CHAPTER 12
Asher
I can’t stop the rage that has fully consumed my every emotion. I can’t even focus without seeing a red haze clouding my vision. When I walked through those doors and saw that motherfucker’s hands on Chelcie, I believed myself capable of murder. Cold, hard murder, and I didn’t give a fuck that I had witnesses surrounding me. My soul was demanding that I claim what is mine—that I tear that piece of shit to pieces for even breathing her air.
He’s lucky the only thing I did was snap his wrist to get him to remove his hold on her body. That still didn’t satisfy the primal animal that is snarling to be set free. It’s the same feeling I get when I think about what happened to Coop. That need to wrong a right, to claim what’s mine.
Images of Chelcie, her eyes closed and his fingers touching her feet, bombard my mind again, and I swerve my Jeep over a few lanes. Pulling off onto the shoulder of the highway, I rip off my seatbelt and jump out of the Jeep before slamming the door with enough force to rock the whole vehicle.
I’m fighting every instinct in my system to turn the car around and kill. I’m at war with myself and I am too out of control to correct it. I need to claim, to mark, and to prove that she is mine.
I pace back and forth in short successions before stopping in my tracks and whipping my head around to look back at Chelcie. I was expecting her anger, but when I look back and see her curled forward with her shoulders shaking violently, I immediately rush back to the Jeep. This time, I bypass my door and jerk hers open. She shoots up and hiccups a sob before crumbling again. This time, it isn’t herself she is escaping to. No, she lunges forward, almost falling out of the Jeep, and wraps her arms forcefully around my neck.
Pulling my hips back slightly, I move her body so that her legs are hanging out the side of the Jeep. I push them lightly apart and step in between her thighs. She immediately wraps her long legs around my hips and all but crawls inside my body. I stand there, running my hands down her back, and let her take every ounce of strength I have in my body. I can feel her trembling against me, her tears soaking my shirt, and her heaving breath against my neck. I just keep running my hands down her back and press my lips to her head. The feel of her body and the smell that never fails to make me roll my eyes in yearning combined with the adrenaline that is still thundering through my body does nothing to help ease the need I feel to claim.
To make her mine.
Without speaking a word, not trusting myself to even open up my mouth, I reach my hands up and unwind her body from mine. She looks up at me with confusion before shock takes over her features and she jerks her body back in the seat.
“Don’t even think about it,” I seethe.
Her eyes flash, but she visibly tries to relax her protective posture.
I take a few steadying breaths before I walk back to the driver’s side and pull back into traffic.
It’s time that Chelcie and I have a long, overdue chat. I want to know what the hell she’s hiding, and more importantly, I need to make sure she understands just where the hell things stand between us.
* * *
The drive back to the apartments doesn’t take long in reality, but with the thick anticipation of what is to come coating the air around us, it feels like hours. Chelcie hasn’t spoken, not one word.
Her silence is alarming. I’m used to her sweet murmurs—the snarky bursts of fiery attitude she normally keeps closed off from others—and most importantly, that deep-rooted desire that is usually blazing in those brown-gold pools.
I hate this closed-off, scared version of her, and I’m almost afraid to believe that it could be me she’s afraid of.
We pull up, park, and silently make our way past a smiling Joe and into the elevator. She goes to press the button for her floor, but I grab her lightly, pulling her flush with my body.
“No,” I growl, the primal sound shocking even my own ears.
“Please,” she pleads, her eyes round with what I can only guess is panic.
“Sunshine, would I ever hurt you? Get that look off your beautiful face,” I murmur. Lightly pressing my lips to hers, I take a deep, reassuring breath when I feel her body relax slightly in my arms.
“You scare the ever-loving shit out of me, Ash. We need to talk, and right now, I’m just trying to take a moment to get over the fact that when you hear what I have to say . . . you could hate me forever.”
“A little dramatic, don’t you think?”
She doesn’t say anything, just looks up at me with pain very evident in her eyes.
Even with the anger from Fat Jacks still surfing through my body, I can feel the trace of apprehension starting to take hold of my skin.
“You don’t get it, Ash. There are things I haven’t told you, things that could change the way you think you feel for me. Things that could change everything, and I have no clue how to get past this. Don’t you see? Don’t you see how much you mean to me? I’m not sure I could handle you not wanting to be a part of my life anymore—even if it is just as friends.”
My brow creases with her words. “You’re going to realize real soon that when I say you’re mine, I mean it. We’ve been dancing around this for way too long.” The earlier feelings of uncontrollable anger over her being out with another man threaten to take hold of me again. It’s taking every thread of control to keep myself calm. To stop myself from throwing her on the floor of the damn elevator and showing her just how mine she really is. “And before the day is over, there will be no fucking doubt in that pretty little head just how much I mean that.”
Her eyes darken, but not out of the desire I wish I saw. No, this time they get darker with her sadness, and I wish there was something, anything, I could do to take that from her.
Chelcie
While sitting in the car on the way back to the apartments, I busy myself with trying to figure out what just happened. I’m almost positive that Asher just . . . claimed me? My ankle is killing me from where crazy Phil had his hands crushing deep into the muscles and tendons. I’m pretty sure I’m going to have a huge welt-like bruise when I get a good look at it.
The ride up is more heavy silence. The tension between us is so abundant that I keep shaking uncontrollably. I don’t fear Asher. Even when he was at his drunkest, his meanest, and his worst, I never feared him. It’s almost been as if his pain was my own, which even to my own mind makes no sense. Sure, we’ve grown as close as two friends who have red-hot chemistry can get, but ever since the day that I met him, I knew there was potential for something so powerful that I’m not sure I would come out the same person in the end.
He makes me feel alive. And completely untethered to my own sense of reality.
I’m not exactly naïve when it comes to men and relationships. I’ve had a few steady boyfriends, but nothing that I was really willing to invest myself one hundred percent in. I haven’t been avoiding being in a committed relationship, but I’ve also been unwilling to give myself to someone who clearly wasn’t eager to look at me as anything other than a warm body.
Which is one of the main reasons I’ve avoided acting on the attraction between Asher and me.
That and the obvious elephant in the room.
And in the back of my mind, I have to be honest with myself. Sure, we have a friendship—as precarious as it seems at the moment—and the combustible attraction . . . But when he finds out about the baby, how do I know that, if he still wants something from me, it isn’t going to be just because I’m carrying a part of his brother.
With a deep sigh, I lean back against the elevator car and mentally prepare myself for what is to come.