One Man Read online

  “No, I know, or I’m trying. I’m sorry. I deserve that statement, but right now, I want to warn you. He could show up here.”

  His brow furrows. “Do you think he will?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t seen him in years, Jax, but he doesn’t take rejection well. If he does show up, how are you going to handle that?”

  “How are you going to handle it?”

  “Most likely horribly,” I admit. “That’s how I always handle York which is why I don’t want to deal with him tonight or ever.”

  “Well, then,” he says, giving me a wink, his mood lighter now. “I guess I’d better answer the door in my underwear and make sure he knows you’re occupied.”

  I laugh at the unexpected comment, drawn to the way this man is proving to be one part intense, and one part something else. Something gentler, easygoing. Calming.

  “You could just answer the door naked,” I tease, and we share a moment of humor that fades back into a darker moment.

  “Come on,” Jax says, opening the door to exit first. Nervous and yet somehow eager for what comes next, I scoot across the seat and Jax offers me his hand. He’s touched me before obviously, but there is a shift between us that I feel happening, a new level of intimacy that tells me this time is different. He is different, though I don’t even know what different means.

  I settle my hand in his, heat radiating between our palms and when my eyes lift to his, the jolt between us steals my breath, butterflies erupting in my belly. Oh yes. Oh yes, there is something happening between me and this man.

  His eyes pull me in, burn me alive, even as he eases me across the leather seat, and I twist around to slide to the ground. Somehow in the process, his arm slides under my jacket and around my waist. He molds me close, taking me with him to the sidewalk, the charge pulsing off of our bodies combustible.

  “I almost skipped tonight, but I had a feeling you’d be here,” he informs me.

  “You stayed for me?”

  “Yes, Emma. I stayed for you.” He kisses me and then gives me a small smile, and a small smile from this man is panty-melting perfection before he shuts the back door. He doesn’t speak to the driver, which I assume is because that lean forward he did earlier was him offering instructions that are now being followed.

  Jax’s hand finds mine, the fingers of one of his hands lacing with my fingers. A warm awareness radiates between us that is perhaps all about sex, but it doesn’t matter. It feels right. He feels right and all that matters right now is the here and now with this man. Besides, sex is an honest human need and as long as I keep my mind in that place, it stays honest. I need honest in my life right now.

  And so, hand in hand, we walk inside my building, shiny white tiles beneath our feet. The lobby is small, with a sitting area to the right and a desk to left, where Ned, the thirty-something stoic doorman is standing on this side. I wave, ignoring the knowing twist to his lips that says I have a man on my arm, soon to be in my bed. He is about to be in my bed. Yes. He is. I bet my bed has been empty longer than Ned’s.

  Thankfully, as impatience is burning me alive, the elevator is a short walk and it arrives with a quick punch of the button. Jax and I step inside the car and I push in my floor, even as my cellphone buzzes with a text. The doors start to close and I hate this, but I have to check the message. I reach for my phone, but Jax catches my waist, his hands on my body an assault on my senses, driven home when he pulls me to him. “Whoever that is can wait,” he says, his voice low, rough. “You’re mine the rest of the night.”

  Mine.

  That word is a trigger and I forget the text message. My hands go to his hands on my waist as if that will cool the effect, but it only serves to spread the heat up along my arms. “And what does that word mean to you?”

  “What word? Mine?”

  “Yes,” I say. “Mine.”

  “I’m not a man who shares, Emma. You’re with me tonight or you’re with him.”

  Understanding washes over me, right along with guilt for judging him by a past long gone.

  “Jax,” I begin, planning to explain, but the elevator halts and the doors start opening. “The text isn’t from York,” I add quickly.

  He stares down at me under hooded lids. “You haven’t even looked at it.” There’s disapproval in his statement. He thinks I’m pining for York and while I doubt he’s jealous, every person on planet earth wants to feel like they matter when they’re with another person.

  “Jax—”

  “Emma!”

