Thea forced a smile and said, “Girl, have you been drinking? Who is this ‘Thea’ person?”
Lord deliver me. “Look, I ain’t gonna lie, I see the appeal in playing head games with people. It’s the best time-passer ever. I’d normally play along with it just to see how far you’d take the act, but I’m not in the mood right now. So we’ll have to content ourselves with you getting down to the nitty fucking gritty and telling me why you’re polluting my air.”
Thea drew in a breath, dropped the vapid smile, and inclined her head. “Very well. I heard that you and Keenan are allegedly a … couple now.”
She’d said “couple’ like it was a dirty word. “You went through the trouble of finding me just to tell me that?”
“Someone mentioned they thought you were staying here and I, well, I need to ask you something. And I need the truth. Are you and Keenan really a couple? Or is he secretly pretending to be in a relationship so that no one will guess I’m around?”
“It wouldn’t be a secret if I denied or confirmed it, would it?” And it was more fun to keep the woman in the dark.
Thea briefly closed her eyes. “Please just tell me.”
“Why?”
“Because I planned to try to fix things with him, but I never go after men who are spoken for. If he has moved on, I’ll back off.”
Khloé’s demon hissed. The bitch wanted him back, huh? Well, too fucking bad. “In your shoes, I’d quite simply just back off anyway, since he wants nothing to do with you.”
“He’s just mad at me. And rightly so.” Thea curled her hair behind her ear. “Keenan doesn’t forgive easily. I knew it would take time to win back his trust and earn a place in his life. But he’s worth the wait and effort, so I would have been as patient as he needed me to be. If he’s with someone else and he’s happy, though, I’ll step aside. So, please just answer my question. Are you and him together?”
Khloé eyed her closely, seeing right through all the bullshit. “You wouldn’t truly step aside. You’re here to size up who you see as a possible opponent.” Khloé took a step toward her. “You think I can’t sense that? You think I don’t know how hard it is for you to keep up this noble act when what you really want to do is warn me away from Keenan?”
“I don’t—”
“Come on, be a big girl and say whatever you really want to say. I’ll even pretend to care, if you like.”
The softness left Thea’s expression. “Keenan and I had something special. I messed up, and I hurt him so bad he’s never recovered from it enough to try a relationship. I’m not saying I think he pines for me. I’m saying he’s holding onto that pain and using it as a shield to keep others away. Because he knows, deep down, he’s never going to find anything that special with someone else. It only comes around once in a lifetime.”
A flare of jealousy fired through Khloé. It shouldn’t have hurt that he’d had “special” with another woman, but it did. Just as it hurt that this bitch could well be right—a subconscious part of him could be clinging to what he’d lost, desperate to have it back. Khloé sure hoped that wasn’t the case, because she’d hate to have to mangle him.
“He and I can start over,” Thea went on. “I’m here, I’ll fix what I broke, and I’ll make him so happy he’ll never regret taking a second chance on me. So if you are with Keenan, if you care about him at all, you’ll walk away and let him have that something special again.”
“That’s a real pretty way of putting ‘stay away from Keenan, he’s mine, mine, mine.’ That is what you mean to say, isn’t it?”
Thea’s mouth tightened. She gave a tight shrug. “I suppose you could sum it up that way.”
“And if I tell you to go squat and piss up a tree, what will you do? I truly am interested to know.”
“I’ll fight for him, if I have to.”
Khloé perked up. “Fight for him as in, like, challenge me to a duel?” Her demon stretched inside her, more than happy to take this bitch on.
“No. I just mean that I’d put in the effort to prove myself to him.”
How boring. “You don’t think it would be a waste of time, considering he’s indicated that he doesn’t want you back in his life?”
“He doesn’t want to risk that I’ll hurt him again—that’s different from him not wanting me around. You can’t understand unless you’ve ever loved someone so deeply that they almost feel part of you. He loved me that way once. You can’t just shake off something like that, no matter how much you might wish you could. It stays with …” She trailed off as her eyes darted to something behind Khloé.
