“Tiny, don’t ask questions you don’t want to hear the answers to.” I felt his hands on my heated face, and then he kissed me slowly and lightly this time.

“Seriously, how many?” I asked between kisses.

“Bus full of ‘em. They had cameras too. I think they were filming.”

“WHAT?”

Jaxon laughed hard against me, his chest vibrating as he collapsed his weight into me, pushing my ass further into the ground. Scratch that shit about wanting it again.

“You’re such an asshole, Jaxon Barlow.” I smacked him hard on the back and then tried pushing him off of me.

“Yeah, but you love it, Tiny.”

*****

The memory had me in tears, and thank God they’d started running down my face at the end of the movie we were watching, otherwise Remy would have known something was up.

“Sad movie,” I mumbled, wiping my face quickly before he could see the full waterworks on display.

“Yeah…” was Remy’s noncommittal reply.

I looked at him and would have laughed if it hadn’t been for that memory. He had a “what the fuck did I just watch” look on his face. Obviously not his cup of tea.

He popped in another movie and opened a bag of chips. He settled it between us and we munched away. I could tell he was hardly paying attention to the storyline, seemingly lost in his own thoughts. I desperately tried to focus on the movie, but the weight in my chest was too heavy to ignore.

I just wanted him. What was he doing right now? Was he feeling it in his heart – the deep emptiness that burned so badly?

“Hey, Remy?”

“Huh?”

“Do you think I can use your phone? I’d like to call a friend of mine.” If he’d actually given it to me, I’d have called Lexi. Mostly, I’d asked because I wanted to know how imprisoned I really was.

“No reception here, Birdy.”

Huh. So much for being at the clubhouse.

Four

She was crying. Like fully fucking crying. Over the most cliché piece of shit movie he’d ever seen. Meanwhile he’d wanted to shoot the hero in the head for being such a pussy-whipped fool, taking back the most wishy-washy bitch he’d ever seen in his life. How the fuck did movies like this make it big?

Then again, wasn’t he being a pussy-whipped moron? He’d loaded his truck up with girl essentials to make Sara’s stay at his bunker comfortable and easy. Then he watched her like a lovesick puppy, at one point barging into the bathroom while she was in the shower because she hadn’t responded two seconds after he’d called her name. Full blown panic had erupted in his chest at her silence… Talk about an overreaction.

He didn’t understand the feelings in his chest. They weren’t like before when his desire for her was purely based on something he didn’t even understand himself. Now he was feeling warm and… fuzzy. She was burning him slowly just by being around him. He’d never felt so drawn before… Then he had to bring up that douche’s name only to see her face contort to a sadness that churned his insides with anger. She loved that douche.

Calm and patient Remy was now a jealous, angry, lovesick, pussy-whipped moron. Fucking lovely. The rational side of him said to walk away from this immediately. He didn’t need this kind of competition. There was no way he’d have a chance with a woman who was so obviously in love with another man, no matter how douchey that man was.

Yet the jealous, angry, lovesick, pussy-whipped side of him said to persevere. Her relationship with that hick was doomed. It’d been over for years. So she’d come back and shacked up with him. So what? That didn’t mean anything. It wasn’t like she’d been jumping his bones for months.

Daniel. Now there was a fucker that had been touching her for months and months. Maybe even years. He still hadn’t sorted that deceiving fucker out, but it was only a matter of time before he broke a few bones. With the homicidal urges he was experiencing currently at just the mere thought, he figured it was best to wait awhile. Reacting on impulse wasn’t something he did. Until her, of course. Besides, Daniel was protected by his father, and his father was the damn best crooked lawyer around. He didn’t want to step on those toes… too badly.

“Can I ask you something?” came her little voice beside him.

Like last night, she looked hesitant again. Was he that intimidating? It didn’t help he was wearing a frown, but it was aimed at the dumb red-head in the movie who’d just cheated on her boyfriend with a surfer bum.

“Ask away,” he replied.

“You said you were keeping track of me. Why didn’t you let me know when my mom passed away?”

Ah, fuck. Honesty would ruin everything right now. The girl was emotional, and rightfully so, but if she knew the answer to that it would put a damper on the entire weekend. She’d learn the truth to that one eventually, but right now it wasn’t going to happen.

“Wasn’t around at the time,” he said, feeling like the world’s biggest asshole. “Nobody but me knew where you were.”

She stared at him for a long moment, and he figured she’d caught him in the lie. It was a damn shit lie. He made sure to keep his eyes steady with hers, no back and forth movement that might indicate he was the lying asshole that he was.

She finally nodded and returned to the movie. Her hands clasped together in her lap and her thumbs circled about one another. She was thinking. Fuck, that girl was always thinking. At the moment, her glum look was making him feel like shit.

Then she opened her mouth again, paused a few seconds, and said, “Did you know her well?”

Oh, he knew Joanne well, too well actually. But he answered with, “I guess.”

“She was close to your sister.” Now that came out like a statement, not a question.

He shrugged passively. “They were close, yeah.”

“Your sister texted me last night and said when she was back in town we could chat about my mom and I’d be able to find out what I wanted to know.”

Remy gritted his teeth. Fucking Rita. Always a nosy little wench that didn’t know how to keep her fat fucking mouth shut. That meeting wouldn’t go well, but again, Sara didn’t have to know that.

“I see,” was his tight reply.

“Is that alright?”

He crossed his arms and looked over at her. “Rita… She’s not a daisy. She’s the shoe that stomps on daisies. You, Birdy, are a daisy. And she’ll stomp on you in a heartbeat.”

Confusion clouded her face. “Why?”

“Rita’s a bitch,” he casually stated. “Not a little bit of a bitch either. She’s a full-blown, psychotic, raving bitch.”

