The Dangerous Curves Series

Chapter 8

The room smelled of s*x. That was the main point of these rooms, of course, and Jax had taken advantage of their availability more than once. So had the boys. So had everyone. The cleaning women changed the sheets every morning, and beyond that, Jax had never given a single thought to hygiene, or cleanliness, or anything else. He’d been sucked and f****d on these beds and sofas, without any concern for anything except getting off.

Now, though, the idea of setting an injured woman down on a bed where God-only-knows-who had been doing God-only-knows-what, probably not even ten minutes earlier, made his skin crawl. He’d promised Sarah he was going to take care of her, and he guessed that included not setting her down in a f*****g petri dish.

Mac was switching on the lights and moving around, clearing empty beer bottles and overflowing ashtrays off the low coffee table.

“Come on, Jax. Lie her down.”

Aidan and King came in then, and Jax was relieved to see that Aidan was carrying fresh bed sheets. Aidan stripped the crumpled, stained sheets off, let them fall on the floor, and quickly made the bed again, impressing the other men with his domestic skills. Then Aidan produced a black garbage bag, and started cleaning up the mess everywhere.

“Thanks, man,” Jax said.

Aidan grinned. “Figured she’d appreciate waking up in a clean bedroom, you know, instead of a f**k pad.”

Jax set her down on the bed carefully, moved a pillow under her head. She moaned now, and all the men looked at her.

“Sarah?” Mac touched her cheek gently. “Can you hear me?”

Her eyelids fluttered open, closed, open again. Mac sat on the bed next to her, and waited patiently for her to focus on him.

Sarah’s vision was blurry and dark, her head hurt, her neck was sore. She sensed a man next to her before she actually saw him, and her body stiffened.

“Hey, sweet thing.” The man seemed warm and vaguely familiar, and she felt her panic lessen a bit. “Sarah? Can you see me?”

She turned her head towards the voice, blinked. “Mac?” Her own voice was weak and rough.

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s me. You’re OK now.”

“I – what?”

Aidan approached slowly, and she turned her eyes to him.

“Hey, Sarah. I’m just going to wash your face, OK?”

Nothing was making any sense. “What?”

“I’m going to clean you up a bit…”

“Why? What’s going on?” She tried to sit up, but Mac held her arms. That scared her, and she started to struggle as she realized that she was lying down on a bed in a room full of very large men. “What am I doing here? What’s happening?”

Now Jax sat down on her other side, and she went into full-blown panic mode.

“Let me go!” She was pushing hard against Mac, trying to get away, breathing too hard and too fast. “What are you doing to me?”

“Sarah,” Jax said. “Listen to me.”

She kept struggling. Mac held her easily, trying not to hurt her, trying to stop her from hurting herself.

“Sarah.” Jax spoke softly but firmly, and the tone cut through her steadily rising sense of unreality and fear. “You’ve got to stop fighting Mac. You’re hurt, baby, and he needs to help you.”

That stopped her. “Hurt?”

“Yeah.” He moved a bit closer to her. “Somebody beat you up out in the parking lot. You remember?”

She stared at him, her mind whirling. Then she gasped. “Dave.”

“Yeah, I figured.” I am going to f*****g track him down and pummel him within an inch of his life. But first things first. His eyes met King’s, and the other man nodded, knowing exactly what Jax was thinking. “But you’re safe now… we’ll make sure nobody touches you again. Just trust us, OK?”

She looked at Jax, then at the other men. What had happened was coming back to her now in waves and images; she remembered Dave’s face twisted in rage, his large fist coming at her over and over again. She started to shake and Mac let her go, not wanting to frighten her more. Weak, dizzy, she fell back on the bed, and turned her face into the pillow as she felt the tears start.

Jax glanced at the other men. He could only imagine how intimidating the group of them must look to her, standing there huge and muscled, in a semi-lit bedroom in a strange place.

“Hey, guys… give us a minute alone, OK?”

“Sure.” Mac stood up and said in a low voice, “Try to calm her down, Jax. I can’t have her fighting me when I do the stitches… I’m just going to scare and hurt her more if she doesn’t know what’s going on here.”

Jax nodded, waited until they had left, and shut the door behind them. Then he looked at Sarah, at a total loss about what the hell to do next. He knew exactly what to say and do to get a woman hot for him; he knew damn well how to touch a woman to make her come. But what to say or do to make a woman feel safe; how to touch her so she felt comforted? That was all way beyond him, and he knew it.