Jet: A Marked Men Novel (11 page)

I shook my head in confusion because she was talking a mile a minute. “Where what was?”

“I don’t know. Just
it
. He freaked when he saw the Taser and I think he heard your car pull up. He took off.”

“We should call the cops.” I patted her back because I could feel her quivering. Cora was a tough chick, and not very much rattled her, but having a stranger force his way into her home had to have been terrifying. She puffed out a little breath against my chest where she was tucked and she thunked a fist on my ribs.

“No.”

“What? Why the hell not?”

“Because they can’t do anything. He didn’t take anything and never got a chance to put his hands on me. They’ll come poke around and tell us tough shit. I’m an idiot for opening the door anyway. I know better than that.”

I set her away from me with a sharp frown. “You could have been seriously hurt.”

She waved a hand in front of me. “No, I couldn’t have been. He was after something, not after me. It just spooked me, is all. What are you doing here, anyway? I thought you went to play nice with Ayd.”

I didn’t like it one bit. Everything inside me said call the police, that one girl I cared about had already been put through the ringer by a loose cannon. I wasn’t about to let it happen again. I picked her up in a full body hug that had her squealing and laughing at the same time. “You need to be careful, Cora. We wouldn’t know what to do without you.”

She scoffed. “You really think I’m about to let you guys roam around this city unsupervised? The female population of Denver would never survive it. We have to be sure to tell Ayd to be careful. I don’t know what would have happened if she had been home and not me.”

I liked that thought even less. I don’t know how all the fury and fire that I barely kept banked would stay contained if something happened to Ayden. If I let it go, not only would I go up in flames but there was a chance I would end up burning anyone close to me to dust as well.

“I don’t like this, Cora. I want both of you to be safe.” She hooked her arm through mine.

“It’ll be fine, Jet. Seriously, he probably just had the wrong house, or was looking for money for drugs or something. No place is perfect and we can take care of ourselves. You never answered me”—her crazy eyes narrowed at me—“did you fix things with Ayden?”

I sighed and let her drag me into the house. “Sort of. I apologized for being an asshat last night and told her I couldn’t fight this thing between us anymore. I don’t know what that looks like to her but I can take it day by day for now.”

“She was okay with that?”

“I guess, Honestly, I think that’s the only way she’s okay with it. She’s a hard chick to pin down.”

“Don’t be stupid, Jet. You have a lot to offer anyone. The cool thing is Ayden isn’t the type to take it all. She can provide for herself, and be happy just taking what she wants from you. It’s up to you to make her see just how much you’re willing to give and how much better she is off with the entire package. Make her want to be pinned down and not just in the sexy, fun way.”

I just looked at her in silence. This little pixie ran us all ragged and at times I think she had our lives figured out far better than we did.

“I’ll keep that in mind.” She tapped me on the chin with her finger.

“Good.”

“The guys all went bowling. Do you want to go? Nash was worried you weren’t answering your phone, so I decided to come and check on you.”

She scrunched up her nose and ran a hand over her spiky blond hair. “No. I think I’ve had enough excitement for one day. Plus, I had a pretty good sulk going before the breaking-and-entering portion of the day. I think I’d like to finish it.”

I felt my eyebrows dip sharply down. Cora wasn’t a sulky person. She was cheerful and honest to a fault. “Why are you sulking around? That isn’t like you.”

She sighed and flopped down heavily on the couch. “Watching Rule take such good care of Shaw is kind of hard for me. I never thought he was going to fall in love, never thought anyone would be able to get him to see past himself, but she did, and they are just so perfect together. I thought guys like him—guys like you—were hopeless. Now I’m wondering if I’m the one who is hopeless. I mean, you’re amazing, Ayden is amazing. So, whatever you guys work up is bound to be amazing and I just feel like I’m missing something.”

We were friends and I cared a lot about her. There were plenty of mirrors in the house, so I knew that she knew she was hot enough to make men stupid. I didn’t really understand it, but all I could figure out was that she was alone because she wanted to be alone.

“Cora, come on now. You can find a guy in, like, a second flat. Half the guys in the band have you on their laminated list.”

She rolled her expressive eyes at me. “I want something real, Jet. Something that is life changing and dramatic, something that makes me forget anyone else ever existed. I just can’t see that happening and it makes me sad.”

“I think you’re maybe reaching for something that doesn’t exist.”

“You see Rule and Shaw. It exists.”

