the hospital, I was on my patio, carefully watching my brother and Taylor play what my brother had termed “a friendly game of chess.” They were sitting across from each other at the small patio table, and I was surveying them from a lounge chair.
Of course, he’d called it that hours ago when Taylor had mentioned she played, and Jax had suggested the two of them have a friendly game.
Right about now, or at least in the next ten minutes, I had a feeling Jax wasn’t going to feel the same way he had right after dinner.
Serves the bastard right since he dropped in for dinner unannounced.
Not that I didn’t know exactly why Jax had casually dropped in just in time for dinner.
Number one, he was a lousy cook.
And number two, he couldn’t wait any longer to check up on me.
I’d been pretty evasive when I’d talked to him every day on the phone about work. Maybe because I’d had no idea what to tell him. I learned something new about Taylor every single day, every reveal more surprising than the last, but I didn’t want to discuss that stuff with Jax.
I’d never hear the end of it, and he’d start all that crazy shit again about me liking Taylor.
I didn’t really want him to know that there wasn’t a single thing that I didn’t find attractive about her, and no, my instinct to protect her wasn’t getting any better.
It fact, it was becoming fucking unbearable.
And now that she wasn’t as defenseless and vulnerable as she’d been right out of the hospital, my goddamn dick wanted in on that obsession, too.
I knew if I told him that, Jax would start crowing about how he’d been right, and I wasn’t in the mood for his bullshit.
My balls were starting to turn blue, and if Jax knew, he’d have a damn field day with that.
But dammit, Jax had been right about me wanting to bend her over the nearest object and fuck her until we were both sweaty and satisfied.
Christ! Taylor was still recovering, and all I’d been able to think about for the last few days was getting my painfully hard dick inside her.
Maybe if it was simply a bad case of lust, I could handle it better, but it wasn’t. I refused to bullshit myself about that.
I was attracted to Taylor in ways that I didn’t understand, but I was past trying to figure out why she was the gnawing pain in my gut that wouldn’t fucking go away.
I just didn’t care about the whys anymore.
All I wanted was to satisfy this damn carnal obsession.
Honestly, what guy wouldn’t be enchanted by Taylor Delaney? She was alive with warmth and energy that seemed to exude from every pore in her body, and I was a chilly guy who wanted to wallow in all that vibrance. I wanted to make it mine.
I wanted to make her mine.
I wanted her naked, writhing in the throes of a powerful orgasm, screaming my name while she came so hard that her pleasure was almost too much to handle.
Not. Happening.
Her body still had healing to do, and I’m sure her mind needed that, too.
Nope. I wasn’t going there.
I tried to jerk my lurid thoughts from my brain, shaking my head a little to get a grip on myself.
I’d been fighting that fight for a couple of days now, and even when I had control, it slipped pretty damn quickly.
The only thing that kept me reined in now was my concern for her physical and emotional state.
Taylor didn’t need a man who wanted to fuck her. She’d been sexually assaulted over and over, so that was probably the last thing on her mind. If she ever thought about sex, it was probably with revulsion, and I certainly couldn’t blame her for that.
Luckily, every medical test Prince Niklaos had gotten done on the rebel leader had been negative, and Taylor had the file of results to prove it.
She was getting healthier every day, but I knew she still had a ways to go before she’d physically be where she was before the kidnapping.
I tried to focus on what Taylor was doing, and the game that was in progress.
Jax and I were both really good players, but I was better, so he almost never suggested that we play against each other.
He only asked Taylor because he was cocky about the fact that he easily beat her.
He didn’t ask Cooper for a game, either, because neither one of us could