Page 24 of Blue-Eyed Jacks (Destroyers MC: Skilletsville PA #1)

Kate

D eep into the unlit hours before dawn, I snuck around Jackson to use the bathroom attached to his domain.

While not a castle, it was a private suite of three rooms. It included an office with space for at least five men to sit if you didn’t count the chair behind the desk.

From that throne, Jackson ruled these miscreants.

Attached to the office was a small bedroom with a queen-sized mattress, two mis-matched dressers, and a trunk overflowing with motorcycle gear.

On the other side of the office was a private bathroom, complete with one of the smallest showers I’d ever seen.

And for a woman who survived with an in-kitchen tub for over six months, it was one of the worst things I’d ever seen.

But it was much better than the one I’d noticed on the trip to this little retreat.

Why? Despite the larger size and amenities, that bathroom reminded me too much of the one at Shock’s headquarters. The one the hookers used. Judging by the series of three doors along one wall, Jackson kept hookers here, too.

Was I okay with that?

He’d told me his mother was one. Could I possibly be judgmental of him knowing about his childhood?

I shook my head. No. That wasn’t what bothered me.

It was deeper than that. A fear that he was going to be like Shock.

My hands trembled. I stared at them, trying to will myself to be stronger. I had to be. Zoe needed me.

Of course, she had her dad now.

With that thought, a pang of sorrow sliced through my heart.

I was deathly afraid of this. Not only losing my daughter, but possibly to a man as evil as Shock.

Worse? I didn’t know if I wanted to escape from Jackson should the depths of my imaginings come true.

Nor could I count on Zoe to see reason if escape was necessary.

Thank God for John. He verified my story with Zoe, giving it the gravitas needed to convince her to leave with me.

And they’d shot him. Shock did that.

Not Jackson…yet.

A soft knock tapped on the door. “You okay in there?” Jackson’s voice was quiet, barely discernible over the constant thrum of noise from the jukebox a floor below. Didn’t these assholes ever sleep?

“I’m fine.”

He cleared his throat. “I’ll believe that when you get your ass out here.”

Spoken differently, it would have scared me. But he said it so kindly, I had to wonder if I was wrong to worry. Then again, I’d been proven utterly wrong with my father. “Give me a minute.”

I washed my face and hands and nudged a half-hearted pep talk into my backbone. But the effect was fleeting. I had no strength left to fight.

“Babe?”

That soft prompt made me open the door to glare at him. He smiled.

Shock would have hurt me for that defiance.

“I’m scared.”

Jackson blinked. Then opened his arms. “Come here.”

I wanted to. But this was not something solved by a hug. Shock would kill him. Despite Jackson’s position or his club as guards, I had an acute understanding of the vindictive evil aimed at us. “Shock is going to kill us.”

He dropped his hands and sighed. “He’ll kill me.” His face turned grim. “Once that happens, you and Zoe…”

Yes. I knew the dark place his words had trailed off to. I’d lived it. I’d survived and fled. In doing so, I’d killed at least one man, and gravely wounded another already. Not to mention Cara, who never resurfaced.

“I’m not going to let that happen.”

He was delusional. “It’s going to happen.”

Jackson grabbed me and pulled me close. His fingers cupped my chin, but they weren’t bruising like Shock’s would have been. “Listen to me. I will move the heavens for you and Zoe. No one is going to get through me. But if they do, I’ve got plans for that.”

“Like?”

His jaw tightened. “My VP, Wolf… he’s got a wife who works with a group who can move you, hide you, give you a whole new identity. Her name is Tits, but don’t let that fool you. She’s a badass with expertise in making that sort of thing happen. She knows how to keep you and Zoe safe.”

While it was a relief to know there was a plan, it still meant he’d be dead. “Jackson…”

The arm around my waist tightened, and his grip on my chin turned into a caress. “I don’t want to die. I want to live… for you. For Zoe, too, but mostly you. We deserve this. We deserve happy .”

Which was why it wouldn’t happen. The perversity of fate meant two people like Jackson and I wouldn’t ever get a happily ever after. Eventually, the life we were tangled with would eat us alive.

“You deserve happiness, Kate.” This time, his sigh sounded defeated.

“You’re right. I don’t deserve happiness.

But you… my God, Kate, you were born to be everything happiness is.

You’re beautiful, so damn beautiful, and you’re not a bitch about it.

You could be. But instead, you hold yourself with such grace and strength that I’m awed.

You’ve become a wonderful mother and person. I can’t compete with that.”

“Shh.” I put a finger on his lips to stop him from demeaning himself any further.

If anything, that proved to me he wasn’t like Shock at all.

Jackson may be the leader of a motorcycle club and all that comes with it, but he wasn’t soulless like Shock.

And for some reason, I wanted to be at Jackson’s side through the good and the awful, rotten, criminal bad.

Because no matter what he’d done in his career as a member of the Destroyers, he simply wasn’t the evil man my husband was.

Jackson’s lips puckered on my finger. He broke the kiss with a warning query. “Kate?”

“Make sure Tits has a plan for Zoe. I’m going down with you.”

He shook his head, disagreeing with me but not fighting me. “With you at my side? I’ll fucking move the goddamned universe. Wait and see.”

The familiar quirk of his cocky grin flicked upward.

I kissed it for no other reason than to see what it felt like against my lips.

Which was a… mistake? One I simply did not regret as our tongues tangoed, and he pressed me against the wall. I made a noise as he slipped his fingers under my sweats and into my panties.

“Shh, Kate. Zoe’s sleeping in the next room.”