I couldn’t really argue that point with her, but I didn’t know what else to say. I believed in love. I just didn’t trust it and what the end result could be if two people weren’t ultimately right for each other. Every great song was sung from a place of love. I knew love was strong enough to change people. My mom held on to her love for my dad, like it was a raft in the center of the ocean of horror that was her life. It was just my experience that love never changed anyone for the better, with Rule being the exception to the norm. He always did his own thing anyway, so it wasn’t like he was going to even love someone within the conventions of how it normally worked.

“Well, if some guy does come along, that’s an awful lot of pressure to be putting on him.”

“I know, so I’m destined to be alone and grumpy for the rest of my life. Not to mention sexually frustrated.”

“Stop being ridiculous and shake this crap off. Go put on some shoes and come bowling with us. It’ll be fun.”

She grumbled until I eventually got tired of it, and just picked her up and hauled her to her room. She argued the entire way, but after I pointed out that I was wearing pants that were bound to make it impossible to throw a heavy ball down the lane without ripping in half, she begrudgingly put on some Chucks and followed me out the door. I refused to ride in her little circus car, so we hopped in the Challenger and roared down to the sprawling blocks of the Sixteenth Street mall where every tourist and degenerate in town hung out. I normally avoided this part of the city. It brought back too many memories of skipping school and sneaking booze from Phil with Rule and Nash. However, after a spectacularly nasty day, I didn’t mind the noise and hustle as much.

The bowling alley was lit in blue and had velour couches scattered all over the place. Personally, I thought it looked more like a strip club than a bowling alley. The guys had beer and it looked like they were having a great time giving each other shit as they rotated turns. The pink bowling ball looked like a tiny toy in Rowdy’s beefy hands, and when he tossed it down the alley it bounced hard enough that it went right into the gutter. Cora laughed and gave him a high five, while Rule and Nash offered up a round of ridiculous-looking golf claps.

There was a group of teenage girls a few lanes down openly gawking, and I thought they were going to need the paramedics called when Nash winked at them when he got up to take his turn. I sat next to Cora on one of the benches and ducked just in time to avoid getting knocked upside the head by the flat of Rule’s palm. I scowled at him, but his glacial gaze made it clear he wasn’t playing around.

“You ever pull a stunt like you did last night again and I will use your intestines to string your Les Paul.”

I swallowed, because from most people that was an idle threat, but not coming from him. I nodded.

“I know, dude, I know. I tried to make it right. We’re good, she doesn’t hate me.”

Those cold eyes regarded me seriously and he must have decided whatever he saw was sincere, because some of the tension left his body.

“Good, because if she hates you, then Shaw has to hate you, and by default that means I have to kick your ass all over town and I would hate to have to do that.”

I snorted and took a pint of beer that Rowdy handed me. “You wouldn’t hate that at all.”

He shrugged and nodded at Cora who was having some kind of argument with Nash over exchanging her Chucks for bowling shoes.

“What’s up with her?”

I felt my mouth pull down at the corners and my eyes sharpen just a fraction. Rowdy sat down on the low lounge table and all three of us bent our heads together so that they could hear me when I lowered my voice.

“Bad stuff going down at the homestead, guys. When I got there, she was chasing some guy out the door. She said he shoved his way in and was demanding to know where ‘it’ was. She has no clue what he was looking for, but she was pretty shaken up. He took off on some souped-up bike way too fast for me to do anything about it. After everything that went down with Shaw, I don’t like it one bit.”

Rowdy whistled and Rule growled like a wild animal. “Did you call the cops?”

I sat back and laced my fingers behind my head. “Cora wouldn’t let me. You know her, she thinks this is the Wild West still and things like that just don’t happen here like they do in Brooklyn. She seems to think it’s a onetime event and that the guy was just a meth head or something looking for money. That bike was cherry and there was no way he just picked out our house at random. We’re way too far away from downtown for a junkie just looking to score some cash.”

“This isn’t cool.” Rule sounded a little unhinged and I couldn’t blame him. He had gone a little off the rails when Shaw had been attacked and we were all now just starting to settle down from it all.

“I know, but I don’t want to get all worked up over something if it turns out to be nothing. I’ll tell Ayden to keep an eye out and remind Cora that things here can be just as bad as the East Coast, but I’m hoping this was an isolated incident.”

Rule shoved hard hands through his spiky hair and squinted eyes that were glittering like ice on a frozen lake. “It better be because I’m not going to make it through something like what happened to Shaw again.”

I lifted a dark eyebrow. “I’ll keep an eye on them. I do live there, you know, and I’m trying to figure shit out with Ayden.”

