KENNICK: A Bad Boy Romance Novel

by Jackson, Meg

  “Say it when you come,” he demanded, and reaching for her he rolled his finger across her clit, making her back go rigid and her eyes close. “Say it…”

  “All yours,” she cried out as he circled her clit with his finger, slamming himself deep inside her and holding there, pulsing slightly as her pussy clenched and released around him, her body shaking and bucking as her climax ripped through her, a train barreling through the station, everything dazzled and sparkling while the world faded to black and her thighs shook in ecstatic release.

  He could feel his own balls churning, the sensation of her rippling pussy around his cock, and he pulled out quickly, taking his shaft in his own hand.

  “All…fucking…mine,” he groaned as warm bursts of cum landed across Kim’s inner thighs and still-spread pussy, each spurt draining him more and more as his eyes stayed fast on Kim’s face, her lips parted and eyes unsteady, her climax only just fading. When at last he felt himself emptied, his cock beginning to go limp, he quickly grabbed a paper towel and cleaned her.

  “Just so you know,” he said, as clinically as a physician as he wiped the evidence of their passion from her still-pink flesh, “that goes both ways.”

  “Oh?” Kim asked, smiling lazily, that post-orgasmic look on her face that he’d grown to love so much.

  Discarding the paper towel and moving close to her once more, letting her arms fall around his neck as their eyes met, he smiled.

  “Yeah,” he said, voice low and husky. “Consider me yours. No matter what happens, you’re gonna have me as your man.”

  She hummed, a sleepy happy sound, and let him lean in for another soft, lingering kiss.

  It was early still, not yet 5pm, and the summer sun was still high against the blue sky, but they were both spent, and Kennick led her to his bedroom. As Kim curled into his arms, feeling the strong pulse of his blood against her cheeks, she sighed. Whatever consequences would come, they would not come then. This may be the last time they could sleep so easily, though she certainly hoped not. She closed her eyes and hoped until sleep overcame her.

  A scream ripped through the early evening. Kennick woke with a lurch, his heart stopping as a crash followed the scream; beside him, Kim's body tightened then released as she awoke. She could hear his heart race through his chest, her body lifted as he rose. Bleary-eyed and sleep-stoned, she first felt thirsty. And then she heard the screaming, and her eyes found Kennick's in the dark of his room. For one moment, the world was frozen as reality rushed in, the nonsense of the sleeping mind colliding with reality.

  And then he was on his feet, pulling on his jeans even as he ran through the trailer. She followed, pulling her dress on, and ran into Damon as she rushed into the hallway. His huge form bouldered past her, his heavy footsteps shaking the trailer as he rushed. The door was already swinging open as Kennick raced out into the settling night, Cristov at his heels and Damon close behind, Kim bringing up the rear. Outside, the air was too hot to believe, the humidity heavy.

  The sounds of cracking, of screams ripping across the land, baffled the still-rousing mind, but in the distance there was red and orange light, flickering and violent. Kennick was barefoot, crossing the trailer park as fast as he could, hollering. He called for water, for someone to call 911. He screamed fire, followed by his brothers.

  Kim found her phone bouncing against her thigh, still tucked into the pocket of her dress, and dialed 911, screaming at the operator for a fire truck, her words breathless as she tried to keep up with the Volanis brothers. The trailer came into view at last, two wailing figures crumpled to their knees before it. The fire was gigantic, spectacular in its destruction. Already, half the trailer was collapsing upon itself.

  “Is anyone still in there?” Kennick bellowed as he approached one of the kneeling figures, who clutched his arms in gnarled fingers. It was an old woman, a younger woman beside her. Kim could hear her screeching.

  “Destin,” she wailed. “The baby...”

  The women's clothes were covered in char and soot, their cheeks smudged. Kennick looked into the inferno. He wished he'd had time to put on shoes. He raced forward. The flames engulfed him. Kim screamed his name, her voice joining in the cacophony. The sun had only just set, but the flames lit the world up in a horrible glow, shadows dancing wickedly across the figures that came, fast and slow, to crowd around the burning trailer.

  Someone pulled the women away, their wails trailing behind them. Kim strained her ears for the sound of sirens. She wanted to follow Kennick into the fire, needed to bring him back to safety; she stepped forward, but felt a strong hand on her arm, holding her back. Turning, she saw Cristov, his eyes soft but his head shaking no.

  Inside, Kennick's lungs were burning, his eyes streaming tears. The heat was worse than anything he'd ever felt. This was why they called hell an inferno. This was hell. A sickening crack made his heart lurch, and a part of the roof collapsed into the kitchen. He knew where the baby's room was, and fought through the heat and the smoke towards it, hoping against hope he wasn't too late.

  The bottoms of his feet scalded against the melting tiles, and he slammed his body against the plywood door of the nursery; the flames hadn't made it there yet, but the two-year-old boy didn't move in his crib. Kennick bolted forward. He'd been holding his arm across his mouth, but he needed both his arms to lift the unconscious figure from its crib, and he felt his mouth immediately fill with ash and smoke, the taste something he would never forget. Everything smelled like ruin: burnt plastic, melting tar, smoke like a monster clawing at him from inside out.

