He felt the ground shake unsteadily beneath him and the air tremble with the sudden rush of temper Jax was desperately trying to bite back as Tara slipped into her father's house like nothing of consequence had just passed between them.
Frustration relentlessly thundered through him, making his heart speed and his blood pound with the need to race after her but Opie's low tone was a welcome flag of caution as his friend queried, "What happened?"
"No idea," Jax clenched his jaw, trying not to fall back into the black void of checkered anger that could so easily suck him in and spit out something ugly, vile, and utterly stupid that would only further upset the precarious balance he'd been trying to achieve with Tara by slowly drawing her closer without scaring her away.
"Sorry, man," the mountain of muscle before Jax helplessly sniggered like he was still a little boy trying to sneak crude potty humor past their all too astute second grade teacher, Mrs. Bulldock, before she made him clap erasers for his unrepentant attitude.
"Yeah, I can see that," Jax replied with a disgruntled smirk as his best friend's long standing amusement that Tara was the only female his bad boy aura and natural charm couldn't readily tame rose to the surface despite his foul mood.
Op's mouth quirked to the side, sunlight making the red tint of his long beard flame along with his humor before the other biker eventually raised his frank brows and thoughtfully reminded Jax, "Brains before bullets, Brother."
"Yep," he shot back already knowing where the barrel of his friend's advice was pointed.
"Better find out what she's thinking before you do anything," Opie aimed with long standing practice. "You know she'll have a good reason, she always did."
Jax took a deep drag from the butt that he'd nearly forgotten was lit in his hand knowing that Tara surely would have an explanation filled with lots of poignant words; all of them steeped in irrefutable logic and thoroughly soaked in a rational perspective. They'd line up like obedient little soldiers to stalwartly fight her verbal battle for her but no matter what his wife actually articulated, her silent premise could be summarized into one thing; Tara was still running from him.
And, no matter how she delivered that message, it would still hurt like hell.
"Yeah, man, I know," he swallowed the surge of anguish that threatened to break over him, refusing to let the raw wave of angry habits intrude on the resurrected horizon of their future. He wasn't going to let his fists harshly speak for him against hard surfaces and he wasn't going to let them devolve into a nasty tit for tat styled argument where Tara's stubborn nature always won out either. This time, Jax was going to reasonably talk with her until he'd picked off every straggling point of intellect and demolished every coherent line of defense Tara tried to erect between them until the obstinate woman had no choice but to surrender the truth.
Decision fucking made, Jax ruthlessly crushed the cigarette under his foot and stalked toward where Tara had made her escape inside the house earlier. He didn't need to search hard to find her; in fact, he almost tripped over his wife's bent form when he first passed through the garage into the kitchen. Tara was just inside the door; nonchalantly moving freshly laundered bedding from the ancient washer to the equally decrepit dryer like it was something routine they did together on a regular basis which pissed him off even more.
"Want to tell me what's going on," he led out; his burning irritation almost banked for the moment by his overly forced control.
"What are you talking about," her green eyes met him in wide open confusion, obviously, not seeing the huge God damn line she'd drawn in the proverbial sand outside.
He eyed her in a pointed way that practically dared Tara to avoid answering his next question, "Why don't you want to stay at the clubhouse with me?"
"Jax," she started with the befuddled slant of her eyes, "you know I need to clean this place out and me being there really isn't fair to the guys. They kept certain things in check last night," she gave him a significant look to indicate the apparent lack of easy women flashing their naked feminine wiles or more, "but they're not going to be happy if they have to keep that up."
"They were just being respectful," he evenly countered not nearly satisfied with Tara's evasive response yet.
"I know and I appreciate it," she half smiled in recognition of his Brothers unexpected courtesy as she pressed the button to start up the beleaguered old machine. Then her dark brows scrunched together for a long moment, her considerable unease raking over his rapidly dwindling patience before Tara hesitantly admitted, "It would probably be easier to talk here too."
Suddenly, time stilled, sucking the life out of his smoldering fury when it dissolved into nothing but ashen misunderstanding as Jax realized that Tara wasn't trying to run from him or put up another choking smokescreen. She hadn't even been trying to strategically outmaneuver him in the silent war of unshared history between them.
No, she'd just been harmlessly attempting to control how their inevitable conversation would occur, with less eyes and ears to eavesdrop or interrupt and that wasn't necessarily a bad thing for either of them, but what was of crucial importance to Jax was that Tara wasn't hiding from it or from him with her disclosure. At some point, she'd made up her infuriatingly headstrong mind to actually discuss things with him while she was here which inherently made Jax breathe a little easier than he had before since each passing second wasn't one less chance, another cruelly missed opportunity, to get close to her again.
