Taming Jax (First Wave Book 5) (17 page)

Grai looked to the closed door and couldn’t ignore the angry and embarrassed energy that radiated from it. He shook his head dramatically. Hell no. There was no way in hell that he was disturbing that angry woman. Not that he could blame her. Traze had always had bad timing.

Grai looked at Reven and realized the poor man was in no shape to play guessing games with the furniture. “All right, we can do this. We’ll start on the crib, and I’ll have Lagor and Cristali hack into their corporate computers and get another copy of the instructions for Melina’s bed.”  

Reven just shook his head distractedly as he paced between the boxes. How the hell was he going to fix this, he wondered? Then it dawned on him; Jax had almost allowed him to mate with her. Reven sat back down on the floor. Hard. As the memories flooded his senses.

He relived each moment with relish, and each remembered scent encouraged him more until the grin broke out on his face. She’d begged him; he thought. His beautiful mate had surrendered to him. If she felt enough for him to do it once, he could stoke that passion in her again, he thought confidently as he turned to Grai. 

“Let’s do this.” Reven said with a smile, already planning the taming of his wild and passionate mate.

Chapter Ten

Jax had been up for hours, but refused to get out of bed. Instead, she lay beside a sprawled out Bayla, who periodically smacked or kicked you if you weren’t quick enough. Jax was distracted enough to have taken a few hits before moving farther away from the baby.  

She had run through what had happened with Reven so many times that she knew every second by heart. Every emotion, feeling and scent assailed her again and again as she went through every moment trying to figure out how the hell it had happened. How she’d let it get so far.

There was no explanation. She’d lost it. No matter how many times she’d laughed off the mating talk and no matter how determined she was to have nothing to do with it; she could no longer deny the truth. She actually had feelings for the man. There was no other excuse for her uninhibited display the night before.

Jax knew she was attracted to the man physically. Hell a woman would have to be dead not to be attracted to him, she thought, trying to justify her feelings. Even now, the memory of his hard body pressed so closely to her own sent ripples of excitement through her.

She rolled onto her back and stared at the morning shadows drifting across the ceiling. She wanted nothing more than to go back to sleep but knew it would be impossible. Even now, she could feel Bayla’s energy slowly awaken, and she was pretty sure Melina was already up and wrapped in her own thoughts.  

Even if she could sleep, Jax knew she’d continue to be plagued by the erotic dreams she’d had all night. It had taken forever to get to sleep after she’d run out of the room, and she still had awakened half a dozen times because of the intense dreams.

Maybe that’s her problem, she thought. Maybe it’s just exhaustion that’s making her more susceptible to all this… this family stuff that just popped into her life. Yeah, Jax thought, liking the idea the more she considered it.

It’s probably just female instincts when you’re around kids and a hot guy who wants to play daddy. Jax sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. She could fight this. She had no problem being a mom to the kids, but she damn sure wasn’t ready to quit the fight and be a soccer mom either.

If she could just get Reven to stop pawing at her, they could make this work. With the kids anyway. Their teams could take turns on missions so one of them would always be with the kids. They could get them registered at school today, start a routine for them all. One that she and Reven could work with. She could easily convince Ivint that it would be the better option for the sake of the children.

So what if it had the added benefit of keeping her and Reven apart all the time. The children would always have a parent with them, and it was the children who mattered; Jax thought with a grin.

Feeling better now that she had a plan to put an end to this frustration and misery she was in, Jax quietly got dressed and mentally prepared herself for dealing with Reven. Jax sneered as she pictured him all gloating and arrogant about it. Like he won or something. She’d show him; she thought confidently.

“Can I go to the bathroom please?” Melina’s voice startled Jax, who turned quickly, knife in hand.

Jax looked down at the knife she’d grabbed from the top of the dresser and blushed before quickly putting it back.

“Sorry. Of course you can. You don’t have to ask. This is your home now too.” Jax said gently as she crawled across the bed and tickled an awakening Bayla, causing both girls to giggle.

The knock on the door startled all three girls. “Is everyone decent?” Reven asked from the other side, causing Jax and Melina to look down at themselves.

“Yes.” Melina said, as if she were happy that Reven was still here.

Jax sighed, thinking it was too bad the girl was so enamored of him. Otherwise, she’d make a great single mom.  

Reven pushed open the door and carried in a large tray that he sat on the end of the bed. Both girls scrambled across the bed and smelled the steam coming off of the piping hot food.

Jax watched as Reven scooped up a giggling Bayla and set her in his lap next to the tray before he handed a plate to Melina. “Eat up, breakfast is an important meal so try to clean your plate. And you, little one, you get a mix of people and baby food today.” Reven said as he picked up a spoonful of fluffy eggs and put them in Bayla’s waiting mouth.

Reven ignored the stunned look on Jax’s face and placed a plate in front of her before giving Bayla another bite of eggs. He tried his best to hide his smile but knew he wasn’t successful, so he tried to make it appear it was the children putting the smile on his face.

The effort was worth it though to keep Jax off balance. He knew that she had expected this morning to be awkward, and he anticipated that she would be more than ready to refortify the walls she’d built around herself, but he’d had enough. He had thought of every moan, every scent of her arousal and need, and he was done.

Her begging words had told him everything that he needed to know. It may have taken him a while, but he’d finally figured out what kind of man Jax needed him to be. Sadly, it was the man he’d been all along. The man he’d never shown her that he was, the one that he had hidden from her.

