Plain Tiger
For Tara, the dawn not only ushered in a new day, but it also brought her old insecurities roaring back, loud and clear. High on adrenaline and attraction, it had been one thing to let her guard down and let Jax in when the rest of the world was locked out, and reality was still twenty-four hours away. But she was due back to the hospital that evening, and, suddenly, she was second guessing… everything.
By going to Charming to see Jax… and by leaving Charming on the back of Jax's bike, Tara hadn't just allowed the man beside her in bed entrance into her life, but she had also announced to the world, Jax's world, her father's world, that she existed. Tara didn't know much more about a motorcycle club than what a Google search could provide, but even she knew that she wasn't ready for everything that came with being the daughter of a thug biker.
But it wasn't just her dad and his despicable actions; it was also the Shakespearean drama unfolding within Jax's family, the guns, the IRA. Oh, and Tara couldn't forget the Kohn of it all, too. And who was she? She was just a normal, boring woman who never felt good enough. Tara hadn't been lying when she told Jax that, if nothing else, she had always known that her mother loved her. What she wasn't too sure about was if Grace regretted keeping her.
Having Tara had forever altered her mother's life. Someone who was impetuous and a free spirit became responsible seemingly overnight for the care and wellness of a completely dependent infant. That infant then became a quiet, introverted child, who then later became a sullen and angry teenager, and then finally landed on a distant and cold adult. Without Tara, Grace never would have tied herself down to an 8:00 to 4:00, Monday through Friday job, to structure and monotony. Worse than wondering if her mom ever wished that she had gotten an abortion, there were times when Grace would look at her daughter but see through her, and Tara would believe that her mom blamed Tara for her broken heart, for the only man she had ever loved leaving. Grace didn't need to talk about him for Tara to know that her father was her mother's one, true great love. Tara would never be able to compete with that.
And now, what, she thought that she could compete with ghosts, a legacy, and decades of history? Because Tara wasn't naive. What she was doing with Jax might have been new to her - the feelings, not the sex, though sex with Jax far surpassed any of her previous experiences, and she might be the product of years of self-doubt and insecurities when it came to feeling wanted and loved, but she knew herself, and she knew that what she wanted was to be the center of someone's universe, their reason for being. She wanted unconditional love, and Jax Teller came with more conditions than anyone else Tara had ever met. She wouldn't be satisfied with just having a part of him; she'd want to possess him entirely… just as she wanted to be possessed.
Besides, when the euphoric haze of their sex high faded, what would they have left between them? The only thing Jax and Tara had in common was death. How could they ever build something deep and lasting on top of such a depraved base? Plus, Tara simply didn't fit into Jax's world. She wasn't talking about the fact that she was a surgeon, and Jax was the vice president of a dangerous MC, though their disparaging professional careers would certainly pose their fair share of problems. No, what she was referring to was the culture, not their livelihoods.
She didn't smoke… anything. She rarely drank… not the least of which was because, as the child of an addict, Tara had a complicated relationship with alcohol. The only leather she owned and wore were her boots, and she didn't have any tattoos. Tara liked books. When she had an evening off, she preferred spending a quiet night in, not partying. And that was just scratching the surface of their differences. Eventually, Jax would realize all of this and start to wonder why the hell he was with her in the first place. Before that could happen - before she could be hurt anymore than she already would be, Tara would do the smart thing and walk away now - leave before she could be left.
She'd get her car back, and Jax would return to Charming, the club, and his life. Kohn was gone, and despite the police's interest in his disappearance, Tara felt confident that the cops wouldn't figure out what had happened to the ATF agent. Even before she consciously decided to protect Jax's role in Kohn's death, Tara had long since gotten rid of the gun. It had just seemed like asking for trouble to have a capital murder weapon simply chilling in one of her cold air returns. As soon as they both went back to where they belonged - Tara to the hospital and Jax to his MC, they'd have no reason to interact or even see each other moving forward.
But, first, Tara owed Jax an explanation.
"Jesus christ, your brain isn't just big; it's loud, too."
