Chapter 43
Lovelyn
On the hallway floor. Halfway up the stairs.
On the threshold to my bedroom. We didn’t so much as pause for breath.
In my bed, in the room that smelled of him, Kane brought me down on top of him and took handfuls of my ample hips to control how I rode him.
Then lost it and jerked into me until we both tumbled into pleasure.
The night was made of possessive touches and sweet words. A reconnection where we’d been severed.
When I’d come for the third or fourth time, he held me so tight to him, I could’ve cried. I’d missed his holds. I’d missed him so much.
“I need your arms around me, always,” was my insensible mutter.
“Then you’ll have them.”
“Even when I’m with my friends? Or job hunting?”
“Especially then.” He paused. “What happened with your job?”
“I’ll explain in the morning.”
His wonderful cuddle continued, his warmth soothing where I’d been so cold. “If ye need me, I’m there. If you’re scared, I’ll hold ye until the fear goes away. We’re never parting again. Try changing your mind. You’re stuck with me.”
I laughed. He swallowed it with a kiss.
In minutes, he was hard again, sliding against me. “Take me inside ye.”
He already was, in every way.
It felt like a dream, except with orgasms keeping me aware instead of being pinched. When we slept, he didn’t stop holding me, so even in my dreams, he was there. Mine again.
Daylight found me deep in a happy place of soft sheets and hard man.
I wallowed. Kane loved me. He’d fucked the words into me all night to make me accept them as true. I’d wanted to say them back, but it felt like a whirlwind had hit. I needed a minute to catch my breath.
On the white pillow, Kane flexed his thick arms then pulled me onto his chest. His hug grounded me enough to make sense of the storm inside my head.
“Did you enter the game for me alone?”
His answer was a rumble. “Aye, I wouldnae have touched a woman again if Mila hadn’t told me your plan.”
“Forever?”
“I never expected to live a long life, not in my line of work. Didn’t want to. Until you. To think, I almost lost ye to some bastard in that basement. Sorry I drove ye to it.”
He can’t have understood me last night. “I had a wild idea to enter but quickly changed my mind, only going into it to lay the trap. Arran was supposed to extract me. He left me in only because you were there.” I’d messaged Genevieve to check, and she’d confirmed it. Sneaky matchmaking gangsters.
He held me closer. “Arran did that? Thought I’d burned that bridge.”
“Because you can’t see that anyone cares about you or thinks you deserve good things.” I chose my next words carefully. “Your aunt did that to you.”
He went still, and for a moment, I thought he’d reverted again. Then his breath ruffled my hair. “She hated me from the first second she knew I existed. She told me often. Her voice was the guiding narrative of my childhood.”
My heart sank for the boy who’d had to hear that bile. And who’d believed it. “You lived with her?”
“She’s my mother’s twin. They were always together, never married, either of them, and no other kids but me.
Ma even let Blair name me, hence the name that was a jab at my absent father.
Ma raised me, when I was small, but pretty soon she couldnae walk, and her grip had gone by the time I was maybe ten.
Blair took over, and to whatever degree she kept me alive.
But she dedicated her life to caring for her sister. ”
“While torturing her son.” I kissed his hand. “You are a blessing. Your life is precious. I need you to know that. I’m going to undo everything she taught you.”
Under my ear, his heartbeat stuttered. “There’s something new she told me outside the meeting. That I was the child of rape. Able forced himself on my mother. I knew they both hated the Marchants, but not exactly why. That cut deep.”
God. “I’m so sorry. It doesn’t change how special you are.”
“Doesn’t it? Even with the way I chased ye?”
I followed his logic, building a picture in my head of what he’d handled alone at the care home. Age-old trauma meeting a new and shocking revelation. “That’s where your mind went? They aren’t connected. You used that kind of sex to keep clear of pesky feelings. Isn’t that right?”
Rearranging myself with my chin on my folded arms, still on his chest, I linked my gaze to his.
Kane slowly nodded. “In part. I still want to hunt ye.”
