20. Raegan
Chapter twenty
Raegan
I balk, and his grin widens. “Don’t worry, I can start slow. No street racing for you tonight.”
I scoff. “That’s slow?”
“It is for me. We can always try a bit of racing if you’re up to it once you figure out the clutch.”
“What’s a clutch?”
The car behind us screeches its tires as it takes off around us, the guy waving the bird out the window. As if either of us gives a shit. Kellan doesn’t even bother to turn his way.
“All right, get out.” There’s a second of dread that he's kicking me out and leaving me on the side of the road again. Considering the good night so far, it’d be about right to happen now. But then he opens his door and steps out, and I realize he means to switch.
I release a breath and hesitantly pull the latch on my door to swing it open.
It’s not that I don’t want to drive cars. I just know that I’m never going to own one, so why bother? I’ve lasted this long on buses, taxis, and walking.
I snap my head up to find him leaning against the hood of the car with an outstretched arm on the open door. “What? You nervous?”
I stand and freeze when I realize I’m now trapped between him and the car. “No. I just don’t need to drive.”
Kellan crowds me back against the car. “Bullshit.” His breath is hot against my face as I’m trapped in his blue-green gaze. “We only fear what we don’t know. So, face it. Learn it. Own it. Then you’ll never be afraid again.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Isn’t it? Have you tried?”
I duck under his arm, and he turns, his gaze following me all the way around the car with an intensity that I can feel burning into me. I pull the lever beneath the seat to move it until my feet can at least touch the pedals.
Kellan sits and throws his seat all the way back so he can stretch his long legs out as much as the dash will allow before his shins hit it. He throws an arm behind the headrest like he is lounging and about to take a nap, then tilts his face to look at me with his signature smirk.
“Ready?”
I look from the shifter to the three pedals on the floor. I’d been happy enough to learn that one pedal meant go and the other stop. What is the third one for?
As if reading my mind, or maybe the confusion on my face, Kellan starts his training. “The third pedal is the clutch. You use that to manually shift gears for better control of the car.” He leans over and uses his hands to show me how my feet should look on the pedals when shifting gears, when to use the shifter, and what feels like an oversimplified explanation of what looks so complicated.
“Now, give it a try.”
I do, and the car grinds beneath my feet when I can’t get the timing right. I cringe at the sound and peek over at him, expecting him to be annoyed or pissed that I’m hurting his car. Instead, he’s contemplative and rubbing at his beard. He snaps his fingers and then looks at me. “Stop the car. I’ve got a better idea.”
Before the car comes to a complete stop, he hops out and strides to the driver’s side to open my door.
“What are you—” I start, but he waves me out. Disappointment and relief swirl in my chest as I do what he asks. I turn away to move back over to the passenger side, but he grabs my wrist.
“Don’t go anywhere.” He fixes the seat back for his legs, then raises the steering wheel up. Kellan crooks his finger at me and curls it in. “C’mere.”
I stare at his lap and then back up at him. “You’re joking.”
“It’s the best way for you to learn. You can feel how and when I do it and then try it yourself.”
I scrunch my nose. “I think everyone else in the world who learned how to drive one of these things would disagree. They all learned another way.”
“Well, they took weeks or months to learn it. I’m teaching you in one night. Now, get in here, beautiful. I promise I won’t bite.”
The whites of his teeth are so large in his grin that it’s hard to believe him. And for whatever reason, I do anyway.
I duck down and grab the roof of the car as I find my seat in his lap. His hands guide my hips where he wants me and then he jerks the seat forward until my feet reach the pedals and his knees are bunched on either side of the wheel. It can’t be comfortable for him, but I’m more focused on the fact that he’s surrounding me on three sides.
It’s so cramped that his chest is flush against my back, and his breath is constant behind my ear and neck. His knees box me in, and I’m acutely aware of my short dress riding up as my ass presses firmly into his lap.
“Put your feet on mine,” he rumbles in his deep voice. Liquid heat pools between my legs, and I pray my dress and underwear will keep that secret. I do as he asks, my feet curling around his ankles, and then he moves his hand under mine on the shifter. He shuts the door and puts us back in neutral. “Now, close your eyes.”
I turn to look at him with surprise. “Why?”
Kellan smirks at me. “Because I don’t want you watching what I’m doing. You need to feel it. Let the car tell you when it needs to shift and then do it.”
Swallowing, I manage a small nod, then close my eyes. Now I feel even closer to him. All I can feel and smell is Kellan around me. My skin tingles at the close contact and I take a deep breath to get my body under control. His beard tickles my ear and I shiver just as his foot drops on the clutch. My foot falls with his, and then both feet and my hand are moving.
