40. Emery
FORTY
EMERY
It was late afternoon as we slowly drove down the dirt lane and came to a stop in front of Kane’s house.
Stillness hovered in the air, a calm quiet that gleamed against the windows and sent peace echoing back.
The sensation was fully at odds with the turmoil that blistered through my being. The tattered fragments of fear that lingered in the periphery of my senses.
Except vestiges of that peace were there, hinting at the edges of my consciousness when I shifted to look at Kane who sat in the driver’s seat of his car, his jaw taut with the strain, though his green eyes were soft when he turned them on me.
“Wait right there.” It didn’t matter that his tone was harsh and grating. The comfort of it still swam around me.
I didn’t have the time to protest before he was out and rounding the front of the car, his tall, lithe body rippling with power as he moved.
My door was pulled open to the potency of his aura.
His presence intense.
It washed over me in an inundating wave that pushed me up to the edge of surrender.
His care so stark that my throat locked up.
“Here we go,” he murmured as he dipped in to pick me up.
“I can walk, Kane. I’m not even injured.”
I’d sustained nothing more than a bump on my head, though the impact of it was going to leave a scar. A deep, invisible scar that only I could see.
The terror I’d felt in that moment.
Fighting for my life.
I knew I’d been so close to losing it.
Kane didn’t heed my deflection. He slipped one arm under my knees and the other under my back, that voice low with tremoring emotion as he murmured, “I want you in my arms and not anywhere else.”
My spirit tremored. Trembled in this want and adoration that I shouldn’t feel.
I gave a slight nod, and he pulled me into the strength of his hold. Arms flexing and bowing with the magnitude of the man.
“I’ve got you.”
It was the same promise he kept making.
As if he might have been as afraid as I had been.
Emerald eyes were pinned on me as he nudged the door shut with his hip, and he never broke the connection as he carried me up the porch steps and to his door. He didn’t put me down as he worked the key into the lock, and somehow, he managed to maneuver around enough to get it open.
He carried me through, kicked it shut, and locked it behind us, quick to input the security system code to shut it off.
My arms held tight to his neck as he began to carry me upstairs.
Slowly.
Never looking away as he stared down at me in this adoration that nearly toppled my walls to the ground.
Our hearts were a thunder around us. A bashing that clattered between our souls.
This man who wasn’t supposed to be mine. One I shouldn’t want. But one I didn’t stand the chance of staving off this attraction right then.
The gravity that ripped and pulled between us.
A silent connection that blared at full volume .
When he got to the landing, he didn’t head for my room. He turned right and carried me into his where I’d fallen into the safety of him last night.
His bedroom was massive, taking up this whole upper wing of the house.
Masculinity dripped from the walls, the space every bit as dark as the man. Haunting paintings were framed on the walls, as distinct as the art that covered his flesh.
His bed faced out at the wall of windows that overlooked the back property. This afternoon, the heavy curtains were drawn open, giving a view of the forest that surrounded the stream that ran through in the distance.
Kane sat me down on the edge of his bed.
My pulse beat wildly as he dropped to his knees in front of me.
It didn’t matter that he was below me.
I could feel the bristling of his strength. The violent ferocity that blazed from his being and belted into me.
I could barely draw oxygen into my lungs with the pressure he exuded.
At the pain and devotion that was carved into the harsh lines of his unforgettable face.
“I won’t let anyone get to you, Emery. Whoever this fucker is, he won’t come near you.”
I wasn’t sure how I could trust him in this, but I did. I felt this overwhelming calm curl around me like a blanket.
“My crew is looking. Right now. And we won’t stop until we find him.” It was there again. That undercurrent to his admission that should have sent me running.
A violence that skated beneath it that promised peril and hazard.
That the instinct I had that he was dangerous—that they all were dangerous—wasn’t some idle, vague idea.
I should be afraid. Terrified for my niece.
Instead, I felt a security that I hadn’t in years.
That feeling of forever falling into a bottomless, harrowing abyss obliterated in his arms .
Kane’s expression deepened as he took both my hands in his. “What happened today, Emery…thought I was going to lose my mind when I got the call, terrified that I was about to lose what I finally found.”
Emotion crested, rushing up from where I tried to keep it shored. There was no chance of containing it any longer.
