Chapter 14
KENNA
T he kiss was clumsy at first, but I grasped her chin to command the kiss, and I sank deeply into her warmth. My tongue coaxed for hers to meet mine. Give me your all, princess.
I’d feel guilty for the distraction if it wasn’t for the way that I dropped my hand from her chin to loosely wrap around her neck. My fingers grazed her pulse point as I held her still. Her heart rate spiking further at the touch. Oh, you like it? Good.
“Don’t be kissing in the backseat.” Neenan’s plea cut through the bubble of heat we’d created. A good boy shouldn’t get what he wants, so I switched gears into a full on make out sesh. I grabbed her hip, fisting the fabric of her dress so that it would lift a little and she’d be flush with my chest. “No Frenching in my backseat. Laney?!”
That got her out of it.
Bastard.
I leaned back into my side of the car and held my index finger between my teeth as I watched her. Inappropriate behaviour, Kk.
She pulled away, violently, suddenly apologetic. “Sorry, sorry, sorry.” She muttered, becoming flustered but not in a good way. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
The resounding silence crushed me as blood pumped through my veins at the same rate as Laney’s rapid breathing. Lust wasn’t going to solve this. All my life, I trusted that in the wake of tragedy the dopamine rush from sex would heal the soul, or at least make me forget for a little while. But that wasn’t the case for Laney, I realised. That was likely her second or third kiss. The gravity of such a moment shouldn't taint the memorial of her best friend. I blew it.
Right person, wrong time.
What she needed now was what she had always sought for. Comfort.
The rest of the car ride was spent without a single word, but I extended an arm along the backseat and fiddled with a lock of her hair. We were close but not touching, and while Neenan and I seemed to grow more relaxed, Laney continued to writhe her hands together with her head down.
“Princess,” I whispered across the car. The snap of her head was an admission in itself as she looked at me. “Calm.”
“No, I–” Her tone screamed anxiety, my pulse thrummed by it.
“Sir Ravencroft will be waiting,” Neenan interjected.
“What? Why?” I asked them both but kept my eyes on Laney.
“Questions need answers in the Ravencroft family.” He said. He wasn’t the one I wanted these words from though, but he kept rattling on. “The Logan thing, the disappearing, the kiss probably.”
“Do not tell him.” I shot a glare at the back of his head. Nothing good could come from Richard Ravencroft’s involvement. His hubris alone would send me a thousand miles away from her if I dared to dip a toe in Laney’s personal life pool.
“Oh, I think he already knows.”
“How could he possibly?” I mocked. We approached the iron gates of the Ravencroft Estate, and dread began to set in.
“You don’t stab a man for no reason, Kenna. He wasn’t born yesterday. He had love too.” Had? LOVE?
I scoffed. “I’ll deal with him.” I’ll show him.
“Then, you don’t know where you fall on the pecking order.” He shook his head. And that was what I feared. I’d gotten too close and would lose it all. Mama forbade me from volunteering for this mission, saying that I was too involved to see through clear water, but I promised it was purely physical.
Getting my first taste of Laney further entrenched my obsession, but my timing may have ruined it all.
The car drew to a stop in front of the ivy clung manor house.
As I glanced to my right, I saw Laney’s eyes were sealed shut. “Okay,” she spouted all of a sudden, overcome with some new spark of confidence, but when she smiled, I knew it was faked.
She opened her own door and strode toward the front door.
When I got out of the car, Neenan came fast approaching and gripped my upper arm. “Do not hurt her,” He gritted out. His grip tightened at my silence. “Understood?”
I nodded.
“Verbal.”
“Yes. Understood.” But fear seeped into my heart as if there were vines wrapping around an intruding object. Even when he had let go, I was frozen in place.
I was going to hell.
★
Later that night, voices came through the bedroom wall. It was muffled but growing in volume as if it were getting closer.
“Divorce is not an option this time.”
“I don’t want him. Father, please.”
“Sunshine, which is it? You like him but you scream when he gets close? You two seemed pretty close in the church until you stabbed him. A clear cut, you know. Good girl.”
“I was getting away from him. Kenna saved me. You sat there doing nothing as he fawned over me.”
“So, it’s Kenna that you want? You were in that forest long enough, you fuck her?” My ear touched the cold stoned walls.
“Father!” She sounded appalled. “I was having an anxiety attack because my best friend was in a casket and my ex-husband couldn’t keep his dirty hands to himself long enough so that I could say my goodbyes. This is not about my want .”
“Don’t give me that attitude. I spent thousands to get you help. And I spent years getting you a good match. You ruined it. I won’t let you ruin it again.”
A slammed door shook the walls to my bedroom. After a few minutes, heavy footfalls receded down the hallway and Laney’s door clicked open before a knock sounded at my door.
The sigh of relief I released delayed my reaction before I swung the door open.
“You heard?” She said, teary eyed.
I nodded, sadly. “Everything.” And opened the door wider for her to come inside.
And she did and with an ungraceful flop, she fell onto my bed, face first. Please, let this day be over, please, let this day be over could be heard muffled by the bedsheets.
For me, I didn’t want it to end just yet. She came to me. She came to me . I’m usually the one in her domain, but she sought comfort in me. There wasn’t a bigger compliment than that. Maybe, I hadn’t lost her after all, though I knew she was still suspicious, I vowed to protect her above all else.
It was a weirdly foreign sight to see her in my space, cloaked in the darkness of my burgundy bed sheets and dim lighting. I’d spent a lot of my life underground, sometimes literally, so it helped to acclimate my eyes to low light just in case. It made for an intimate setting.
I laid down beside her, on my side, facing her, but all I could see was the dark blonde of her hair sprawled around her head. Fingering a couple strands, it took an effort to just slide the silk through my hand instead of tightening a fist and pulling her back and making her mine.
I refrained for now. It had been a taxing day. Emotions and tensions collided into a hurricane, but it was the unspoken truths unclothed that made the day worthwhile despite it. Laney’s honesty had been a surprise. A welcome one, but still unexpected when her voice spitting “liar” continued to ring in my ears.
My hand cupped the back of her head in a gentle caress. I looked at it often in secondary school. It was the only view I was allowed to examine. The other times, the times I could see her face, she always returned my gaze. My mission was to authenticate her identity. We knew that her father might put her in school sooner or later, so we installed alerts for new pupils with suspicious backgrounds. And bingo, we got their location. And me? A year-long obsession.
I dropped my hand.
Laney groaned in protest. “No, keep going.” She tilted her head to the side, the side I was sitting on, and almost seared into me a command to comply.
“And what do you say?” I teased in a mocking voice using the type of tone an entitled aunt would use to prompt a random child to show her respect she didn’t earn.
“Please,” she said, her doe eyes focused full throttle on me but immediately closed when I returned my hand to the same spot on her head. A girl could get used to this.
I shifted my hand from her head to rub her shoulders.
She cooed at the affection.
Deciding I needed to use both hands to give the best massage, I straddled her back and lightly placed my arse to rest against hers. With hands on either side, I dug my thumbs in deep, moving them slowly in a circular motion. As I did, I felt her breathe below me and the tension ease from her shoulders.
God, I wanted to be under her. She could reign my kingdom.
The circular movement of my thumbs moved my hands lower and lower down her back forcing me to straddle her on her upper legs. Her arse in full view now and she stiffened. I hovered for a minute, but she didn't try to buck me off.
In a seductive tone, I whispered close to her ear, “Relax, princess,” as I continued massaging her ass and upper thighs. I continued lower down her legs in serene silence all the way to the tips of her toes.
When I looked up at her again, she was softly snoring.