  His feet burned even when he finally stepped back onto the grass, stumbling forward, seeing, in the distance, lights. He heard sirens as he laid himself on the ground, careful not to crush the toddler beneath him. It seemed he might never feel fresh air in his lungs again, breath after ragged breath, the air too shallow, too hot, too humid. Kim was at his side, turning him over, pushing his hair from his face and lowering her lips to his, giving him her breath, pausing only to whisper his name, again and again she called to him, begged him to stay. And though it was what he wanted more than anything else, he couldn't.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Kim followed Kennick to the hospital and stayed at his side the whole time. When the police arrived with their questions – and answered the questions Kennick had for them – she held his hand. Miraculously, his body was largely unscathed, although his feet were badly blistered. He could stand on them, but just barely, and it was painful. He was recommended to bed rest for at least a few weeks.

  When, finally, they were released, Kim drove him back to the trailer park and helped him into the trailer, where Cristov and Damon waited to be updated on Kennick’s condition and the word from the police. There wasn’t much to say, and Kennick was tired, so the conversation wasn’t a long one, and Kim and Kennick collapsed into bed once more after showering to rid themselves of the smell of smoke. They fell asleep quickly, and stayed asleep, though both were plagued with nightmares of fire and hell and smoke.

  In the morning, things got worse.

  Kennick woke up determined. Kim saw it in his face, and it made her want to bury her head in the sand like an ostrich. She made a light breakfast of toast and eggs, barely exchanging words with Cristov and Damon in the kitchen, who both sat in obvious unease at the table, but who retired to their own rooms when Kennick emerged and gave them a familiar gesture that meant he wanted to be alone.

  They sat, not eating, facing each other at the table. Kim felt like she was witnessing the end to her own movie. Even before he told her, she knew what he was going to see. This was what gypsies did, after all. They travelled. They left. And Kennick was leaving. He was going to take the kumpania and bring them somewhere safe, because Kingdom had proved itself to be a dangerous place for his kind.

  “Come with me, Kim,” Kennick said, holding both her hands in his across the table.

  “I can’t do that,” she moaned, feeling her heart ripped asunder. She di
dn’t want to admit she could have become one of those girls who fell in love so fast, but it seemed more and more to be the dire truth. She thought of the girls she’d grown up with, who’d move in with a man after three months of dating, be married by six months, and pregnant at ten. She’d thought they were stupid and desperate. Now she understood, how when it was right you felt it all over. But moving in was one thing. Moving out was another.

  “Why?” Kennick asked, gripping her hands harder, his emerald eyes searching hers for reasons she knew he knew.

  “This is where my life is, Kennick,” she said. “My job, my family, my friends. My future.”

  “You can have a future with me. What do you do here that you can’t do with the kumpania? I’m rom baro. I’m like the mayor. You can…”

  “Stop,” Kim said, her voice threatening to rise to a wail as she struggled to free her hands. His touch, once a salve for all the pains in her heart, was becoming too painful to bear. “You know it’s not the same. You know it.”

  “These people,” Kennick said, releasing her hands as his eyes darkened. “These people burned down a trailer that had people in it. These are the people you’re always defending, Kim. These are the people that you want to give up happiness for.”

  “Not all of them,” Kim said, her breath hitching. “It wasn’t all of them, Kennick. And they’re all I’ve ever known. I would never belong here…”

  “And you think you’ll ever really belong in this shit town?” He was yelling now, the power of his anger frightening. She shrunk back and he saw, saw how her chest sunk backwards as though her heart was trying to hide away from him. His long, light brown hair fell into his eyes as he lowered his head, shaking it slowly.

  “I hoped you were going to be the one,” he said, fists clenching but voice soft. “I thought…but that’s the thing about hope.”

  Now he looked back up at her, and the pain and loss in his eyes made a strangled cry escape her lips.

  “It’s the quickest way to hell,” he finished. Standing, he moved to the door, limping through the pain in his feet, and pulled it open. Kim watched him there, in all his masculine beauty, the hurt like a palpable aura around his body. She thought of how his skin tasted under her tongue, how his smile had made her heart skip a beat, how his strong hands on her made her feel beautiful, strong and alive. Then she followed him, standing before him.

  Kim laid her hand on his stubbled cheek. She wanted to memorize the placement of every one of those funny, red hairs that covered his chin. She wanted to count his eyelashes, commit the number to memory. She wanted to take his sweetness – their sweetness – to the grave. She knew she’d never find anything like it. Not for the rest of her days.

  “I love you,” she whispered, the words coming out perfectly, as though they’d always existed between them and had just been waiting to be said, to be brought into the waking world. “I always will.”

  His neck flexed and he uttered a short, guttural noise. She was waiting for him to say them back.

  “Find me,” he said instead. “When you change your mind, find me.”

