the villain.
This isn’t what I wanted. I was supposed to keep my distance from them and focus on my mission, and now it looks like I’m tearing them apart.
No matter what I do, everything I touch gets destroyed.
My throat thickens at the realization.
Aiden’s studying the room like me, eyes landing on Kellan and then Jackson with a deepening frown before it falls on me.
“Did. You. Do. It?” Kellan spits at him.
Dane glares at him. “I did. She’d do it to any of us. As soon as she killed the informant we had, I knew I needed to get rid of her. I just tipped GE off with her name and a picture in one of the newsletters I know some of them read.” His anger swings my way. “No one else was supposed to get hurt,” he snaps.
Kellan’s face and fist tighten with rage. A sharp stab of panic hits me that he might actually beat the shit out of Dane for this. Dane seems to realize it too, because his hands are glowing and gripping Kellan’s forearm to block his gift from coming out.
“That’s enough. Put him down.” Aiden has a sword in his hand out of nowhere and it lengthens until it rests against Kellan’s neck. With his gift muted by Dane, the blade nicks his skin and a tear of blood drips free. But the wound, even as tiny as it is, doesn’t heal .
What is happening?!
“What do you want, little one?” Jackson whispers in my ear so only I can hear him.
“Not this,” I breathe out, and I can feel his smile brush against me.
Kellan curses when a throwing star embeds into his wrist so deeply that I gasp. His hand snaps open, like the tendon keeping his hand closed was cut suddenly, and Dane drops to the ground.
He yanks the star free and relief floods me when his body immediately heals it.
I run to Kellan and check his wrist and neck, and then glower at Aiden until he puts the sword away. “Are you okay?” I ask him, and he grins at me.
“Aw. Were you worried about me, beautiful?” He strokes my hair through his fingers, and I stubbornly remind myself not to liquefy under his touch. He wants more from me than I’m willing to give. I can’t let that continue.
I push away from him, though not unkindly, and smirk at him instead. “Just making sure you didn’t lose the use of your hand. I’m sure you need it,” I tease, though he catches my real meaning behind it and laughs.
“Damn right, I do.”
“What the fuck are you two going on about?” Dane grumbles and turns to me. “So? You came here to rat me out. What now?”
“Now, it’s out in the open and we put it behind us.” Aiden steps forward, and I grind my teeth.
“You’re fucking joking. He sold me out to GE and is the reason they’re even here. He put your Guild and everyone else hiding from them on their radar. And I’m just supposed to let that go?” I demand angrily. “There’s no taking back what he’s done!”
I think of Portia. Elias, Kit, Ethan, and everyone else at Hype. Hell, I don’t even know anyone at this Guild other than Claudia and now Isabel being there, but doesn’t Aiden care at all that Dane is the reason they’re all at risk now?
“We’re never going to beat them like this. Us or you, Raegan,” he growls at me. “If we’re going to get rid of them for good, we need to work together.”
I stare at him in shock.
“I thought we could ignore you, but that’s clearly not the case. We keep getting in each other’s way and slowing the other down. It’s a win-win. We’ll all be on the same team and look out for one another.” He shoots a look over at Dane, before returning his attention to me. “And we’ll be working together on the same plan. There’s nothing we can do now to fix what Dane did, other than having us help keep them off your back. Dane is also their number one target for his gift, so you’ll get closer to them just by being around him.”
He finishes his speech and I just shake my head at him. It would never work. Dane would sell me out again to GE, to Gordon, in a heartbeat if I were close to them. And the others…it’s clear now that I only make things worse between them. I won’t be the reason they’re torn apart. They’re supposed to stick together.
With Elias’s resources, I don’t need Aiden or the guys to help me take down GE. As soon as he comes back, we can brainstorm our next plan of attack. I can keep moving forward without destroying the people I care about the most.
“What does that mean?” Aiden questions, his voice tight with irritation.
“No,” I answer firmly. “We can’t work together.”
His brow furrows. “Why not?”
I look around the room at the others. At the people who mean more to me than they will ever realize. It gives me the strength to do what’s necessary to keep them together. “I already have a partner I’m working with. Besides, you don’t trust me. We can never be a team if we don’t trust each other.”
“Who? And we can put aside our differences and trust in that we all want GE gone. It’s a common goal that we’re working toward. Trust in that.”
Dane cuts in, “I don’t want her here either. I’m not working with her.”
“See? Not happening.” I give him a saccharine smile and turn back to the door.
There’s no deal or offer he can make me to join sides now that I’ve seen the damage I cause them.
It’s better if I do this without them.
Sighing, I lean against my apartment door. I’m not entirely sure how I feel that went. Instead of coming back feeling relieved or satisfied with any revenge on Dane, I just feel empty. And lonely .
Jackson patiently watches me as I put myself back together. He’d followed me out of the safe house and all the way back without a word.
My shadow. My protector. My personal god of death.
He knew exactly what I needed when everything was going to hell in a handbasket and did it without hesitation.
He said he knew me better than I knew myself. Can I even doubt that anymore?
His hood is back down again now that we’re alone, but his eyes are no less intense out of the shadow. There’s a dark heat in his expression that calls to me. I want to bathe in it and feel it in the way he touches me.
“What do you want?” he asks so softly that I’m not sure how I actually heard the words that barely grazed past his lips.
