“Whatever, you like being my piece of meat.”
He marched toward me, gnarred playfully as he swung me into his arms, and lifted me off the bed. “Damn, fucking right I do.” He pressed our lips together, and I tried to pull away because morning breath, but he wasn’t having it. He cupped the back of my head and pulled me closer.
When he pulled away, I was breathless, a bit turned on, and hungry all at the same time. Hungry for him and hungry for my food.
If I could find a way to do both…
“Good morning, sleepy,” he said, eyes darting all over my face as he brought the coffee to my face.
“Mmm, good morning, handsome. You sure know the way to a girl’s heart.” I tilted the mug against my lips, and my body warmed and came alive when the warmth of the vanilla coffee slid down my throat. “That’s good.”
“I’m glad. Now, you have an hour to get ready. We are finally going to go shopping for some clothes, and I want to take you ziplining through the redwoods.”
I nearly choked mid-swallow. “Ziplining? In the air? High…in…the…air?” I repeated and wanted to crawl back into bed. “You know how I am with heights. I can’t. It’s sweet that you want to do that for me, but I can’t, Jaxon.”
“You’re in a house, built in a cliff, above the water, Quinn. How is that not just as scary?”
“I’m inside! I’m safe inside. I can appreciate the beauty from a safe space, but I don’t want to be flying through it. You know, zeeeermmm,” I made my go-to flying noise and whizzed my hand through the air, showing him what would happen if I did what he wanted me to do. And then, I made myself crash and burn. I made an explosion sound, bringing my hand back and spreading my fingers. “And then, I’d be dead, Jaxon. Dead.”
I hesitated when I looked up from the comforter, afraid to see the look of disappointment on his face, but the asshole was fucking recording a video of me on his phone. I reached behind me and tossed a pillow in his direction, and his cheeks were so red from laughing at me, that it kind of hurt my feeling. “Don’t laugh, Jaxon. It is not funny. You know heights scare the hell out of me.” There was no doubt in my mind that he knew I was mad at him. My face heated, and I pressed the heel of my palms against my eyes to stop the burn.
“Aw, baby, you know it isn’t like that. I loved the sounds you were making; that was all. I don’t discredit your fear,” he kneeled down in front of me on the floor, and he didn’t even have to tilt his head up to meet my eyes, we were level now. “I’m sorry if it came off that way. I had no idea your fear was still so serious. Can you do me a favor though?”
“What?” I huffed, blowing a piece of hair out of my face.
“Conquer it with me.”
I gnawed my lip, and internally I winced because I had been chewing on the flesh too much lately because of the anxiety over the last few days. Without me even voicing it, Jaxon tugged my lip free and brushed his thumb over the raw spot.
“Stop eating yourself. That’s my job.”
I blushed, remembering just how good he was at said job four times last night. He was deadly in every sense of the word, violent, and crass. He was not the kind of man to be fucked with, but the way he fucked me.
Like I was the last person he’d ever have sex with again, every time he slid inside me. He was so good at it; he never once made me feel used. Jaxon always went out of his way to tell me how he felt about me, so that was probably why. I was never just another woman to him.
I was the only woman he had ever wanted, and in a typical Jaxon fashion, he wrapped me around his soul. Truth be told, I knew I was the only person he trusts with it. Not even his friends that lived in the same house as him knew him like I knew him. I knew all his scarred parts and regrets, just as he knew mine.
We were fucked up, and it was settling, knowing we would be fucked up together.
“Okay, tell you what. You go hiking with me to Strawberry Rock. We will start with that height. It’s just a tall rock that looks over the ocean. Do that with me today and ziplining can be saved for another time.”
It was a compromise. He was asking me to better myself. He faced fear every day and owned it. He served ten years in prison and survived. I could climb a silly rock. “Okay, I’ll do it.”
“Thank you. I’m proud of you for even trying.” He pushed himself off the ground and stood, intimidating as always. He wore all black today. The color against his olive skin tone with the darkness of his tattoos made me want to lick him all over. “I have to go deal with some business first, so eat, get dressed, and we will shop first, hike later.”
I sat on the edge of the bed and reached over the cart for the A-1 sauce, unscrewed the white cap, and poured a hefty amount over my breakfast. My mouth watered. “Are you going to go see Brian?”
I shouldn’t have asked that question because his confidence diminished a little. His shoulder sagged slightly, and his jaw tightened, annoyed that I would ask about Brian in the first place. “I was only wondering what the plan was for him?”
“You don’t want to know, Quinn. You don’t want to know that side of me. I prefer to keep it away from you.”
“Nothing can surprise me, Jaxon. Don’t you think I know what you’re capable of by now? You objected at my wedding, you shot Brian, and then you kidnapped us, then adopted some old lady, who I haven’t seen in a day—”
“Cause we have been in here,” he said with a flirtatious suggestion and dancing brows.
I pseudo stabbed him with my fork that had a piece of biscuit on it. “You know what I mean.” I shoved the food into my mouth and groaned.
My love for A-1 was unhealthy. I probably needed to cut back.
Never.
He laid his hand on the nook, where my shoulder and neck met. His skin was hot, almost branding me like a hot iron poker as he touched me. “I know. I’m happy you know that I’m not a good man, but it doesn’t mean I want you to see that side of me. You’d look at me in a different way, in a whole new light, and that is something I’m not ready for. I just got you back, Quinn. Losing you again isn’t an option.”
“You aren’t going to lose me. You are in a criminal heist group, and you admitted to killing innocent people, yet here I sit, eating your food, probably bought with blood money, but you know what, Jaxon?”
The waves took the moment to batter the windows, and both of us looked outside to see the sea rocking again. Mother nature was pissed off today. “What, baby?” his tone was so soft when he called me that. I couldn’t help that my heart tripped over itself every time the pet name left him.
“The food tastes just as good as food bought with clean money.” I shoved another scoop of loaded hashbrowns into my mouth, debating for a split second where my moral compass had vanish to, but it must have fallen in the damn ocean and sank to the bottom of Mariana’s Trench.
“There is no way you are real.”
“As real as a heart attack that this food is about to give me.” Gravy dripped down my lips as I horsed around with him, but he didn’t find it funny. His expression changed from soft and sweet to concern. He stared at the food, then me, back to the food, and then me again. A light bulb went off above his head when he got an idea. I saw it.