by Lora Leigh
“No kidding.” Of course Cord was in complete agreement.
“He wouldn’t come see you two anyway,” she promised them blithely. “You’re on the bad list.”
“Well, doesn’t that just break my little heart,” Cord stated with a definite lack of any such pain.
At one time, when she was younger, she would have told him he had to have a heart first. All in the spirit of sniping back at him. She couldn’t do that now. All their hearts had been laid bare and left to wither.
Now she just rolled her eyes at him, unwilling to continue the game that had begun farther back than she could remember.
“Mom would have told us the kitchen table was the wrong place for ill words and insults,” he said gently as he leaned forward to rest his arms against the tabletop. “But she would be laughing at us right along with Pop, wouldn’t she?”
Kenni shook her head. She couldn’t talk about her parents, not yet. She’d lost not just her mother that night, but Poppy and her brothers as well. She’d lost far too much to be able to discuss it until she knew that what was left, would be safe.
“You can’t hide forever, Kenni,” he warned her then, his voice resonating with tenderness, with heartache. “You can try, but it’s not in your nature to isolate yourself to the point that you can’t love or be loved in return.”
“I’ve been hiding for ten years.” Turning her head back to him she stared into his eyes, hoping he could see her determination as easily as she could see the arrogance in his face.
“Did you?” he asked softly. “No, baby sister, you weren’t hiding, you were running—but you weren’t alone. Once Gunny was gone, though, you came home to those you loved and who loved you, knowing damned good and well one of us would realize who was hiding behind the colored contacts and hair dye.”
Had she?
Was that what she’d been doing, endangering them with her subconscious need for them?
“Kenni…”
“Cord, shut the fuck up and give her some space or take your ass back up that mountain.” Jazz’s hand descended on the table in a flat-handed blow that had her flinching violently.
Jerking her gaze from her brother, she stared up at the savage lines of his profile and the menacing look on his face.
Cord sat back slowly, his gaze on Jazz, narrowed and thoughtful for several heartbeats.
“You can’t protect her feelings while trying to save her life, Jazz,” he breathed out roughly. “You know it just doesn’t work that way.”
Jazz’s head lowered, the menace on his face turning to outright intent backed by icy fury. “Test me again,” he dared her brother. “Go ahead, Cord, keep testing me and I’ll test my fist against your head. You understand?”
“Jazz,” she whispered, hoping to dampen the air of violence beginning to pulse through the room.
“You understand me, Cord?” Jazz pushed, his voice only deepening, growing darker.
Two heartbeats later Cord nodded slowly, his lips quirking in acknowledgment that Jazz had won this round. For the moment. “I understand, Jazz,” he assured him. “Now why don’t you stop playing Kenni’s shield and fix those steaks. You always were too damned testy when you were hungry.”
The tension eased enough that she could breathe without the horrifying fear that these two men were going to try to kill each other across the kitchen table.
But the question Cord had raised still whispered through her mind, poking at her, prodding at her conscience. She’d told herself she’d come back to Loudoun to find the person who had killed her mother and destroyed her own life. Finding that person was beyond her abilities without help, though. Without the help of someone who knew and understood the Kin. And more than once she’d wondered how she was going to face another day without her family and the man she loved.
The question now was, how would she face another day if she got one of them killed?
* * *
The steaks were grilled and eaten in silence, the anger coursing through Jazz finding no outlet, no way of discharging the tension thundering through him. And that was a first for him.
He’d learned how to control the fury that raged through his too-big body in his early teens when expending it meant possibly hurting someone without intending to.
The tricks he’d learned in those early years and had depended upon into adulthood weren’t working now. Cord was pushing Kenni, trying to force from her what even Jazz refused to attempt to force from her. Cord would batter down the shield she’d placed between herself and those she loved. Jazz wanted her to release it willingly. Taking her heart wasn’t what he wanted. There would be no satisfaction in stealing it, none in forcing her to give it to him. He wanted her to release it willingly. She had to come to him because she ached for him as desperately as he ached for her, because she couldn’t face the next day without him.