Curled up on her side with Jax wrapped around her like a second skin, Tara jumped slightly when he mumbled against her neck. She hadn't been expecting him to say anything - let alone something so intuitive, because she had believed him to be asleep. Although he just seemed to burrow even deeper into her… if that was even possible, Jax made no move to change their positions and bring them face to face. It helped.
"I was never with Kohn."
That, however, made Jax sit up… both physically and metaphorically speaking. As she felt him lift his upper body off of the bed and support himself with a single bent elbow, Tara rolled over onto her back and met his intense gaze. While she remained flat, Jax hovered over her. His face was set in a pattern of lines so intense that he didn't, couldn't, blink, and his voice, when he spoke, was clipped and hard - not with animosity or challenge but with conviction. "I wouldn't judge you even if you had been." Before Tara could express her gratitude, he continued, "for me, it doesn't matter what came before that night. I know what I saw, and I know what would have happened had I not…. I don't regret anything, Tara."
And that was all the more reason why he deserved to know everything. Without preamble, Tara launched into her story. "I met him while I was in med school. It was highly encouraged that we log as many volunteer hours as we could… because, you know, studying to be a doctor and holding down multiple jobs wasn't enough."
Despite the seriousness of their conversation, Jax wouldn't be Jax unless he was somehow thinking about sex… and trying to have it with her. "Did you wear one of those candy striper outfits?"
For his troubles, Tara just flashed him a bland, unimpressed look. "I ended up coordinating and running a CPR certification program for Northwestern Memorial. It just so happened to be where the local Chicago branch office of the ATF went to receive their CPR training."
"And, let me guess, that asshole considered his session your first date, the mouth-to-mouth your first kiss?"
Tara snorted, suddenly extremely grateful that Northwestern Memorial had provided practice dummies. "Pretty much. He asked me out the first chance he had. I turned him down, but that just seemed to make him even more determined."
"Fucking Fed," Jax swore. Resituating so that he was on his stomach, Jax mimicked her earlier position… only, instead of propping himself up on Tara, he used her chest as a pillow, looking up at her. Mere inches separated their faces. It was… intense. And intimate. And it naturally made the volume of Tara's voice drop several decibels, the two of them barely speaking above whispers.
"I won't lie and say that I wasn't tempted to say yes. I'd always been lonely, but for the first time in my life, I was alone. After so many years of disappearing - whether it was on purpose or because the past had a stronger hold over my life than the present, the attention was nice. Plus, at 25, I couldn't imagine a better 'fuck you' to my parents than dating a cop. You weren't entirely wrong when you suggested that I did certain things to spite them."
"But dating Kohn was a bridge too far I take it… even for you?"
In remembrance, Tara shook her head in disbelief. "He was crazy, Jax. Right from the beginning - in his refusal to accept that I wasn't interested, in his pursuit of me, in his lies and manipulations, in tracking me down and investigating me. Within a matter of weeks, he knew everything about me. I know he used his work resources to dig up all of the information he could, but it had to have been more than that; he must have been stalking me, too."
At this, Jax winced, and Tara was suddenly reminded of how and why they had met. Despite the extraordinary circumstances surrounding their involvement and her background which should have made her extra wary, Tara had all but forgotten - and forgiven - that Jax had stalked her, too. Perhaps this was because, unlike Kohn, Jax didn't make her feel unsafe… which was ridiculous considering the fact that she watched him execute a man. But the only fear Jax Teller inspired within her was emotional - that she could end up caring too much for him.
"I know finding out retrospectively that I followed you for all those weeks probably reopened some painful wounds, but I can't regret what I did, because, otherwise, I wouldn't have been there to..."
" … to save my life," Tara finished Jax's thought. Or maybe she amended it. Because she was pretty sure that Jax was thinking more about Kohn's attempt to rape her and not what would have happened afterwards. It was Tara's belief that, one way or another, had Jax not stormed into her life like an avenging, fallen angel, Kohn and his obsession would have killed her.
"Plus, no matter how it came about, I'm not sorry that I know you and that we somehow ended up here." In Tara's bed. Together.
