Free Ignition (Black Legion MC Book 2) by Kathryn Thomas Page B

dropped open, and she held her breath as he lingered by her side and sadly shook his head.
     
    “I hope I live to regret this,” he muttered.
     
    “You will, Artie.” Lifting her body to the bike, she wrapped her arms around his waist. Not as taut and smooth as the lines of Jax’s body, but he felt brave even as she reached up and felt his pounding heart.
     
    “So we’re really doing this?” he asked, the crack in his voice suggesting he would still take a way out of the one that she had to offer.
     
    “I’d do anything for him,” she said. “Now ride.”
     

 
     
    CHAPTER TEN
     
    Aggie listened with unblinking eyes and a few moans here and there. Jax didn’t skimp on the details. Lena’s violation always stayed at the forefront of his mind, and even though he could sense Lena didn’t want to talk about it any more times than once, Jax allowed his mind to fill in the gory blanks. He had seen what Eric could do if he wanted a girl against her will, and even now he shuddered to think of Lena being subjected to such treatment when he had no hope of helping her. Now would be different. It just had to be.
     
    “So… Stiles took advantage of your woman?” Brutus asked, his fists as his sides and seemingly reserved for Eric if the man ever had the misfortune to cross his path.
     
    “She wasn’t exactly mine then,” Jax confessed. “Kind of just my best friend.”
     
    “Friend?” Aggie asked.
     
    “Lena… you would like her, Mom,” Jax said. “Never judged me. Always made me feel like I was worth something.”
     
    “Because I didn’t.”
     
    Jax’s anger was still ripe, but he bit it back and kept it at bay as he saw firsthand how she had suffered. First her husband. Then her son. What else would Eric Stiles take away from her if the demon were given half the chance? “No more of that now,” he said. “And I’m not so pure. She ran, too, and I didn’t get it. Like I didn’t get it with you, Mom.” Aggie started to apologize when Jax took his mother into his arms and pressed his lips to her ear. “But I understand it all now,” he said. “And there’s no way this asshole is hurting any of my women ever again.”
     
    Tears finally left Aggie’s eyes as she rested her chin to her son’s chest. Jax stroked her back and sighed into her shorn hair.
     
    “Not such a little man anymore, Mom,” he assured her. “Time to put the bastard in his place.”
     
    Aggie’s relieved tears trailed down his chest, and he spied Brutus moving out of the corner of his eye. He retrieved the fallen ice, already melting from the ground, and nursed the wounds he had inflicted as he grunted.
     
    “Always heard that he was a sick fuck,” Brutus said. “And not just from Aggie either.”
     
    Suddenly sensing a strange camaraderie with the man who had tried to do him in, Jax kept talking when Brutus pressed his hand into the air and cocked his head to the side.
     
    “He did your girl like that?” he asked. “And you’re only here now?”
     
    “I didn’t know,” Jax confessed. “She kept it quiet to keep me safe.”
     
    “And now that you got the lay of the land, you’re thinking there’s another way.”
     
    “No question about it,” Jax continued. “Maybe I didn’t see what he did to Lena, but I see it in her eyes. And I’ve loved her for most of my life. Have to help her now.”
     
    “Of course you do.” Aggie pulled away from and stared to pinch his cheek. She stopped short at the sight of the swelling still crossing his face and folded her hands in her lap. “So let’s make something happen,” she said. On her feet and offering her hand, Jax took it slowly and basked in the feel of her fingers curling tightly around his. “We got our own chief,” she said. “And he listens to me on all things, little man.”
     
    Aggie led him from the room, and Jax held his mother’s hand tighter and suddenly felt grateful to have Brutus at his back as they stepped through the