41. Kane
FORTY-ONE
KANE
I gazed down at the woman who had shattered every belief. Blonde air strewn around that gorgeous face. Toffee eyes swirling with the affection she’d been fighting.
Breaths short and panted, her heart this thundering beat against mine.
I exhaled heavily as I shifted off to the side, ridding myself of the condom and tossing it into the trash. Then I laid back onto my side and dragged her against me so that we were facing each other. All that hot, sweat-drenched flesh tucked up close to me.
Right where she belonged.
Emery let go of a contented sigh, and fuck, I didn’t think there was much that sounded better than that.
The woman finding her peace—her comfort—in me.
Especially after what had gone down this afternoon.
“How do you feel?” I finally asked, voice rough with the lust and relief that still barreled through my insides.
Emery blinked. Blinked those fathomless eyes that had the power to suck me down to the very depths of who she was. A looking glass into her soul that she kept under lock and key but had somehow granted me access to .
Yet, somehow, I felt as if I’d recognized them all along.
“Amazing,” she quietly admitted, lashes fluttering low as those tender fingertips danced across my chest.
“That so?” I kept it soft. Close to a tease. Probably should have been impossible with the way this moment felt profound.
Emery sucked her bottom lip between her teeth, so fucking cute when she got coy, and she gave a slight nod. “You want me to sing your praises, my dragon?”
It was her own tease. Something playful ridging into her features, her tenderness so deep and wide I thought there was a chance we might be floating in it.
“Well, a man needs to know if he lived up to expectations.” A smirk hitched at the edge of my mouth.
“I think you already know you by far exceeded my expectations.”
My brows lifted. “An A+ performance?”
“A perfect ten.” She might have been playing along, but she whispered it in awe.
My tone intensified as I let the pad of my thumb caress along the defined angle of her cheek. “That’s what I want to be for you. A perfect ten.”
“I think you’re proving yourself to be so much more than that.” All the ribbing had drained from her words, and I drew her even closer, needing to feel her life beat burning through my veins.
I ran my lips across her forehead. “Guess that’s fair since you’ve become my everything.”
We stayed like that for the longest time, just existing in those words. In the silent promises that were woven in between.
Finally, I broached the topic that I didn’t want to give any credence to. The topic I didn’t want anywhere between us, tainting the moment. But it was there, anyway, a part of Emery that I needed to understand.
A piece I needed to hold.
Share with her because when I told her she didn’t have to go it alone anymore, I meant it.
Because fuck. I didn’t want any secrets between us, which I recognized the irony of considering the charade that I lived .
“What you said at the doctor’s office…you couldn’t let it happen again.”
The question darkened the air like a wraith had just crawled in through the cracks in the walls.
Emery winced, rigidness lining her spine as she grappled with the shift. I could feel the war go down inside her. Her uncertainty up against the trust that I had gained.
My spirit flailed. Couldn’t stand the thought of sullying or defiling that trust. Couldn’t stand the idea of her fearing me when she’d just learned that there was no safer place for her than in my arms.
Hated that I was keeping things from her when I was asking her to cut herself wide open.
But I couldn’t let her behind the veil of who I was yet.
Not until I knew she would stay. Not until I knew she wouldn’t run. I couldn’t put my crew or her at risk like that.
The situation was already jacked.
But there was no way to imagine her not becoming a permanent part of my life. To me, there was no other solution or conclusion than her being right here.
With me.
With Maci.
With us .
I could do nothing but curl my arms tighter around her, like locking her against me would bring her to the same resolution.
“It was a long time ago,” she finally whispered into the tension that bound us. Like it was enough of an answer and explained everything.
“Yeah?” I encouraged.
She nodded against my chest, and I caressed my thumb along the small of her back.
Back and forth.
Back and forth.
My voice was choppy as I asked, “But you didn’t leave it there, did you? It has chased you? Haunted you?”
Her exhalation was shaky. “It’s always with me. Lurking in every corner of who I am. ”
Protectiveness slammed me as fast as a summer storm.
Crushing.
Pervasive.
Compelling me to demand a name. That’s all I needed.
One little name, and I’d do the rest.
But I knew it wasn’t always that simple. Even if I put the monster in the ground, it wouldn’t erase the scars that had already been written on her.
I waited, giving her the time to see that she could tell me anything.