In response, she could only reach down and caress his bristled jaw - Jax having not shaved in a few days. Her touch made him nuzzle further against her left breast… like a giant, affectionate, horny cat. The rasp of his stubble abraded her sensitive, tender skin and made her nipple, already hard from its exposure to the cool air, tighten just that much more. Jax noticed - of course he did!, so Tara started talking before he could further distract the both of them. If she was going to tell him about Kohn… and she felt like Jax deserved to know how he had gotten to the point where he killed a Fed for her - both for his own peace of mind… whatever that might be… and to protect himself legally, then she needed to do it without interruptions. If she stopped the tale, she might not ever restart it, and if Tara was right, and this thing between them… faded away like it had never happened in the first place, then that morning might be her only chance to talk to Jax about the matter.
"Despite his disturbing behavior, his delusion, and his fixation upon me, I still might have been tempted had I felt even a shred of attraction towards him. But I didn't. The only thing I liked about him was that he was nothing like my father, nothing like any man my mom would have dated. Plus, he was significantly older than I was. Even if I had agreed to go out on a date with him, I was too focused on school to want anything more than a casual fling. And Joshua Kohn did nothing casually."
"How'd you end up back out here," Jax asked, pulling Tara out of some of her darker memories of her time in Chicago. She was grateful for the diversion.
"By the time I received word that my mom had died, Kohn was everywhere and seemed to know everything about me. He'd roughed me up a couple of times, too. I tried to get a restraining order against him - multiple times, but he was a cop with a squeaky clean record. No one believed me. They thought I was hysterical or overreacting. One prick even accused me of making it all up as some kind of twisted sex game. So, I ran. Just like eight years earlier when I left home and never looked back, I packed my bags and fled Chicago… only, this time, I returned to the one place I always swore I'd never live again. But it turns out that this house, the house I hated and resented so much as a kid, was the only place that I felt safe."
Sniffling, Tara lifted a softly trembling hand to wipe the tears threatening to fall from the corners of her eyes. "I couldn't be bothered to come and visit my mom when she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. I was so focused on me, on my career, and I think there was even a small part of me that felt like she was getting what she deserved after more than two decades as a drunk, and so sometimes I even ignored her phone calls. But then she was dead, and she left me everything she had, and it seemed like, for the first time in my life, my mom was finally there for me in the way I wanted her to be. Timing-wise, I was just lucky, and I was able to refocus my residency applications in the Bay Area. My original plan had been Penn, but Kohn and my mother's death changed everything. As soon as I was accepted by UCSF, I left without a word to anyone. That should have been the end of it, of Kohn."
"But it wasn't." Jax wasn't asking for confirmation, and he wasn't making assumptions either. He knew, perhaps only second to Tara, just how far from the end of Kohn's obsession and psychotic pursuit of her leaving Chicago and Northwestern had been.
"Three months after I moved out here, he showed up for the first time. I was at the hospital - oblivious, lost in my work. I thought I was safe. And then there he was… like I hadn't moved 2,000 miles away to escape him. He apologized for taking so long to visit but said that work was crazy, and it was taking longer for his transfer request to go through than we wanted. As soon as he was gone, I started the restraining order process again. Luckily, that time, it worked. I don't know if it helped that I was the local girl who had done well for herself, or maybe it was the fact that Concord Police didn't personally know Kohn like it seemed every cop in Chicago did. Whatever the reason, I got my RO, and Kohn wasn't allowed within 100 yards of me. That really should have been the end of it."
Jax rotated his head so that his chin was resting against Tara's medial definition, repeating his earlier statement with even more sorrow and rage. "But it wasn't."
"He'd show up every few months - always in a public place so I wouldn't make a scene, and he'd always disappear long before the cops could arrive. That's when I stopped going anywhere but work, when I started carrying a gun, when I signed up for self-defense classes. My life has always been focused, but it became downright narrow during the last three years."
