Page 92 of Shadowed Sins: Nitro

"Ring toss." Jax grabs my hand, pulling me toward a game booth covered in stuffed animals. "Statistical probability of winning is approximately—"

"Stop." I let him pull me but dig my heels in when he starts calculating. "No math. You're supposed to be decompressing."

"Right. Decompressing." He releases my hand to run his fingers through his messed hair, making it stick up at angles. "Fuck, I don't know how to turn it off, Mira. The numbers just keep spinning and—"

I step behind him as he picks up the rings, close enough that my breasts press into his back through the thin fabric of my gala dress. "You turn it off when you drive. No calculations at two hundred miles per hour."

His entire body tenses. His heartbeat pounds through his spine, accelerating like he's about to take a hairpin turn.

"Mira." My name emerges strangled. "We're in public."

"Then you better make this quick." I guide his wrist, adjusting his grip on the ring. "Throw."

The ring clatters off the bottle neck. His jaw tightens with frustration.

"Again." I don't move away, letting him feel every breath I take. "Without thinking this time."

The second ring bounces off the rim. His shoulders tense, that perfectionist need to win everything bleeding through his posture.

"One more." I drag my nails lightly down his forearm, feeling him shiver. "For me."

He throws without aiming. The ring lands precisely where it needs to.

"Holy shit!" He spins to face me, eyes bright with that boyish excitement that makes him so dangerous to my control. "Did you see that?"

"I saw." The smile tugs at my lips before I can stop it.

The vendor, a bored teenager with gauged ears, gestures at the wall of prizes. "Medium tier. Pick whatever."

Jax surveys the options with the same intensity he uses to analyze escape routes. Finally, he points to a stuffed tiger with absurdly large eyes and orange stripes that look painted on by a drunk toddler.

"That one."

He presents it to me with ridiculous ceremony, bowing like he's handing over crown jewels instead of a five-dollar carnival prize.

"Your operational trophy, my lady." His grin is infectious, pulling me into his orbit despite every instinct screaming to maintain distance. "Guard it with your life."

I take the tiger, its synthetic fur soft beneath my fingers. It's hideous. Pointless. Exactly the kind of thing I was never allowed to have as a child, training to be a weapon.

"Come on." He grabs my hand again, and this time I let him lace our fingers together. "Let's see what else normal people do."

We move through the pier like we're casing it for infiltration, if infiltration involved throwing basketballs and shooting pellet guns. Jax throws with surprising accuracy once he stops calculating trajectories. I destroy the shooting gallery, putting every pellet through the bullseye until the operator accuses me of cheating.

"You can't cheat at marksmanship," I inform him coolly, setting down the air rifle.

"She's got a point," Jax says, sliding his arm around my waist with casual possession. The touch burns through the thin fabric of my dress, reminding me I'm not wearing anything under it except panties—no room for proper weapons in this outfit. "Natural talent."

By the time we reach the end of the pier, I'm carrying the tiger while Jax has won me a neon green octopus and a bear wearing a tiny tuxedo. He's also holding a massive unicorn that he insists has "tactical applications."

"This is what normal people do?" I ask, shifting the tiger to see around it.

"Fuck if I know." He sets the unicorn on a bench, then takes my other prizes and adds them to the pile. "But it's better than thinking about—"

"Roman." The name hangs between us like a ghost. Possibly dead, possibly worse. The whole reason we're in LA, hunting trafficking rings while trying not to destroy each other.

"Yeah." His hands twitch at his sides—that nervous energy that makes me want to give him something better to do with them. "Cole keeps saying we'll find answers, but what if the answers are worse than not knowing?"

"You'll drive yourself insane with hypotheticals."