Fuck.
He was in love with her.
He nearly dropped the wire brush he was using on the grill as the knowledge seeped into his senses.
He loved her. He’d loved her when she was sixteen and too damned young for the man he was becoming and he loved her even more now. Loved her until she was buried in his heart so deep that she filled his soul.
And there was a chance she would never release the distance she’d placed between herself and losing anyone she loved. The distance that ensured she held back the part of herself that would die with those she loved, if they died for her.
Pulling two beers from the cooler on the other side of the grill, he sat down on the bench built into the deck and unscrewed the cap with a violent jerk of his wrist. Tipping it to his lips he drained the bottle, tossed it to the trash, and opened a second with the same quick, angry twist.
Son of a bitch, he was going to kill the bastard who did this to her. To them. The gentle heart she’d once had wouldn’t have known reserve or limits. She would have loved him without a thought to protecting any part of herself or holding anything back.
He’d lost that. Before he’d ever had it, he’d lost it.
“Babying her isn’t going to fix her, Jazz.” Cord moved slowly along the deck from the kitchen, a bottle of liquor in one hand, two glasses in the other.
“That’s my best whiskey, Maddox,” he sighed.
Cord snorted at the comment. “You think I was going to pick up that rotgut shit you keep for folks you don’t like?” Sitting down heavily a few feet from him, the other man placed the glasses on the bench and filled them halfway before sliding Jazz’s closer and placing the bottle between them. “Have a real drink, maybe it’ll help clear your head.”
“Or break yours,” Jazz suggested instead. That actually seemed like a better alternative.
Cord chuckled. “Hell man, I think you’ve forgotten how damned stubborn that girl has always been. If she decided she was going to do something, then she did it. She wanted to learn to hunt when she was fucking five.” Amazement still filled the other man, Jazz realized. “Five, Jazz. This pretty little princess who dressed in frills, lace, and ruffles, and she wanted to learn how to hunt.” He shook his head. “The first time she tried to follow me she was wearing sneakers, striped tights, a black ruffled skirt, and some tiger-print little velvet jacket mom bought her for a party. I could hear her coming for a mile and she thought she was being quiet.” Cord tossed back the drink and poured another. “She had her first buck that fall, even helped dress and skin it. She declared the whole process ‘gross’ and went back to her lace and ruffles until she was twelve and wanted to make sure she hadn’t forgotten how to do it.” His gaze met Jazz’s, amusement lurking behind the pain that filled the green eyes. “She had her first buck before I did and before I got to her she’d nearly completed field-dressing it.” He shook his head. “Dad had to teach her how to fish when she was three or four. Then when she was thirteen she was going to win that beauty pageant, remember?”
Jazz nodded, tossing back his own drink rather than think about the implications of what Cord was sa
ying.
“She won, she was done,” Cord whispered again. “Then she was gone. And I couldn’t find her. I knew she was out there and I couldn’t find her.”
“And not once did you fucking tell me.” Grabbing the liquor, Jazz refilled his glass then rose to his feet. “You didn’t tell me she was alive. You never breathed a word that you were searching for her.”
“She was my sister.” Possession rang in his voice as Cord came to his feet, anger flashing in his face. “It was none of your business.”
Jazz nearly staggered back at the declaration.
None of his business?
“She’s a Maddox,” Cord snarled. “You are not.”
“Cord, go back up the mountain.” Kenni stepped from the kitchen, her expression so fucking calm it made the bitterness in his stomach intensify.
“He’s a big boy, Kenni,” Cord drawled. “He can handle it.”
“Go back home, up the mountain, hell, I don’t fucking care, but take your attitude and your anger somewhere else. Now.” Not once did her expression or her voice shift.
“And if I don’t?” he challenged her.
The smile that curled her lips actually had her brother wincing.