"What do you think made him attack you now," Jax queried. Tara didn't need to hear his next words to know what he suspected. The guilt was written plainly enough across his handsome features. "Do you think he knew about me and…"
"No," Tara cut him off before he could damn himself further with pointless blame and unfounded fear. "I think, when his transfer came through, that was the permission he needed. I think he saw it as validation. I was wrong, and he was right. If the ATF thought we should be together, and Kohn wanted us to be together, then we would be together, regardless of what I thought or wanted. You coming into my life around the same time was first a coincidence and then a blessing." When he still didn't look reassured, she tried a different tactic. "Jax, I didn't even know you were following me until you admitted as much… after we slept together for the first time. Trust me, Kohn was too preoccupied with his own obsession to ever notice you."
"Or my obsession with you." The self-loathing was clear in Jax's voice. "I can't exactly fault him there, Babe."
"It's different."
"How," Jax challenged. He wasn't being confrontational; he needed reassurance. He needed to see this thing that existed between them the way she did. "I'm certainly just as capable of violence… if not even moreso."
"Not that kind of violence," Tara refuted. Before he could say anything more against himself, she pointed out, "do you really think I would be with you like this if I thought you capable of rape?"
"But Tara…"
"No," she cut him off. Raising her voice for the first time, she ordered, "shut up. I don't want to hear it. Trust me, it's different. You're different. You backed down, Jax. When you could see that I was scared and unsure, you walked away. You made it my choice if we ever saw each other again. Hell, you literally put the smoking gun in my hands. Kohn tried to take my power away, whereas you gave me all of it - yours and mine both."
After several quiet moments, Jax finally said, "okay."
But Tara needed to know that he wasn't simply backing down and agreeing with her because she had gotten upset. She needed to know that he believed in what she said as much as she did herself. "Really? You understand what I'm saying to you?"
"I get it, Babe," he promised her. "But… if you felt like a physical demonstration of your faith in me was needed to really hammer home your point, I wouldn't object."
Oh, she could feel just how little objection he would offer. It was currently poking her thigh. "You're incorrigible, Teller."
"I think you mean insatiable." Despite his words and his obvious arousal, however, Jax didn't actually do anything to try and have sex with her again. Instead of seduction, he wrapped his arms around her, pulled her even closer, pushed one of his legs between her own, and delved his face back into her chest - this time settling so that his every warm breath bathed her right breast. "This okay?," he wanted to know.
"Yeah," Tara murmured, gently running her fingers of her right hand through his messy, blonde locks - the other hand she busied with tracing the lines of his tattoo, trailing her touch as far down his back as she could reach and then back up again.
She knew that, if she had given him any indication that she was turned on and wanted to have sex again, they wouldn't be falling back asleep. Jax's lethargy was real, but Tara also didn't think he was capable of ever being sexed out. Someday, he'd be that octogenarian servicing the entire female population of his nursing home. Whether Jax had sensed just how drained their conversation had left her, or whether he needed a more emotional connection to her in that moment than a physical one, whatever the reason he held her tight instead of getting between her legs, Tara was thankful.
Yawning, she closed her eyes, and the world fell dark once again.
/
Jax woke when his body realized it was alone.
The first thing he became aware of was the fact that Tara's bed no longer smelled of her. And it didn't smell of him either. There was a new scent clinging to her sheets, one that combined both of their essences into something new and different - their individual smells no longer distinguishable - superseded, and changed, and unique only onto them.
The second thing he realized was that it had been more than twenty-four hours since his last cigarette. Tara hadn't asked him not to smoke. She would have had every right to do so, and given that she was a doctor, a surgeon, Jax couldn't imagine she'd enable the habit, but the topic had never come up, because not once had Jax reached for a pack of smokes or felt the pull to light up. It hadn't even crossed his mind. And he didn't think it was a phantom restraint leftover from his days of tailing Tara and triggered once again by her presence, by being in her home. He just… didn't want to smoke.
Oh, Jax knew that, as soon as he was away from her once again, he'd instinctively reach for a cigarette. He had to dig deep in his childhood memories to recall a time when he wasn't trying to smoke. At first, the appeal had been the taboo of it, the rebellion - not against his parents who proved indifferent once confronted with his antics but against society, the man. Then, it eventually became expected - just another step in becoming SAMCRO, in being outlaw. And, now, he realized that it was routine, his body seeking the familiar action more so than it was addicted to the nicotine.
