The Rebel King (All the King's Men Duet #2) - Kennedy Ryan Page 0,20
slim.
“Thanks, Grim. For everything.”
He hangs up without acknowledging my gratitude. The closeness between Grim and me is different, obviously, from the closeness I share with my brother, but he feels like family. We’ve bonded around peril and adventure and all the things young men chase when they have no real sense of their own mortality, their limits. We spent our wanderlust together in dozens of cities in a hundred different ways. Spent it on more women than I can count, but none of them were ever Nix.
I sit on the couch and open my iPad on Lennix’s coffee table. Despite the exhaustion weighting my arms and legs, I force myself to return emails and address the issues Jin Lei held while I focused on getting Lennix back. I need some serious libations to get through this pile of work that’s been waiting for me. I search the kitchen and cabinets, the small bar in one corner of the room, but all I find is wine.
“Damn, babe,” I mutter, reading the bottle of Bordeaux. “I was hoping for something stronger.”
I poke the fire and remove my socks and shoes, settling at the coffee table again. I’m not sure how long I work, but the fire goes out, and the bottle of wine is almost empty when Lennix’s bedroom door opens.
The sight of her arrests me. It’s her beauty, yes, as she leans into the doorframe like it’s the only thing holding her up. But more than how impossibly beautiful she is, it’s her life I appreciate most. The simple lift and fall of her chest with each precious breath. I want to feel her heart pressed to mine, beating reassurance into every part of me until I’m sure that she’s actually safe.
Dark hair tumbles around her shoulders and there’s a sleep print etched into the smooth, un-bruised skin of one high cheekbone. In her white silk pajamas, she’s soft and sleep-mussed.
The thing I’ve been trying to ignore since I held her in that jungle rears in me. It’s primitive and too rough and too soon after what she’s been through. Every cell in my body screams with the need to reclaim her physically. To stamp myself into her skin and feel the imprint of her burned into mine.
But I can’t because it wouldn’t be gentle or soft or considerate. It would be a hard and pounding and unrelenting fuck. I need to feel her under me and know she’s safe in my bed, in my arms. To have her to myself so completely, the fear that somebody will one day take her from me subsides. I need to fuck that fear away, but I won’t do that to her. It’s selfish and base, and she’s the best thing in my life. I won’t corrupt her with that.
“Hey,” I greet her.
“Hey.” Her voice is husky with fatigue. “What time is it? Why are you out here?”
Because I don’t trust myself with you right now.
“Work,” I answer instead, pointing to the iPad and the papers sprawled over the coffee table. “Jin Lei’s already cracking the whip.”
She nods and walks farther into the room, coming closer. I swallow hard. The sight of her looking so pure in the snowy pajamas, her pretty bare feet peeking from beneath the wide silk bottoms, is more than I can take right now.
“It doesn’t take long to get behind,” she says, sitting beside me on the couch.
“No time at all.” I force my eyes back to the iPad, even though the letters of the document run together onscreen. “Been taking the last few hours to start catching up.”
“I’m sorry you missed work.”
I abandon the pretense of working to reach over and cup the uninjured side of her face. “Baby, there was no question where I needed to be. I couldn’t have thought about another thing until I had you back.”
She leans her cheek into the palm of my hand. “He said someone tried to negotiate for me. Someone he called Moneybags. I guess that was you?”
“Yeah.” A harsh chuckle rumbles in my throat. “I almost screwed everything to hell when I lost my temper. Grim was handling things and I jerked the phone from him and took over. I fucked it all up royally. I thought that bastard was going to. . .” I can’t even bring myself to articulate what I know he would have done to her had we not found her in time.