“What?” He reaches up, swiping his hand over his neck.
“It’s not something you can wipe away, silly!”
He flicks water in my face and I can’t help but smile. He gives me these quick glimpses into the quirky and funny Jax, and I’ll take them. All of them.
We head to his bedroom and climb into bed. I’ve only slept in here a few times, because usually we’re in the group bed. He keeps a simple room with only a bed, a desk, and a small corner bookshelf behind his chair. His sheets are black satin and feel so smooth against my skin. I learned my lesson the first time with these sheets. Approach with caution, like you’re on a safari surrounded by lions, not like a kid at a bouncy house party. The first time I slept in here, I ran and jumped on the bed and slid straight the fuck off. I was wearing a satin nighty and apparently satin on satin equals face planting on the floor. So as you can imagine… super sexy with a busted lip.
He rolls to his side and before I can even scoot over to him; he snakes his arm under my leg, grabs my ass, and pulls me toward him. My leg rests on his stomach, which is still warm and a touch damp from the shower, and my head finds the crook in his neck. “You know I was coming over here already,” I mumble with my eyes closed. The sandman has loaded up my eyelids because it’s getting harder to keep them open.
“I know, but I didn’t want to wait a second longer.” He kisses my forehead. “Goodnight, love.”
“I love you, too,” I mumble out against his skin, head foggy and falling down the dark hole of sleep rapidly.
EVERLEE – BUTTERFLY MEET PTERODACTYL
Theclockonthewall feels like a guillotine inching closer and closer to my neck. Sammie will be here in a few minutes and I’m running around the house like a chicken with its head cut off, straightening everything. That’s not true. Callum hired a company to clean this morning, and they just left thirty minutes ago.
Four hours! They were here for four hours, but I feel like they left the house how they wanted to, versus how the guys like it, or maybe that’s just me.
Knox swings into the room and grabs me around the waist and lifts me up, with my back pressed against his chest, pressing his nose into my hair. “What are you doing? It all looks great.” He sets me down.
“I know. I’m just… excited? Nervous? Anxious?”
“To take ownership of a sex club? You’re perfect, you know that?”
“No, but you can keep trying to tell me.” A sly smile parts my lips.
“I will tell you whatever you want to hear, love.” He brushes the hair away from my face and plants a kiss on my lips.
“And also, I’m not taking ownership. Remember?”
He rolls his eyes. “Whatever. You are, but if you want to think you aren’t to make yourself feel better, that’s fine, too.”
“Knox.”
He waves over his shoulder as he walks out of the front living room.
“Knox!” I yell, running after him and turn the corner running into a wall of muscle. “Jax.”
“Don’t sound so happy to see me.”
I wrap my arms around him, inhaling his citrusy, musky scent. “I’m always happy to see you and your grimace,” I say, grabbing his chin and shaking it.
He was gone this morning when I woke up, which made me a little sad, but I know he goes on early morning workouts and runs to clear his mind before he starts the day.
“Your phone was going off this morning. I went and cut the alarm off.”
“Shit. Sorry.”
“Not a big deal. I needed to get up and workout, anyway.”
The air falls silent, and he looks at me. For a moment I think he’s going to say something about last night, but he doesn’t. “Are you ready for Sammie?”
“Yea, but what if she doesn’t take the offer?”
He shrugs, “It’s a good offer, more than she’ll probably get from an outside buyer, plus we’ve written in the offer we’ll keep all the things she has changed and try to tackle the list of her other ideas.” My face contorts, so he adds, “We won’t only do her ideas, we’ll do yours too.” He kisses my forehead. “We think that’s something that will be important to her. She put in a lot of time and work into this place, really making it her own, so we want to honor that.”
“Aren’t you boys the sweetest?” I tease.
