Page 10 of Badd B*tch

"Yes."

He nodded, knowing there was nothing else to say. "Take care of my boy, Tea."

"I absolutely will."

"Z!"

"Comin', I'm comin', Jesus, Tinker. Keep your fuckin' shirt on." He glanced at me over his shoulder, grinning. "Once a Master Chief, always a Master Chief, eh, Commander?"

I snorted, knowing damn well the truth of this. "Your lips to god's ears."

He was gone, then, in a swirl of macho voices that brought back a hot, vivid crush of memories of hauling men just like that into and out of combat zones. Watching them writhe and bleed in the back of my bird as I banked away, rounds tinking and popping at the underside.

I shook my head to clear the memories away, took a deep, bracing breath, and headed upstairs for the last door on the left.

I knocked—again, a third time, a fourth, louder, and finally I pounded on the door with the bottom of my fist.

Nothing.

I did hear music thudding and thumping, muffled yet loud, which means it must louder than fuck on the other side.

Screw this—Linus was gonna pop a gasket in a minute, despite being the reason we're already running late. Although, since Linus makes the schedule, I suppose one could argue that if we’re with him, we can’t, by definition, be late, since he is the schedule.

I tested the lever-style knob, pushing it down; the door swung open, and a wall of sound almost literally blew my hair back. If it wasn’t in a braid, the sheer force of the bass alone would have my hair fluttering.

“Shook Ones, Pt. II” by Mobb Deep?

Okay, now.

"…Scared to death and scared to look, they shook…" I heard Jax rapping along with the song, albeit very… um…whitely. It's cute. He cannot rap. I had to bite back laughter as I entered the lair—LED lights rippled and rotated and flashed and strobed, and a shelf of athletic trophies and award plaques rattled and buzzed.

A queen bed, messy and unmade, more of a nest of blankets and pillows than anything, took up the center of the room; a large bureau opposite, with a massive flat-screen TV on top of it, the latest PlayStation to one side. A desk sat under the window overlooking the street, on which was an open computer—on-screen, it looked to my layman's eyes like he was running some program or other while he did whatever it was he was doing, which wasn't packing. A black hard-sided suitcase lay open on the bed, clothes spilling out. More clothes lay discarded on the floor—socks, shorts, tees, boxer briefs, joggers, hoodies, Geek Squad polos, chinos.

The man is a fucking mess, my lord.

I itched to put the room to rights, and I had to shove my hands in my pockets to stop myself.

Concert venue-worthy stacks of speakers on either side of the desk produced the deafening barrage of sound, which was making my ribcage rattle.

As I considered violating Jax's privacy and just unplugging something to make the din stop, the bathroom door swung open, and Jax himself emerged, dripping wet, buck ass naked, a fluffy baby blue microfiber towel slung over his shoulders as he dabbed at his face with it.

Holy dick.

I mean big shit.

I mean… what do I mean?

Goddamn—that’s what I mean. Goddamn, the man is fine.

He had an eight-pack, an Adonis-worthy pair of V-cuts leading down to a long, thick cock dangling halfway to the floor. Maybe not quite, but damn, what a monster. His shoulders were absurdly broad, his arms brawny and huge, and his thighs….god, the thighs.

Look, science says large, muscular thighs directly correlate with lower all-cause morbidity, better brain function and cognitive health, and a lower risk of cognitive decline as you age. And you know what's just as sexy as sculpted arms and a wicked set of abs—such as Jax's? Good health and well-rounded intelligence.

So the fact that I find men with big thighs and plump, hard asses intolerably hot isn’t that weird.

When I say I like cake, I'm not talking about dessert.

As I stared at him, unable to blink or speak or turn away or do anything but stare—or should I say BUTT stare—he turned away, tossed the towel onto the floor of the bathroom, and then turned back. And saw me standing there with my jaw on the floor, eyes wide, not even trying to not look at his gargantuan and gorgeous dick.