“Which is why we shouldn’t—” His mouth smothered my words and my resistance. I wrapped one leg around his hips to give him easier access to my clit.

Jackson did not fail me. His finger circled the nub, adding quick brushes against the apex as he swept over it again and again.

I whimpered for more. I needed to feel again.

I hungered for the slide of his cock in my vagina.

With a few kisses and masterful fingering, he’d resurrected the passion I’d buried when he left that morning so long ago.

“Bed,” I demanded.

Or mattress, whatever . He’d given up his queen-sized bed for a much smaller mattress dragged from one of the hooker’s rooms into his office. It was slapped down in front of the door to his bedroom. I tugged at him to give me space to let me drag him over to it.

But he lifted me instead.

He carried me to the desk and set my ass on the edge. With a shove, he sent the contents to one end. “I’d send it to the floor, but I don’t want to wake up Zoe, so—”

I stopped his words because I had a question that was extremely important to me. “Have you ever had sex on this desk before?” Please, dear God don’t say yes.

“Hell, no. The desk is sacred.”

And my butt was on it.

He must have read my face. “Only you. Lift up; I want your bare ass kissing it now .”

Tingles of arousal and a small amount of fear shivered through me. But I did as asked, knowing deep down I wasn’t in danger. But it did cross my mind, which was too close to that threshold of terror to be benign. He stripped me easily and, with another lift and maneuvering, laid me on my back.

“Pull your shirt up, I need to see those tits.”

My breath came in short gasps. My pussy was soaked. He pushed down his jeans, baring his penis. I tugged my shirt to my neck to expose my breasts, but didn’t take it off because I needed to see him.

He tapped his dick on my pussy.

His bare dick.

“Condom!” I glanced at the bedroom because I might not have whisper-shouted that.

Jackson grinned and dug a packet from his jeans. “Not that I need it with you, but… if it makes you happy…” He rolled it on.

“What do you mean you don’t need it? I’m not on the pill or anything.” This time, I remembered to keep my voice down.

He sent me a look. One I couldn’t decipher. So I shot him one back.

Jackson raised two fingers in a quick scissors motion.

“Oh.” Oh. Wow. “When?”

“Right after you called me to tell me I was a dad.”

Well. I tried to close my legs, but he’d already snuck between them again.

“What? You mad at that?”

With a hastened debate, I decided not to be.

I didn’t want to be a mother again. Not that raising Zoe was awful, but because of her age, and my age, and heck, to be utterly honest with myself, I was looking forward to life after twenty-four-seven mom life.

Zoe would always be my baby, but part of the deal was making sure she became a functional adult.

I hadn’t had that option. I was seventeen, sold, raped, a fugitive, then a mom so quickly, I didn’t know that life.

Jackson leaned over and kissed my breast. He settled his chin between them and stared at me. “You with me?”

I nodded. “I’m with you.”

“Good.” His lips locked onto my nipple and sucked just hard enough to send a wave of lust through me. I arched into his attack and relished in the ecstasy.

In reward, his fingers pinched at the other tit, and that was even better. But most of all, his crotch pressed hard against mine and with the right upward rock of my hips, I aligned with his shaft and worked against it, spreading a rush to every part of my system.

He broke the suction and reached down to insert himself. In a masterful thrust, he seated inside me.

I moaned.

He clapped his hand over my mouth and pumped into me furiously. “Shh, Kate. Hold it in.”

I tried. He wasn’t making it easy with the hard slide of his dick in and out of my pussy. I was lighting up from the inside as his neck turned red.

“Hold on to it. I’m almost there.”

I was, too. I gripped his waist and tugged with each inward thrust, adding the silent urge to pound into me harder.

His hand slipped from my mouth and planted on the desk by my head. I gasped for air, but kept the keening demand to scream locked deep inside. “Soon, harder, but soon.”

“Oh, Kate.” His words strangled, and he sunk deep and hung there, his fingers grasping my shoulder and hip almost painfully.

Connected as we were, the pressure of his body against mine, and the frantic cacophony of my nerves, all of it combined with the heady memories of our nights and this one.

My body clamped onto his, throwing me into an orgasm so hard I almost forgot to be quiet.

A tiny cry of ecstasy squeezed out, and I held my breath to ride it to the final throbbing bliss too many years denied.

Over me, Jackson grunted. His eyes met mine. But there was a madman inside, not the collected leader who made plans. This was the wild soul that lived inside him. Glorious and untamed, unleashing itself in the twitching pulses of his cock.

We were breathless and Jackson’s body bent over mine. His grip relaxed, and he followed the collapse of strength down, barely catching himself above my body. “Fuck. It’s been too long for us.”

I had nothing profound to say to that, because it had been too long. “Next time we’ll last longer.”

He laughed in a quiet gust. “Next time, we’ll be in a bed. Promise.”

I ran my hand down his sweat-slicked neck. “What’s that over there?”

He looked to his left. “Damn, part of a bed.” His smile was contagious. But my quiet laughter caused him to slip out. I regretted it instantly.

It had been too long. And I needed more as soon as possible.

“I’ll be right back. You’re on the side against the wall, got it?”

A memory resurfaced. “That way, they shoot you first?”

He stopped, his grin uncertain. “You remembered?”

I nodded.

Such a bittersweet remembrance. This time, the threat was all too real.

But I wasn’t a coward. Logistically, a bullet would pass right through Jackson’s body shield and into me.

Which was exactly how I wanted it. If he went down, I’d be right there with him.

“Against the wall, got it.” I smiled at him to convince him this was all going to be okay.

I lied.

But we both knew I did, so it didn’t count.