The last thing he noticed before sitting up and scooting out of bed was music. But that wasn't exactly right. Because there were no instruments. There were just lyrics and melody. And what he was hearing was no recording. Tara hadn't put on one of her mom's hundreds - if not thousands - of records. No, instead, those haunting words and those beautiful sounds were coming from Tara herself, her voice being carried to him on the clouds of steam hovering inside of the bathroom. The door already ajar, Jax finished pushing it open with just a toe, his movements silent so as not to alert the woman who fascinated him more and more with every second he knew her, with every moment he spent with her.
"Thirsty for your smile, I watch you for a while." Jax crossed the small space of the bathroom. He put his hand on the shower door but paused, listening. Still, Tara didn't realize he was there. "You are a vapor trail in a deep blue sky." He contemplated whether or not he should do something to alert her to his presence. If he said something, though, she might stop singing, and either way, he'd inevitably startle her. "Tremble with a sigh; glitter in your eye." Tara was in her own world, a world given to her by her mother… in more ways than Jax had realized until that moment. "You seem to come and go; I never seem to know." Decision made, he opened the door and stepped into the haze and mist, stray streams of nearly scalding water finding and searing his skin. "And all my time is yours as much as mine."
But Tara didn't jump, or scream, or even shiver. Instead, she calmly turned around and sang, "we never have enough time…," her words falling off and the song going unfinished. Jax should have known that, despite what seemed like her obvious preoccupation, after years of being terrorized, Tara was always aware of her surroundings, especially when as vulnerable as she was while showering.
In that moment, more than anything else in the world, he wanted to know how the song ended. "Never have enough time for what?"
Instead of answering him, however, Tara asked her own question. "What are you doing in here, Jax?"
He gave in, because she seemed uncomfortable with his presence - something he never wanted, and because he would be able to look up the lyrics later. Although Jax allowed the change in topic, he pivoted himself. "I didn't know you could sing."
"I might have rebelled against everything my mom cared about and embraced science to spite her, but I never said that I lacked artistic ability."
"Babe, that was a little more than being able to carry a tune."
Her skin already flushed from the heat of the water, Jax was amazed when he watched a blush wash over her cheeks, her chest. And then she just shrugged before attempting to turn back around and finish her shower, but he didn't even let her move ninety degrees before snapping a hand out to grab ahold of her. Despite the intensity of his actions, Jax kept his touch gentle. Gripping her right forearm, he returned her so that they were facing each other once more, lifted both hands to cup her face - his longer fingers slipping into her long, heavy, wet locks, and kissed her.
In the past twenty-four hours - after spending most of the previous afternoon riding, Jax and Tara had sex three times, and, yet, it felt like they had barely kissed. So, he took his time and savored her mouth, her taste. It was coffee, and toothpaste, and him, and it was so good that he forgot to worry about his own breath. After several passive moments, Tara engaged in the embrace. While she wrapped her arms around his shoulders, cupping the back of his neck and standing up on her toes to get closer, nearer, pressed tighter against him, an involuntary moan slipped through her full and swollen lips. Jax swallowed the sound.
Letting his hands fall from her face, he reached down and palmed her upper thighs, using his grip to effortlessly pick Tara up. Her legs came around him in a mirrored image of her arms, circling his waist. As he turned to his left to back her up and press her against the tiled wall of the shower, Tara tightened her embrace. There was a desperation to her touch that registered in the back of Jax's mind, but he was too lost in the moment, in her, to really consider what the added frenzy meant. Instead of thinking, he acted, seeing her fever pitch and matching it with his own.
With a growl of frustration, Jax was forced to rip his mouth away from Tara's, gulping in air to satisfy his burning lungs. Just as he moved back in to resume their embrace, however, Jax noticed that, like him, Tara was also breathing heavily, and the effort made her chest heave, her breasts surging towards him with every greedy inhalation. It was distracting. Attention thoroughly riveted, Jax decided to alter their positioning. While he backed away, he pressed just Tara's upper spine against the wall. Her head was tossed back, and her torso angled out towards him. As Jax slid one hand to the small of her back to offer support, he used the other to position his ready and more than willing cock at her entrance, slipping inside of her while, at the same time, leaning forward to suck a diamond hard nipple into his mouth.