He shook his head. “It’s not that. You have no idea what it’s like to have someone you care about, someone you love, facing a danger like that. It changes you, it turns you into a different person. I barely made it when Shaw got hurt. If someone hurts Ayden or Cora, there is no telling what’s going to happen.”

Rowdy reached out and gave him a shove with one of his hands. Rule glowered at him but there was just something about Rowdy that made you want to listen to what he had to say.

“We all care about those girls, Archer. Nobody wants to see anything happen to either one of them. Let Jet handle the home front. You tell Shaw to keep her eyes open and remind Ayden to be careful and on the lookout. We’re a goddamn team and no one better forget it.”

It took a minute before Rule relented, but when he did his shoulders relaxed and his tattooed hands unclenched. I nodded in agreement, but the conversation was cut short because Cora flopped herself on the couch between me and Rowdy and pouted about Nash forcing her into regulation bowling shoes.

The topic was essentially dropped, but I couldn’t stop thinking about what he said, that when you cared about someone so deeply it changed you, made you into a different person. In his case, deciding that he could love Shaw, and more important, that she could love him, had turned him into a totally different guy. He was still a pain in the ass, but now he was a pain in the ass that could see beyond himself, and he was a shining example of love changing someone for the better.

I didn’t know how going from friends to something more was going to play out for me and Ayden, or that I necessarily needed to be better or worse. All I knew for sure was that she was inside me like cold drops of water next to all the burning things that had lived there for years. I was in no hurry to get her out, because something about her was cool and soothing to all the parts of me that had been on fire for far too long.

Chapter 7

Ayden

I
was tired when I got home. Work had been busy, which was nice because I was tired of dodging Shaw’s questions and speculative looks about my relationship, or nonrelationship, with Jet. I wasn’t ready to get into it with her—hell I wasn’t even ready to get into it with him. When Rule had shown up to get her, he had almost strong-armed me into letting him take me home. When he got distracted by Lou, I had literally ducked out the back door to take my own car home. Something weird was going on, because while Rule was normally bossy and overbearing, he usually toned it down with me because I didn’t acquiesce to him in the least.

When I was pulling out of the parking lot, I got a text from Cora telling me that I needed to park in the driveway and that they had left all the lights on for me. It was all clandestine and overly cautious, and was making the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.

The house was quiet when I got in the front door. Cora’s light was off. I still wasn’t sure about this new territory I was treading on with Jet, so even though his light was on under his door, I decided I needed a shower and a minute to collect my thoughts before trying to talk to him. I collected a pair of yoga pants and a stretchy tank before padding to the bathroom on silent feet.

I shared the second bathroom with Jet, and before I had started sticking my tongue down his throat I never really thought about how intimate that was. For instance, all the junk he used in his hair was scattered all over the counter, right next to all the stuff I used to smell good and look pretty. He had a collection of thick silver rings on one side of the sink and a bunch of random guitar picks in the soap dish, next to the fancy bottles of perfume I left out because I was too lazy to put them away. One of his belts with the metal studs was curled up on the back of the toilet and the skirt of my cheerleader uniform was in a discarded pile on the floor. Somehow, without even noticing it, my life had intersected his so thoroughly that it was just seamless and so easy. I liked having all my stuff mixed up with all his. It made for a more interesting mess, kind of like us.

When I was walking back to my room, I had to stop outside the door because there was music drifting from across the hall. It wasn’t the screaming, ear-bleeding, headache-inducing noise that he usually had blaring, but soft guitar and the most beautiful voice I had ever heard. I couldn’t make out the song because it didn’t sound familiar, but it was alluring enough that I threw everything on my bed and went back across the hall without any hesitation. I knocked and the guitar stopped long enough for him to tell me to come in. When I did, my breath stopped somewhere in the middle of my chest, and my heart did a slow slide all the way down to the bottom of my feet and back up to my throat.

Jet was sitting in the center of his bed, his long legs crossed at the ankles. He didn’t have a shirt on, which was already hot and distracting, and the huge black and gray tattoo that covered his entire torso looked menacing behind the acoustic guitar he was holding. It was a sight that made my breath catch and made me remember why he put every good intention I had to the test. His dark head was bent down and he was scribbling something on a notebook he had open next to him. He looked rumpled and sexy, the rock star at rest, but the things he was doing with that guitar and the way he sounded when he sang the next verse made my knees go weak. I walked across the room in a daze, unaware that he was pulling me in with his voice alone. I sank to the edge of the bed and watched him with wide eyes.

