“Nobody’s stopping you.”
She blinks up at me in surprise, her mascara smudged on one eye, dark shadows beneath it as she glowers at me.
Scowling, Jax snatches a towel from a hook on the back of her door and leaves the room. I can still hear her brothers talking as I follow her silently to the bathroom.
She turns, about to shut the door in my face, when I force my way in.
“Get out,” she says sharply, as I lock the door. “If you think you’re coming anywhere near me, you can fucking?—”
“Let me help,” I say, cutting her off mid-sentence as she stares at me, her mouth open.
I walk to the shower decisively, turning it on as I stare upward at the pathetic excuse for a shower head. It’s tiny, and the dribble of water coming out of it is depressingly cold and miserable.
I watch the water cascade into the bath, with mold along the sides and a brown stain above the drain.
“Come back to my place,” I attempt, desperate to have a chance to care for her after the horrible misery of the last few hours.
“I swear to god, Gray, get the fuck out of here,” she hisses, and her eyes flicker to the door as Ben’s voice grows in volume before footsteps descend the stairs.
“I’m not leaving until we’ve talked this out,” I insist.
“Talk what out? That you ripped my brother’s club away from him? That we owe you more than we can ever repay?”
I step up to her, crowding her back against the sink.
“Either let me help you, or I’ll put you over my shoulder and take you back to my place, whether you like it or not.”
“I’m getting sick and tired of men telling me what to do,” she snarls.
The water has turned warmer now, and there’s steam filling the room. I remove my jacket and roll up my sleeves. The bruises on her skin keep drawing my eye, and for once, my anxious need to get her clothes off has nothing to do with sex. I want to check over every inch of her skin and make sure they haven’t caused any major damage.
“Either you come back to my place right now, or you let me help you get clean and comfortable again. Which are you going to pick? Either way, I’m not leaving you alone.”
Jax sniffs, looking at the water running down the drain. The exhaustion weighs on her face, lines around her mouth showing the tension, the fear of the last few hours clearer than any words.
With a defiant shake of her head and a venomous glare at me, she shrugs one shoulder and strips off her clothes.
It’s perfunctory and in no way erotic, as I look over her skin, searching for any marks at all. There are scratches on the backs of her upper arms and a nasty cut on her elbow. The bruising on her legs is mainly around her thighs, and I swallow hard, trying not to punch my fist through the mirror behind me.
She pushes past and gets under the shower, shaking out her hair, but as she runs her hands through it, they’re shaking.
My chest aches painfully as I pick up her clothes one by one and fold them neatly into a pile.
The shower curtain isn’t enough to keep water from pooling onto the floor. I step closer, pulling it out of the way and opening up the space between us as she looks at me, her jaw clenched.
“Fuck off, Gray.”
“Sit down. Let me help get you clean.”
I don’t miss the little tremble of her lip as she contemplates me for a long time. Rivulets of water are running over her beautiful body, but all I can see are those huge, gorgeous eyes I love so much.
Her hair is wet against her back, the drizzling water from the shower head barely bathing her shoulders as she stands, paralyzed by indecision for a moment before she finally lowers herself to the bath, sitting there with her knees pressed to her chest.
I pull the showerhead from the wall, fiddling with it to boost the pressure, but it makes no difference. The shampoo and shower gel are in a variety of different bottles on a rusting shelf in the corner, and I wish we were in my bathroom, where I could pamper her for real.
She’s shivering slightly, so I turn up the water until it’s flowing better and hand her the showerhead so she can direct it over her shaking shoulders.
Jax doesn’t speak as I squirt some gel into my hand; it smells of lemons, and the strong odor permeates through the steam-filled air.
