35. Emery #2
The chuckle he emitted was foreboding, and his head tipped to the side. “Whatever the cost? ”
“There’s no cost too great when it comes to those who are most precious to us.”
I would have paid it. Would have given anything to have brought Jana back to us. But I’d been just as young and powerless as Kane had been.
Little more than a child who hadn’t understood or fathomed the consequences.
Guilt bloomed.
No doubt sensing the sudden turmoil, one of those giant hands suddenly slipped to my cheek.
I gasped at the contact.
Flames igniting. Searing and inciting.
Kane searched my face, his eyes flicking across every inch, as if he held the power to sift through my ghosts.
“Would slay yours, too, if you’d let me.” His words were gravel.
I tried to hide them—the scars that for him were in plain sight. My voice was shallow when I forced out, “I don’t let anyone get close enough for them to see my monsters.”
A shiver rolled through me as I thought of the sense I’d had for months.
Maybe there were monsters hidden in the shadows.
The feeling that I was being watched. Plus, the unsettling information that I’d found in my sister’s notebook and on her laptop?
I couldn’t shake the overwhelming premonition that something was wrong. Wholly off.
Gaze deepening, he stroked the pad of his thumb under the hollow of my eye.
“You don’t have to hide from me, Emery. I can see the monsters lurking in your beautiful eyes.
Felt them the moment I saw you in my bar the first time.
Felt them in your fingers when you touched me.
Can feel them now…trying to dim the beauty that you are.
But they can’t do that, can they, Little Warrior?
Not when you’re so strong. Not when you’re aching to rise above where they’ve kept you trapped. ”
A tremble rocked through me.
“Your only concern should be Maci.” I went for the best defense I could find.
Something close to arrogance slid through his features. “Ah, think I’m big enough to take care of you both. ”
“I’m not in need of a savior.”
“No, you’re plenty fierce enough. But like you said, sometimes we all need someone to slay our monsters. Sometimes we all need someone to hold us up when life gets rough. Sometimes we need someone to show us how powerful we are.”
“Is that what you want to do? Show me I’m powerful?” I didn’t know if it was a challenge or a plea.
Begging him to put out this fire that rushed through my insides.
Kane angled in closer, his nose just brushing mine, his words seductive wisps that wound around me.
“Yeah. That’s exactly what I want to do.
Want to show you that you’re powerful. That you’re in control.
That you deserve to have every pleasure.
Show you what it’s like to be treasured.
I want you to be free in me, in a way you’ve never let anyone do before me.
Want to erase every scar from your being. ”
Unable to suppress it, a blast of fury rushed across his face, so volatile my knees went weak. It wasn’t what I’d expected.
His rage.
The anger that surged through his expression.
He lifted his second hand, both big palms suddenly gripping my face.
I could almost taste the violence that thrashed through his bloodstream.
I was such a fool because I wasn’t afraid.
“I want to know who hurt you so I can make sure it never happens again. Just give me a name.”
“They’re long gone,” I mumbled. Without a trace. No one knew who they were.
“I’d do anything for you, Emery.” Kane inhaled a shaky breath. “I want to set you free.”
“You have.” It pulled out of me without permission.
“Did you like it when I did?” The energy shifted around us. “Did you like me touching you? Did you like it the other night when you got yourself off to the sound of my voice?”
“Yes.” I breathed it.
He pulled back a fraction. Studying me again .
Searching for my truth.
He must have found whatever he was looking for because he suddenly swooped down.
I gasped as his mouth captured mine in a maelstrom of intensity.
His kiss desperate and fierce. Hands tightening as he pulled me against him.
Shock rasped up my throat, and I inhaled a sharp, staggered breath.
It only drew him down into the well of need that he’d built within me.
A well that instantly erupted.
My hands shot out, and my fingers fisted in his shirt in a bid to get him closer.
It was so wrong.
So wrong.
But right in that second, I didn’t care.
I needed this. I needed to feel. I needed to feel something else than the sorrow and the dread that had taken me captive. Needed to feel something other than the loss.
“Kane.” I muttered his name against the press of his lips.
“Right here, Little Warrior. I’m right here. Use up whatever you need of me.”
His hands skidded down the sides of my throat before one twined in the fall of my hair and the other wrapped around my waist.
He jerked me forward.
Up against the hard, packed planes of his immaculate body.
This fierce, terrifying, brutal man who made me feel as if I were flying.