The car steadily increases speed, and I notice after a couple of shifts I can hear and feel it when the car needs to shift. Kellan’s body moves so smoothly and mine follows along with his as we move to higher gears and then back down repeatedly .
“Now, you try. Don’t open your eyes. I’ll steer. And I’ll tell you whether we’re going faster or slower.”
“You’d better not crash us into a wall or the water, Kell.”
He chuckles and I can feel it vibrate from his chest to my back. “Go when you’re ready.”
I push his foot down and start going through the motions we’d done like a coordinated dance. Kellan guides me with the speed, and I’m pleased when there’s no grinding noise with any of my shifts.
I’m midway through another gear change when Kellan’s curse and tone snap my eyes open. “Fuck.” I jump and screw up the shift. The gears grind until Kellan steps in to take over. He swings us around and that’s when I notice we’re at the abandoned airport. And there are red and blue lights heading our way.
“Shit,” I agree. “Should I crawl over to the other seat?”
Kellan reaches between my legs and the seat flies back with me going with it. “No time. Just hold on tight.”
I’m trapped between his arms and legs as he thrusts the car into its highest gear to speed us away from the airport where we’d likely been trespassing. We’re back in the city quickly, but two police cruisers stay in sight behind us. Kellan starts whipping us down smaller one-way roads, winding us left and right into shorter streets to try and lose them.
A third cruiser almost crashes into the back wheel of our car from out of nowhere, but Kellan yanks on the emergency brake and then shoots us away from him. We jump over a curb and hear metal snap and scrape against the concrete, then drop back over the other side of the median to drive back in the opposite direction .
We weave through the city in a way only someone who knows the streets inside out could do, turning down roads I couldn’t even see were there until we’d disappeared down their unlit alleys.
After a while, Kellan drives down another alley. “We’ll hide here,” he starts, moving his foot to the brake and then cursing when the car makes no move to stop. He wrenches the emergency brake to slow us down, but the solid building wall at the end is closing in faster than the brake will slow us down.
“Kell!” I cry out in panic.
“Pull your knees up!” he bellows, then flips us around and crushes me into the seat. His body covers mine, and his hand pins my neck to the back of the seat.
The car smashes into the wall, and I release a choked scream as the hood bunches up like an accordion and the windshield shatters. I wait for the dashboard to squish us both, but the car groans and then quiets.
I’m struggling to breathe, and I’m terrified when Kellan doesn’t move. “Kell? Kellan?!” My hands are stuck between my chest and his, my body pinned to the seat and my neck still captured in his hand. I’m immobilized.
He doesn’t answer and the panic claws up my chest and into my throat. “Kellan! Wake up! I know you’re alive, you prick!” Tears are clogging my voice, and I curse them for weakening it when it’s the only thing I can use to try waking him up. Because he can’t be dead. His gift wouldn’t allow it.
Right?
The longer he stays quiet, the more I struggle under him to do anything I can to wake him up. “This isn’t funny, Kell. Move . Say something. Please .”
He’s not breathing.
I should hear or feel him breathing over me, but there’s not the slightest movement of his chest.
“No, no, no. Kell, you can’t do this. You’re invincible, right?! Wake the fuck up!”
Is it because the car is crushed too much into him that it’s not letting his body heal? He always had to take anything stuck in his body out before his body could heal, so is that why? Then, how am I supposed to get the car out of him to heal if I’m trapped?
I struggle against him. Even if it means pushing him further back into the car, if I can shift enough that his body has some room from the car, then maybe…
I keep wiggling and throwing my body back and forth against his.
How long can he stay like this without dying?
He can’t die.
He can’t .
I just got him back. We were figuring things out. I was having fun again.
Everything I’ve done has been to protect him and the others. So, he can’t die when I’ve been fighting for him all this time.
“Please, Kell,” I beg again, imploring him to move. “Don’t leave me.”
A sob slips free, and I give one final shove.
Then he groans, and his body shifts over mine.
“Kellan!” I croak out .
He pulls away from me as much as he can in this overly-tight space, his shoulders and head ducked down from the roof, and he winces at the movement. His blue-green eyes rake over me with worry. “Are you okay?” He releases my neck and starts searching my body with his hands for signs of injury.
I suck in oxygen now that my airflow is no longer restricted and hurriedly wipe the tears from my face. “I think so.”
I’m so relieved he’s alive that it’s taking everything in me not to descend into bawling madness. I turn my focus on making sure he gets himself healed so I don’t do exactly that.