He kept their pace fluid, measured. The still scalding water beat down on them from above, and Tara burned him from the inside out. With every few thrusts, he would pull back far enough to catch his breath and watch his dick disappear inside of her. The sight would make him lose his breath all over again. But then her breasts, a siren's song, would beckon once more, and he'd latch on, alternating back and forth. Sometimes he would sip and suckle, nip at her nipples; other times, he'd bite the undersides, or try to take her entire areolas into his mouth, or trace the faint, blue lines of her veins underneath her milky, creamy skin.
Tara was close. She would keen with every up thrust and whimper, sometimes even sigh, on every withdrawal. Although her eyes were closed as she focused on experiencing the pleasure Jax was giving her, Jax's were wide open - glazed with lust and with the droplets of water that constantly formed, and then dropped, and then formed again on the wet spikes of his lashes.
She needed more, and he needed her. So, with the hand that wasn't holding Tara up - it had traveled from her waist to her ass, his palm having taken possession of the full and round globe of her left cheek, Jax blinded reached out and up - at first finding nothing more than the waterfall engulfing them but then finally finding what he sought. Taking hold of the showerhead, he detached it from the wall and brought it down between their bodies, angling it away from his own and directly onto Tara's clit. Mere seconds later, she came. With a scream, her inner walls snapped down around him, squeezing Jax's own orgasm from him and eventually wringing him dry and limp.
Jax was still lingering in the looseness of his release and enjoying the heavy shudder rolling through his veins when he felt Tara stop holding onto him and start to push him away. With her hands on both of his shoulders, she allowed her legs to fall from his waist. Still unsteady on her feet, her knees nearly buckled. If it wasn't for Jax's arm wrapped around her waist and cupping her ass, she would have fallen. The physical manifestation of the energy she had been giving off and the worry Jax had been feeling since that morning was enough to sap any last fissure of his pleasure.
"Please don't."
While avoiding his gaze, Tara murmured, "I need to finish getting ready for work." She took the showerhead from him and reattached it.
Jax tried again. "Don't do this, Babe."
"I don't know what you're…"
"Don't run," he cut off her denial. Then, grasping her by the shoulders, Jax turned them both around so that Tara's back was towards the now slowly cooling water, and they were facing each other. "Look, I get that this is complicated. My life is a convoluted mess, and you're so complex that it scares the shit out of me sometimes. Together, we're fucking labyrinthine. But I think we're better together, too - at least, I know that I'm better with you."
"Jax, we barely know each other. You can't possibly…"
He interrupted her once again. "I know that, even if you didn't practically spell out that this, running, would be your next move, I would have predicted it anyway. Because despite what common sense should tell us - I'm an outlaw biker, and you're a fucking surgeon for christ's sake, we're not really that different, and I would want to run, too, if I were you. But it won't work. You can't outrun this shit any more than my old man could. He tried, Tara, and look at what happened to him."
"Are you saying that, if I run, I'll end up dead?"
"No, what I'm saying is that you can't get away from this - from me; from your mom, Tig, your past; from this trainwreck that I unwittingly put on its inevitable, destructive course. I started this, I'll admit that, but as soon as you sought me out in Charming, at the garage and at the clubhouse, you gave up your ability to walk away. You're in it now, Babe, whether you like it or not. If you run, all this shit will just follow you."
"It always does," she whispered melancholically.
"And I get why running is your instinct and why you would want to run again now. I do," he emphasized. It was in finally expressing his sympathy and understanding that Tara truly looked at him again, and he watched as the tension gradually drained out of her once more. "Hell, there's a part of me that would like to go with you - just climb on my bike, point it in any direction but home, and disappear forever. But even if we left, Donna, and Opie, and my Dad would all still be dead; their deaths still my responsibility to somehow make right; the club's sins still mine to answer for. And what about your career? That's something you should never stop fighting for, but if we ran, you'd have to give it up, because you'd have to give up being Tara Knowles… just like I'd give up on being Jackson Teller."
