35. Emery
THIRTY-FIVE
EMERY
A swath of darkness hung overhead, lit in the sea of stars that were smattered across the canopy. Peace rained from it, this overwhelming stillness that felt as if we were held in a net of security.
It poured that respite across the placid expanse of the shimmering lake, the faint ripples glinting beneath the shimmer of the moon and stars.
Maci had fallen asleep almost the moment Kane had buckled her into her seat, and her little breaths filled the cab of the SUV as we drove the short distance back to Kane’s house.
For once, Kane was silent, too.
But I supposed the tension that strained between us said plenty. The way it felt as if the oxygen had grown so heavy and dense that it was nearly impossible to draw it into my lungs.
Awareness curled and wound around us.
Wisps of electricity that felt like pinpricks crackling across my skin.
It took us only a few minutes to get through the downtown area of Moonlit Ridge, and Kane was soon slowing to turn right onto the dirt drive that wound around Kane’s .
The club wasn’t busy yet, the parking lot sparsely filled, the hour just past eight. It felt as if it’d been one of the longest days of my life, yet it had also passed in a blur.
Being among these people that I didn’t want to find comfort in.
But that’s what I’d been.
Comfortable.
Floating through their care and laughter. Wary of the easy conversation but unable to stop myself from contributing.
As if it were natural.
But this wasn’t.
Natural.
This thing that burned between me and Kane.
It was something so outside of what I knew. Wrong on so many levels, yet in some way, it felt as if it was supposed to be.
The SUV bounced down the long lane, and the club disappeared behind us as we wound through the dense trees that grew up along the edges of the road. The headlights speared out in front of us, illuminating the gorgeous scenery Kane’s home was surrounded by.
Rather than pulling around to the detached garage, he came to a stop in front of the porch where he always parked his bike.
Silence swamped us when he killed the engine, and the air grew even heavier.
So heavy I was afraid it would crush me.
Obliterate the last pieces I was trying to hold together.
Kane seemed caught in it, too, staring out the windshield for the longest time before he finally opened his door and slipped out, the man so brutally beautiful it was getting more and more difficult to look at him without completely losing myself.
But how could I not after the way he’d held me last night? After he’d shown me he was so much more than the callous intimidation.
He quietly shut it behind him before he was at Maci’s door, his movements fluid as he unbuckled her from her seat.
She barely stirred as he pulled her into his hold. It shouldn’t look so right when the man tucked her carefully against his chest.
But, God, it did, my little niece so at ease in his massive arms .
He knocked the door closed with his hip, ambled up the steps and across the porch, then maneuvered the key into the lock.
So adept he might as well have done it a thousand times.
Blowing out some of the tension, I forced myself to move, and I climbed out and followed them inside. I locked the door behind us, and I kept my footsteps as light as Kane’s as he carried Maci upstairs.
At the top landing, a dim light burned in the hall, and he crept into her room and laid her on her bed. I moved in behind him, and I went to the dresser and pulled out a pair of pajamas that had been stocked in Maci’s dresser on the first day we’d come here.
I edged up beside him, and that unstable air in my lungs locked all over again as we peered down at the child.
“She’s so perfect,” he murmured.
My spirit squeezed. “She is.”
With a knowing glance at me, he helped me change her into her pajamas, lifting her up so I could work her sundress over her head and replace it with the gown, then he shifted her around beneath the covers, and I drew them to her chin.
The blonde waves strewn over her pillow. Her lips puckered and her brow lax.
Her sweet, sweet face so serene that there was no mistaking the amount of joy she’d experienced through the day.
I brushed my fingers through her bangs, and my heart fisted when I stepped back and Kane moved in to take my place.
The man a fortress over her, his movements tender as he leaned in and pressed a kiss to her temple, his words quiet and raw as he mumbled, “Goodnight, Angel Face.”
Adoration spilled from his being.
I backed away, unsure that I could stand within the magnitude of it.
I crept out into the hall in an attempt to find solid ground.
Only it rolled and rumbled and quaked.
The man a force that tremored the floors and rattled the walls.
Decimating all barriers and demolishing sound reason .
Because I couldn’t form one rational thought when he stepped out and drew her door closed a fraction behind him.
My throat went dry when the man shifted around to peer at me through the dull, hazy light in the hall.
