I expected her to be angry, or even to hit me. Something to rile me back up again. Aggravate me so I stopped wanting to kiss her again and again, letting my lips wander down memory lane as I rememorized the curves of her body. Like I was ever able to forget them in the first place.
"Jax…" She moaned my name into my mouth, and it was the sexiest sound I had ever heard in my life.
"Fuck, Bit. I've missed you so much." Did I say that out loud? I was kissing her too hard to tell. I pressed her against the wall. I needed to feel her against me, under me. Sudden clarity popped into my head as I immediately sobered up. I couldn't afford to forget this.
She wrapped her hands around my neck, her little fingers fluttering against my back, and I was gone completely. I was ready to rip her clothes off right here in the hallway and lift her tiny body right onto my cock. She was making these little sounds, tiny, mewing noises that were killing me.
Then her whole body shuddered and she pulled back.
"No." I was sure I said that out loud.
She placed her hands on my chest. For a brief moment, I was hopeful.
But then she gave me a small shove.
Then she smiled this small, patronizing smile and fucking patted me on the chest.
She patted me.
"Let's be grown-ups here, Jax, okay?" she cooed in this false calm voice. "We've already done the whole horny teenager thing."
"Horny teenager thing?" I stepped back from her. My head whipsawed between drunken anger and sober sorrow. "Is that what it was to you?"
She sniffed, her little lips pressed into a thin line. "Clearly, that's exactly what it was."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah." She folded her arms across her chest again, her jaw tight.
"I don't believe you."
"Well, you should." Liliana shook her head. "We were kids, Jax. Puppy love and hormones. It didn't mean anything."
All the breath went out of my lungs and I sagged against the far wall. Didn't mean anything?
"Fuck you, it didn't mean anything," I muttered, staring at my shoes. For a moment everything was swimming, and I knew I would start crying like a bitch if I didn't pull myself together. I looked back up at her.
She was staring at me with pity in her eyes. Fucking pity for me, Jaxson Blue.
No one pities me.
"It meant a lot to you, anyway," I said slowly. Her eyes widened—God, how could they get even wider?—as she listened to the cruel words that tumbled out of my mouth. "I taught you everything you know. It was cute, really, how eager you were to learn." I wanted to hurt her. I hated that I want to hurt her. But I needed to hand her some of the pain I was feeling. "Been nice really, ever since, not having to do all that hand-holding while I'm fucking a chick. Virgins are exhausting."
She made a little noise, and for one second, I could have taken it back. But I didn't. I watched her turn her back on me and slam the door in my face.
Chapter Fifteen
Liliana
Stop crying. Why are you surprised? He's cruel. He's evil. You already knew that, so why does it bother you so much?
Berating myself wasn't helping me sleep, and neither was the crack of early morning light that was working its way up the far wall of my bedroom. Maybe I dozed a little in between bouts of recrimination, but I didn't sleep.
When my stomach growled, I finally gave up on forcing myself to sleep and just lay there. My head felt like it was stuffed with cotton balls and my eyes were puffy and swollen.
And my cheeks were scratched from Jax’s stubble and my lips still tingled from his kiss.
I could leave. Go back home, put an entire continent between him and me once more. It was an enticing thought.
Dammit, no. I'm not running away again. I have as much right to be here as he does, and he's not going to get to me.
Fierce.
I closed my eyes, feeling marginally more composed.
I swore I never fell asleep. But I must have. Because when I opened my eyes, Jaxson was sitting at the edge of the bed, my laptop opened in his knees. "Mornin' Bit," he said.
I sat bolt upright, yanking the covers up to my chest. "What the fuck, stalker! What are you doing here?"
He stretched like a cat in a sunbeam and shot me a lazy grin. "Waiting for you to wake up." He gestured to the laptop. "You took forever and I got bored."
My heart started hammering in terror before my lips could form the question. I gaped at him, watching his eyes dart back and forth across the screen, an amused, and frankly triumphant smile twisting his lips. "Are you seriously reading my book?" I demanded, trying to mask my horror with belligerence. "Oh my god, Invasion of privacy much?" I reached over, trying to snatch the laptop away while simultaneously clutching the blanket to my chest.
He deftly swung the laptop just out of my reach and kept on reading. "You publish these books for everyone else to read, why can't I? Besides," he tapped the screen, "I see a few things in here that might constitute an invasion of my privacy, Bit."
I blushed. He was reading the sex scene. "What are you talking about?" Though I well knew.
He licked his lips. "Well that move sure sounds awfully familiar." He swiveled and looked me full in the face and twisted the laptop so I could see. "Right here? We did that, right?"
I couldn't look at him. I couldn't look at the screen. Mortification was hitting me from every possible angle. "I guess we did, yeah. Why, you don't remember?"
He pulled the laptop back. "No. I do." His eyes went far away for a moment. Then his lip quirked slightly. "Though I don't remember it going exactly like this. 'The center of her pleasure?' Why not just call it what it is?"
"That's… more or less what it is." I bunched the blanket in my fists and contemplated pulling it over my head. "You can't be too clinical."
He rolled his eyes and kept reading. "So many euphemisms." He paused and burst out laughing. “ ’Nethers’?! Really?"
The corner of my mouth twitched involuntarily. "Yeah?"
"That's a terrible word!" he laughed.
"It's evocative!" I tried to protest, but suddenly I was laughing too.
“ ‘Nethers.’ For fuck's sake. The real words for it are so much nicer."
"The real words?"
"Yeah, you know." He shifted a little, tucking his leg under him. His warm thigh pressed against my leg. I could feel his heat even through the blanket. "Clit," he said, rolling the word through his mouth like he was tasting each letter. "Cunt."
My mouth went dry and I swallowed, suddenly at a loss for words.
He stared at me for a moment too long. No way was he going to make me admit how sexy those words sounded when he said them. It was like he was calling right to them and mine were answering with a clutch of need.
A slow smile spread across his face. "Yeah, you think those words are better too, don't you, Lily?"
"They're too… dirty."
"Nothing's too dirty."
"Maybe not to you…"
"You either, Bit." His eyes darted down the page. "Oh my God, 'shaft'? Really? That's what you're calling it?" His hand went to his groin and I realized I was watching way too closely and quickly glanced away. "How about 'cock'? That's a much better word. Better yet, make it a pierced cock, since I remember how you liked that so much."