  At the sound of my sixty-something-year-old neighbor, I cringe at the interruption, but cave to the inevitable. I can’t make this right with Jax until we’re alone. The topic of York lingers and I’m desperate to make this right between us. I don’t want Jax to leave.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Emma…

  I rotate to face my neighbor. She’s standing just outside the elevator, while Jax and I remain inside. “Hi, Mrs. Nichols,” I say, noting her stylish black dress that reminds me that her ten years as a widow haven’t left her desolate. It’s an encouraging moment that reminds me that losing my father won’t leave my mother desolate either. “You’re out late tonight,” I comment, glancing at Jax, who’s all stone faced and hard all over.

  Ignoring that little detail, I catch his hand to guide him out of the elevator with me, relieved when he not only stays close but that his hand settles on my lower back.

  “It’s only nine, honey,” Mrs. Nichols informs me, giving Jax a once-over. “And who is this? Hi there, Mr. Good Looking in a Tuxedo.”

  “Hi there, Mrs. Nichols,” he says, taking a hint.

  “This is Jax,” I say, also taking a hint. “Jax,” I say, glancing up at him. “Mrs. Nichols has lived here for twenty years.”

  “Five of them next door to Emma,” she explains and gives him a wink. “And it only took her five years to bring a man to her door. You’re worth the wait.” With that, my cheeks heat, and she heads for the elevator that’s about to shut. Jax catches the doors for her.

  I take the opportunity to grab my keys from my purse, the need to check that message grinding on my nerve endings. “Have a fun night, Emma,” Mrs. Nichols calls out a second before she’s shut inside the elevator.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Nichols, for telling my story for me,” I murmur, as Jax turns to face me, and in a poorly timed moment, my phone vibrates with another text. “That’s not York.” I press my hand to his chest. “I blocked him when we were downstairs.”

  “You blocked him tonight after years—”

  “Of not talking to him,” I supply. “Five years, Jax, as Mrs. Nichols just made clear. And as for the text message I really want to look at—my phone wasn’t charged the night my father died, Jax. I didn’t know for hours and since then, well, I feel paranoid. My brother is all I—” I stop myself from the continuous flow of confessions. “It’s not about York. I swear to you. You are—”

  His expression softens, his voice lowers. “Look at the message.”

  I don’t reach for my phone. “You’re sure?”

  “Yes. Absolutely. I get it, Emma. More than you know. Where are we going?”

  “To the right and down the hall,” I say and we start walking. We’re only a few steps closer to my apartment, and I’m already grabbing my phone, glancing down at the message. “Oh God,” I say, panicked now, and stopping dead in my tracks, “my brother wants to come over for pizza.” I shove my keys at Jax and quickly type: Carly is here. She’s eager to see you.

  “Is this a problem?” Jax asks.

  “No,” I say, motioning him onward again. “No, I know how to handle him. I just told him Carly, my other neighbor, who talks with an English accent despite not being English, and who wants his body, is at my place.”

  Jax laughs. “Sibling love. It’s something.”

  “Some kind of special,” I agree as we stop at my door. “That’s me.”

  We share a look that pretty much lights a fire in the hallway. Jax t
ears his gaze away, and unlocks my door, shoving it open. “Ladies first,” he says, motioning me forward, nerves now officially erupting in my belly.

  “Okay,” I say, because well, I do. Nerves are never the maker of brilliant words.

  I enter my living room and my phone buzzes in my hand. I glance down to read a reply from my brother: I’ll skip the pizza with Carly and stick with the assholes here. I laugh and let out a relieved breath, turning to face Jax, waiting as he locks my door and faces me, before I announce, “Carly did the job. He won’t come near my place for at least twenty-four hours. Good ol’ sibling love. I know all his buttons.” The words are out before I can stop them and the look on his face says I’ve hit a nerve, a nerve that relates to his dead brother. I step to him, my hands settling on his chest. “Oh god. Jax, I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” he says. “Sibling memories are the best memories. I don’t hide from them. My brother’s gone. Memories are all I have left. Memories matter. Family matters. They’re the people you trust.”

