Runaway ✔

047 • Juice

She pulled her hand away from his, shove it between her knees and stared at the ground. He let her be, no matter how badly he wanted to pull her close.

"So you will go to San Fran soon and attack his house?"

Juice shrugged. "I guess."

She looked up. Fear shimmered in her eyes. "Can't you stay with me? Someone will guard me, right?"

He hesitated. "It's not up to me who will be doin' that."

That the others preferred someone else to do so, was made painfully clear a few days ago.

"I don't want you to go after him, Juice. The thought that I have to stay behind, to wait for  news..." She shivered. "I can't handle that."

Juice didn't know what to say. Of course that wouldn't be easy for her, he understood that very well. But if the club decided he had to join them during retalliation, he would do so.

She grabbed his hand again and looked up. "And when they know I belong to you? Then they will allow you to stay with your Old Lady, right?"

He turned a little more toward her. "Whatcha mean?" Despite understanding her fear, he frowned his eyebrows suspiciously. "You want me to lie to my brothers?"

She bowed her head again. "No, 'course not." She bit her lip, leaving a small mark behind.

"Then what?" he asked softly. "You... You do wanna be my girl?"

"Maybe." She looked up again. "I dunno... if I dare."

Juice watched her face pensively. He understood well why she found it so hard and he didn't want to convince her to do anything. She had to make this decision herself.

"I'm afraid too, Dana. To lose you," he admitted reluctantly. "Today... The thought they'd taken you was drivin' me crazy. So I get it if you don't want a relationship, I really do. It's just... my feelings for you are there anyway. Despite the fear to lose you. So we can keep them to ourselves... or we can share them." He turned sideways, took her hands from her lap and brought them to his lips. Just like she'd done, he kissed her knuckles. "And  I want to show you there are other feelings than fear alone. For when I'm with you... I feel complete. And I guess... I hope... you feel the same."

"You have no idea, Juice," she whispered. "You have no idea what you're doin' to me."

Juice smiled and hovered forward to kiss her. "I think I do."

They got wrapped up in a long, long kiss. The resistance that had been there when she opened the door, crumbled down by every touch of his lips. She crawled a little back on the bed and he followed her, kissing her neck, her lips. Her hands found their way under his cut and pushed it off his shoulders.

He gasped for air when her hands went under his shirt, leaving behind warm traces on his skin. Hesitating he caressed her arms, her shoulders.

"I want you," she whispered. "I want all of you, Juan Carlos."

A shiver crept down his spine. "I want you too," he whispered back. "But... we don't have to do it now." He laid down on his side, stroking her stomach, higher, to her right breast. While he did so, he kept looking at her. She was fine with it, he saw, and he left his hand there.

"And what if I tell you I do want you now?" she asked, a little provoking. She wiggled her eyebrows. "You think you can resist me?"

"Sure. Easily."

She laughed. "I don't buy it."

He smirked, moving his hand to her face and caressing her cheek. "Okay, probably not. But I'm serious. We should build things up slowly, take time for each other. I just don't want you to think about that asshole when I... make love to you. And with all the shit that went down today, I'm just afraid he's too much in your head. And... and in mine."

There was a nervous knot in his stomach. He didn't know how she would react. But it was true. He'd fallen in love with a girl that had been abused, that had been raped, and every time he touched her, his brain was working on that. That way, it would be comfortable for neither of them.

She rolled back with her head and stared at the ceiling. "You find it hard? To be together with someone like me?"

"I want this to last, to work," he answered. "And the only way that's gonna happen, is when we deal with it. Together."

She looked at him again. "That ain't an answer. You disgust me? You think about what others have done to me, when you touch me?"

Juice lifted himself up on his elbow. "Of course I don't disgust you. But what they did to you..." He searched for words. "Yea, I think about it a lot. For I'm afraid to cause flashbacks."

And sometimes the images shot through his own mind. He'd had lots of nightmares, the past nights. He didn't know what Maddox looked like, but that wasn't required to hear her sob, to see her fight when someone entered her violently. But he kept these thoughts to himself. He didn't want to burden her, and he could only hope such images wouldn't haunt him when he made love to her. When they slowly build things up, he told himself, and intimacy became more and more familiar, he assumed they were able to let go of the bad memories a little more every day.