Jersey Six(32)

Max did nice things for Jersey, but she had no idea if they were Max’s ideas or Ian’s generosity—like the trip to the hair salon before the last concert. Jersey acted like she didn’t care if she got a haircut, but there were no words to describe the feeling of someone washing her hair, cutting it measured and carefully, instead of the way Jersey had occasionally butchered her own hair over the years with dull scissors.

“Ready?”

Jersey turned toward Max just as Dani finished telling a story about her drunkenness from the previous night. Just because Ian wasn’t a partier didn’t mean his crew ran a sober ship after hours.

“Yeah.” Jersey followed Max toward the exit.

“Yo, Jersey?” Dani called. “I heard a rumor that you’ve been flying with Ian all this time, and that’s why we never see you on the buses. That’s fucking crazy, right? I mean … are you holding out on your girl?”

She wasn’t sure when Dani became her girl, but Jersey agreed with her about the first part. “Yeah,” she nodded and kept walking, “it’s fucking crazy alright.”

Shane drove them to the airport. They weren’t staying the night in Detroit. They were heading straight to Chicago.

“I’m so damn tired.” Max climbed the stairs to the plane with Jersey right behind her and Shane bringing up the rear.

Jersey stopped just inside the jet. Shane stored her bag in the bin above her head to the right and folded his large body into the seat on the opposite side of the aisle as Max. A closed curtain divided their seats from the other two seats and the sofa in the back of the plane. She had never seen the curtain closed.

“Go on back,” Max muttered on a big yawn as she stretched her legs out on the seat in front of her. “If he didn’t want you back there, you’d be on a bus right now.”

Was that true? Did Ian really want her there? He had a weird way of showing it.

Weeks of traveling with the star, but why? Naked Ian consumed her thoughts. Every perfectly defined inch of his body. Yet, he treated her like a friend, a sister. Not like the woman who asked him to strip for her. It was like it never happened.

“We’re taking off. What’s it going to be?” Shane nodded to the seat facing him.

Jersey collapsed into that seat and fastened her seat belt, gripping the armrests as they took off. Shane closed his eyes like the force of the plane didn’t affect him, and it probably didn’t. He’d done it hundreds of times.

Once the plane leveled out, and Jersey felt convinced that Shane and Max were asleep, she unbuckled and peeked through the closed curtain. Ian’s reclined body engulfed the sofa to her left, so she eased into one of the leather seats on her right.

When she looked at Ian again, two dark, wide eyes stared back at her. The way they burned her skin didn’t change her intentions. If he was a killer, she would end his life. But in that moment, she didn’t know anything. Weeks of digging and subtle questions left her with no more information about Ian and his past than she knew after their first time sharing spaghetti in New York.

And she’d been dodging the one thing she knew might get her somewhere—offering him something new. Something he couldn’t refuse. The only way to uncover the truth was to get as close to it as possible.

When he didn’t blink or say a single word, Jersey stood, nervously stroking her ponytail a few times, still in awe of how soft her hair felt since the haircut. Ian had no idea how much all the little things he did for her added up to something too big to describe.

Slipping off her jacket, she let it drop to the floor. Ian eased himself to sitting in the middle of the sofa with his broad shoulders squared to Jersey.

How close?

Ian helped himself to every inch of her without moving anything but his eyes.

How close could she get?

Jersey kicked off her shoes and locked gazes with him as she unbuttoned her jeans.

How close could she get to the truth?

Ian’s hands rested on his legs, and his gaze moved only with Jersey’s eyes as she lowered her body to peel the jeans off her legs, leaving them to rest by her jacket, along with the knife she had planted in the sock of her right leg. Not even a discarded knife made Ian as much as flinch.

The slick material of her new panties still felt foreign to her after years of wearing worn, ripped, and stained cotton. Wearing only the black satin panties and her black, fitted Ian Cooper Crew shirt, she straddled his lap. Ian eased his hands to the side, resting them on the sofa as she lowered to his lap, balancing herself by holding the back of the sofa. With a stone face and even breath, Ian lifted his hand so very slowly, reaching for the back of her head.

Jersey’s lips parted and her jaw lowered an inch as he tugged her ponytail. It radiated heavily in her breasts and between her legs. The feeling intensified when she thought of him naked.

He pinched the rubber band and eased it from her hair, allowing the long strands to fall around her shoulders and face.

She let a man fuck her with the handle of a hairbrush while he videotaped her. After six days locked in a room with a gallon of water and no food, she realized her body was nothing more than a tool. Weak and emotionally dead, she stopped fighting him. For a ham sandwich, she let him do it to her—the brush in one hand, the video camera in his other hand. Pride had no place in her life.

Survival.

Basic human needs.

Revenge.