He needed to tell her about the kind of resources the club had at its disposal, how easy it would be for SAMCRO to track them down no matter how difficult Tara and Jax tried to make it for them. But that conversation could wait until after he convinced her to stay, to at least try. "But most of all, you can't run, because I need you here. With me. And I need you to need that, too. I know this sounds crazy, because for you, combined, we've spent a total of two days together, but whatever this is between us, Tara, it's real. It's more real than anything I've ever felt before - more real than everything I've ever felt before. And I think you feel it, too."
For one beat, then two, Tara just stood there, looking up into his face and searching his gaze. Finally, when she spoke, her voice was tentative with reservations made from her panic yet steady in its commitment. "I cannot promise you that I won't run. I… it's just too ingrained in me. But what I can promise you is that I won't run from you."
It was a start. Pulling Tara against him and wrapping his arms around her in a hug, Jax brushed a kiss against her forehead and then dropped his face down into the hollow of her right shoulder. "I'll take what I can get."
/
On their way into the city, they stopped and picked up some sandwiches from a little deli Tara liked. Jax had finished his in what seemed like two bites, leaning back afterwards and closing his eyes. Despite the near constant chill from the winds that swirled off the sea and over San Francisco, the sun was warm that evening, the contrast in sensations relaxing. With his hips thrust forward so that his ass was just on the edge of the bench, his arms spread wide and long over the back, and his head tilted back, Jax looked at rest and content. But sitting besides him, Tara could feel his barely restrained tension, and she knew it was there because of her, because of their earlier conversation in the shower.
But her preoccupation, her stillness, her lack of appetite wasn't what he thought, what he feared. Like before, she wasn't contemplating leaving; she was envisioning staying… and everything that meant and that they hadn't discussed. But needed to. If Jax's one request of Tara was that she didn't run, well, then, she had a condition of her own, and it was nonnegotiable. "If we're going to try… this," Tara gestured back and forth between them despite the fact that Jax couldn't see her, "then there can't be other women."
His head cracking to the side, Jax's gaze opened to narrow slits. He wasn't angry, though, just fighting to see Tara through the vivid light of the setting sun. "What?"
"I'm not naive, Jax; I know enough to understand how your world works. It doesn't take being raised inside of a motorcycle club to figure a few things out. And you've admitted to me yourself that you've never been in a relationship before, monogamous or otherwise. Well, I'm not willing to risk… everything for you only to have to share you with anyone else. I won't."
"Trust me, Babe," he smirked, "you give me plenty."
"I'm being serious here, Jax!"
"So am I," he snapped, sitting up straight. Twisting around on the bench so that he was facing her, Jax tried again. "Tara, I want you. Only you."
"Yeah, now," she allowed, "when everything is new, and exciting, and the sex is… There's been a lot of sex, Jax."
His smirk turned into a blinding, satisfied grin. "I know."
"But it won't always be this easy. I won't always be this easy," Tara pointed out, her voice barbed and challenging. "And then what? You obviously have a very… active sex life. Because of my work schedule, there could be days - weeks even - that go by when I'm too busy, too tired, too disinterested to have sex. What then?"
"I'm not a prophet, Tara; I can't see our future."
"No, but I can… if you cheat on me. I'll be gone before your wandering dick even has a chance to dry off."
"Jesus," Jax laughed, though the gesture was certainly not one of amusement. Rather, he was caught off guard by her bluntness, by her crudeness. Taking several moments to compose himself, Jax scrubbed his hands over his face. "Look, I'm exactly the guy you think I am. But I've also never felt this way about someone before. It's different with you, Tara; I'm different." She must have looked skeptical, because he reached out for her hands, holding them within his own and tugging her closer to him. "When I received the call that Donna had been shot, I was literally fucking a woman I'd just met five minutes earlier. I don't remember anything about her… or any of the other women - hundreds, maybe more, I don't know - that I've screwed. The one thing I do know about that girl from the night Donna died is that she was the last person I slept with… before you."