“Then the next time you piss Jazz off I’m turning my back and letting him beat the shit out of you. How does that sound?”
Cord was silent for long moments before reaching back to rub at his neck while shooting Jazz a brooding look. “Is she serious?”
“If I’m lucky,” Jazz promised him, wishing the other man would get cocky enough to warrant a fist to his dumb head. Kenni would forgive it then.
“Who says I won’t beat the shit out of him?” Cord sneered.
“You might.” She shrugged. “But he’ll have the satisfaction of trying. Now, I’m going to shower and go to bed. I’m tired of refereeing for you tonight.”
Turning, she moved back into the house, the weary droop of her shoulders a sign of the exhaustion he’d recognized earlier.
“Deacon and Sawyer will be here in a few hours to watch the house.” Retrieving the drink he’d set on the banister, Cord tossed the remaining liquor back, grimaced, and stared at the empty doorway a moment longer. “That’s not Kenni, Jazz,” he said sadly. “Kenni’s explosive, loving, she doesn’t do anything halfway, and she doesn’t hold back her heart. Is that really the woman you’ve waited on all these years? Really?”
“Whoever she is, Cord, she’s the woman I’ve waited for,” Jazz assured him.
Setting the liquor heavily on the small table next to the grill, Jazz stomped to the front door. “You owe me a bottle,” he snapped before entering the house and locking the door behind him. Minutes later, the shades over the kitchen windows lowered. He set the alarm control for the house before heading to the bedroom and the woman still running.
And she would keep running, he realized, until something or someone stopped her.
CHAPTER 17
“Is there a reason you feel the need to wake me?” Scratchy, drowsy with sleep, Jazz’s voice rumbled through the fog-shrouded morning light.
“Because I need you,” she whispered, the hunger for him rising hotter, charged with needs and hungers she no longer tried to make sense of.
Thick, heavy black lashes eased open and electric-blue eyes peered back at her with a matching heat.
“How do you need me, Kenni?” he asked as she curled her fingers in the quilt and slowly began dragging it down his body. “You’re overdressed, darlin’,” he pointed out, callused fingers running up her arm to the narrow straps of the sleep shirt.
“I can remedy that,” she promised.
She was going to remedy it as soon as she pulled the blanket free of his body. As it cleared his erection, though, she paused.
Good gracious.
Thick, heavy, a blunt spear of iron-hard flesh rose from between his thighs, lying nearly to his navel.
“Had I taken a moment to pay attention here, perhaps I would have had second thoughts,” she murmured, running a finger down the heavy, throbbing vein that ran the length of the shaft.
“I would have convinced you.” He grinned.
Oh, he was cocky, so very certain of himself. Jazz was like a force of nature, never changing course once his mind had been set and wearing away resistance as though it had never existed.
“Possibly,” she agreed.
“Definitely,” he promised her. “So, do you remove that very pretty article of clothing or do I tear it from you?”
A shiver raced up her back at the thought of him tearing it from her body. The image was completely sexy. But the thought of other alternatives, of being brave, of pushing her own boundaries, was sexy as well.
Easing to her knees, Kenni gripped the hem of the gown. Slowly, her eyes locked with his until the material blocked them as she eased the gown over her head and tossed it from the bed.
“Damn. How perfect,” he sighed, a grin tugging at his lips. “Touch them for me.”
Her brow arched. “Afraid you don’t know how?”
“Oh, I know how,” he promised wickedly. “I want to see how you do it. How do you pleasure yourself, Kenni?”
“How do you pleasure yourself, Jazz?” she asked then. “You show me and I’ll show you.”
Strong, broad fingers circled the base of his cock as his breathing grew harder, heavier.
“I pleasure myself with thoughts of you, darlin’,” he breathed out roughly. “Wondering if you’re thinking of me. If you’re pleasuring yourself with those thoughts and how damned sexy it would be to watch.”
Oh, she had, many times.
