Chapter 4
FOUR
KANE
Ican’t help but notice her, and I don’t know why. But every time she moves, my pulse races.
I grip the steering wheel and steal another look. She’s already watching me, her brows knitted in concentration.
“So…” she begins. “You kidnapped me and now I’m here in your car. What’s next?”
I can’t help the way my mouth curves upward; it just does. There’s something oddly endearing about her snarkiness.
“Now you spend the afternoon with me.”
Her brows shoot up in surprise, and a smile softens her face. My answer surprises her, but not only her—me too. Honestly, I can’t tell you what made me show up at her college today, but she was the first person on my mind this morning, and I had to see her.
I simply had to.
“Kane,” she says softly, uncertainly. She’s about to turn me down again, and I fucking don’t like it. I’ve never met a woman this stubborn before.
Actually, I’ve never met a woman who hasn’t jumped at the chance to bounce on my dick. So, this is new territory for me, and I don’t know how to make this girl like me. I’ve never had to try before, which only makes me more determined.
“Just… Give me today, okay?” I relax my tense jaw and loosen my grip on the steering wheel. She’s not going to agree to spend the afternoon with me if I look like I’m about to explode.
She studies me, and I fight the urge to do what I would normally do—tell her she has no damn choice because she doesn’t. She’s spending the afternoon with me whether she wants to or not, because I fucking like her for reasons I can’t explain.
I mean, what is it about this girl that has me all tied up in knots? I keep asking myself this, but I can’t find an answer.
Even now, dressed in faded jeans and a white T-shirt that reads, ‘kinda classy, kinda chaos,’ she’s the most attractive girl I’ve ever met, and I can’t even tell you why.
Maybe it’s the wavy lock of hair that refuses to be tamed, or the freckles on her nose.
Maybe it’s her smile, because it hits me in the chest every damn time like a Cupid’s arrow.
Ah, fuck! I’m going soft.
“Kane,” she says again, but I cut her off with a vigorous shake of my head.
“Just one afternoon, little thief. That’s all I’m asking. If you don’t want to see me again after that, I’ll walk away and you won’t have to deal with me anymore.”
Lies, all damn lies, but I’d happily grow my nose like Pinocchio if it got her to spend time with me.
She fidgets with her hands in her lap. “Kane... I promised my brother I would stay away from you.”
Note to self: don’t bury her brother in a shallow grave, no matter how tempting it is. Trust me, it won’t help your cause. Take a deep breath. Keep your cool. You can win him over later.
One day, he’ll worship the ground you walk on. One day, he’ll admit you’re the best damn thing that ever happened to his sister.
One day, she’ll admit it too.
“Okay,” she says slowly, pulling me back from my thoughts. “One afternoon... but after that, you have to promise to leave me alone.”
Watch my nose grow. There it goes—poking the windshield.
“Of course,” I lie. She presses her lips together, but I catch that hint of warmth playing at her mouth, and suddenly I can’t think about anything else. I want to make her smile again. To be the reason for all her smiles.
“You look like you bit into a sour lemon,” she says. “Why do I get the feeling you won’t leave me alone after today?”
“I don’t know what gave you that impression.” I check my mirrors, then pull out to overtake a pensioner in a Civic Honda.
She studies my side profile with a gentle expression that settles in my chest. I’m dying to ask her what she’s thinking, but I’m nervous, which is another strange feeling and something I haven’t experienced before. My hands are clammy, and my heart is pounding.
“You seem kinda tense,” she points out, turning to face me, her inquisitive eyes warming the side of my face and neck.
“Why would I be tense?” I ask her.
I’m tense as hell. Of course I am. She fucks me up like no one else. One moment I’m chasing her, and then she’s chasing me, and something about our back-and-forth excites me to the core.
A soft sigh slips from her lips, and my cock twitches to life.
“I don’t know.” She’s silent for a moment, and I pull back into the slow lane before I cause a crash because she’s so distracting. I wouldn’t put it past me to kill us both, and we can’t have that before I taste her again.
I turn off the blinkers, but an incoming call from my father stops my thoughts cold, like a bucket of ice water dumped over my head, so I quickly silence his call and let it ring out. Fuck him.
I already know what he wants, and hell no. My skin crawls as I recall the flowery notes of the witch’s perfume from last night and the threat she left hanging in the air.
“Are you okay?” Jessica asks, her soft voice pulling me away from my father’s shadow. My tight-lipped smile doesn’t reach my eyes.