Her brows knitting together, Khloé glanced over her shoulder. Her stomach flipped at the sight of Keenan fluidly stalking through the reception area, anger in every step … like a pissed-off leopard intent on punishing whoever had intruded on his territory. The danger emanating from him right then almost made her demon purr.
Thea backed up a few steps as he advanced on her, his eyes cold and flinty. She raised her hand, as if it would protect her. “Keenan—”
“Don’t know why the fuck you’re here, but you need to get out of my sight,” he clipped, his nostrils flaring. His hold on his temper was clearly wafer-thin.
“But I just—”
“Don’t,” he bit out. “I’m not interested in anything you have to say. I thought I made that clear.”
“I’m not trying to upset you, I swear. I just wanted to talk to Khloé, I wanted to—” Thea cut off as he put his face close to hers, a snarl tugging at his features.
“You stay away from Khloé,” he ordered in a menacing whisper. “You hear me? You don’t approach her. You don’t talk to her. You don’t even look at her. She’s no one to you.”
Pain flickered in Thea’s eyes. “But she’s someone to you? Is that what you’re saying?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying. So do the smart thing and stay the fuck away from her. You know me. You know how far I’ll go to protect what’s mine.” He took Khloé’s arm and ushered her toward the private elevator. “Go,” he told Thea. “There’s nothing for you here. I’m not interested in you or anything you have to say.”
Khloé raised her finger and said, “I did try to tell you that, Raini.” She gave a dramatic wink. “It was lovely chatting with you.”
After he’d swiped his keycard and punched in the code, the metal doors slid open. He shepherded Khloé into the elevator and jabbed the up button. Thea hadn’t moved. She was staring at him, her eyes wet and hurt. Security guards surrounded her just as the shiny doors closed.
Keenan spun Khloé to face him, his eyes hard and dark with anger. “Why the fuck would you give her the time of day?”
“She came here posing as Raini.”
“You obviously suspected it wasn’t Raini, because you didn’t let her up to the penthouse. You had to at least also suspect it was Thea, given that she had a kid with her. But even if you didn’t think it was her, you shouldn’t have gone down to see a total stranger.”
Her brow furrowed. “Don’t you growl at me.”
“I’m serious, Khloé. Enoch is going to try all sorts of ways to get to you. He might even hire an assassin to do the job for him. So if a stranger comes calling, you tell the receptionist to send. Them. Away. You hear me?”
“Look, I get that your emotions are still all over the place after what happened earlier—”
“Tell me you’ll do that, Khloé,” he said, ignoring her words. “Tell me you’ll send any strangers away.”
“Or what, Don Juan?”
He towered over her, all sex and fury, and curved a hand tight around her nape. “Or I’ll fuck the answer I want right out of you.” He took her mouth with a territorial snarl, sweeping away any other objection she might have made. The kiss was hard and wet and hungry, and it woke her body in an instant.
Need—so raw and terrible—roared through her. Her blood heated. Her nerve-endings tingled. Her hormones went haywire.
Keenan kissed her hard an
d deep, so greedy for her he almost shook with it. A powerful, primitive need crawled through him, thick and hot. He wanted to fuck her. Possess her. Pleasure her. Claim her.
His fear of losing her to the fucking infection sat like a lump of lead in the pit of his stomach, driving him to officially make her his. He couldn’t imagine not having her in his life. Her smile, her laugh, her way of making him feel alive—even when she was poking at his patience—warmed his soul. Just looking at her each morning set him up for the day.
He got why committing to a mating would be scary for her, but he wasn’t going to give her up. Not to her fears. Not to the infection. Not to anything.
He was done holding back on claiming her. He couldn’t do it any longer. He needed her in a way he’d never needed another person. Needed her to belong solely to him, because he sure as fuck belonged solely to her—all the way from cell to bone.
