group, you agreed to the punishments that come with them if a rule is broken,” he reminds me.
“Hey, that was never specified when I agreed to the oath,” I stress, my lips moving against his finger.
The corners of his lips quirk. “It was in the fine print.”
My lips part then shut. Did he just make a joke? If he did, his facial expression does not match it. Nor does his tone.
Maybe he’s being serious?
He looks like he is. But he almost always looks like that.
“Are you being serious?” I ask.
“I’m always serious.” He absentmindedly grazes his finger along my bottom lip ever so slightly, with his brows furrow as he dazes off. Then he quickly shakes his head and lowers his hand as if he didn’t mean to touch my lips. “Now go inside. We have a lot of stuff to do today.”
Just to make sure he understands I’m not going to obey him on command, I make sure to stand in the doorway for a few seconds with my brow quirked. Then I cross my arms for added emphasis.
His eyes darken as he watches me. “Are you challenging me right now?”
“Not challenging,” I stress. “Just proving a point that I don’t have to listen to you.”
For a faltering moment, his eyes widen in surprise, but he hastily recovers, putting his mask of indifference back on as he steps toward me, so close that the tips of his boots brush mine.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” he says in a low tone. “You took an oath that said you would.”
I resist the urge to step back. “No, I took an oath that said I’d follow this group’s rules. And none of those rules stated that I’d listen to everything you told me to do.”
The muscles in his jaw pulsate as he leans in, getting so close that the heat of his breath dusts across my face.
On the outside, I play it cool, but on the inside, my heart is hammering against my chest, and not in the same way it did when Hunter kissed me. No, this time it’s out of worry. The look on his face, it’s like he’s veering toward losing control. It has me feeling a bit unsettled, yet extremely curious.
Yeah, I’m all sorts of fucked up.
“Trust me, Raven,” he warns in a soft, but startling eerie tone. “You don’t want to play this game with me.”
I could back down. It’s not like this conversation is important. But I don’t. I’ve spent way too much of my life being controlled.
“I’m not playing a game. I’m just stating a fact. I’ll obey the rules, but I’m not going to let you boss me around.” Then I reach up and lightly pat his cheek while flashing him my pearly whites.
Maybe I shouldn’t have done it—touched him and taunted him when I know he’s a dangerous guy who is the son of a mafia boss. And as his breathing quickens, I kind of regret my decision, enough that I almost apologize. But before I can get the words to leave my lips, he wraps his fingers around my wrist. I think he’s just going to remove my hand from his cheek, but then he backs me up until I’m pressed against the wall just inside the doorway, pinning my hand against the wall beside my head.
Both fear and something else, something I’m not sure I’ve ever felt before, courses through me. And that sensation only amplifies when he grabs my other wrist and pins that hand against the wall beside my head, too.
At first, neither of us say anything, and our soft but audible breaths fill the silence. Then he slants forward, putting his face too close to mine. Our chests touch, and that feeling I’m not familiar with swells through my body even more.
It’s weird how I’m reacting this way since I hate being pinned down. My uncle does it all the time to hurt me, and while Jax looks like he might just do that, I get the weirdest feeling that he won’t.
“I’ll never hurt you.”
The voice filling my head isn’t my own.
What the shit?
“There may not be a rule stating that you have to obey me,” he breathes out with a slight quiver in his tone, “but it’s an unwritten rule. It’s why I make all the final decisions. It’s why Hunter and Zay listen to what I say.”
I gulp down a shaky breath and will my voice to come out even. “And what happens if I don’t listen