“I’m fine.”
She wants to ask more questions, and I brace myself for what’s coming. But luckily, she gets distracted as we turn onto a bumpy dirt road.
“Where are we?”
“You’ll see.”
Overgrown tree branches hit the sides of the windows, and a flock of birds takes flight in a rush of squawks as we enter a clearing. After I pull up near the small lake, I cut the engine and unbuckle my seatbelt.
I’ve always enjoyed how quiet it is out here… silent and peaceful. Mom used to bring my siblings and me here when we were younger, and we’d spend hours playing by the riverbed while she read a book in the shade. That was before my father’s dark world drained the last spark she had for life.
It’s good to be back here again. Honestly, I have many fond memories of this place, but it’s strange to see the lake now through adult eyes.
It seems so small and insignificant, a tucked-away lake that nature forgot.
It used to look so big when I was a little boy, like the ocean itself—endless and full of secrets.
Jessica shifts beside me, probably wondering why I haven’t moved yet.
For a moment, I question why I brought her here…
to a place that means so much to me. Just the thought of taking any of the other women I’ve been with here is out of the question.
I don’t want them anywhere near the only happy memories of my childhood that I still hold. But it’s different with Jessica.
She is different.
I feel off balance, like a reckless kid on a roof raft high above a hay bale in an old barn, my stomach twisting with excitement and fear.
I shouldn’t be up here, but the thrill of climbing the rickety old ladder is too tempting.
And if Jessica kisses me now, I’ll lose my balance, and I’d better pray that the hay bale is tall enough to catch my fall.
“It’s beautiful here,” Jessica says quietly, looking out through the windshield, her voice filled with wonder.
“Yes,” I reply, looking at her, “it is.”
There’s no way the hay bale is tall enough to catch my fall, not this time... not with her. But it’s already too late.
I’m airborne, caught in that split second before gravity sends me hurtling to the ground.
“How did I not know about this place?” she asks.
“Not many people do.”
Hopefully, it stays that way. I’m not ready to share it with anyone else.
Jessica looks at me with those blue, expressive eyes that hold a thousand questions, and my pulse jumps beneath my skin.
I step out of the car, shut the door behind me, and face the glassy lake, the sun warming my face and shoulders. I just need a moment or two alone to calm my nerves, and then I’ll be okay. It’s not like me to feel this unsettled around women, or anyone else, for that matter. I haven’t cared before.
A door opens and shuts behind me. I glance over my shoulder to find Jessica watching me over the roof of the car. She squints against the sun, one hand raised to shield her eyes as a gentle breeze lifts her unruly hair.
“Why do I feel this way around you?” I ask, my voice threatening to crack.
She tilts her head, curiosity flickering across her face. “Feel what?”
I can’t believe I fucking said that aloud. Who even am I anymore? Cash would never let me live it down.
Turning fully, I rest my arms on top of the roof, studying the freckles on her nose and the small scar near her lip. “Like the world is shifting beneath my feet.”
Her eyes flicker slightly, and I nervously tap my fingers on the roof as I look toward the treeline. “It’s fucking scary, to be honest,” I admit, and when I turn my gaze back to her, she swallows, a stray lock of hair drifting across her lips.
She has no idea of the effect she has on me, and it makes her even more attractive.
“Kane,” she says, drifting off. Her voice is so quiet that it’s almost lost in the gentle breeze, and my throat jumps. Here we go again. She’s fighting her feelings.
I watch her as I drum my fingers on the roof, my chest tightening.
“I don’t know what this is,” I continue, wetting my lips, and she looks at me like she’s scared, but not in the way you’d think. She’s afraid of getting hurt.
“And I know it doesn’t make sense.” I focus on the black paint, tapping my finger in sync with the pulse in my ears. “But when you walked out of that building earlier. Fuck… I couldn’t look away.”
“Kane,” she tries again, and I dig my eyebrows in, refusing to listen to reason.
Tap. Tap.
“Why are you fighting this?”
“Fighting what? This? What’s this? Kane, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
My chest twinges. “This connection.”
“There’s no connection,” she says, exasperated. “Whatever it is you feel, I don’t, okay? I don’t feel it.”
She’s lying. She has to be. There’s no way I’m alone in this.
Something inside me snaps, and I walk around the car in quick strides. The ground seems to give way beneath me as I back her against the door.
“Shut up,” I tell her, cupping her face. Her eyes flare just before I crush my lips to hers. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.