Struggling to breathe, Khloe tore her mouth free. “Wait.”
“No.” He bit down on the crook of her neck. “You’re mine, and I’m going to claim what’s mine.”
Khloe’s heart thudded. Claim? A contradictory mixture of panic and joy spiked through her.
Realizing they’d arrived at the penthouse, she backed out of the elevator. “You don’t really want this. You’re not thinking straight because you’re mad and—”
“Mad?” He prowled toward her, his face cold, his eyes alive with something that made her stomach twist. “I’m mad about a lot of things. I’m mad that my ex came here. I’m mad that you’ve got an infection ravaging your system. I’m mad that Enoch’s sending dead fucking bodies after you. I don’t do well with feeling helpless, Khloé. But I’m helpless to protect you, and I absolutely fucking hate it.”
She kept on backing away, but he just kept on stalking her. She licked her lips. “I’m doing what I can to stay safe—”
“Doesn’t matter. It wouldn’t matter if you were surrounded by armed fucking guards every single minute of the damn day. I’d still worry.”
“Then I’d say it’s a control issue for you. You don’t like that you can’t take charge of this situation,” she accused, expecting him to go on the defensive.
“You’re right, I don’t. Control is important to me for a number of reasons. But you’ve been shooting mine to shit since day one.”
The surprise of that made her halt. She frowned. “How? By poking at you?”
And then he was eating up her personal space. “No. By making me hard as a fucking rock against my own damn will. Yeah, that’s right, I can’t control my body around you. I never have been able to.”
Pure shock hit her first. But it quickly gave way to sheer incredulity when she realized … “Oh my God, you’re mad at me for this,” she said, backpedaling again. “How is it my fault?”
“It’s not. But I wish it was, because then I could be pissed at you. And maybe if I was pissed at you, I wouldn’t want you so damn much I can barely fucking think straight. It’s like you’re imprinted in my system. I can’t get you out, and I don’t even want to.” His anger melted away, replaced by a firm resolve that made her scalp prickle. “Come here.”
Her pulse jumped. “Why?”
“So I can claim what belongs to me. I know why that scares you. You hear the word ‘mate’, and you don’t think ‘safe.’ Why would you? I don’t know your family well, but it’s no secret that your mother’s relationships have been nothing short of dysfunctional—all violence and verbal abuse and binge drinking. It’s also no secret that your father wasn’t faithful to his past partners and that he struggled to settle down. Although he’s now mated, you’re probably not confident that it’ll last.”
Khloé opened her mouth to argue … but she couldn’t. He was right. He was right about all of it.
He closed the space between them in one slow step. “People have been walking in and out of your life since you were a kid. Some were good, some weren’t. It probably became a reflex for you not to form attachments to anyone new, because taking a chance on them sticking around usually never worked out. And that’s mostly why you fear taking me as your mate—you don’t have any faith that I won’t leave you at some point.”
She swallowed hard and closed her eyes for a moment. She hated that he’d seen right through her. It made her feel too exposed.
“It’s no easier for me to take this risk, Khloé. I know what it’s like to get used to having people around, to learn to trust them, only to have them shit on that trust. I can’t promise you that our mating will be all flowers and rainbows. I can only assure you that I’ll give this all I have; that I’d never give up on us.”
He swept his thumb over her jaw. “We could play it safe and just go on as we are, sure. But neither of us would happily waltz through life with no regrets that we didn’t take a shot at mating. You know that.” He framed her face with his hands. “What scares you most? That there’ll be no going back—and there won’t be, Khloé; neither me nor my demon would ever let you go—or that you love me?”
She jerked back, but he didn’t release her face. “Love you?” she echoed. “You think I love you?”
“Don’t you?”
She spluttered. “Well, I … it’s … I don’t … Why are you …” She closed her eyes. “Fuck.”
“You love me,” he said softly. “And I get why you’d find that scary. I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone or anything, and it fucking terrifies me.”
Her eyes popped open. “You … you love me?”
