CHAPTER 17
MAYA
Axle is kissing me. With no one around. And he’s kissing me like he’s going to do much more than kiss me.
Which takes a second to sink in.
My hands slide up his bare chest to his shoulders, and one of his hands slides down to my spandex-clad ass, squeezing it roughly as he pulls me flush against him. I keep moaning like he’s a piece of chocolate cake sliding into my mouth, acting like a stupid virgin kissing a guy for her first time.
But I can’t help it. Kissing Axle is like tasting an adrenaline rush, or feeling a drop from the top of a building. It’s as exhilarating as it is terrifying, because he’s the kind of guy who could consume a girl with very little effort.
When he starts tugging up my shirt…that’s when it finally sinks in what’s going on, and I push away. My skates make that easier, since I sort of fly backwards, giving us an immediate three feet between our bodies when he releases me.
He arches an eyebrow as though he can’t believe I’m the one stopping things for once.
“Keep her happy means to fuck me, doesn’t it?” I ask with a scowl. “Drex just told you, in no uncertain terms, to fuck me into staying put with a smile on my face.”
His lips twitch.
“You think I’d fuck you just because Drex wants me to?”
“I think those guys down there are the only ones you’d do anything for. So yes; I do think you’d fuck me out of obligation.”
He cocks his head, his lips thinning.
“So I’m a jackass for being suspicious of your motives when you crash in from out of nowhere. But it’s okay for you to be suspicious of my motives when I finally decide to quit thinking.”
I bristle a little. When you put it that way…
No. No. I’m not an idiot.
“You’ve made it a point not to touch me in private. Then Drex tells you to keep me happy, and you drag me up here like a caveman to kiss me stupid.”
His eyebrows go up, and I swear my panties catch fire when a small, sinfully perfect smile quirks on one side of his lips.
“I wanted to do more than kiss you stupid, but feel free to find reasons to halt it. Or feel free to admit you’ve just been playing a game you never thought you’d win, and now you don’t know what to do with me. Whatever you need.”
He walks by me, not looking back, and disappears into the bathroom. Cursing, I drop to the bed, removing my skates, as I listen to the shower come on.
“Most complicated man in the history of all complicated men,” I grumble.
There’s one way to check his temperature on this situation and find out if he’s legit into me all of the sudden.
I quickly strip out of my clothes, and I walk into the bathroom, seeing his naked silhouette through the frosted glass shower doors. I lick my lips, wondering why I thought it was a good idea to think I’d be running this thing.
Axle will consume me within minutes if I go through with this. He’ll hold all the power. Because it’s clear I’m way more into him than he is me.
But for some reason, it doesn’t really matter.
I move toward the shower doors, and I see it when he realizes I’m in here. Though I can’t see his face or eyes, I can feel his gaze on me as I open the door. I step in and look up into that intense, heated stare, and face him fully as I shut the door behind me.
Holy sexy male. Naked is a good look on him. I’ve seen him in boxers. I’ve seen him mostly naked. But truly naked? It’s beautiful.
My eyes fall down, and I see a curious scar on his massive beast of an erection. He’s definitely hard enough to prove he wants me.
I want to touch the scar that is near the base of his dick, but I’m scared now that I’m alone with him. What if I touch something he doesn’t want touched?
“Why don’t you like being touched?” I ask him, peering up at him carefully.
The water sprays against his back. His dark hair looks even darker all wet, and he runs a hand through it, making it stick up in a way that I find much too sexy.
“I told you I only don’t like being touched when I don’t want to be touched,” he tells me quietly.
“Do you want to be touched right now? Because I don’t think I could survive a hit from you, if we’re being honest.”
His hands pause and he scans my face. “I wouldn’t hit you. I’d just shove you off me if I didn’t want you touching me. But that hasn’t been a fucking problem since you showed up.”
He grabs my wrist, and I hiss out a breath as he jerks me against him. My other hand slams against his wet, hard chest, and he studies me like he’s waiting for a reaction.