Casually, he conceded with unforeseen relief, "Alright, we'll stay here the next few nights."
"Jax," Tara immediately countered with a hint of emotional panic beginning to undermine her prior facade of mundane serenity, "I'll be fine here by myself, you really don't need to sleep here."
Instantly, annoyance sparked to life again because what Tara really meant was that she didn't want to even rest under the same damn roof with him never mind curl up under the sheets beside him but his wife was fucking out of luck this in this skirmish as Jax leveled in a manner that brooked no argument, "Babe, you don't go anywhere, even here, alone."
Her head slowly dipped to the side under the weight of his unyielding statement. "You really think that I could be in danger don't you," Tara asked as worry finally crept into her gaze, "that wasn't just an excuse to get me to stay this morning was it?"
And, just like that, Tara expertly pulled the yo-yo string of his emotions once again; tightly coiling his aggravation back in and effortlessly rolling out the reassurance that he needed to give them both.
"Look, I'm sure that everything is going to be fine, that nothing will happen," his eyes sincerely implored her to understand the severity of their current situation without pressing for the illegal details, "but we gotta be a little more cautious for a while."
Once again, Jax rode the razor sharp line between need fully clasping Tara to him and recklessly driving her away for good. There wasn't a damn thing he could do about it either because there was no way he'd compromise her safety after everything that had happened in the past and the unsettling meeting he'd had with Romeo this morning.
No matter what, Jax just couldn't see her hurt again even if that meant that Tara's stay in Charming didn't entirely meet with her approval. He was going to stick as close to her as the unconventional wedding bands they'd inked into their skin over a decade ago. From the tender concern unexpectedly shimmering back at him from Tara's jeweled depths, it was perfectly clear that they'd both have to make another permanent adjustment soon because their innate connection obviously hadn't faded with the passage of time either.
Gemma had always thought that the longer she and Clay were together, the closer they'd inevitably become. That unlike her relationship with Jax's father which had eventually become stagnant and withered into decay; they'd grow so inextricably bound, so intimately aware of the other, that there would be no uncertainty as to who the other person would become because they would be grafted into one, living and breathing, entity. Unfortunately, she'd forgotten another lesson Nate had patiently taught her in her youth, that sometimes when two branches were twined together to breed something even stronger, they instead shriveled and deadened not producing a good fruit because a rotten part was all too fallibly human.
Just as she knew every petal, leaf, and stem of the floral tattoo that spanned her forearm, Gemma knew the insidious vines of treachery and deceit that had flourished in the verdant soil of her husband's black heart. There was no doubt he was capable of mercilessly beating Luanne to death, the question was whether Clay actually had killed her, and, if so, why?
Gemma didn't think that either Clay or Tig had been unaccounted for around the time they'd been notified about LuAnn's brutal passing but she couldn't recall with complete certainty either. She'd been wholly consumed by the ever widening rift between her husband and her son back then. A dangerous chasm had been rent by Donna's unfortunate demise and Jax hadn't easily reconciled the botched hit on a Brother that Clay had ordered behind the Club's back when it had taken the life of Opie's wife instead of his best friend.
It had been a very long and darkly twisted road but her boys had finally managed to steer through the worst of it and ride in tandem once again when she'd been endangered by a business rival. Gemma highly doubted Otto's threat today would mend the current tear in her family's normally unified fabric but, instead, would further unravel the tattered remnants completely. Still, Gemma had little choice in the matter, she'd have to give Clay threads of truth now or risk weaving a shroud of suspicion if one of the other guys mentioned something since there was no way to avoid telling Jax and Bobby.
With weary resolution, Gemma leaned down to place a habitual kiss of customary greeting upon her husband's scabbed lips as she confided into the sterile room, "Hey, Baby, we've got a complication."
Clay's gaze became positively feral as the pertinent details of her conversation with Otto turned him into the snarling equivalent of a lamed dog that'd rabidly fight his way out of any corner and, unfortunately for her, his vicious bite had always been more lethal than his gravelly bark.
Grease laden hands and shirtless baggy jeans were a long forgotten aphrodisiac...
Work roughened fingers clasped tightly around the hard metallic flesh of tools had always been legitimate foreplay...
The perfectly tuned bump and grind of their fondling movements made her engine purr deeply with satisfaction...
When Jax had volunteered to help Tara change the Cutlass' oil it seemed innocent enough but she'd neglected to recall just how much she'd always lusted after him whenever the dirty blonde would spread the magic of his expertly gaged fingers over the smooth body of anything with gears. His taut muscles had glistened with the sweaty evidence of his physical skill while demanding effort ran down his exposed back. The musky sheen never smeared the indelibly inked beauty it trickled over before seductively pooling at the base of his spine just above the puckered kiss of his boxers waistband, the heady liquid a tongue flicking vintage that always made her distinctly thirsty.