He didn’t know why, maybe like Jax; it was a wall he’d put up around him and the way they were both so passionate just clouded his reason. Whatever the cause, he intended to fix it. 

Jax looked down at the plate in front of her and was surprised to see scrambled eggs, toast, orange slices and… was that a hamburger? Jax shot a questioning look at Reven, who grinned and shrugged his shoulders.

“It was all you had in the house, and Amun said they needed protein to help rebuild their muscles.” Reven chuckled as he fed Bayla a spoon of what looked like yellow slime. Jax shivered and turned away from the gross looking crap.

Jax picked up her fork and dug into her eggs. She was really surprised when they turned out to taste incredible. She had the eggs devoured when she tentatively took a bite of the hamburger and moaned.

“What did you do to this?” Jax asked as she took another bite.

Reven smiled. “I used spices you already had and grilled them.”

Bayla started getting fussy as if she were done and Reven whisked her up into his arms. “Let’s get you cleaned up while your sister and Jax finish eating.”

Jax and Melina watched him walk out of the door. Jax was wondering where the arrogant jerk had gone and who was the sweet man who just walked out of the room? And when did he learn how to cook? She would have never guessed that he could, judging by the crap he had in his cabinets and freezer.

Melina was calculating the fastest route to the knife on top of the dresser and to the bathroom where Reven took Bayla. She knew that she wouldn’t need to save the baby. She could hear Reven in the bathroom, running the water and cleaning up a giggling Bayla.

It was just something her mind always did. Something she couldn’t seem to stop or control. It was comforting in a way and she had learned to rely on those strange thoughts that were always there.

Jax finshed eating the wonderful breakfast, even the orange slices that she wouldn’t have normally eaten. By the time Reven came back in with a squirming Bayla, Melina and Jax were both standing nervously by the side of the bed. It didn’t take a genius to figure it out.

“How about I change Bayla in the living room, while you and Melina change in here and the bathroom?” Reven said as he walked over to the bag with Bayla’s clothes and grabbed it. He was out of the room before Jax or Melina could respond.

“Grab your clothes and hit the bathroom. I’ll be right behind you.” Jax said as she turned to her dresser and pulled out tact pants and a black tshirt. She felt the need to feel somewhat normal today.

Obviously needing to use the bathroom as much as Jax, Melina rummaged through her bag of clothes and shut the bathroom door before Jax had a chance to grab her underwear and bra.

Figuring Reven had things under control for a few minutes, Jax waited until Melina came out dressed before heading in for her morning shower.

She had every intention of taking a long, hot shower to not only wake her up but to clear her head. The first touch of her poof on her breasts and all she could think about was Reven’s mouth and tongue teasing her hours before.

Groaning in frustration, Jax rushed through the rest of her shower. She dried herself angrily, unsure if she was madder that they had been interrupted or that Reven had acted like it never happened this morning.

She wasn’t stupid, she knew he couldn’t say anything in front of the kids. But he could have said something through the Shengari’. An apology or an acknowledgement of their mutual humiliation would have been nice, Jax thought as she threw her towel into the bright purple hamper in the corner.

No, instead he brings in breakfast! She thought, getting more irritated the longer she thought about it. What the hell? She’d had one-night stands act better before leaving! Damn that was a lie. Why the hell, did the man get under her skin so bad? She wondered in exasperation.  

Jax had every intention of ignoring the man when she got out of the shower. She’d show him how it felt to be ignored. But of course, the bastard couldn’t make even that easy on her; she thought with a sigh as she saw the girls giggling as they played on Melina’s new bed.

She stepped into the room, still set on ignoring him, when she saw what they had done. To say she was shocked was an understatement, she thought as she looked around.

They had not only built the bed and the crib, but all of the furniture, and it was placed in the room in such a way as to leave the middle of the floor for a play area. It was a perfect room for the girls. And it wounded Jax more than she’d ever admit.

She had expected to argue with Reven, even relished the thought of the verbal sparring. She had been so sure that he would have given the girls both of the spare bedrooms, using Melina’s age as an excuse for her to have her own room.

She had expected him to gallantly take the couch before he tried to worm his way into her bed. But this… this was blatant rejection; Jax thought, suddenly feeling sick to her stomach. He may as well have just said it wasn’t that good for him and slapped her. It hurt the same.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Melina gushed as she rolled around her bed laughing with Bayla.

Jax plastered a smile on her face and walked further into the room, ignoring Reven’s curious looks. “It’s amazing. I’m so glad you like it. We really need to get moving though. We need to go to town and get you both some more clothes. Not to mention groceries and the testing center, so we can see about getting you in school.”  

“Do you want to go to school with other kids your age?” Jax asked gently, unsure if the little girl would ever be ready.

Melina’s pale blue eyes looked at Jax curiously. “What is school like? Do you really learn things there?”

Jax sucked in a sharp breath; her own anger at Reven was pushed aside and all she wanted right then was to kill the people responsible for what Melina had gone through. The years she’d lost and the childhood she’d never get back.

Jax sat beside the young girl on the bed and put her arm around her thin shoulders. “It’s fun. You can play and learn with children your own age. Knowledge is one thing no one can ever take from you. It’s something a nun taught me in the orphanage I was in until our people found me.”