Page 37 of Reckless
After a moment, Jaz asked, “What is it?” Her dark brows had come together, a sign of confusion and concern. She’d been through so much since coming to Midpark, and it looked like things weren’t about to slow down yet. I would do everything in my power to keep her safe, to keep her alive; she had my word.
“I know you might look at me differently after I tell you this,” I said, wishing I didn’t have to be so talkative. Sometimes silence was the best answer. I’d never been one of those fools who talked so much my own voice box got sore. Listening, I’d found, was so much better. “But I don’t want to hide it from you, either.”
She sat with her back rigidly straight beside me. “Okay, now you’re scaring me a little bit.”
Figuring it was best to get the topic of the conversation out in the open, I said, “It’s about Ryan.”
Jaz’s expression changed, and I knew she was smart enough to connect the dots. If Dante had been the one to attack Ryan and his friends, it was only fair that I was the one to end the last living idiot who’d tried to rape her.
“Markus and I went to the hospital, and I suffocated him.” The truth, laid bare, but as simple as it was, as much as I did not feel remorse for the act of killing, I knew Jaz wasn’t like that. She wasn’t like me; she felt guilt, remorse, and all the other feelings that usually evaded anyone with Scott blood.
Since she said nothing, I went on, “I paid Dante to go after Ryan and his friends, too.” In reality, they were all dead because of me, because I couldn’t sit back and let them live knowing what they’d tried to do. Maybe Dante would’ve gone after them himself—he did seem a bit off his rocker—but that was something we would never know now.
Jaz didn’t get up, and she didn’t say anything for the longest time. Those dark eyes simply stared at me, as if she expected me to say more. Finally, after a while, she murmured a single word: “Why?”
I turned my head to meet her stare, wanting to lean into her, to feel her soft skin against mine and those lips devouring everything I’d give her. Before Jaz, I never knew what addiction was like, what craving someone else was like. Now that I did…now that I knew how she made me feel, I never wanted it to end.
The realist in me told me it would. After graduation, I’d be stuck in this house, working for the family. Jaz would go off, do whatever it was she was born to do. Go to college, become someone in the world. That was never in the cards for me, and I’d been fine with that.
At least, I was fine with it, until her.
“You,” I said, knowing it probably wasn’t what she wanted to hear. “I couldn’t let them get away with what they tried to do to you, Jaz. I couldn’t. They tried to hurt you in the worst way, and so I set a beast on them.”
Jaz’s expression was heavy, and she stayed silent, watching me, listening to me. Hey, at least she wasn’t getting up and storming away. I could consider this a win, in that respect.
“And I would do it over and over again,” I told her, meaning every word I spoke with my entire heart. It might be a black thing that sometimes ceased to beat in care of anyone else, but for her, it tried to be a normal heart. I’d never be like anyone else, but then again, Jaz had never asked me to. “Anyone who hurts you doesn’t deserve to live.”
A blunt blanket statement, but I meant it wholeheartedly.
Jaz then asked something I wasn’t expecting, “What would you do to your brother, if he hurt me?”
I blinked, my instincts telling me to tell her exactly what I’d do, what I wanted to do. It went against everything I’d been taught since birth, against everything that meant being a Scott—when you were a Scott, family and loyalty was above all else—but sitting here, staring at Jaz, I suddenly knew.
“I’d kill him.” I spoke it so easily, so calmly, as if I talked about killing on a daily basis. As if confessing to Jaz that I would kill one of my brothers for her was something normal. She wouldn’t know it went against everything I thought I was.
Jaz was changing me, and I didn’t know if I could stop it. I didn’t know if I wanted to.
She reached for one of my hands, and she ran a finger over my knuckles, tracing the tattooed letters there. “It’s bad that I’m not running for the hills,” she whispered. “At my old school, if a boy I was seeing would’ve told me that he’d killed someone, that he would kill his own brother for me, I would’ve run the other way—and called the cops. But you…”
I watched as she shook her head, wondering what was tripping her up now.
“This place has changed me, I think,” she said, her dark gaze locking with mine. “Or maybe the company I keep did.”
Maybe I changed her, was what she was saying. I never knew it was possible, to feel content that I’d gotten into someone else’s head, their heart, their body. I never knew any of this was possible for me. Jaz had stormed into my life and upended everything I thought was real, and you know what? I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Jaz lifted her other hand, running it along my jaw. I’d just shaved this morning, so it was smooth to her touch, allowing me to feel the softness of her fingertips unhindered. My eyelids shut, and I relished the small sensation, feeling myself leaning in towards her.
“I like you, Vaughn,” Jaz whispered. “I like you so much, even if I shouldn’t. I can’t help it.” She went to crawl on my lap, straddling me on the edge of the bed. My eyelids cracked enough to see her face inches away from mine, my hands finding her hips as hers tangled in my black hair.
“I don’t want to talk anymore,” I murmured, and Jaz nodded in agreement. Her lips came down on mine, and I tasted her for the first time in what felt like forever. Even a day spent without her mouth on mine was an eternity. With her constantly on my mind, in my dreams, making my body crave things it never craved before, it was difficult to stay sane.
And yet, here we were now, both of us about to lose it.
I’d never felt these things before, never wanted to do what we were about to do. Sex had never interested me before Jaz. She’d walked into Midpark High and threw my world for a loop, made me want her and her body something unbelievably fierce. I never wanted to let her go.
Heat flooded my body as she rocked her hips along me, grinding her midsection against mine and eliciting a twitch in my jeans. Her lips were ridiculously soft on mine, supple and sweet, and I held onto her with a firmness that I hope told her I would never willingly let her go. She was mine, even if she happened to be Dante’s, too.
And Jacob’s. And maybe Archer’s.