He let out a soft chuckle. “Yeah. How could I not?”
“Easily. I’m the ultimate pain in the ass. Proudly. I put a whole lot of effort into it, as it happens.”
“Hmm, yes, you do. But you’re my pain in the ass.” He took her mouth, sweeping his tongue inside to flick her own, feasting and consuming and dominating.
Khloé broke the kiss as a spicy, aphrodisiac scent laced the air and seemed to curl around her. The room instantly felt too warm and humid. Heat flashed through her system, making her breasts ache, her nipples harden, her clit pulse, and her core spasm. “Wait. We’re not done talking.”
“Sure we are,” he said easily, sliding his fingers into her hair. “What is there to talk about?”
A phantom finger slid through her folds and then circled her clit. She sucked in a breath and moaned. “Not fair.”
His brows lifted. “Did you think I’d play fair when it comes to something this important to me? If I thought you didn’t want the same things I do, I’d back off. Maybe. But you do want this, Khloé.”
Fuck if she could deny that. “What about your demon? It might be possessive of me, but I highly doubt it’s interested in claiming me.” She gasped as phantom fingers pinched her nipples, making her pulse clench and ache.
“My demon wants to straight-up own you. Wants to brand you both inside and out. As far as its concerned, it has waited long enough for both you and me to get with the program. It doesn’t want to wait any longer, and neither do I.” He put his mouth to her ear and bit the lobe. “More importantly, neither do you.”
An image flashed in her mind of her tied spread-eagle to a bed while Keenan hammered into her, his skin glimmering with a fine sheen of sweat.
“Do you want me inside you, Khloé?” he asked, his voice low and velvety; it feathered over her tingling skin, teasing every nerve-ending. “Do you want to feel my cock filling you? Stretching you? Shooting my come in you?”
Phantom lips suckled on her clit, making her stumble backwards and collide with the side of the sofa. “Oh, Jesus.” Each wet tug on her clit made her pussy spasm and ache. “You need to stop.” But he didn’t. Those lips suckled a little faster.
She reached behind her to rest her hands on the arm of the sofa. “You’re such a prick,” she hissed. “You can’t seduce me into accepting your claim.”
Keenan combed his fingers through her hair. “You already have accepted it, baby. You just haven’t said it out loud yet. Do it, Khloé. Say it. Say you’ll
take this gamble on me, on us.”
She drew in a shaky breath, trembling with the unadulterated need rocketing through her bloodstream. “I can’t think when my body’s screaming for you like this.”
“What’s there to think about? You want this. I want this. So, let’s stop dicking around and do what every other couple does—take a chance.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. She could admit, if only to herself, that he was right—she didn’t need to “think.” She knew what she wanted; she was just hesitant to reach for it.
That made her want to slap herself, because she’d once resolved that she’d be nothing like her parents, who allowed their issues and fears to rule them when it came to relationships. Yet, here she was, doing that very thing.
He’d been right about something else, too. She loved the annoying bastard. She’d loved him for longer than she cared to admit. She’d denied it to herself for years because it had made it easier to deal with the idea that she’d never have him. But now she did have him, and now those feelings she’d tried to bury swamped her entire system.
Her demon had no fears about taking this chance with Keenan. It considered him a worthy mate for Khloé; believed he would protect and care for her. It wanted Khloé to do as he’d suggested and stop dancing around the decision.
She opened her eyes. “This could blow up in our faces,” she whispered.
“Or it could be the best fucking thing we ever did.” He cupped her jaw. “Take this gamble with me, Khloé.”
She swallowed hard. “Fine. But if my family curse interferes at some point and you find yourself alone and miserable, don’t whine to me about it.”
Masculine satisfaction glimmered in those blue eyes. “Noted.” He closed his mouth over hers and sank his tongue inside to lick her own. He plundered and devastated her mouth. Bit and licked and feasted.
Omens (The Dark in You Book 6) Page 23