Big body striking chaos in the middle of mine.
Gravity.
Pure awe-inspiring, terrifying gravity.
He took a single step toward me.
My entire being rocked and swayed. Blown through by the power he emitted.
My pulse raced, a frantic thrum that throbbed desire through my veins.
This fierce pounding that I couldn’t understand or fathom.
One that I couldn’t evade.
He took two more steps forward.
His aura swilled around me.
A rising tide that started at my toes and swirled up my body.
“What do you think?” Kane’s voice was a hushed scrape.
“What do you mean, what do I think?” I had to ask it since I was about to do something super foolish and blurt out that I thought he was magnificent and wonderful and everything I shouldn’t want.
“About my family?” he pressed.
I blinked through what seemed like the thousand memories I’d made today, and my brow pinched in emphasis. “I think you’re right. I think they’re the best people I’ve ever met.”
I didn’t know how it could be.
Not when I could sense that he and his friends were hedged in secrets. Could see the demons that played in their eyes and danced across their skin.
Could feel the severity of it blister across my own.
And I couldn’t make any of that seem to matter.
Satisfaction tugged at the edge of his mouth, though it was dark and seductive. “Told you that you’d love them. That Maci would love them. ”
“You’re all so close.” I didn’t know why I was whispering it. I was pretty sure Maci could have slept through a fire alarm right then.
But this felt like my and Kane’s own little secret.
A dirty secret.
The way those magic eyes fluttered over me as he stared down at me with his face cut in harsh lines of severity that still flickered with this undying softness.
The man straight contradiction.
A conflict that waged in the deepest, darkest place inside me.
Because my stomach tremored, my insides twisting with this foolish need I knew was going to devastate me.
“They are the ones who made me believe in humanity again when I’d come to believe there were only monsters that walked the earth.”
His confession penetrated, cutting through bone to the marrow.
It was as if his thoughts directly matched my own.
As if he saw what haunted me and grasped it in some intrinsic way.
There was also a grimness there. Like he also believed himself one of those monsters.
“Raven told me about when she was young. How she lived with all of you in an abandoned warehouse.” The words were thick and sticky. “How you welcomed them in and took care of her.”
“Yeah.”
I blinked through the disorder that raged around us. “You were homeless…living on the streets when you were a teenager?”
“Much better than living with the assholes assigned to be my foster parents.”
Another punch to my gut, my spirit grappling with the onslaught of pain that rolled out of him.
“What happened to your parents?”
He’d mentioned that he’d lost his mother, but he hadn’t given me any details.
I tried to convince myself I was only asking these things because of Maci. Because I needed to know about her father so I’d understand the person she would be raised by .
It was true in some sense, but that was only part of it. There was another part that needed to know him. The part that wanted to climb inside him the way I wanted him to climb inside of me.
Kane flinched. Old wounds cutting deep into the rugged lines of his face. “Never knew the prick who fathered me. And my mom…”
His jaw clenched, and I could feel the rush of rage that billowed out of him. “My mom was killed when I was sixteen. Her boyfriend murdered her, Emery. Right in front of me.”
A gasp of horror ripped free as an arrow of sorrow struck me.
So fierce and harrowing I was nearly bowled over by it.
“Oh my God. I’m so sorry, Kane.”
I swore that I could hear his teeth grind. Could hear the battering of the storm that roiled within his soul.
Sickness spun, and my throat tightened.
My own nightmare flashed through my mind.
Ripping me back to the place where it felt like we’d lost it all.
To that time when nothing had remained the same.
Both me and Emmalee changed in an instant.
Only my throat squeezed tighter because Kane angled in closer.
His presence overpowering where he towered over me.
Energy screamed down the hall.
Bashing and belting.
Emerald eyes flashed, striking in blackened, singed flames.
“I had no power then. No way to stop it. Too fucking feeble and weak to stand up when she needed me.” Hate was seeded in every word. “But I’m not weak anymore, and I can promise you that no monster will ever get to Maci that way. I’m monster enough to protect her from that.”
I should be disturbed by the clear, vicious threat.
By what he was promising me.
By the claim that was so evident in his statement.
But I couldn’t do anything but push out the hoarse whisper, “That’s what we all need sometimes. Someone who will slay our monsters.”