Page 30 of Jazz
“Checking there’s no more cuts,” his words dusted my hair.
“And have you found any?” That hoarseness again, my throat squeezing out the words.
“Just your wrists.”
His fingers slid further down my wrists, a million tiny, energised tingles erupting where the rough pads moved. He used his hands. He wasn’t a desk jockey. His hands were too rough. Even his voice was rough. I couldn’t see him in a shirt and tie. But he earned good money. He had to, to bathe in that Victor & Rolf aftershave he’d been wearing every day. He was clean. There was not a single smell of dirt on him, not even the slightest hint of sweat. Yet, something else lingered in the background. Well washed, but no amount of scrubbing could get rid of the oil smell. It was clean. New oil in new bikes.
“Chase?”
“Uh huh?” He seemed distracted.
“Get me out of here.”
Chapter Eighteen
She distracted me. Her wrists were red and angry. The blue rope aggravating the wounds further. Yet she barely complained. She took long, slow breaths as I squeezed the warm water against the cuts, with only the slightest wince. There was tension in her neck, as she fought the fear of me touching her, not knowing what I’d do next.
I’d cleaned plenty of wounds before, my own and my brothers’. Knife cuts, burns, shit gone wrong on runs, but never like this. Never wrists rubbed raw because some bastard thought a pair of cable ties good enough to hold her weight for days. And I was one of those bastards. I chewed the inside of my cheek. Iknew what I was. What the club was. I’d done shit far worse than most people knew. But this, this was something else.
I soaked the cotton with antiseptic. This would sting like a bitch in heat with those open raw wounds. But she’d take it. Because she was as wild as she was resilient.
“This bit’s gonna sting like a bitch,” I warned.
The antiseptic bit into her, the sound that escaped her throat tighter than she wanted me to hear. Her fingers stretched, the tendons in her wrist jumping as she pulled against the rope. I pressed my palm into her arm, steadying her, feeling the heat of her skin and the smoothness underneath that.
“I know,” I soothed, talking to her like the motorbikes in my workshop.
Her arms were slender, a femininity that betrayed the wildcat that thrashed and kicked and fought. Her skin wasn’t quite pale. I’d noticed that under the bleaching light of the warehouse, but under the dull orange glow of the solitary bulb that hung naked from the ceiling, she had even more of a golden glow. Not a tan, but a deeper pigmentation, a blend of olive skin with a hint of sunlight.
Done. Her wrists looked rawer than when I started. But they were clean. And they would heal. If Dougal and Grim gave her time. My stomach twisted, and I swallowed, refusing to allow that to rise to my throat, concentrating on something else, anything else.
Jazz. Stretched out on that bed, the leather of her bike suit pulled tight. The jacket hugged her chest, the trousers clung to her thighs. Her entire figure sculpted in black and red. Like her temper. I wanted to lift that blindfold. Just once. Wanted to see the eyes behind it. I’d caught myself thinking about them morethan I should. About whether they’d be hard and blazing or soft in that moment of pain. Whether they’d be blue, or green, or dark like her hair. That strip of fabric had become a wall between us, one I ached to tear away, but I didn’t. Not yet. And that something else I’d just tried to concentrate on wasn’t helping me either.
My fingers traced down her arms, smoothing over her skin, searching for cracks and tears, for other wounds. I thought I’d heard a little hitch in her breathing. An unsteady rhythm. Just for a moment. I rolled the leather back over her arms, feeling and touching, my brain memorising the path. Her skin was smooth. No lumps or bumps. No cuts or scrapes.
“Chase,” her voice cracked, weak but laced with something sharp underneath, jolting my mind and making me jump. I was pleased she was blindfolded, so she couldn’t see me jump like a pussy from the suddenness of her voice, however soft she had spoken. “Get me out of here.”
The words hit harder than I expected. As though she believed I could. As if she thought there was a chance I’d put her over my shoulder, walk out that door, and tell Grim and Dougal to shove it. I swallowed it down.
“I can’t,” I said finally, my voice lower than I’d meant. “There are rules. You know that. I follow my President, and you’re… you’re Kings. This is how it works. You have to understand.”
“Understand?” She laughed, hollow and bitter.
“Jazz. I don’t have control over this.”
“You’re fucking here. The only one. You can just walk me out of here and let me go.”
“Jazz.” The heaviness I’d felt in my stomach returned, like I’d swallowed a fucking boulder. “I just can’t.”
“Because of your rules?”
“You know my rules, Jazz. They’re the same as yours.”
“They’re not mine. Never fucking have been. I’m not part of it.”
“You’re a King, Jazz,” I reminded her, as if days in captivity, of being starved and beaten had finally sent her brain to mush.
“And you fucking know no MC lets women in. I’m not fucking patched.”