Chapter 29

Jax

I walked Riley through to the kitchen and sat her down on one of the barstools, silent since she’d asked me whether I’d sold or not. All in good time. All in good fucking time. I loved this woman, but she still had some explaining to do.

“Jax?”

“Do you want something to drink? Water? Soda?”

“Water would be good,” she replied.

I fetched a bottle from the fridge, unscrewed the cap and placed it in front of her. “There,” I said and leaned my palms on my kitchen counter, watching as she drank and a droplet snaked down her throat.

She finished and put down the bottle, played with the top, her tan brow wrinkling up, hazel-flecked eyes measuring me. “Did you sell—?”

“Riley,” I grunted, “you just put yourself in danger. I’m not going to talk to you about the fucking club until you tell me what the hell you were doing at the studio.”

“Dancing,” she replied and didn’t sound the least bit ashamed about it. “I forgot how that’s a crime.”

“Breaking and entering is.”

She clicked her teeth together and didn’t comment.

“But shit, I don’t even care about the breaking and entering. Do you know what I do care about?”

Riley shrugged, worried the bottle’s cap with her fingernails.

“That you endangered the life of our child.”

She choked and jerked upright so fast the bottle shot from her fingers, dropped, and rolled across the countertop. I caught it and set it up right again before it could drop off the edge. “Our child,” I repeated. “When were you planning on telling me?”

“How—what? How?” Riley stammered then set her jaw. “Veronica,” she muttered.

“Yes, Veronica told me, not that it damn well matters,” I replied.

“I was going to tell you this week. I just needed time to think about how I was going to do it. I—guess I was afraid, that’s all.”

“You didn’t know how to do it? Here’s a concept. Call me, ask to meet me, and then use your fucking words.”

“Jax! It doesn’t help being angry with me about it. I was going to tell you,” she snapped. “It’s not like I was withholding the information because I wanted to keep you in the dark. I needed time to figure out my next move.”

“Your next move.” A fresh wave of anger shuttled through me. Perhaps I’d been too soft with her, too caring from the start, because she didn’t seem to understand that this was no longer her next move, but ours. “Your next move.”

“You sound weird,” she said. “Are you OK?”

“No, I’m not fucking OK,” I said, my voice hitting a lower octave. “No, I’m not fucking OK.”

“Calm down,” Riley said, primly. “You’re getting angry.”

“Getting angry?” I strode around the kitchen counter and came to her side, stood in front of her, adrenaline pounding through me. “Getting angry? I’m not getting angry, I’m already fucking furious.”

“I was going to tell—”

“Enough,” I said. “E-fucking-nough, Riley Robinson. Enough of your plans and your ideas and all the bullshit in between. I’ve done nothing but provide you with options to fulfill your dreams, and you’ve outright rejected them. You’re stubborn and full of shit, and you can’t seem to see the truth when it’s staring you right in the goddamn face.”

Her bottom lip trembled. “You’re scaring me.”

“Good!” I growled. “Good. You should be afraid.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m in love with you,” I snapped. “I’m so damn in love with you I’m willing to excuse all the bullshit you’ve put us through over the past month. I’m willing to allow for the fact you kept the pregnancy from me.”

“I didn’t keep it from you!”

“Silence.” I grated it out. “Riley, I sold all my strip clubs. I sold them all and bought the studio so you could start your dreams.”

“I—Jax—I—appreciate it, but I—”

“What?” I asked, and grabbed her upper arms and pressed them to her sides. “What? What’s the excuse this time?”

“I—just—I—I—I –”

“Spit it out.”

“I’m scared of losing you,” she wailed, breaking at last. All the tight control she’d held over herself shattered, and the flood gates opened. “I don’t want to fall in love again. I don’t want to get hurt again. I don’t want another man to drag me backward through the coals, because the last time it happened I wound up losing everything I’ve ever wanted and Jax, I—I won’t let it happen to me again. I won’t let it happen to my child.” She pressed her hand to her stomach.

“Our child,” I corrected her. “Our baby. And you don’t have a choice in the falling in love thing because it’s already happened. I swear to god, Riley, if you let me look after you like you’ve deserved all along, you’ll have the life you’ve dreamed of. You’ll have everything you’ve ever wanted. A business to build, a baby to care for, and a man who loves you more than his own fucking soul.”

She whimpered and bit her bottom lip, the vulnerability I treasured shining through again, as it had on the first night I’d brought her back to this apartment and made her lasagna.

Riley looked down at her lap and refused to meet my gaze. Tears dropped onto her yoga pants and dotted them. The water bled through the fabric to the skin underneath. “I can’t believe you sold the clubs. I thought—you didn’t have to do that. You would have been part of the baby’s life regardless. You’re the father.”

“Part of the baby’s life, but not part of yours,” I said. “I won’t settle for that. I love you, Riley, and you’re going to be mine, not because I want to own you, but because we belong together. This baby is proof of that. What were the chances that this could’ve happened.”