Sara’s eyes widened. More thinking. Then, “Why would Mom enjoy being around a bitch?”

Because Joanne was the biggest bitch of them all, he thought. “I’m not sure,” he responded with instead.

She finally stopped talking about it, and Remy relaxed significantly. He hated keeping her in the dark, but he didn’t want the time with her to be tainted with bad news.

Instead of watching the movie, he watched her. It was a hell of a lot better of a view than the shit she was currently staring at. Every time he looked at her lips, his heart surged with adrenaline. She had the plumpest, kissable lips he’d ever seen – naturally, anyway. There was something so soft about her appearance; she radiated innocence and vulnerability, but he knew better. There was something edgy about her, too. It was in those eyes, betraying her soft features, gripped with a kind of roguish darkness he wasn’t sure he could trust.

She looked back at him too, but he doubted she was admiring him. Sara was the observant, quiet type. When he’d visited her – without her knowledge, sure, but that was neither here nor there – she was always off on her own, studying the world around her. That same deep gaze was directed at him. She was trying to figure him out and, for the first time in eons, he was hoping she’d like what she’d find.

He had this one opportunity, and he wanted her to want him.

No.

He would make her want him.

It was not lost to him how fucked in the head he was. Rita had told him so many times before that the level of obsession he’d developed for a girl he barely knew was unhealthy. But he did know her. He’d been in and out of her life for years, watching her grow and change right before his eyes. So what if it was unhealthy? So what if he manipulated her and changed her world around so it revolved around him? So what if he had obvious mental issues from his fucked up past? So what if he was a selfish fucking bastard that did horrible things to get to her? At the end of the day she was here, in his bunker, and she wasn’t going to get away.

He never said he was a good guy.

Jaxon

She just vanished.

The days passed by.

Then a week.

Then two.

Then three.

By the fourth, he was on the verge of losing his sanity. Where would that cocksucker have taken her? He was hardly around the Jackal compound. Jaxon knew he was spending every moment he could with her.

“He’s a fucking ninja,” Damien said after coming back from another scope around the clubhouse. “The guy knows from a mile away if someone’s watching. It’s actually very impressive.”

Jaxon stared daggers into Damien’s enthralled face. “Then we have to find another way.”

Damien stood with his back against the bar. The bruises around his face and head had practically disappeared, but there were still healing scrapes all over his arms.

“Jaxon,” he started, and his voice took on a seriousness that had Jaxon shutting down immediately. “Finley’s noticing your absence. He’s onto you, bro.”

“What the fuck do I care what Finley thinks?” Jaxon snapped.

“You haven’t touched pussy since her–”

“God fucking forbid I don’t want to stick it everywhere, huh? Wow. Let’s all crucify me for not wanting those obtuse, attention-seeking skanks jumping all over me.”

Damien frowned. “You know that shit isn’t tolerable. It’s part of what the club’s about.”

“Why? Because Finley made sure of it?”

“Yeah–”

“Well, fuck Finley.”

Damien looked around the bar, making sure they were out of earshot from the Scorpions gambling at their tables. When he was convinced they couldn’t be heard, he turned back to Jaxon.

“She didn’t want you,” he simply stated. “She made her mind–”

“Because of you!” Jaxon icily interrupted. “Because you told her what goes on around here. If it wasn’t for you, she’d still have been here!”

“If it wasn’t for me, she’d have been getting fucked by him as we speak! Now you keep this shit up, and he’ll start tracking your whereabouts to make sure you stay away. Is that what you want?”

Jaxon had to suppress the violent urge to punch Damien out. Of course he resisted, and not because he didn’t want to, but because punching Damien out was a fucking impossibility.

“I did what I could to protect her,” Damien continued, keeping his glare intact. “Told her you were shit for her – anything to get her out of this life. You saw Finley. He would have taken her just to prove he has more power than you.”

Jaxon didn’t reply.

“You need to let her go. You got brothers here that care about you. They turn to you when they need someone. Don’t rock the boat, bro. No one deserves to die because of one man’s selfishness.”

Although Jaxon valued Damien’s friendship, he fucking hated him too.

But he was right. His greed would only result in serious repercussions, and although some of the men here had questionable moral issues that disgusted him beyond measure, the majority of them were like family.

She had decided to walk away, and when he thought about it too hard, the temperature in him rose to a boiling point. He had no fucking clue what to do. One minute they were promising everything to each other, and the next she wanted out. How much more of this uncertainty could he take from her?

As a last resort, he picked up his phone and sent text message number infinity and two.

Please, tell me where the fuck she is.

He knew there would be no response, but it was always worth a shot.

*****

Jaxon’s heart had stopped. There was no other way to describe it. It just… stopped.

How many days had passed by? How many tears had been shed? How many hours had been spent consumed over her departure and where she could have gone? He was losing his mind. He couldn’t even breathe without feeling a searing pain in the pit of him.

Didn’t she know how much he loved her? Was it so easy for her to walk out the way she did? But then it couldn’t have been. She’d taken photos with her. You don’t take memories with you of something you didn’t care about.

However, all hope was not lost. Lexi had fled too. Those two were inseparable. Surely they were together. Of course they were together! Maybe they were just traveling or hiding out someplace to cool off. Regardless, they would return. They wouldn’t abandon two years of school after all the hard work they’d put in. Sara would come back in time for the new semester and he would find her there. And if, in all its unlikelihood, he didn’t, he had his mother. Sara would never abandon Lucinda.

“I didn’t even know things were going bad,” his mother had said when he’d called her the ten millionth time.

“Things weren’t all bad. I don’t want to talk about it. Just tell me when she calls you and let me know what she says. I need to know where she’s taken off to.”