  He says this, but he’s now in my apartment and he’s not touching me, while I’m touching him. And there’s something cutting in his words, something that speaks of a man who trusts no one, no one but his family. I’m right. I’ve hit a nerve and it’s that I remember the business between our families. “I know that my father was trying to buy your property, but I didn’t know until tonight. Chance told me after seeing us looking at each other.”

  “The North family castle. Yes. Your father was trying to buy it.”

  This displeases him. That message is in the hard lines of his handsome face. “I didn’t know, Jax.”

  “But you’ll be happy to take it off my hands?” he asks, his tone sardonic.

  “I didn’t know,” I repeat.

  “Don’t you handle new property development?”

  “Yes, but I was never even told about this at all. Chance said it was some pet project for our father and he suggested we try to finish it in his honor. He told me you shut him out.”

  “In honor of your father,” he repeats, homing in on those words with a sharpness that cuts.

  And I am cut. I drop my hands and take a step backward. “You’re angry.”

  “Your father tried to take my family history. Yes, I’m fucking angry. I’m not selling. You need to know that.”

  “I don’t care if you sell or not. I was just trying to be honest and if you were this pissed at me and my family, why did you invite me to the castle?” I don’t give him time to answer. “You didn’t. You were playing some game.” I laugh bitterly. “Seriously? I pick all the wrong men. I really do. I didn’t know. I wasn’t a part of any of this. I don’t want to be a part of this, so if you being here is about that, go away, Jax.” I try to turn away, but he catches my arm and drags me around and to him.

  “I’m here for you, not them,” he says, the heat of his touch scorching me anew.

  “And yet you’re accusing me of something. I don’t even know what but you are. What is this, Jax? Besides a mind and emotional fuck that I don’t need right now?”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Jax…

  What is this?

  Everything and nothing that I expected. She is everything and nothing that I expected. Her connection to York, her involvement with him, and then her step away from him, telling me a story. Her words about her father a bigger story. She interests me in ways she was never supposed to interest me. I don’t want to want her and yet, I do.

  I tangle my fingers into her hair and drag her mouth to mine. “You want to know what this is about? So the fuck do I.” My mouth slants over hers, tongue licking past her lips, the taste of her bittersweet considering who she is and why I sought her out, why I wanted her in the first place.

  She moans and shoves against my chest, tearing her mouth from mine. “I can’t be a chess piece in a game, Jax. I can’t. My father’s dead. If you hate him, hate him, not me.”

  I do hate her father. I hate her whole damn family. I expected to hate her.

  “I don’t hate you, Emma. Don’t give me a reason to start.”

  “You’re pissing me off, Jax. Maybe I hate you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Show me.”

  “Are you serious? Show you?”

  “Angry sex is a great damn way to deal with death, Emma. I told you. Use me.”

  “And you’ll use me?”

  “Damn straight, baby.” And that’s the most honest I can be with her right now and for reasons I can’t explain, considering her family’s connection to mine, I want to be honest with her. My mouth covers hers again, tongue licking into her mouth once more, drinking her in, and then I taste her pain, so fucking much pain. I feel that pain, I feel it like a demon snapping and biting inside me, all the emotions I’ve suppressed since waking up to my brother’s death raging inside me.

  I tear my mouth from hers and search her face, looking for the woman I thought I would find, looking for the woman I thought she would be, hating how much I don’t want her to be the woman I thought her to be.

  “You’re still angry,” she whispers.

  I turn her to face the opposite direction, pulling away her coat and tossing it on the table just inside the door, uncaring when it falls to the floor. It’s a distraction. Everything between me and this woman is a distraction I don’t welcome. My hands go to her arms and I lean close, inhaling her sweet scent.

  “I am angry,” I agree, brushing the dark strands of her hair away from her delicate neck and kissing the pale skin, while my fingers catch on her zipper, dragging it down her back. “What are you going to do about it?” My hand slides under her dress to her bare skin, my intention to slide the dress down her body. She shivers, twisting in my arms as if hiding this reaction, this vulnerability from me, and when she faces me once again, I catch her waist before she can run.

  “I’m not your submissive. You want to fuck me, be it in bed or out, you have to look me in the face to do it.”