My heart thumps and squeezes in my chest, and my breathing shallows.
“You,” I breathe in an exhale.
He’s on me in less than a heartbeat. I’m mid-gasp when his mouth covers mine, and then it’s game over.
His kiss is demanding. Eccentric. Insatiable.
I can taste the obsession on his tongue. Feel his devotion in his touch as his hands hold either side of my head. It’s almost too much. I’m drowning in him as he fills me up and saturates me with the endless depth of his need for me.
I cling to his hoodie for support when my body threatens to give out under the headiness of his kiss. His hands grasp my wrists and our lips smack apart with how quickly he pulls them away. Our foreheads and the sides of our noses stay joined as we pant.
“Wait.”
I release his hoodie when he tugs on my hands. His cerulean eyes never stray from mine, leaving me doubtless that he won’t be gone from me for long.
Jackson carefully drags his hoodie over his head. The motion is slow and drawn out while he maintains eye contact with me for as long as possible. It feels like a strip tease, even if it’s only a hoodie. But it’s Jackson’s hoodie.
What does he look like underneath it now, all grown up?
I’m half-kidding to myself that I’ll see he has a demon’s torso from making a deal with death to be its reaper.
The hoodie finally drops from his head and onto his arms and then he carefully extracts those as well. Jackson’s lips tug into a cocky smirk when he tosses the hoodie to the floor. It drops like it’s weighted with lead and clatters with the sound of metal.
Holy fuck.
He wears that all the time?
I check out what he’s wearing underneath and, surprise, surprise. It’s a black shirt.
“Is black your favorite color?” I tease to break some of the sexual tension in the room.
He chuckles and bends down to unlace his boots and heel them off. “I could ask the same of you. But I already know why you wear it so often.”
I follow this dance we’re doing and remove my boots and socks. Then put all the weapons I had on me on the counter. “Tell me. ”
Jack circles me like a predator. “You wear it trying to blend in at night. Because you think bad deeds can only happen in the dark.”
“Don’t they?”
He stops behind me. Natural instinct screams at me to turn around. Never let a predator see my back. My pulse sledgehammers. I clench my hands at my sides and try to relax, but my breathing only quickens when my hair shifts over my shoulder, and I feel him drawing closer to me.
“No.” His voice is dripped in darkness and sin, and I shiver in anticipation. He’s not even touching me and my underwear is soaked. “Some of the worst things happen in the daylight. By the very people you think you can trust. People who wear masks far better than any real monsters.”
He plants his hands on my hips and pins me back against him. His hard length digs into me, and I writhe into it.
“Why do you wear black then?” I pant, trying to keep playing the game but failing miserably with how desperately I want him to keep touching me. His hands play across my every curve, stroking up my inner thigh and slipping up my shirt. It’s like he’s using his hands to memorize every line of my body by touch alone.
It’s intoxicating.
Empowering.
“So that my enemies never see me bleed,” he finally answers me. His tongue paints a line up my carotid artery to my ear. “An enemy who never appears injured, no matter what you do, is terrifying.”
“Jackson,” I beg.
His teeth scrape across my pulse as he drags my shirt up over my breasts. The clasp comes undone and then both of his hands find and grab them. My nipples are tugged and teased and pinched and my hips squirm harder against him.
I’m yanked back tightly into him and gasp with surprise, because I can feel both of his hands still higher up. Nothing keeps them still, but I can feel it. Then a soft, teasing pressure tickles through my pants at the apex of my thighs, and I jolt in shock, as much as the invisible band at my hips allows me.
Jackson chuckles into my skin. The invisible wind or hand or whatever it is continues to caress and fondle me through my pants until my legs shake. The band around my hips and Jackson’s hold on me keep me from falling. I’d be putty on the floor without them.
“I want you so badly, Raegan. I’ve always—” He hesitates for a moment and I’m afraid he might actually throw the L-word out and I’ll go running for the hills. He hums under his breath. “—wanted you,” he finishes. “Do you feel what you do to me?”
The pressure on my clit intensifies just as the invisible hold on my hips keeps me from running away when it becomes too much at once.
“Oh God. Jackson. I’m going to come.”
Everything comes to a crashing halt when he releases me. My orgasm, which had been creeping up my back and preparing to detonate, deflates and flies out of reach. Frustration replaces it and I whirl around at him.
“What happened? Why did you stop?” I demand on a breathless exhale.
“I’m yours, little one, but not like this.” He steps up to me so I have to crane my neck back to look at him. “I’m not just going to be your distraction like you’re doing with Kellan. When you’re ready for me, really ready to take my leash, then you can have all of me.”
He kisses me, and I fight him at first, still pissed at what I just lost, but his tongue wipes away the anger and I sink into him. His arms cocoon me, and I fall deeper into his kiss like quicksand. Or tar. Smooth and dark and impossible to get free of once you’ve been touched by it.
Jackson breaks off the kiss and plants a gentle one on my forehead while I re-orient myself with where I am. He slips his hoodie back on and throws his hood back up, tucks his feet into his boots without tying them, then leaves my apartment.
I collapse into the nearest chair, leaning back and taking my hand to my clit, hoping I can stir my orgasm back around.
I keep forgetting that while Jackson was always there for me, and still clearly is, he was never less of an asshole than the others.