She sniffed and cleared her throat, met my gaze, her chocolate eyes sharp now. “Well, there was that one time in the club—”

I silenced her with a kiss, pressed my lips to hers and parted them with a nudge of the tip of my tongue. She opened to me like a flower turning to the sun and looped her arms around my neck, pulled herself into my chest.

The kiss broke her. It had to, since she’d been so stubborn all along. So convinced that love wasn’t possible for us. Christ, I had been too, but I wasn’t too stubborn to let it take me when the facts were present.

I brushed the backs of my fingers down her cheek and then her throat, across her shoulder. I grabbed her coat and dragged it down, off her body. She helped me, shrugging to lose it, and kissed me harder, groaning and grinding into me, giving her all as only she could.

My Riley. My sanity. First she’d taken it from me, and now she’d become it. The only thing that mattered. Her and our unborn child.

I drew back from the kiss, my dick already aching to be inside her again. “Are you able to… you know.”

“Fuck?” she finished, and I chuckled.

“That one.”

“Of course,” she replied.

“Good,” I said and lifted her off the chair. I gripped her ass with both hands now, and she wrapped her legs around my hips, grinding her hot little box against my throbbing erection. She was wet through those yoga pants, and the soft spot at her neck, where I nibbled and sucked, tasted of her—lavender, vanilla, and salt.

I walked her to the kitchen wall and pressed her up against it, ripped the calendar, which tumbled to the floor, and braced my arm where it’d been, holding her up by her ass.

Riley kissed me and dropped one leg to the tiles. The other she lifted and slung over my shoulder.

Oh fuck. “You looking to get pregnant with twins?” I asked. “Because I’ll shoot my load inside you again if you tempt me like this.”

“You know that’s not possible right?” she breathed, but her gaze was thick with desire, swimming with her need for me.

I managed a dry laugh. “You’re going to have to sleep naked, tonight,” I said.

“Why?”

I answered her question by ripping the yoga pants, stretching the material till it pulled free from her supple body. I tossed the ruined garment aside and admired her swollen, pink pussy, the curves of her ass cheeks peeking at me below it.

“What about you?” She worked on my belt. She fumbled it free, then tugged down my zipper, popped my top button. My cock fell out, heavy and veined, dripping precum already. Fuck, not even dripping—it was a veritable stream of my juices, all for her.

“I wanna suck it,” she whispered.

“No time,” I replied and popped the head of my dick into her warmth, slid upward and into her sheath.

Riley gasped and slammed her head back against the kitchen wall. “Oh my god, oh my god, it’s so sensitive.” She clenched around me. “I can feel everything.”

I adjusted her leg on my shoulder, ran my fingers down the inside of her thigh, grabbed her by the throat and pinned her there, my grip light. “You’re going to come for me,” I said. “You’re going to come on my cock when I fill you, Riley.”

“Anything for you,” she moaned. “Anything for you, Jax.”

I fucked her slow, only because fast would see me blowing before she was close to orgasm, and I couldn’t allow that. My woman would scream my name before I filled her. Her satisfaction was my trigger.

Riley’s shirt blocked my view of her tits, but it didn’t matter. Just the sight of her twisting for me, her neck muscles cording under the pressure of our sex, her eyes rolling back with every pained thrust, was enough to drive me through the roof and right into the fucking stars. The galaxy.

I leaned in and dragged my hand from her throat down between us, playing with her clit instead, resting my forehead against hers. “Hey,” I said, and she opened her eyes. “I love you, Riley.”

She shattered instantly, came screaming my name, pulsing and clawing at me. “Jax,” she moaned. “Oh Jax, oh fuck. Oh god. I love you. I love you too.”

“That’s it, that’s my girl,” I whispered.

Riley shuddered around me, her leg slipping, her mouth open, caught in absolute ecstasy.

My balls tightened and drew upward. Tingling spread through my abdomen and my hips jerked in a rhythm all their own. I couldn’t control it a second longer. I howled myself over the edge, slammed my fist into the wall and filled Riley to the brim.

It was too good. It lasted too long. Pulse after pulse.

This would be our everyday. Every night for the rest of our lives I’d fill her like this, appreciate her flavor, her scent, her everything.

“I love you,” she whispered again, and her leg slid from my shoulder. I caught it and lowered it to the ground, slipped out of her, dripping everywhere. “Jax, I do love you. And I want to be with you. I want to live with you and—”

I silenced her with a kiss, slower than the last one, but just as hot. I finished by sucking her lip, then kissed her nose on the tip, rested my sweat-streaked forehead against hers, and eclipsed my world with her gaze.

“Took you long enough,” I said.

“What happens now?” Riley asked, no restrained fear in her tone for the first time since I’d met her.

“Now?” I kissed her eyes one at a time. “Now, we order takeout, eat, sleep, and start the rest of our lives. Sound good to you?”