Kellan’s knees are on the floor in front of the seat, and the dash of the car is embedded in his back. I can’t even see his lower legs or feet beneath the crumpled mess. It’s like it gobbled him up.
“Oh shit, Kell.” I reach for his back, and he grabs my hand.
“I’m good. Hurt like a bitch, and I hit my head, but my gift’s starting to take over.”
Starting to. It can’t heal him while the car is still in him, though. “Get out of the car so you can heal already,” I snap at him when he doesn’t do it right away and still seems focused on looking me over. “I told you I’m fine.”
He smirks at my tone and grabs my chin, so I look at him. “Worried about me, beautiful?”
“Of course, I am!” I yell at him. “Get out!”
He finally relents and shoves the door open. It screeches on its hinges and fights him, but once it’s open, he pulls himself out, and I get a clear view of the damage to his lower back and his legs. They’re bloody and mangled, and my chest constricts tightly .
He pants on his hands and knees on the ground just outside of the car, and I can see the fine tremble in his muscles as he struggles to keep himself upright until his gift kicks in now that the car’s no longer in the way of his flesh healing. He rips his shirt off and out of the way and picks out any remaining bits of glass in his back and arms.
His body slowly begins to stitch itself back together, his ankles and feet straightening, and golden scales filling in over the freshly healed skin.
I don’t breathe again until every last injury is healed and reflecting moonlight from his hard exterior.
And then I’m breathless for an entirely new reason.
I’ve seen Kell injured numerous times before, but it was always a wound here or there. It’s never affected most of his body at once.
The bits of skin I can see through the tears in his pants and his exposed lower legs and feet are covered in golden scales. They continue up either side of his torso, but the skin from his abdomen up his chest is more of a solid pale gold. The scales along his sides stretch to cover his arms to the back of his hands and then up his neck and along the sides of his face.
His eyes are dark and feral. He looks almost…draconic.
He effortlessly rips the door off the car and leans in over me. “Let me see you.” His voice is deeper than usual, like a rumble echoing from a deep chamber in his chest.
I shiver at the sound of it.
He offers me his hand, and I let him guide me carefully out of the car until I’m leaning against it. He works his way down every inch of my exposed skin while I’m mesmerized by his scales fading away before me. Kellan presses his forehead to mine and exhales. “I don’t see anything. Did I crush you?”
I tilt my face up to his while keeping the contact with our foreheads until we’re staring into each other’s eyes.
He saved my life.
He could have let me die in that wreck. He could have protected himself instead.
But he took every injury for me. He risked his life, took every bit of pain I know he feels, and is still looking me over in case I have so much as a scratch.
He protected me.
Like he always used to.
The feelings I tried to push away since seeing him again break free in a rush of warmth and desire. It will never work out between us after what I’ve done.
But I can’t deny what’s between us anymore.
Not after that.
My hands move up his shirt to curl around the back of his neck. His eyes heat, but he doesn’t move or say anything.
I ignore the betrayal and distrust that’s supposed to be between us when I pull his lips to mine.
I ignore Aiden’s accusation when I sink my tongue between his lips and his fingers tangle into my hair and grip tight.
I ignore the past and anything else that might hinder this moment.
All I know is that I want him. I have wanted him since I knew what it meant to want someone.
And I’m not holding myself back anymore.
Fuck the consequences.
We snap at the same time, clawing at each other like animals. It’s all teeth and nails and tongue as we take what we want with abandon.
I sink my nails into his back and drag them down, drawing a pleasured groan from deep in his chest. His teeth find the crook of my neck. Every nibble, every firm suck shoots an electric current of desire straight to my core. I grind my hips against him to sate the pulsing need there, but it isn't enough.
He tugs at the top of my dress and then rips the front open with a snarl when it doesn’t give easily. I cry out from the force of it that I’m sure will leave a bruise, but I couldn’t give a fuck right now. My breasts spill free, and he drops his head to ravish them while I lean back and moan. I pull his hair tie free and tangle my hands in his soft locks, pulling and grasping at them.
I grab his hair to pull him up, and he growls and wraps his hand around my throat before he gives me a brutal kiss that takes my breath away.
Following the grooves of his abdomen downward, I rip open the button on his pants and tug them down. His cock springs free, and I wrap my hand around the hard, hot length.
I need him now. It's as if I’m afraid that this moment might end at any second, and if I don’t have him inside of me, I might never get the chance again.
Kellan breaks the kiss and looks like he might say something, so I jump up and wrap my legs around his waist, lining myself up with him.
“Don't stop,” I pant, my voice thick with desire. “Fuck me, Kellan. Make me feel you tomorrow and the next day and the day after that.”