Tipping her head back, she gave him what he asked for. Finding one of the hard, sensitive tips of her nipples, she slid her other hand from between her breasts, down her stomach, to the bare folds already growing slick with the heat spilling from her.
Watching him, watching lust galvanize his blue eyes as they followed the path, Kenni slid her fingers along the narrow slit leading to the aching depths of her vagina. Pausing at the swollen bud of her clit she circled the bundle of nerves before finding that spot at the side, barely covered by the thin separation of skin, and stroked it slowly.
“Fuck. Kenni.” Tight, the sound low and achy, Jazz breathed out her name as her legs parted farther. “Ah, baby, those sweet juices are spillin’ for me.”
She was lost in the look on his face, the sound of his voice as he watched her. Then her body electrified as the fingers of his free hand moved between her parted legs, two fingers tucking against the clenched entrance of her vagina before pushing slowly inside her.
“Yes,” she whispered, her fingers stroking, rubbing against the throbbing bud of her clit. “Oh, Jazz…”
His fingers stretched her, heating her flesh further as he penetrated it by slow degrees.
“That’s it, baby,” he whispered. “Let that pretty pussy milk at my fingers. Fuck, when it does that to my dick it’s all I can do to hold back. To keep from coming so damned hard I swear I’ve lost the top of my head.”
His voice joined the sensations racing through her body, drawing her muscles tight, lashing at her clit, the sensitive flesh of her vagina.
“Come for me, Kenni,” he whispered. “Let me feel you suck at my fingers like that tight flesh sucks at my cock…”
That fast. His words, the images, the thought of him coming inside her, that heat ignited an orgasm she could never hold back, sent her spiraling into that chaotic storm of sensation with a suddenness that had her breath catching.
At the first strike of ecstasy his fingers pushed hard and fast inside her, throwing her higher, spreading apart as her muscles clenched harder, tighter, pushing the pleasure deeper through her body, spearing parts of her soul she knew would never forget it.
Crying his name, shuddering, her body shaking with the tempest tearing through her, she was only barely aware of Jazz moving until he was behind her, pushing her forward and in the next instant he was working his cock inside the clenched, milking
muscles of her pussy.
“Jazz…” she cried out as the fierce, fiery lash of sensation began racing through her again.
Thick, hard flesh pushed inside her, working in by increments as the clenching, orgasming flesh parted hesitantly around his cock.
Each thrust inside, each burrowing impalement tore a cry from her lips until his cock was locked inside her full-length, throbbing, pulsing, pushing her back into the race for ecstasy.
“You make me crazy.” Coming over her, one arm locking beneath her hips to keep them raised, his lips moved to her shoulder, her neck. “Feel how tight you are around me, Kenni. So tight and hot.”
She moaned at the explicit words, her hips arching back, fingers curling into the blankets as his thrusts became harder, faster. Pounding into her as she cried out for more, begged for more as his mouth settled at her neck and his teeth raked the sensitive flesh.
As though it were a trigger the added stimulation set off an explosion that encompassed her entire body. Shuddering, quaking at the extremity of the pleasure raking over her senses, Kenni heard herself crying out to him as the explosions threw her back into the storm and left her wasted and exhausted beneath him as he found his own release.
Heat spilled inside her, jetting against her gripping flesh, sinking inside her as another shudder of pleasure tore through her.
If she lost this … When she lost Jazz, she would grieve for the pleasure he brought her. She hadn’t shed tears in so many years, but Kenni had a feeling that losing Jazz would give birth to a river of tears.
“You are an addiction,” he rumbled against her ear as he moved, easing his weight from her to collapse beside her on the bed. “Better than any drug I’ve heard of.”
No, that was Jazz, not her.
He was the drug, and she was hopelessly addicted.
Curling against his side as he dragged her closer, Kenni opened her eyes and stared toward the balcony doors.
“Is Cord right?” That question had followed her into the night. “Did I deliberately endanger all of you because I’m too weak to fight?”