Yes, she might have forgotten but the sly gratification that danced with the small dimples of Jax's playfully seductive grin showed that her biker had known exactly how she'd react to his automotive ministrations.
And, even now, as she drove with Jax leading her escort in Piney's Caddy and Opie and Kip bringing up the rear, all Tara could think about was the male bounty that would soon be riding shotgun beside her when they eventually made their way back from the Teller-Morrow compound. It wasn't just the proximity of Jax's all too tempting physique in the vehicle's close confines that had Tara incredibly nervous or the vague element of danger posed by some clandestine criminal element that caused her alarm. No, it was the fact that as soon as the heavy metal door creaked closed behind him; they'd be alone.
No Brothers. No Gemma. No distractions. Just them.
It scared the shit out of her.
So much so, Tara almost hyperventilated from the terrifying fear silently stalking her.
Purposefully, she gripped the steering column for additional support after she parked near the clubhouse because Tara knew their imminent discussion would be pure emotional torture. Yet, she couldn't deny that the landslide of grueling truth needed to be shared before they were unexpectedly swept away and crushed by its suffocating weight at an inopportune time, or, worse, after Jax finally convinced her with his unwavering confidence that there was still an idyllic outlaw future ahead for them.
The man simply made every feminine part of her quiver with the want to believe his ruffian charm as Jax practically dared Tara to reclaim her rightful place at his side; a coveted position that her steadfast heart was practically forbidding her logical brain to classify as a really bad idea because it seemed that Jax had kept the spot vacant waiting for her return. Maybe, she just needed to wistfully imagine that the surreal fantasy he spun with virile ease could actually become their new reality since it's what she'd secretly dreamed about all these miserable years apart.
Still, yearning girlhood fancy aside, knowing that the churning storm of elemental honesty needed to be endured wasn't going to make facing this Clay-made disaster head on any less complicated for either of them, it just made its wrathful devastation even more painfully inevitable.
Finally resolved to the forecasted torment, Tara swung the driver's side door open before her ambivalent stalling raised eyebrows or more from anyone. She headed toward the limited shelter of the clubhouse to gather her overnight bag with resignation while Jax was already deep in discussion with a few of the guys in the garage across the lot. When she pushed through the door, Piney wasn't in his former spot at the corner of the bar and Tara wasn't sure if that was a blessing or not given his considerable penchant for liquor. Mildly concerned, she couldn't help wondering if the old grizzly bear had already ambled away to sleep off his excess consumption somewhere. Her inner query was temporarily stayed as Opie quickly trudged out from the opening to the back hall, essentially blocking her access with his wide frame, and startling her as he conspicuously ground out, "He's not in there."
Tara had been many things in her life but blindly stupid wasn't ever part of her repertoire and even if she'd never been gullible enough to believe one of Opie's deflections in the past, it was patently clear that her lifelong friend didn't want her headed towards Jax's room right now. So, of course, skepticism piqued, she wouldn't deviate one spec from her current mission by even the sparse distance of a misplaced click of her boot heel on the overly resonating concrete floor... especially now.
Curiosity was supposed to kill the cat but as the surgeon's sure hand popped open the battered apartment door, Tara could only wish for such an easy surrender into that good night. Instead, she felt brutally stripped raw in the stark light of day, skinned from the inside out, and ravaged by the gleaming ray of naive humiliation. Her tender flesh burned with searing pain as her splintered soul oozed with each bloody pulse of her foolish heartbreak because this wasn't their private haven anymore.
The four walls of Jax's room, that had once created an impregnable barrier to her father and Gemma's overbearing control after they'd come of legal age, wasn't her personal cocoon of safety now. Jax had certainly been there with other women, not so hypothetically nameless or faceless to her any longer either as Opie angrily reiterated an earlier command, "Ima, I told you to get your highly trafficked pussy out of our clubhouse."
While the tawdry blonde looked like she'd been ridden hard, often, and without care; Tara futilely wanted to doubt that it had happened with Jax but her overactive brain would only concede that it probably hadn't occurred yet today only because his room didn't reek of sex. It still held the subtle scent of warmed cotton imbued with the lazy aroma of their snuggled intimacy from this morning. Something which made it all the worse for Tara when the sodden tramp fluttered the wings of her false lashes slowly as tiny drips of water sparkled along her nude form like luminous butterfly kisses and taunted, "But, Jax likes me nice and shiny."