A thrill ran over me. “But not to hurt me.”
“Never. And only if ye want it.”
I did. What felt like forever ago, I’d bemoaned the fact I’d never had great sex. With Kane chasing me, with the dirty phone call where he’d directed my use of his weapons, and with our perfectly intimate nights making love, he’d given me everything I’d wanted.
“You’ve spent the night with me in a bed, staring into my eyes and telling me you love me. There’s nothing wrong with you, or what we do together. I love the hunt. I won’t give it or you up for the world.”
He took a moment over speaking, a strand of my hair twisted around his fingers as if it gave him focus.
“No one has ever treated me as more. I was a nuisance, a burden, then a machine. A functional part, like you said I’d treated you.
Tyler showed me my worth as part of his team, and my sister tried to show me she cared, but I couldn’t see it, or accept it.
Until you. When we were in the hotel, I had this alternate life planned out.
One where someone cared about me and wanted me. ”
Emotion rushed. “Me.”
He kissed my forehead, his lips lingering. “Only ever you. I wrote it on your hip because I didn’t trust that I could say it.”
I’d been right. Those patterns he’d drawn on my skin had been words. “What did you write?”
“That I loved ye. Over and over.”
My poor, unbroken heart hurt for us both. “Then Blair and the care home happened.”
“I’m sorry, flower girl. I thought letting ye go was the right thing to do. It was the opposite. I’ll do everything I can to make it up to you. I’ll earn your forgiveness.”
I squeezed my eyes tight shut, opening them to tears. “Just keep loving me, because I am in so deep with you.”
He shifted to hold me at arm’s length.
Deep emotion flickered in his eyes.
“It’s true. I’m in love with you. How could I not be?”
Kane’s mouth opened and closed, his gaze searching mine. “For so many reasons.”
“No. There’s nothing that could’ve stopped me falling. You’re wonderful. You have a beautiful soul. That grouchy stonewalling? If we ignore the last time, it’s just a turn-on. You are a force of nature I had no chance of withstanding.”
He shook his head, one big hand coming up to hold my face. “I’ll learn to be all those things. I’d say ye could boyfriend-train me some more, but it’s my job to work on that. I’ll find a way to be what ye need.”
His kiss interrupted my shaky laugh.
“I learned the lessons. How to compliment ye, bring flowers, take ye out.”
“To show up in the middle of the night when I needed you.”
He kissed me again. “It started as a joke, but I needed that guidance. It woke up a part of my brain that had no idea how to treat someone as perfect as ye. Just putting this out there, the game commits us to thirty days together, but I want life. I don’t ever want to give ye up. I go where ye are.”
“Stay here with me.” With him, the house could feel like a home again.
He took my hand and placed it on his chest, showing me how his heart thundered. Under me, he’d grown hard again, and I lifted up to fit him to my core then sank down, my mouth open at how good he felt.
Kane groaned and stroked my soft belly, rising to cup my breasts. “So. Fucking. Happy.”
His promise to speak his emotions and share his thoughts meant the world to me. It gave us a way forward together. The information I needed. His happiness and mine.
When we next came up for air, Kane ordered food and laid out the cartons on the coffee table in the lounge, curling on the big blue sofa.
“Can we put a movie on?” he asked.
“Any preference?”
“I’ve barely seen any, but how about Lord of the Rings? I want to meet this Aragorn. Check out my competition.”
He’d not only remembered my favourite but the scene I’d watched a hundred times, too. In utter delight, I set it up, snuggled against him while we ate. “Be warned, my love for Aragorn is all-powerful, formed when I was young.”
“Challenge accepted.”
By the time we reached the Inn, with Aragorn’s face lit by his pipe, giving a glimpse of the hot-as-hell Viggo Mortensen, I was under Kane again.
“Don’t swoon over another man while I’m inside ye,” he growled.