He groans and pushes me back against the car. “Fuck, beautiful. That's music to my ears.” His hand tightens on my neck while the other hand has a bruising grip on my hip.
Kellan thrusts into me in a single stroke, wringing a garbled scream from my throat. I’m wet enough to ease his passage, but he’s thick, and I still have to adjust to his size before he drags his shaft back to the tip and slams into me again. My nails dig into his shoulder to hold on tight as he relentlessly fucks me against his car.
His hand on my neck cuts off my screaming and black spots edge my vision while he gives and takes pleasure like it’s his mission.
My entire body clenches and coils at record speed, and my orgasm crashes through me. I collapse against the car where his hand and dick have me pinned, feeling like a ragdoll as I catch my breath. Kellan collars my neck and crushes our lips together.
I kiss him back in a breathless frenzy as his hips circle inside me, and I tremble from the stimulation.
He carefully moves us to the back of the car. I whimper when he pulls free of me and sets me on my feet. Kellan chuckles and spins me around, planting my hands on the trunk and positioning me just right for his height with my knees on the bumper. “Don’t worry, beautiful. I’m not finished with you yet,” he murmurs his heated promise into the back of my neck and bites down just as he drives into me again from behind.
My breasts flatten against the cold metal of the trunk when he holds the back of my neck. I push my ass up and back into him, meeting his thrusts so that we’re matching each other stroke for stroke. He shifts a little, and a wanton moan flies past my lips as his dick runs over the sensitive area that makes my toes curl and my legs spasm.
He laughs softly. “Is that where you like it?”
I struggle to nod my head in his grip.
He grunts, keeping himself positioned to hit that spot. Then his fingers drag some of my leaking slick up to my clit and tease it until I can feel another orgasm rushing up on me again.
“Oh god. Yes! Fuuuuck, Kellan!”
“That's it, beautiful. Come for me again like a good girl.”
He speeds up, and my heart stops with the intensity of the orgasm that nearly washes me away with it.
Kellan swears as he follows behind me.
We don’t move for what feels like an eternity after that.
It takes until my body finally stops twitching and the rush of heat subsiding for my brain to come back online.
Shit.
This was a mistake.
One that felt amazing , but a mistake all the same.
Aiden is going to kill me.
Doing this was selfish of me.
“Don’t,” Kellan warns.
“What? ”
“Don’t second-guess it. Don’t get in your head.” His thumb strokes across the back of my neck, which he has yet to let go of.
“How did you—”
Kellan turns me around so we’re facing each other, his arms on either side of me on the back of the car. “Your body told me.” He brings his thumb and pointer finger to my nipple and pinches it, eliciting a gasp from my lips. “Whatever you’re thinking, stop. You can lie to yourself, but your body doesn’t lie to me, remember?”
He kisses me slowly, but with no less heat than before. I can feel my body unfurling under his touch like a blooming flower. It doesn’t even feel like my own then. Like it’s his to command.
My heart flutters in my chest when his lips leave mine and, for once, I’m at a loss for words. What can I say when my body so clearly answers him all on its own?
When I opt to keep my mouth shut this time, Kellan grins and helps to fix my dress, but there’s no amount of sewing that can be done to restore it for Portia. I’ll have to dip into my funds to buy her a new one.
Kellan pulls his shirt back on and fixes what’s left of his pants, before he ties his hair back up and out of his face. He looks over the car and gives it a pat. “Sorry, girl. I’ll get you fixed up.”
“How far away from the club are we?”
“Other side of town.”
Crap. I am not walking all the way back, and taxis aren’t out this late at night.
“Don’t worry, I’ll call us a ride.”
I nearly snap my neck with how fast I look over at him. “Not Aiden.”
He raises his brows. “Oh? And why not?”
I cross my arms over my chest and try to feign nonchalance. “Other than the fact that he still hates me? If he finds out about what just happened…”
He grins like this is all so funny, and I want to punch him for it. “What? You think he’d hate you more? Do you care how much he hates you?”
“I think he’d join Dane in trying to get rid of me,” I snap back.
He shakes his head. “Neither of them actually wants that. Give them more time.”
Kellan doesn’t know what Aiden did to make sure I stayed on the island.
“Call Jackson, then,” he says. “He’ll come if you call.”
“I don’t have his number.”
He laughs and steps up close to me. “I’m sure you do. Go on. If I call, he’ll ignore me.”
I pull my phone out of the hidden pocket and check my contacts, where I only expect to see Elias's and Portia’s names.
Jackson’s name is above hers.
Ugh. Stalker.