“When I first joined as a prospect, I was still a punk teenager—naïve and horny as fuck. A woman was all over me all night at my first party. It was the first time a female had ever acted like the scars didn’t bother her. Acted like I didn’t scare the shit out of her.”
My hand slides higher on his chest, and he releases my other wrist, using his newly freed hand to gingerly grab my hair and hold my head so that I’m forced to stare up into his pale eyes.
“She fucked me. Took my virginity like a pro. Then stole close to twenty grand in cash from the club after I stupidly asked her to spend the night. Herrin had her by the hair the next morning, and all the guys in his circle were taking turns with her. See? They knew what was coming, so she never made it out the door.”
My stomach roils. He sure as hell knows how to kill a mood.
“It was him and five of his closest men, all of them planning to punish her for weeks. So when Herrin told me it was my turn, I grabbed a gun from the counter and shot her between the eyes. Figured that was mercy. They considered it to mean I was a coldhearted bastard. Herrin was wary of me from then on.”
I swallow audibly as he stares down at me with unreadable eyes.
“I got my cuts that night, and I haven’t been stupid like that since then. So yeah, I have trust issues with girls who claim they want me. Girls who look like you and throw themselves at me.”
My hand slides up, touching the scar over his lip. He goes still against me, but I keep touching him. He said he’d just shove me off if he didn’t want it.
“I’ve watched three guys I’ve dated die because they were too naïve for this life,” I tell him suddenly, swallowing against the knot in my throat. “Three men who weren’t survivors. They were just guys in over their heads, and that was with my identity being mostly a secret. Imagine if more people knew who I was.”
My finger traces over his lip scar again as I continue.
“Your scars don’t bother me, because they mean you went through hell and came out on the other side alive. Your scars tell a story. Your scars make you sexy because it means you could handle me without getting yourself killed in the process. I love your scars, because they mean you’re strong enough to withstand the worst in life. And my life is toxic. Dangerous. Constantly a snake pit. Even if you’re only in it temporarily.”
I blow out a breath, feeling his grip on my hair soften, and his hand on my ass caresses up to my back.
“I may not have the outward marks to prove it, but I’m scarred all over too, Axle. Mine are just hidden from sight, because life was hard for me in a different way. People tend to constantly die around me. I lost my family in less than a blink, and I was betrayed by my own brother. So yeah, your loyalty is sexy. Your scars are sexy. You are what turns me on, because I feel like you can survive me.”
His lips find mine in a flurry of motion, catching me by surprise, and my fingers dart up to tangle in his hair as he pushes me against the shower wall.
I moan into his mouth, and his tongue uses that to gain access. For a man who plays hard to get, he sure as hell knows how to kiss.
The thing about Axle is that he’s a constant presence that seems to surround me the closer he is. With him kissing me, pressing me against the wall, he feels like he’s burning me from the inside out.
It’s consuming.
That hard erection grinds against my stomach, which only has me holding back whimpers. This game of cat and mouse has gone on for far too long.
His grip on my hair becomes just shy of painful, because Axle does everything a little rougher. That fact alone has me ready to climb him.
His body is like a wall of lean muscle trapping me to him, as though he’s worried I’m going to change my mind and try to run away. He continues to kiss me stupid, and I reach between us, finally grabbing the smooth, tight skin of the part of his body I’ve been wanting for so long.
One of his hands trails down, and a surprised sound slips free from my mouth to his when he grabs my thigh and jerks it up around his hip. My other foot leaves the ground, and I scramble to wrap it around his waist for stability.
Both his hands go to my hips, supporting my weight with scary ease. I’m not sure how he manages to do it, but suddenly he’s thrusting in without warning.
My lips break apart from his as he pulls back and thrusts in harder, burying himself all the way inside me this time. It feels even better than I thought it would, because the size of him drags against my inner walls, touching every nerve-ending.
He seizes my mouth again with his, and I kiss him harder, hungrier, as he continues to drive in and out of me. One of his arms goes behind my back, and his other hand hits the wall beside my head as his thrusts get even harder.