I snapped my gaze off the screen. “I did warn you. He was my first love. Or maybe my fifth. I—”
My words were lost to a moan of pleasure where he rotated his hips at the perfect angle to be sure I never fell in love with a fictional character again.
At least not this week.
When the movie was done, my thoughts had shifted on to other matters. To the aunt who’d ruined his childhood and failed him so badly.
I extracted another promise. “Can we go see your mum again?”
“I…hadn’t planned to. But I should. You’re thinking I need to tackle Blair as part of fixing this shite.” He gestured at his head.
“Or to let me. You’re your mother’s next of kin, aren’t you?”
“I am.”
“Let me take Blair on. You don’t need to handle everything alone, and when it comes to all that,” I kissed my fingers and tapped them to his forehead, “all you need do is unlearn what she taught you. I’m going to tell her off on your behalf.”
He dove his eyebrows together. “How?”
“I’ll inform her that we’re taking over your mother’s care. Unless she stops blaming you. But one more word against you and she’s out. I know the damage it did. It can’t be healthy for your mum to hear.”
“I love you for it, but there’s no way she’s going to change.”
“Your mum never corrected her when she was able?”
“Blair’s abuse was mostly done in private. Ma knew she hated me, though.”
I took a steadying breath. He’d never had anyone stand up for him, and that was a tragedy.
If his mum never stopped her sister, perhaps it was because she had no one else to care for her child.
I’d always had my mother in my corner, and even though she was gone, I knew that strength.
I had it in my bones. I’d use it to protect the man I loved.
“She’ll listen because I’ll make her. I love you. I won’t let anyone hurt you.”
“I don’t deserve you, but I’m fucking glad you’re mine.”
I kissed him, thoroughly, until we were both so wound up that Kane drove me into the cushions another time. He made love to me, speaking words of love, praising me, loving me.
He’d taken me so low then brought me sky-high, yet at last I felt in control of myself again. All the emotions that had been inside me had come out. A full circle from the emotional wreck I’d been.
It was early evening when we woke again.
“Satisfied. Needy.”
I smiled at Kane’s murmured emotion-telling.
“Want me to tell you I love you again?”
“Would ye?”
Grey eyes held mine. I loved being the only person to ever see this side of him. Soft. Vulnerable.
“I’m so in love with you.”
“Thank fuck I didn’t dream it.”
We made our way to the kitchen, and Kane patted my mother’s urn on his move around the space. He used her name and chatted to her over making coffee. If he hadn’t already claimed my heart, that would’ve cinched the deal.
Over a steaming mug, he turned his questions on me. “Tell me about Lyle. I’m enjoying the thought that he watched me carve a path to ye then found himself cut off and locked up. How did that come about?”
I went over the plotting I’d done with the skeleton girls.
How I suspected Lyle was trying to take over my father’s dubious police-underworld connection role, how he’d threatened Arran, the invite to dinner, and lastly my guard and Pollyanna who were both in his custody.
It all led to our plan to catch him, and the fact he’d shown up, not with riot vans or a warrant, but to see me, told us everything.
Kane’s eyes twinkled. “He’s going to be spitting teeth. Can we go find out?”
We showered, clung to each other, dressed, and readied to leave. Kane brought his scant possessions in from his car. His black holdalls. His winter coat and weapons stash. When I overheard him chatting to Mrs Hampton out front, I slipped back into the kitchen and took a seat in front of Mum’s urn.
As I’d done so many times, I shared my news.
“You know Kane? Well, I asked him to stay here with me. Which means I want him to move in. I hope that’s okay. It’s happened fast, sure, but when you know, you know. So you told me once because you said you’d never found love like that. Kane loves me, and I can’t imagine being apart from him.”
Quiet calm hung in the air.
My kind, warm-hearted mother would’ve adored Kane. She’d have done the fun and flirty thing with him, and they would’ve grown close. I gave myself a moment to grieve a relationship that never got the chance to happen, then chose instead to celebrate the one I’d cherished and the new one I’d gained.
Lighter than I had felt in a long time, I left to join him.