Stay with Me (Wait for You, #3)(69)

His body was chiseled and cut and just wow, but his skin . . . it was another story. There were marks, dozens and dozens of them, all across his chest and over his abs, and I understood now why I’d thought his skin had felt rough.

Sitting up, I glanced at his face—at his lazy, half smile and raised brows—and then back to his body. The marks were like craters in some areas, where pieces of flesh had either been removed or sunken in. Other marks were puckered, healed over.

Without thinking, I reached out to him, and his free hand shot out like lightning, snatching my arm around the wrist. I swallowed hard as I lifted my lashes. “What happened?” I heard myself ask and then I swore under my breath, dipping my chin. Hair slipped over my shoulder, falling between us. “I’m sorry. That’s a damn rude question. I should know.”

“It’s okay.” He brought my hand forward, and the tips of my fingers brushed a scar. “Roadside bomb,” he reminded me. “Shrapnel sucks ass.”

Oh my . . .

I knew he hadn’t been telling everything last night. I lifted my gaze. “So you got Reece out of there, but you had shrapnel in you?”

“Yeah,” he said like it wasn’t a big deal.

But it had to be, because so many of those marks were over his heart and a lot of other vital places. Some were deep. They had to have hurt and bled a lot. And he managed to get Reece out of there? God, he wasn’t just brave. He was crazy brave. Our gazes locked, and I don’t know what made my mouth move. “It was glass exploding that cut my face.”

Jax didn’t respond as he slid his hand down, pressing his fingers over mine, against his skin.

“It . . . it was a backdraft,” I said. “There was a fire and pressure built up in the room . . .” My gaze broke free from his, shifting to his body, to the connect-the-dot map of scars. I’d never told anyone this. Ever. “When I opened the door, oxygen poured in or something like that and the window exploded.”

“You’re lucky.” He rose into a sitting position and his knees knocked mine. He lowered his head and we were face-to-face. “You could’ve lost an eye.”

Or a nipple, but I wasn’t sharing that. “You were lucky, too.”

“Damn straight.”

Neither of us spoke for a long moment, and then he was up and off the bed in like a nanosecond. “Let’s get breakfast. Maybe IHOP today,” he announced while I stared at him. “Then we’ll go looking for your mom. Plan?”

I blinked once, and then twice. “Okay.”

That lopsided grin appeared. “You got to get off the bed.”

Yeah, he made a good point, but . . .

“Wait.” I hobbled off the bed, feeling my cheeks heat as the words rolled right off the tip of my tongue. “What about you?”

He’d stopped at the foot of the bed, head cocked to the side, bottoms hanging so low I could really see that happy trail of his. “What about me?”

“You know . . . I, well, I came and you . . .”

“Didn’t?” The grin was spreading.

“Yeah. That.”

He tipped his head back and laughed.

My lips slipped down at the corners. “What’s so funny?”

“You are. You’re funny. You’re cute.” He came forward and he was right in front of me. “And you’re sweet as hell when you’re coming.”

Oh. Wow.

“I know I didn’t come, but honey, you never had anyone but your own hands down between those pretty legs before.” His gaze dropped to said legs, and I shivered. “That’s the first time you’ve had that and it needed to be about you. Not me.”

Oh. Double wow.

I gaped at him as he turned, starting for the bathroom. My insides started to melt, get a little gooey.

Then he stopped and twisted toward me, lips curved in a mischievous sort of way. “I’ll take care of myself in the shower.”

My jaw was on the floor.

Jax sucked his bottom lip in between straight, white teeth. “And I’ll be thinking of you when I do it.”





Eighteen


Things changed after a guy gave you an orgasm. Not something I’d ever considered before, since no guy had done that to me, but I was catching on pretty quickly.

I’d gotten back in bed while he showered since it turned out that we really were up early. It wasn’t even eight in the morning. I tried not to imagine him in there touching himself, but my thoughts kept going back to that and what it must look like, and that was, well, it was turning me on, which was pretty shocking considering I still wasn’t sure I had complete use of my legs yet. I really needed to stop thinking about all of that.

So I used that time to take stock of my life.

I finally had a non-Calla-induced orgasm, which was pretty epic. Part of me was proud that I’d finally jumped that hurdle, even though I was twenty-one when it happened. But I wasn’t sure what to do with it. I mean, what did it mean for me? For Jax? For us?

Oh my God, was there an “us” now?

My heart rate kicked up a notch as I sat straight up in the bed, staring at the closed bathroom door as I held the blanket to my chin. I could hear the water running from the bathroom and then . . . I heard him. Not groaning or anything like that, but he was humming something or maybe singing, but it sounded like humming because of the water. Suddenly, all of this was so intimate I wanted to jump out of the bed and run screaming and flailing through the townhouse and out into the streets.