My ankles cross behind his back, forcing his drives to grow shallower, but he still finds a way to grind that pelvis of his against me in the perfect way.
It happens so fast that I don’t feel it sneaking up on me until the force of the orgasm is crackling over my body, leaving behind a wave of tingles as my entire body shudders and I cry out.
He drinks down my sounds, still rapidly thrusting in and out, until I’m struggling to keep my limp legs strapped around his waist.
He drops me suddenly, pushing me down until my feet hit the floor, as he breaks the kiss simultaneously. I’m swaying, half dazed and half drunk on the awesome orgasm, when he spins me around, forcing my hands to come up and slam against the shower wall.
The confusion of his actions is temporary when he grabs my hips, lifts me up and thrusts in from behind. I moan from the sensation, and he lowers me back down to my tiptoes, still clutching one of my hips to anchor me to him. His other hand grabs my hair and roughly angles my head to the side so that his lips can come back down on mine, stealing all my sounds again.
His pace quickens, and with the ferocity in his rhythm, I struggle to keep myself pushed back from the wall. I feel like I’ve somehow unleashed the beast, but I’m not complaining.
Axle is all sharp edges and rough finesse. He’s too hard to be a soft guy, which makes him everything I’ve always needed and wanted. There’s nothing gentle about him, so I’m surprised when he thrusts in one last time, grunting his release, and his kiss turns almost reverent.
His body shudders against mine as his painful grip on my hair and hip both soften at the same time. Languidly, he continues kissing me even as he pulls out.
I vaguely register the spray of the shower still beating down on his back and misting me. Slowly, I turn to face him, our lips never breaking apart, and wind my arms around his neck.
When my lips feel swollen and raw, he finally breaks the kiss, and I shiver a little when a soft spray of very cool water connects with my leg while he shifts to turn the shower off completely and steps out.
While he’s grabbing a couple of towels from the rack, I take the opportunity to admire his scarred back full of mysterious pain from his past, and try to digest what just happened between us, still feeling the undeniable chemistry surging through me. It’s never felt like that—connected, intense, overwhelming…consuming.
That’s the word I use most to describe the enigma of a man in front of me—consuming.
The burn scars on his legs are the most prominent reminders of what he must have gone through. All the scars couldn’t have happened at one time, which suggests a repeated pattern of abuse. Which is what leads me to believe those burns were intentional.
Someone was sick and twisted.
And at one point, Axle wasn’t strong enough to fight back.
My powers of deduction conclude it most likely happened when he was a vulnerable child. It’s the only explanation as to how someone was able to take on a man like Axle—he wasn’t a man yet.
I’d like to see that son of a bitch come after him today. And I’d like to watch as Axle slowly killed him. I’d stay in the room and make sure he stayed hydrated while he made the death last for days.
Axle turns and tosses me a towel, and I blink out of my thoughts as I frown at him.
“Get dressed. We’ll go investigate the trouble with your team,” he says flatly, as though what just happened between us didn’t happen at all.
I didn’t expect cuddling or anything, but…this is colder than I imagined, and it totally ices my after-sex buzz that was still crackling through me.
“Yes, sir,” I say under my breath, my eyes going down to my body as I start drying off.
There’s suddenly a shadow falling over me, and a finger goes under my chin, tilting my head back up. Cold, pale eyes stare into mine as though he’s trying to figure me out.
Again.
“You wanted it, so don’t act pissed now. I know you got yours,” he tells me with narrowed eyes.
Seriously?
“Sometimes, I want to slap you,” I tell him, jerking my head away from his touch as I shoulder my way past him, wrapping up in the towel. When my back is to him, I call over my shoulder, “And I’m not pissed about the hot sex. I’m pissed about the asshole who threw me a towel and pretended he felt nothing. Because it’s irritating as hell.”
With that, I walk out of the bathroom and go to angrily pull on my clothes. However, there’s a text that comes through on my phone, and I blow out a heavy breath when I read it.
Fuck this day.