He didn’t acknowledge me until he was done, and by that time I had a film of tears in my eyes and felt that something in my soul had been touched by what this boy could do. He leaned across me and put the guitar down on the floor and shoved the notebook into a drawer of his nightstand. His dark eyes regarded me quietly and I couldn’t help but reach out and touch him. I grabbed his thigh and leaned over so that we were eye to eye.

“If you can sing like that why in the world do you get onstage and scream and yell so that no one can understand you? You’re amazing. That was so beautiful, it made my heart hurt.”

He cleared his throat and his shoulders moved up and then down. There was a lot of tattooed skin on display and even though I was used to seeing it onstage or in passing in the hall, it was pretty impressive and very distracting up close and personal, and I wanted to touch all of it. I wasn’t sure where to let my gaze land, so I decided that his midnight gaze with the gold halo was my best bet.

“It’s just music, Ayd. It all speaks to something inside us.”

“But you have a beautiful voice. You could be famous, like famous on a ridiculous level.”

He shoved his hands behind his head and leaned back, making his abs contract and flex under the ink that covered them in a drool-worthy way. My fingers itched to run along the faint trail of dark hair that poked out the top of those too-tight pants and across abs that were defined and taunt under a cover of black and gray ink.

“I could be famous on a ridiculous level singing metal or singing nursery rhymes. That’s not what I want.”

I bit my lip because he was way more complicated than I had ever given him credit for. I thought the band was just a way he killed time, a way he got validation. I had no idea he was as skilled as he was, or that he was actively avoiding being a big freaking deal.

“What do you want in the long run, Jet? Where are you going with all this? Wasting a talent like that should be criminal.”

The corner of his mouth kicked up in a grin that made my skin tingle. “As long as I can continue to write songs that are good enough to bring beautiful, dark-haired girls knocking at my door in the middle of the night, I can be happy. I’ll sing you anything you want, Ayd, if it means you keep looking at me the way you’re looking at me right now. The long run can take care of itself much later.”

I knew if I let him, he would own me. If he sang to me with that beautiful voice and played the guitar for just me, with those hands covered in heavy rings and tipped in black fingernail polish, he would just simply own me. He was already close and I was doing my best to keep him at a distance. I knew none of those things, his beautiful voice or his rumpled hair or ink-covered skin, belonged in my future, but letting that take care of itself was sounding better and better by the second. I slid my hand a little farther up his thigh and watched as little sparks shot off the golden rim of those midnight irises. He was my temptation, and had been for a long time now. Good Ayden or Bad Ayden, we both wanted him, only him.

I leaned even farther over him so that both my hands were flat on either side of his hips. We were eye to eye, and only our breath separated our mouths. No part of either of us was touching, but I could practically feel the electricity jump from his colorful skin to mine.

“Why do I feel like I’m always the one coming after you, Jet?” My voice was barely a whisper, and I saw when it hit his lips, it made them twitch. He pulled his hands out from behind his head and I felt the chill of his rings brush across my cheeks as he tunneled his fingers into the hair at my temples.

“I don’t know, Ayd.”

I probably would have had a smart remark to throw back at him, but he was pulling me across his legs and turning us so that I was on my back and he was hovering over me in all his toned and tattooed glory. I’d had his mouth on mine before so it shouldn’t be shocking, shouldn’t be startling, but there was something about being horizontal and having nothing but thin cotton pants between me and a very impressive erection that made our previous kisses seem like practice for the main event.

Before Jet, I had never been interested in guys who were decorated from head to toe, but now I wanted all the things that just made him
him.
That included the artwork that was imprinted everywhere and the metal hoops he had in each nipple that I could feel pressing against my own chest. I was also lucky that all that decoration came with a pair of corded pecks, tightly defined biceps, and an ass that looked better in this bed than it ever had on stage.

I couldn’t decide what to put my hands on first. It was like getting all the presents I ever wanted at one time. Jet seemed to run naturally hot and I felt like if I didn’t get to all of him at one time, he was going to melt both of us into the comforter on the bed.

I felt like I had been starving for this my entire life and now the seven-course meal that was Jet Keller was mine for the tasting and I was about to turn into a gluttonous beast. He was doing a pretty good job of making me lose track of every thought by assaulting my mouth with kisses that had more bite and more sting than I was used to. He was holding my head still, and playing a game of attack and retreat with his tongue that was making me moan. My only recourse was to slide my hands around his narrow waist and dig my fingers into the tight muscle above his ass. The pressure was enough to get him to lift his head, and when he did, I couldn’t help the dart of satisfaction that flared in me at the obsidian glimmer in his dark eyes, the gold completely obliterated by a hazy, passionate gleam. His mouth was damp and when his tongue brushed over it, my knees instinctively bent so that he was cradled right at the heart of where he needed to be.