The triumphant pout mockingly splayed across the porn queen's mouth felt like the seediest of sucker punches and nearly made Tara sick as the royal cunt leaned a reigning arm against the bathroom frame, the pert nipples of her exposed breasts crowning her glaring claim, "Honey, you should wait outside now because I'm not losing Jax to the resurrected ghost of some bitch needlessly tattooed on his arm."
It hurt; stung her pride more than Tara wanted to admit to have reality slap her so roughly in the face.
There was a time, a special almost sacred period, when she'd been the only female to occupy this room, this bed, this space with him but, now, she was just one of many who'd past through Jax Teller's indiscriminate sheets.
"Tara, wait," Opie gruffly tried to stop her but she quickly snatched her bag and instinctively ran.
The reflexive need to lick her feminine wounds in private overpowered everything else, drove her furious flight out of the building, and was strong enough to elude Jax even when he rushed toward her fleeing vehicle. She could barely look at the bewildered man when he savagely screamed her name at the top of his lungs, each letter pounding against her inherent need to escape like the elemental beat of a jungle drum but instead of answering his innate call, Tara gunned the Cutlass for anywhere that her unfaithful husband couldn't follow.
Tara knew she should have been past the surety of his infidelity long before returning to Charming but her dumb heart still shattered all over again because of another one of Jax's broken promises. She was an eternal idiot forever relying on oaths that never seemed to carry more weight than the trivial air used to deliver their meaningless words but, somehow, her biker had always been the one hopeful exception to the hard lesson she'd learned in her youth.
No longer, Tara stonily vowed to herself, never again would she fall prey to the swaggering promise of trusting Jackson Teller so intimately because the man was still incapable of keeping them.
His angry bellow echoed off the concrete and stucco like the rapport of a shotgun blast, his lungs pierced by the rapid fire of fear tearing through him, and his strained legs were nearly paralyzed by the hurt -the withering fuck you finality- emanating from of the hard look Tara struck him with just before peeling out of the lot.
"What the hell happened," Jax worriedly panted as he sprinted back to his best friend who was already jumping on his bike to follow after Tara since Jax's Harley was still parked back at her father's place.
"Nothing you want to get into with her right now, trust me, Brother," Opie ruefully leveled as he swiftly strapped on his helmet. His friend's engine throttled along with his deep promise, "I'll handle Tara while you take care of that psycho bitch."
Instantly, Jax's icy gaze landed on the sultry strut of the well filmed whore making her way over to him as Opie roared away from Teller-Murrow once again in pursuit of Jax's wife for him. This shit seriously needed to end; Tara needed to understand once and for all that he wasn't letting her go and her years of abandoned freedom where she could recklessly take off as she pleased were over. Tara was his Old Lady and she was going to do what she was told where her safety was concerned or he'd fucking chain her to the back of his bike and make her because the cartel didn't dick around and neither would he.
As for the crazy trying to cuddle up to him in crowing victory now; Jax hadn't had trouble with Ima for months but he knew exactly who'd treacherously put her back on his scent.
He didn't need to look past his own bitch of a mother.
Gemma could seriously be a vindictive piece of work but this never would have happened if Jax hadn't gotten so drunk last summer on what had been his and Tara's tenth wedding anniversary and screwed the nasty bitch that'd always had a thing for him instead of a well experienced Crow Eater who knew her insignificance. He'd slovenly begged the star studded slut to make him forget with every salacious and debauched act. He'd fucked the blonde every way imaginable, in ways he never would have dared demean Tara with, but, even then, he'd only seen his wife's heartbreaking face.
Damn it, somehow, forcefully trying to drive Tara away from his emotionally enslaved mind with every hard thrust, something that had been for his own bitter self-preservation at the time might actually have worked far better today, on the real woman, than it ever had on her all-consuming memory.
Tersely, Jax dismissed his one night rut with a disdainful warning that she shouldn't flash her rancid pussy back their way again or she wouldn't even be allowed on Cara Cara turf because nothing about her acting, or anything else, was that good. Her inconsequential mewling didn't even register as he quickly rushed past her to grab his truck keys from inside the office.
As he slid into the gray cab and turned the sluggish engine over, it was humbling to realize that this was the second time today he'd been forced into a cage on behalf of his wife. And, yet, Jax knew without fail, that he'd willingly endure so much worse if Tara would just finally let him get close to her again, to let him sneak past her rigorous pretenses, and just honestly talk to him with the undiminished connection he'd seen before. If she didn't now, after letting him believe she would earlier, Jax didn't know what he'd do because he was so totally fucking lost in her that he'd never been able to find his way out of the maze of love and loyalty that she'd turned his heart and mind into while he'd still been an adolescent.
Of course, Jax reluctantly admitted to himself, it was all a mute fucking point if he couldn't even find her.