  She shook her head, a single tear escaping through her lashes. This was how it ended, then. Not with a bang, but a whimper, she thought, some half-remembered poem coming into her mind as the door shut behind her.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Damon and Cristov watched their brother tear through the trailer. He was ripping the sheets off his bed, grabbing the food out of the fridge, emptying his drawers. It all went into a pile in the middle of the double-wide. His feet were bleeding, but he acted as though he couldn’t feel them at all. He felt like his heart was being crushed under a stampede. Everything reminded him of her, of her bright laugh, her nose crinkling when she smiled, her face when he made her come, so open and all his.

  “Nick,” Cristov breathed, his body tense with the energy in the room. “Stop. You gotta stop.”

  “Gotta get rid of her,” he growled, looking around for someplace else to ransack. “Her hair’s all over this shit. Her smell. This damn town, it’s all over our shit.”

  Damon rose and closed the distance between them in two strides. With his hand clenched tight around Kennick’s shirt, he barreled forward, using his massive size to overcome his brother’s rage-induced struggling. When Kennick’s back hit the wall, the whole trailer shook. The brothers locked eyes, Kennick’s lips in an ugly snarl.

  “You’re being crazy,” Damon said, voice even. “You're not even supposed to be on your feet.”

  “Let me go, Damon,” Kennick spat, kicking out at his brother’s legs. Damon merely moved in closer.

  “Stop acting like a schav,” Damon ordered. “You are a man, so act like it.”

  Kennick’s body slumped as his energy waned. Only when his eyes lost their fiery anger did Damon release him, but Kennick glared at his brother before pushing him away to collapse at the table, draping his body across the whole length of the booth.

  “I loved the shit out of her,” he groaned, holding his forehead in one hand, hiding his eyes.

  “No kidding,” Cristov snorted. “Never seen a man act like this. At least not since Uncle Nevimos got his hands on that mung bean liquor.”

  Kennick shot him a look as Damon slid in next to Cristov, folding his hands across the table.

  “We ought to have a diwano,” Damon said solemnly and Kennick nodded, somewhat irritated with himself. He was throwing a hissy fit over his heart instead of planning for the future of the kumpania. He was not fulfilling his father’s legacy very well at all these days, it seemed. A diwano was in order; a meeting of the kumpania’s elder members to discuss their next moves.

  They had held a diwano before returning to Kingdom, and Kennick well remembered the way he’d had to convince many of the older and clearly wiser members of the kumpania to go along with the idea. He should have listened to them. The Volanis family was the heart of the kumpania, but they weren’t the only members. Still, his people had followed him, trusted him, because he was their rom baro. Their big man. He felt very little at that moment.

  “Cristov, can you…”

  “On it,” the youngest brother said, already knowing what Kennick was asking. He would go around and announce the diwano. Usually, Cristov would bitch about not being a lowly messenger, but he was well aware that this was not the time for petty complaints. He slid past Damon.

  “Say eight pm. Here,” Kennick said.

  “You two behave,” Cristov said, pointing his finger at the brothers before vanishing out into the unbearable heat. Kennick fixed Damon in a long, meaningful stare.

  “Thank you for that,” Kennick said, and Damon nodded. “I’m fucking up, aren’t I? Maybe you should have been rom baro…”

  “No,” Damon said quickly. “It is your birthright. And you are good at it. At the more important things.”

  Kennick’s eyebrows raised.

  “Important things? What could be more important than deciding the future of the kumpania?”

  “The little things,” Damon said with a shrug. “You know, Dad was shit for planning. He let the other men run the businesses, mostly.”

  Kennick nodded. This was true; he’d taken it upon himself, when he was old enough, to learn about the businesses his people ran, since Pieter seemed to have little to no interest in it.

  “But you and Dad – you’re good at people. You know how to talk to them. Settle out the little things. Make the women feel like their men love them. Keep the men from running wild. You delegate, make people feel important. It’s the right way to do things.”

  Kennick cracked a smile.

  “Shit, I’m just a politician, huh?”

  Damon shrugged.

  “No one ever said you had to do it all alone, brother,” Damon said, narrowing his eyes. “You know I’m here. Cristov is – well, he’s Cristov, but he’s here. And Mina, everyone loves Mina, if you really fuck up, she can change some minds in your favor. You don’t have to feel like a failure just because of
all this mess. It’s all our mess, and we’ll clean it up together.”

  “I know, prala, I know,” Kennick said, offering a wan smile before running his hands across his face. Prala. Brother. He spread his fingers, looking at the mess he’d made in the middle of the trailer.

  “You think Mina will come clean this up for us?”

  “I think you can ask, and then kiss the family jewels goodbye,” Damon laughed.

  Just then, there was a knock at the door. Damon made as if to rise, but Kennick waved him down, limping towards the door, the pain in his feet returning as his energy waned. He was surprised to see his cousin, Pieter, standing on the step, looking red as a strawberry and shuffling his feet.

  “Trouble, huh?” Kennick asked, torn between smiling at the look of boyish guilt on Pieter’s face and groaning because more trouble was the last thing he needed. Still, any trouble the pint-sized devil could have spun for himself would be a breeze compared to a burned trailer and a mob of angry townspeople.