Scandal:The Complete Series(44)

He falls back on the couch like a ragdoll, arms stretched out lifelessly to either side. “This is the best way,” he says with relief oozing out of him. “When you saw the scar, I hoped it would jar some memories. You once asked to touch that scar when I was ten at the hospital.”

“Did I actually touch it?”

He smiles. “No, you chickened out. You were so sweet, Ella Wade, with your adult-like concern and all your big words. You overwhelmed me. Every detail of you became the light in my lonely world.”

A smile forms on my lips, I can’t help it. “We were just kids.”

“You told me it’d be best not to touch the scar to keep it germ-free and hygienically maintained,” he says, ignoring me. “You were only eight, but you seemed like the wisest being in all of God’s creation.”

“They call that precocious,” I say. “I grew out of that.”

“Maybe,” Jax says, “but I still see the wisdom and the light in you.” He takes my hand and pulls me onto the couch. I let him do it, giving into his will, and it feels so good.

“I remember, Jax,” I say softly. My voice breaks. I do remember now. Everything. Clearly. It all comes rushing back like summer rain.

“I wanted to stalk you,” he says, “but I stayed away. I just needed to know you were okay. To me you were everything good.”

He laughs nervously, turning once again into the little boy who followed me everywhere fourteen years ago during his brief summer vacation in Santa Barbara. Everything in me wants to believe in the purity of his story, let him wrap his arms around me and lock away all the ugliness in the world.

“I like that story,” I say sweetly. I didn’t plan that tone.

“There has to be a way to start again,” Jax says. “Tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it. Being with you makes me whole.”

“Honesty, Jax. Always.”

He wraps an arm around me and kisses my forehead. “Always.”

I rest my head on his chest, counting the lustful beats of his fierce heart against his ribcage. One, two, three… and then one last question pops onto my lips. “Were you ever lovers?”

His chest rises and falls faster now. I put one hand on it to keep it from escaping his body. “Madison and I? No, baby, we were something more. Kindred spirits. Lost souls. We understood each other. We could mess it up with sex. Even when drunk as skunks we knew never to jeopardize that bond.”

“I’m so sorry, Jax,” I say. “She meant a lot to you.”

“I miss her, Ella,” he says, admitting it for the first time. His chest becomes rigid now, almost as if his lungs have quit him.

I lift my fingers to catch a tear at the edge of his eye. My heart slows, the room spins and I bury my head in his lap weeping. “I miss her too,” I sob. “I miss us, the sweet children we all were. I miss my father and I missed you so terribly much these last few days. I thought you didn’t exist. I thought you were a cruel joke in a long line of cruel jokes.”

My whole body lets go. Every muscle relaxes as I kiss his pants where my tears have dampened. His hot lips land on my neck, hungrily. They are wet and desperate. He lifts me up so he can find my lips with his own.

“Ella,” he says through thin breaths as he kisses my entire face. He says it again and then a third time. Three whispers from my sweetest dreams. I want him to keep saying it.

I want him to say my name until I am the only word he knows, until all the cruel world falls away and the darkness fades into endless light.





—six—


Jaxson


Even as I kiss her, I feel numb. Worse, I feel like a fraud. She thinks I’ve told her everything and I should tell her everything—I want to so badly, but I can’t bring myself to do it. I don’t know how to tell her that her life is in danger because her poor excuse for a father has angered a murder syndicate.

I’ll keep my mouth shut for now even though if I tell her everything, I would be able to explain it was her father who gave me her photos. He’s the one stalking her. Maybe it’d do her good to know her father never stopped caring for her in his own fucked up way.

Ella’s lips taste so good. She trails her little hands along my shoulder blades and I’m losing my mind. I’ve never come close to feeling anything so sweet before, this desperate need for contact with a woman’s body and soul, the need to keep her close and make sure she’s mine. It’s devotional. My spirit entwines with her life force and everything in me asks for more.

Despite all the messed up emotions, despite the feelings of guilt, the dark, needy part of me wants nothing more than to rip her shirt open and take her soft nipples in my mouth until they stiffen and get so aroused they send panicked messages all the way to her sweet pussy.