“What did you think you were going to lose?” The question tremored out of me. For the first time in my life, I was asking someone to bare themselves to me.
Because I wanted to feel. I wanted to feel it all.
Everything I’d been missing even when I knew there was no chance it could last.
“You.” Kane wheezed it on a tumultuous breath.
“I thought I was going to lose you. You who brought my heart to life when I’d accepted that I was going to live in this eternal nothingness for all my days.
You who made me see there is so much more to this existence than just pressing through each day.
You who made me see I want to be so much more than what I thought I was destined for. ”
Kane reached out his hand that was tattooed with the Ss and the dying rose and set his palm on my cheek.
Energy rushed.
A landslide of want.
“It’s you, Emery. You I’m destined for. You and that little girl that have wrecked me in the best way possible.
You who turned my world upside down. And now I’m going to wreck you, Little Warrior.
Wreck you in the best way possible so you know exactly where you belong.
So you know you’re meant to be right next to me. ”
Desire wracked through my body.
An earthquake.
There was no question he felt it because arrogance ticked up at the corner of his mouth. “That is as long as you’re okay with that?”
I should absolutely tell him no. End this before he fully broke me in the end.
But the words were wisping out, “Wreck me, Kane. I want it. I want to feel you. I want to know what it’s like.”
Vulnerability seeped out with it .
That veritable ferocity pounded in the dense air. “I would never hurt you, Emery. I’ll only show you what it’s like to be treasured. Pleasured in every way you’ve ever imagined.”
A tremor rocked my spine.
God, what I had been imagining . Every time he touched me, I felt as if I was caught in an avalanche of bliss all while I was left wanting so much more.
So I admitted it.
“I ache for it. I ache for you.”
A dangerous smirk took over his smile. “I’m going to fill that ache. Erase it all while leaving you hungry for more. Because once you have me? You’re going to want it again and again. You’ll never be full of me, just the way I’m never going to be full of you.”
It sounded of a threat.
Of a promise.
Of a forever that he shouldn’t be speaking.
It didn’t matter.
Shivers raced, and my mouth parted as he shifted so he could trace the pad of his thumb over my lower lip.
Back and forth.
Back and forth.
Hypnotizing.
His head cocked to the side. “That sound good to you, Little Warrior? Because I don’t think I can stand not to be inside you for a second longer.”
He stared at me as he said it.
An invitation.
One I accepted with a shuddery, “Yes.”
The instant I said it, he pushed up high on his knees, one hand binding into the fall of my hair and the other gripping onto the side of my neck.
It was the exact moment his mouth descended and captured mine.
Flames ignited at the crash of our lips.
A blast of heat gusted through my veins .
My fingers dove into his hair, and I kissed him back as furiously as he was kissing me.
It wasn’t gentle or meek. It wasn’t him treating me as if I was fragile or broken. It was him showing me that I might be scarred, but those scars didn’t hold the power to keep me from experiencing what I wanted.
They didn’t hold the power to stem the onslaught of need that careened through my body. Licking up through my insides and saturating every cell.
I felt the rush of him everywhere.
His passion.
His greed.
His beauty.
This chaotic man who burned right through the middle of me.
“Emery,” he rumbled into the frenzy of the kiss. “Gonna show you what it’s like to be adored, and I’m never going to stop.”
“Don’t stop.” It was out without permission, as if he’d drawn the plea directly from that secreted place inside me.
“Don’t worry, sweetness, I don’t intend to.”
His tongue licked at my lips, and I opened to him. Beckoned him to take it deeper.
And I welcomed the thrill that charged through me when his tongue tangled with mine. Welcomed the sensations that rolled and whispered from the innermost sanctums of my spirit and blistered across my flesh.
No numbness to be found.
I was here.
Alive and burning beneath the caress of his hands.
“Kane.” I muttered his name at his mouth as my fingers searched, dragging down the back of his neck and sinking into his shoulders.
“I’m right here, Emery. I’m right here, and I’m not going anywhere.”
He pushed up to standing, and I angled back onto the bed. His feet were still planted on the floor as he hovered over me and kissed me into a puddle in the middle of the mattress.
I started scooting back, making room for him to climb on top of me .
Because I wanted to feel the brute force of his weight. To be pinned and know I was completely safe.