  I narrow my eyes on her, that word “submissive” grinding through me. A word that comes from her time with York if the stories I’ve heard are to be believed. York frequents an underground world, one my dead brother also frequented. A world I suspect ate Emma alive. “I don’t want to own you, baby. That doesn’t mean I don’t occasionally like the view from behind.”

  “I don’t know what to think about you, Jax North.”

  “Nor I you, Emma Knight.”

  “I’m feeling pretty angry myself right now,” she says, her eyes blazing. “Really angry, actually.” She yanks at the tuxedo tie at my neck, pulling it free. “But I haven’t had sex in a really long time, so you want to be used? Fine. I’ll use you. I’ll use you, not the other way around.”

  I shrug out of my jacket and toss it on the damn floor, not even trying for the table this time. I just want it gone. Her hands run up and down my body, my cock thickening in response. “Define a really long time,” I order, catching her hands before she pushes me so damn hard that I fuck her hard and fast and start this all over again.

  “No,” she says. “I don’t believe I will.” She pushes out of my grip and slides out of her dress and lets it fall to her feet, leaving me with a view of her in a lacy bra and panties, paired with thigh highs, and high heels. Holy hell, she’s gorgeous.

  I catch her wrists and drag her to me, kissing her hard and fast, nipping her lip hard enough that she should react, but she doesn’t. Because he made her fear what came after she showed pain. I know it. I feel it in her and I should kill that bastard. “I don’t know what he did to you,” I say, “but I get him wanting you at his mercy.” I want her at my mercy but at the will of my tongue and cock, not chains and whips.

  She sucks in a breath and looks away. I capture her face and walk her backward until she’s pressed to a large velour-covered chair, my legs catching her legs. She grabs my shirt. “You know nothing about me.”

  “And yet, I find I want to know everything.�
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  “And yet, we both know you won’t tell me everything.”

  She’s wrong. I might. Or I might not. I don’t trust her right now, but I want to trust her and on some level, that grief-driven level, I understand her.

  “With me, everything is about pleasure. Everything is about what you want and what you need.”

  Her hands go to my wrists. “Not about yours at all, right?”

  I slide my palms to her shoulders, my gaze lowering to sweep her full breasts, one pink nipple peeking from the edge of one cup. “I’m already there, baby,” I say, my gaze lifting to hers.

  Emotions flicker over her face and she cuts her stare. I catch her chin and force her gaze back to mine. “I’m not him.”

  She covers my hand with his. “Can you just kiss me already, preferably before and after you get naked?”

  “I don’t need another invitation,” I say, my fingers tangling into her hair, my mouth closing down on her mouth and the moment my tongue thrusts against her tongue, she moans, leaning into the kiss. The taste of her a heady mix of pain, hunger, and female, and just that easily she’s pulling me under. I’m right there with her, remembering that month after the funeral. Remembering the guilt, the pain, the shock, that I feel in her now. Every emotion I’ve felt since finding out my brother was dead at only thirty-six years old rages to life.

  I deepen the kiss, and with it is a punishing demand that those memories, mine and hers, die right here and now, and yet they flare to life. Nothing is as simple as it should be. She is a Knight and as far as I’m concerned, the Knights killed my brother. Emma is a Knight, but I want her to be different than the rest of them. Because as long as the taste of her is on my tongue, revenge will be far more bitter than sweet, but I won’t let it go.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Jax…

  I tear my mouth away from hers, and for a moment, Emma and I just stare at each other—and fuck me, I feel this woman, I feel the vulnerability in her, a deep, cutting vulnerability that is familiar in ways I don’t want it to be familiar. It’s fear. It’s the kind of fear that death creates in you. It’s raw. It’s real. I feel those things in ways I have not felt anything but anger in months. Because I understand it and her. I understand how this kind of fear changes how you look at love and life. It makes you vow to never willingly love again, only life isn’t that simple. Some part of me is back to that earlier need, the one that has me burning to strip her naked and bury myself inside her, here, now, but that would be about her body, about pushing her away, and nothing more. For the first time in a very long time, that’s not what I want. I want to stay here in this night with her, to live it. Live it with her.