"What are you trying to tell me, Jax?"
"I'm saying that, even before I realized there was something here," he nodded between them, "I wasn't interested in anyone else. I'll admit that, at first, it was more grief and my fixation on revenge than you, but the thought of having sex with someone besides you hasn't crossed my mind in months - long before we slept together that first night and certainly not since."
"But… why me?" That was the part that Tara was struggling to wrap her mind around - not that Jax was willing to be faithful but that he was doing so for her.
"Why not you?" After giving her a moment to absorb that, Jax squeezed her hands and said, "you're just going to have to trust me, Babe - trust that I won't fuck the first or the fortieth Croeater who comes onto me when you're not around… just as I have to trust that, at the first sign of trouble, you won't run off on me."
She nodded, took a deep breath, and then let it out slowly through her nose. "So, we're really doing this?
"Babe, we've been doing this for weeks already. Since that night. We just didn't realize it." Jax stood then, pulling Tara up after him. "So, I'll head back to Charming, get your Jeep, and meet you back here in twenty-four hours."
Shaking one of her hands loose, Tara reached into her bag and pulled out her keys, handing them to Jax. "You'll need these, then. My house keys are on there, too, so you don't need to break in this time." At his curious, questioning look, Tara explained, "with everything going on, I thought you might like to crash there instead of at your own place. It's more private." What she was really thinking was that it was safer - for both of them - if Jax was in Concord, not Charming.
"That's not a bad idea," he agreed with her. But the next words out of Jax's mouth stripped away any comfort Tara might have felt from his easy acquiescence. "By now, Juice will have uncovered every legal document out there with your name on it, including your mom's will and the deed to your house. If I'm there, I can keep an eye on the place."
The only thing Tara could sputter was, "Juice?!"
"He's, uh, good with a computer," Jax hedged, shuffling his feet slightly.
"So, there are hacker outlaw bikers?"
"Hey, don't put us in a box, Babe," Jax teased, actually finding her surprise laughable versus being as disturbed by the resources at his MC's disposable like Tara was. "We bikers have layers."
"Of depravity maybe," she snarked.
Jax smiled at her remark, though he didn't address it. Instead, he told her, "when I pick up your car tomorrow, there are a few things I need to look into while in Charming, so I'll probably be there most of the day. But if you need me - if you spot anyone suspicious, or if anything feels off or makes you uneasy, call me. I'll drop everything and get here as fast as I can."
"You don't think…?"
"I don't know what to think - not after Donna, and that's the problem," Jax informed her candidly.
"Alright, I'll be careful," she promised him. "I'll stay alert."
At Jax's nod of acceptance, Tara freed the hand he was still holding and turned back around to the bench. Picking up her practically untouched sandwich, she wrapped it back up and placed it in her bag. She'd eat it later. Before she started to walk inside, Tara said over her shoulder, "I'll see you tomorrow night."
She hadn't taken three steps before Jax was calling out behind her, "where the hell do you think you're going?"
Confused, Tara pivoted to look at him, thinking she'd still find several feet of space separating them only to realize that Jax had stalked after her, that they were now standing toe-to-toe. Still, she gestured behind her towards the awaiting hospital. "Uh, work? My on-call shift starts in…"
Tara's words were swallowed - not by Tara herself but by Jax. With his hands tangled through her hair, he tilted her head back and took her mouth as his own. The kiss he gave her then stole her every thought, her very breath, erased her awareness, and narrowed her world down to just Jax: Jax's taste; his scent; the rasp of his facial hair against her sensitive chin, and jaw, and cheeks; Jax's warmth; the sound of his appreciation - a low gravel of a grumble that rolled deep through his chest, his throat. By the time he pulled away, Tara's head was left spinning, and she was slightly rocking on her feet. Jax graced her with one last smirk, turned her back around by the shoulders, and sent her off into the hospital with a none too gentle nor appropriate smack to the ass.
Tara wasn't sure how, but he would pay for that… and, knowing Jax, probably like it, too.
