My gaze lifts above Emma’s shoulder and meets Chance’s stare, a glint in his eyes, a warning. He’s worried about Emma. He thinks I’m using her to get to him now. “Then coffee it is.”
Emma whirls around and poke’s Chance in the chest. “If you say one word about the castle, I will hurt you.”
“I won’t bring up the castle.” He looks at me and adds, “It’s a dead topic.”
Dead topic.
Because my brother is dead?
“Where are we going?” he asks. “I need to run by my apartment and take a minute.”
He means he needs to make a few calls and cover his ass. “There’s a Starbucks on the corner, a block a way,” I say. “Let’s make it easy and go there.”
He gives me a short incline of the chin. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
And I’m never getting my fucking shower. Chance heads down the hallway and Emma turns back around to face me, “Jax—”
I kiss her. “Let’s go talk to security about York.”
“You don’t even want to discuss what just happened between you and Chance? Or what could happen with Chance?”
“What’s going to happen is that we’re going to talk and drink coffee with your brother. Then we’re going to shower because I’m still in last night’s clothes. And then, we’re going to fuck. After which, we’ll eat that real meal that has now become coffee before we come back here and do it all over again, with some work thrown in the middle. Okay?”
“I approve of all of the above, but if you insist on keeping my brother a part of this, do you want to meet him in an hour and go shower first?”
“No.” I ease her close again and damn it, she feels good, too good to walk away from. Too good to be a Knight. “I want to do this, get it over with, and then have you to myself for the rest of the day.”
“Okay, but for the record, I think this meeting is poorly timed and bad for us.”
“I’m not a man that puts off the bad. I get it over with. So all that is left is the good: you.”
“Now you’re just trying to sweet talk me.”
I rotate her and pull the door shut, before catching her to me. “There’s a lot of better things to do with my mouth and you than sweet talk.”
“That was a very dirty thing to say,” she says, tilting that tempting mouth of hers in my direction. And damn, I want to taste her.
“I’m a dirty guy, sweetheart,” I say, lowering my voice, roughening it up. “Haven’t you figured that out by now?” I lean in and kiss her neck, whispering at her ear, “And my kind of dirty is the only kind I want you to remember.”
She pulls back to look at me, and that sexual tease of a moment fades into something else, something emotional, something that keeps me here far more than how much I want to fuck her again. “If you keep looking at me like that,” I say, taking her hand, “we’ll be back in your apartment, and we won’t leave.”
“Can we do that and skip the meeting with Chance?”
“No,” I say. “Lock your door, but I’m going to get a locksmith over here to put on new locks when we get back.”
“I was actually thinking that I need to do that.” She locks the door and pockets the keys in a small purse she’s wearing at her hip. “Someone here had to give him a key. That freaks me out. And how am I going to find out who? No one is going to admit they did it.”
“Which is why we need to go by security and talk to someone.”
“No one who matters is here today,” she says. “And I need to have Chance handle it. He now owns half the building.”
“And you rent.”
She cuts her gaze. “That’s another topic for another day. One we can discuss if you want to discuss why you didn’t stay the event hotel, a Knight hotel?”
Just like that, she shuts me down but she was a closed topic. And it’s not. I’m going to find out why she’s the redheaded stepchild, but what’s crazy is that I’m not sure she knows herself. Or maybe she does know because of that damn journal I didn’t read.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Emma…
Jax and I walk through the lobby of my building hand in hand, and as crazy as it might seem to some, that’s the most intimate moment I’ve shared with this man. It’s that moment when I know this isn’t just sex. It’s a comfortable moment, too, a casual moment that could be awkward, but nothing with Jax feels forced. It doesn’t feel like an expectation but rather a need. We need to touch each other. When I was with York, it became about what he needed. It became about him. There was no “we” to consider. Just him.