Page 93 of Come for Me
“Jemma, he doesn’t want to see those.”
“I’d love to see them, Ms.—”
“Oh, please, call me Jemma. You’re practically family.”
What the hell is happening?Mr. Doesn’t Like To Say Please is being charming and polite.He’s letting Jemma touch him and tell him what to do?Jemma is allowing Dax to call her by her first name—and must really like Dax because she wouldn’t even let Caleb, her future alpha, address her as Jemma, and shelikedCaleb. Having her approve of Dax means she won’t ever let me let him go. I’ll never hear the end of it.
You don’t want to let him go. I mentally kick myself.
I’m trying to decide if Jemma liking him is my worst nightmare or everything I could want when Jemma’s words pull me out of my thoughts.
“Oh, you stay here. I’ll go get them.” Jemma pats Dax’s thighs and gets up.
“No, no, no, no,” I go to chase Jemma down, but she dodges my grasp.
Dax wraps his arms around my waist and pulls me onto his lap. He exhales a hearty laugh as I wiggle on him, trying to get free.
“Keep it up, and I’ll make sure you’re immobilized completely,” he playfully whisper-growls in my ear.
I still and realize I’ve made him hard in the process of rubbing my ass on his lap. Not wanting to rattle the beast more, I ignore the goose bumps on my arms.
“So much for loyalty!” I yell to Jemma, who’s rummaging through my room by now.What if he doesn’t like them?
Ignoring me, she yells from my childhood bedroom, “Found it!”
Jemma returns, carrying three canvases. She lines them up on the dining room table, leaning them against the wall.
Dax peers over my shoulder to look at them. “You made these?” He looks at me incredulously.
I nod, cheeks warming, as he continues to praise the details.
“What’s this one?” He points to the last painting of my mother.
Her blue eyes are rounded like mine, her full lips spread into a smile, her auburn hair flowing around her wildly as she looks behind her.
I painted her running freely, something I had wished her and I got to do together.
“That’s my mother. At least what I think she’d look like. She died when I was born. I don’t have any pictures of her.”
Dax holds me tighter. “She’s wearing your necklace.”
I fiddle with the stone. “It was hers.”
It wasn’t long after I painted the necklace on all the paintings I made of her.
Dax inspects the stone. The way he takes such interest in the things that matter to me... I wonder if family is something that matters to him and if this is something I’d be lucky enough to give us one day.
Danger! Baby fever.
I shake the thought from my mind and avert my attention back to the picture.
“My mother used to go to this spot all the time. I can—I can take you to it i-if you want?”
My stuttering exposes my inexperience with sharing myself with him or anybody.
The man in front of me has so much of the world on his shoulders, and now I’m asking him to entertain something insignificant to anyone else like my stories as a parentless child. Something that I perceive to be so minimal in comparison to everything else.
I don’t know why I chose now to show him. I’ve shut him out time and time again, and he’s still here looking at me with such possession, interest, letting the words I speak sink in. You would think with how he hangs onto every word I say and the way he’s gawking at me that I was the Moon Goddess Herself.