I slid a couple of fingers under the tight edge of his pants and lifted a dark eyebrow. “How do these come off?”

He had lowered his head and was doing something amazing with his tongue on the tendon of my neck, so his reply was muttered against skin that was quivering at his lightest touch. I hooked a long leg around one of his and pressed up against the part of him that I wanted and was being denied access to. “Seriously, those pants are ridiculous. How am I supposed to get them off?”

Everything I had on was stretchy and designed for comfort and cuddling in bed. I made a face at him and he pushed up off me, and had zero trouble taking my tank top with him as he went. The look that crossed his face when he stared back at me had heat surging up my chest and into my face. I took pretty good care of myself, and I wasn’t an idiot, so I knew I was better than all right to look at. But when he looked at me, I had never felt more appreciated, more valued, more adored than I did in that minute. Something serious was going on in those dark eyes, and if I stopped to think about it, I was going to freak out and bolt for my own room. Luckily, he must have felt it brewing, because he clambered over me to climb to his feet and started working on the buckle to his belt.

“They aren’t that tight.”

I propped myself up on my elbows to watch the show and implore him to hurry with my greedy eyes.

“Yes they are, and right now they are in the way.”

He stopped messing with his zipper for a second to stare at me, but I was shimmying out of my yoga pants and that was enough to spurn him back into action. The denim and leather hit the floor with a clatter and I blinked in surprise when I was face-to-face with not only an impressive erection and ripped abs, but another hoop that I hadn’t been expecting. Since Shaw and I talked about everything, I knew that this group of guys was into this kind of thing, but I had never seen it before, let alone had one anywhere near me. I licked my bottom lip and twirled a finger in the air in front of him.

“What am I supposed to do with that?”

He laughed a little and pushed his hair back from his face. “Enjoy it?”

I shook my head a little as he grabbed my ankle and pulled me to the edge of the bed so that I was way closer to it and to him than I was ready for. Anticipation was building and steaming under the surface, but the fear of the unknown was still lurking, and the metal in the unexpected place was a welcome distraction. “Doesn’t it hurt?”

He laughed again and I wanted to touch it. I was reaching out tentatively, worried that it would hurt him, worried that I was going to do something wrong. He grabbed my hand and wrapped the whole thing around the shaft and gave it a squeeze. “I’ve had it forever. I don’t even think about it. You can touch it, you can lick it—in fact why don’t you do both of those things on a regular basis?”

I slid my hand back and forth and felt him shudder a little under my light touch. I let go and used my index finger to gently brush the metal. It was hot from being pressed against his skin and the little ball in the center of the ring was smooth. I could only imagine what it felt like when he did his thing. It was as hot as it was intimidating.

“This should be interesting.”

He winked at me and leaned over to grab a condom out of the nightstand next to his bed. I was sure the anticipation was going to kill me. He handed me the little foil package and shoved me back on the bed. I wrapped my arms around his broad shoulders and looked up into eyes that held everything I ever wanted in them.

“We have to get you to step outside the box, Ayd. None of the best stuff is found in the mainstream.”

He was right. But the mainstream was safe, and no one ever got hurt or judged or ostracized in the mainstream. Now wasn’t the time for that argument, because he was kissing me again and doing things to my puckered nipples that only a guy who played the guitar like he did could do. There was something in the way he touched me, the way his fingers pressed into my skin, the way his teeth left marks, and the way the metal scattered here and there sent goose bumps chasing after it, that erased any and all others who had ever tried to get to me. He was hard and he was soft; his mouth was all velvet and steel, and I wondered if there was no going back from this point with him.

Only Jet made that happen. Only Jet had me forgetting that I wasn’t a girl who simply gave herself over to passion and mindless oblivion, and only Jet made me scream his name when he pushed my legs apart and touched me, stroked me, did all the things he did to me in that bathroom the other night. Only this time, it ended with me seeing stars and pushing him over onto his back so that I could climb on top of him. This boy could play a woman as well as he could play a guitar; there was no doubt about it.

I looked down at him lying beneath me and something inside me shifted. I had wanted him for so long. He was impressive, talented in a way that hurt, and undeniably gorgeous in a way that spoke to something primitive and instinctual inside me. I didn’t care about the future when I looked at him, didn’t care that his plans did not go beyond a guitar and a pretty song. All I cared about was that he never stopped looking at me the way he was right now, and that when he said my name in that beautiful voice, he said it like it was the lyric to his favorite song.