“Emmalee and I were seventeen.” Emery’s voice was sallow, and her sweet hands clung to me as if I could keep her from being sucked back to that time.
“We were on a team trip out of state for a cheerleading competition. Our best friend Jana was with us. We were supposed to stay in our rooms, but we snuck out.”
Tears blurred and bleared that fathomless gaze, and I hated the torment that I could see written there.
“I tried to convince them not to go, but Jana and Emmalee were up for a good time. They wanted the thrill of experiencing something scandalous and new. It didn’t take much for them to convince me to go, too. I’d wanted all those experiences, Kane. I wanted them.”
Grief dented deep in her brow, and her voice dropped to a horrified breath. “We were going to have a great time. We’d won the trophy that day, and I felt invincible.”
Agony lashed through her expression, and my arms spasmed with the effort of trying to hold her through it.
“We’d heard about this club that didn’t always card, so we got dressed up and went. There were these guys there?—”
Old fear cracked on her tongue, and she squeezed her eyes closed tight.
“It’s okay, Emery.”
“No, Kane, it’s not. It wasn’t okay. We were never the same, and Jana didn’t make it through it.”
Her words pierced me.
An arrow staked straight through.
What the fuck had happened to these poor girls ?
Sickness roiled at the possibilities.
“I’m so sorry, baby. I’m so sorry.”
I knew firsthand how sick and twisted these monsters could be.
I tried to keep it contained. The rage that burned a path through my insides. But it was impossible when Emery began to sob. Her cries burrowed in the thunder that sieged my chest.
“What happened?” I issued it at the top of her head as she clung to me.
Those walls trembled around us. Bricks fracturing. Close to caving.
“I…I can’t, Kane. I can’t.” She croaked it.
“Let me destroy the bastards who hurt you. All I need is a little information, and I’ll see that it’s done.”
By my own hands.
It would be my greatest honor to take these motherfuckers’ last breaths.
Emery froze, and in that instant, both of us became distinctly aware of what I’d said.
I’d hinted at it before. Given her undercut warnings.
But this was a blatant admission.
I could feel the force of her gulp where she was still pinned against me.
“What exactly do you mean by that?” The question was ragged. Frayed and torn apart.
“Means I will go to any length to see to it that you feel safe. That you are safe. Warned you before that I’m not a good man…”
Maybe she’d understood on some level, but she hadn’t allowed herself to fully grasp the brutality of who I was.
I couldn’t do anything but admit to being that person right then.
“And I will gladly use that fact to protect what is mine.”
A shiver rocked through her. This one different than the chills that had been flashing through her body when I’d sent her soaring.
This was a flash of fear that was followed by what felt like a wave of acceptance. Her fingertips tapping across the spot where my heart pounded out of control, my own fear slashing through my insides. Dread that she was going to haul herself out of my bed and skip town.
Take Maci with her.
“Should I be afraid of you?” She whispered it into my flesh, those eyes concealed where she had her face completely pressed into my chest.
I shifted so I could take her chin and tilt her face up to me.
Forcing her to meet my gaze.
“I would never hurt you. The only person who should be afraid of me is anyone who would dare to think of threatening you.”
Her, and the rest of the vulnerable.
The fucking monsters that roamed this world. Monsters who would beg and plead for their lives when they met with the monster in me.
Emery met my stare, her fears and her faith and her doubt roiling in the depths. “I don’t think I could be even if you told me to be. I feel who you are. I see it. And maybe I should be terrified of it, but I’m not.”
In what seemed confusion, she slowly dragged the tips of three fingers down the scruff on my cheek.
Like she was struggling to process the way I made her feel.
The way this thing should have been impossible for us both.
“I need to know if what happened this afternoon could somehow be related to that, Emery. If it could be related to the suspicion you had about your sister. Any detail that might help us find out who might have come after you.”
Emery’s head barely shook. “I don’t have a name, Kane. No one does. The police looked high and low. There was no trace. And my sister’s death was ruled an accident.”
“Police have parameters that I don’t.” I gritted through another admission. Dragging her closer to who I really was. To what me and my crew did.
Emery’s eyes squeezed closed for a beat. “I would give it to you if I had it. But there’s nothing there.”
“I just want to take care of you. Give you everything that you’ve given me.” It was a rough plea .