Page 69 of The Vigilante's Lover

It’s still dark outside when I wake. I try not to move. Jax is asleep, and he will jump into fight stance at the drop of a pin. I wonder if that comes from Vigilante training, or if he’s just naturally like that.

He’s so vulnerable looking in sleep. I can’t see much, just the shadows of his face from the glow of the alarm clock. But it tugs at my heart. I don’t know how he can live like this, wary and suspicious all the time.

Maybe it’s just our situation. A normal Vigilante probably has breaks between missions. And if he was a director, there were probably days of paperwork as much as car chases and bullet dodging.

I think back on last night and the gun. I shudder a little. Something I haven’t told Jax, but will soon, is that since seeing the gun, I remember a piece of my past that must have been long buried.

I’m on a boat with my parents. I think I’m six, maybe seven. My mother is out on the deck, holding on to the rail. My dad is in front at the controls. This is a typical weekend for us off the coast of Miami.

Mom is watching something through binoculars. I don’t know what she’s looking at. The water and sky seem unbroken to me. After a moment, she comes and takes my hand and calmly tells me to go below deck.

We head down a little ladder. She gives me a puzzle and asks me to stay here a minute. She’ll be right back.

But something in her tone worries me. I feel funny inside, a little buzz in my belly like something is wrong.

She heads back up and through the door. I start on the puzzle, but the boat makes a turn and we must be speeding up, because the pieces slide off the table.

The motor roars. My anxiety rises, wondering why we’re in a hurry. I creep up the ladder and push on the door, peering out to see if I can spot Mom.

Nobody is on deck. I lift it a little more and look around toward the front cabin. My dad and my mom are gesturing at each other. They look upset. My dad is holding something. I can’t make out what it is. Mom takes it from him, and then I know.

It’s a gun.

A gun!

I drop the hatch and scramble back down the ladder.

I never remember feeling more afraid than at that moment.

I crawl onto a beanbag chair and curl up in a ball, shaking and trying not to cry.

Eventually my mom comes down again. The boat slows down. She calmly picks up the puzzle pieces and starts arranging them. She asks me if I’m tired.

I tell her I’m not and get up to help with the puzzle. I don’t ask about the gun, because then she’ll know I disobeyed her and went up the ladder. But the fear remains.

Lying in bed next to Jax, I swallow hard.

I know the incident doesn’t have to mean anything.

It could point to them being Vigilantes, and that’s why I ended up at a safe house.

Or it could just be an element of who they were, a part I didn’t get a chance to know.

Maybe they were just afraid of a boat coming at them too suddenly.

But in my heart, I start to believe something I’ve held so tightly that I haven’t faced it until now. Jax’s world is where I came from. I didn’t get old enough to be told. And my aunt — if she really was my aunt — didn’t want me involved.

I mentally flip through the photo albums from my house. Were there pictures of my mother and my aunt together?

Yes, I can remember one standing next to each other by a boat. A few others at parties.

But I have nothing of the two of them together as children. And nothing of my grandparents. I never knew them. We didn’t have pictures.

Suddenly I find it hard to believe that all four of my grandparents are dead. I saw my parents in their coffins. I know they are gone.

But I never knew any of my grandparents. They died before I was born, or so I was told.

Something isn’t right here. That’s too much death. This doesn’t happen to normal families.

I want to wake Jax up, get him to look up my parents’ parents. I don’t know if he feels the rising tension in me, but his eyes open. He’s awake instantly, sitting up, scanning the room. “What is it?” he asks. “Did you hear something?”

I put my hand on his arm. “No. I was just thinking.”

He relaxes back down. “What about?”

“I remembered something about my parents. On our boat. With a gun.”

He draws me in close. “So you’re starting to think they weren’t as ordinary as you have always believed?”

“Can we look them up? Or my grandparents? Why don’t I have any grandparents? Or pictures of my family when they were children? I never really thought about it, assuming the images were lost when my parents died and I moved to my aunt’s. But now, I wonder.”

“Your information is locked up tight,” he says. “But I can try.”

I lay my head on his shoulder. “Thank you,” I tell him. Emotion courses through me. I know we’re in terrible danger and that sometime later today, we’ll have to go to Washington and face everything. We might not survive it. Or we might get separated and I won’t even know if Jax is killed.

I might never see him again, nor be told what happened.

Like with my family.

But there is nothing to do but go into it, just go.

For the first time in days, I feel like crying, overwhelmed with fear of what is to come. Jax seems to know it’s happening, and kisses my hair. “They haven’t gotten us yet,” he says.

It’s true. We’ve come through everything.

“I’m scared,” I admit.

“Fear is natural,” he says. “It’s how we perform in spite of our fear that sets us apart.”

I lift my face and he kisses me, light and gentle. My body starts to warm up, a light humming coming over me. His hand comes behind my back to roll me closer. We’re still naked, and his skin is hot.

“Come here,” he says, and guides my leg over him.

My thigh brushes his erection, and I go from warm to flaming in one fevered rush. I settle my knees on either side of his hips, and lower myself down. No preamble. No startup. Just straight inside.

Sparks fly through my body as he fills me. His hands hold my waist, then travel up to cup my breasts. I lift and lower at my own pace, taking him in easy. Every stroke is like a revelation, a new plane of ecstasy.

The first glow of morning strikes the window, and I can see him a little better, watching me from the pillow.

I brace my hands on his chest and speed up my pace.

It’s building so fast, and I can’t control it.

I just ride along with the rhythm set by my body, the direction and speed it is longing for.

Then it begins, a tightening of my muscles around him, a thrumming sensation vibrating through me.

It’s steady and predictable at first, spreading out.

Then everything just bursts. The orgasm explodes out, reaching all the way to the roots of my hair.

I cry out, saying words, an endless stream of endearments and exclamations.

Jax clutches my hips, thrusting to my pace, then holds tight as he flows into me.

I feel his arms shake as we keep this position, shattered, fulfilled, and both undoubtedly a little afraid that this is it, that one or both of us won’t see another morning rise up from the horizon.

I collapse on his chest and bury my face in his neck. His arms come around me and he holds me tight. “It will be all right,” he whispers.

My voice won’t work, so I say nothing. The sun keeps coming. No one, not even Jax, can keep it from rising and making this day begin.