A moan worked free.
A garbled yes .
His tongue stroked out, and I nearly wept.
It felt so good. Felt so good to find this freedom. This thing that hadn’t existed in me until I met him .
I opened and slid my tongue against his.
Heat exploded, and my insides turned molten .
Need gushed through my body.
Every inch of me throbbing and pleading as I fell completely into him.
He groaned into the mania of the kiss. “Em-Girl. So fucking good. You’ve got me so spun up, don’t even recognize myself.”
I whimpered, and he turned so he could back me across the floor and toward his room, never breaking the frenzy of the kiss as we went.
He closed the door behind us then spun me and pinned me against it.
I hit the wood with a soft thunk , and the hand on my back slid down to my knee. He drew it up to hook around his hip then he pressed himself to the pulsing of my center.
I rasped at the bliss that spread through me with the sensation.
“You still with me, Little Warrior? You good with this?” he rumbled.
“So good.”
It was a ramble.
Unintelligible.
No logical thought within reach.
Because the only thing I could process was how he felt.
So hard and huge.
Daunting and formidable.
And I was completely blown away that the only thing I felt was pleasure in the middle of it.
“Fuck me, Emery. What are you doing to me? How’s it you’ve got me on my knees?”
In it, I could feel his true confusion. As if he had never felt anything like this, either. As if I wasn’t alone in this being different.
This connection that pulled at every molecule in my being, drawing me toward him.
“It’s me that you’re destroying. Why do you feel so good?” My words were woven in the frantic tangle of our tongues.
Delirium.
It’s what it had to be .
Hoisting me higher, Kane grabbed onto my other leg and wrapped that around his waist, too.
My feet were no longer on solid ground.
I guessed they hadn’t been since I’d met him.
He held me up with both hands on my outer thighs and my back pinned to the door. Gripping tight as he rubbed himself against me.
“Like that, baby? Just the brush of my cock, and you want to ignite?”
A rash of chills skated at the coarse words he demanded into the kiss.
“Yes.”
Yes, so much yes.
We were both fully clothed, yet I wasn’t sure I’d ever felt so exposed.
The way fire rocketed through me with every rock of his hips. The man pressing and rolling as pleasure raced and gathered.
Rising and lifting with each stroke.
I almost wanted to laugh at how absurd it was, that the man was dry humping me against the wall and it was still the most scandalous thing I’d ever done.
Especially with knowing who he was.
What he meant.
But I was too busy getting sucked down into the depths of those emerald eyes when he broke the frantic kiss so he could angle back to look at me.
Too busy getting my heart tangled up in the wild possession that was carved into every line on his face.
Too busy watching his tongue stroke out to wet his plush, velvet lips.
“Look at you, Emery. So fucking gorgeous I can’t get a full breath. Watching you come alive under my hands. Like you’ve been waiting on the right time to bloom. Want to watch that happen. Want to make that happen. Watch you shine all that beauty that you’ve kept trapped.”
He dove back in, kissing me.
Kissing me into madness.
Kissing me into confusion.
Into euphoria .
The same way as he drove my body.
He suddenly hoisted me higher, and my arms looped around his neck as he carried me across his room to a wing chair that sat under the windows that overlooked the backyard.
The emerging glow of the moon scattered silvered light into the room.
I whimpered when he settled me onto the chair.
He straightened, standing tall, a tower that shrouded, that menacing body vibrating with severity as he stared down at me. Every inch of him was hard, his muscles bowing and flexing as he held himself in restraint.
“Don’t worry, Little Warrior. Going to give you what you need.”
“Please,” I whimpered.
“You don’t have to beg. That’s what I’m here for.”
He climbed down onto his knees, and he spread his palms over the tops of my thighs and rode them upward.
“That’s what these hands are for. To bring you pleasure. You can trust in that. I’ll never fucking hurt you. Will adore you every second that you’ll allow me.”
I couldn’t even process the promises he was making. The way his words whispered over me like a dream and sank deep into the fractured pieces of my heart.
Couldn’t fully fathom him flicking the button on my shorts.
I merely rode the wave of it.
Lifting my hips and helping him push both my shorts and underwear off my hips.
He dragged them down my legs, hissing as he went.
“So damned perfect. These sexy as fuck legs. Way you drove me out of my mind in these little shorts all day.” He grunted it as he dragged the fabric free, then he propped my feet on the edges of the cushion.