Page 42 of Filthy Savage
Angel
I feellike a lump of cooling clay in my seat, still reeling from the brush of Axe’s lips across my palm. It’s a small touch, almost non-existent, yet it sears in my brain as my pulse thrums beneath every inch of my sensitive skin. Something so light shouldn’t be as intimate or more meaningful than the handful of encounters that we already shared together, with our clothes off.
Quotes about solemn passion and powerful flames from romance classics likeJane Eyretwist through my thoughts as I stare at my empty hands in my lap. Clearly I’ve spent way too much time reading at the library instead of actually working. And all those idealistic meanderings ruined me a long time ago, causing me to gravitate to men like Axe all the time. It’s obvious to me that except for the fact that he’s in a biker gang, he needs fixing. He’s as broken as any other man I’ve been attracted too. Which is exactly why I need to back off.
I’ve always been drawn to damaged bad boys, yet with this man, the baggage he carries around is bigger than this truck. Working on him is sure to be a doozy, a project I’ll never overcome or grow sick of until his pain spills over and wrecks everything good in my life. My track record is stellar for picking men who are all kinds of wrong for me. I start seeing them, and eventually try to fix them, and sometimes, I’m partially successful. But then a spring will come loose, and I’ll be frustrated at my failure. The majority of my exes either wound up hating me for trying to make them better, or leaving me after their improvement.
Axe is an utterly gorgeous disaster waiting to happen—or rather, happening right this second—and I have hardly seen the tip of the snowflake resting on the tip of the iceberg that’s his unique set of issues. Even his secrets have secrets. The messy shadows waiting in the depths are sure to swallow me whole, spitting me out ragged, exhausted, and alone. Or dead, given the last day’s events.
I try to inwardly express a few affirmations.
Axe is not my problem.
Axe is not my mission.
I’m a librarian, not a goddamned missionary.
The sad reality is that Axe Voltaire is not someone I should ever give my heart to, even if I allow myself the pleasure of being with him casually. The reason has nothing to do with the fact that he’s a gang member, or from being traumatized as a child. It’s not because he’s desperately in need of weekly therapy, and not because he’s probably the worst of the outlaws in his motorcycle club. It’s not because he’s completely my type either.
Nope.
None of those.
I can’t afford to fall for the man because his touch still lingers on my skin long after he let me go, and it rests there even after we pull up beside his sister’s suburban cookie-cutter dream home, and probably after I return to my life before he came into it.
I glance in his direction as he puts the truck in park. Maybe he’s intentionally avoiding me for the same reason. I follow his gaze, which is glued to the front door, and realize I’m dead wrong about that part. The door has opened. A small boy and a taller girl hurtle outside, descend the front porch and run around in circles on the perfectly manicured front lawn. Their exit from the house is randomly timed, because they begin to play, not noticing that me and Axe are watching them from the side of the road.
My eyebrows pop up when a woman bustles out of the house in an outfit that looks like something straight out of a Talbot’s catalog. Axe’s sister has the preppy soccer mom thing down pat. How on God’s green earth can that woman be related to the man sitting less than two feet away? He’s possibly immersed in organized crime, doing deals with the underbelly of society. And there’s his sister. She could have easily been put in a time machine in her ‘as-is’ state and do a walk-on role onLeave it to Beaver. Their paths must have deviated somewhere or another, never to rejoin—until today.
The woman watches the kids for a moment, and her stare travels, settling on the bullet-ridden, beat-up eyesore of a pickup truck at her sidewalk. Neighborhood watch in the area is probably firing texts down the emergency call tree of homeowners, or may have already put out a BOLO on the vehicle. Axe’s sister’s lips compress for a millisecond, and her face slowly stretches into a broad smile that doesn’t quite meet her eyes. Still, she doesn’t make a move toward us. She stands on the porch with her hands clasped at her middle as if waiting for some kind of direction. I remain neutral, waiting for Axe to make the first move. He remains glued to his seat, staring through the windshield.
I poke him in the ribs with my elbow. “Go talk to her,” I hiss. “You’re being weird right now.”
“I’m going,” he says, sounding strangled.
His fingers click his seatbelt buckle and throws the belt off his shoulder. Opening his door, he slides out of the seat and just stands there. Something is not right between these two people. I’m sure I’m missing some crucial piece of the puzzle. They act more like strangers, like there isn’t enough history between them. Axe eventually walks across the driveway to meet her, and they embrace in the most awkward, uncomfortable way. It’s hard to watch.
So, things with Axe’s family aren’t simple either.
Why am I not surprised?
