by Selena Scott
He felt a pair of hands on his back and when he turned, there was Christy. A sweet girl he’d messed around with a few times last year. She grinned up at him and he smiled at her, giving her shoulder a friendly squeeze, but then he tipped his head toward Valentina and Christy nodded, understanding.
There was another girl across the dance floor, Laura, who wasn’t anywhere near as understanding as Christy. She shot Kain a look that could have slit his throat if she’d been a little closer.
He put himself in between Laura and Valentina, not wanting her to be in the line of sight of the angry woman. But then he looked down at Valentina. The zip-up had fallen off one shoulder as she danced and the lean line of her muscular arm caught the light. Why was he protecting Valentina? The woman could definitely protect herself. Even so, Kain stayed where he was.
The music went on and on and so did the dancing. Valentina was getting looks from all over the dance floor. From dudes.
Anytime Kain took his eyes off of her, there was another guy, inching his way in toward her. She was pretty, of course, and that was a lot of it. But it was also the way she was moving. There was something extremely alluring about it. She wasn’t shaking it the way some of the other women were, but even so, each move spoke worlds. This was a confident woman. A woman who knew exactly what to do with her body.
Kain could barely stand it. He grabbed Valentina’s hand and twirled her so that her palms landed on his chest. “You’re cute, sunshine.”
She frowned at him, moving to the music still, her hips brushing his. “I’m thirsty is what I am.”
“I can fix that.” He took her hand and led her through the dancing throngs over to the bar. He caught the electric scent of her sweat, the shampoo in her hair. His shampoo. He tucked her in front of him when they got to the crowd around the bar. She tugged off her hoodie and passed it back to him to hold.
“I’ll get waters. You’ll never fit in there.”
Valentina squirreled her way up to the bar and leaned over it the way she saw other girls doing. “Two waters!” she shouted to the bartender when he nodded her way.
“You want a real drink, honey?” a voice said from beside her.
Valentina turned and saw a handsome man with dark hair and brown eyes. He sat at the bar next to her.
“Water is a real drink,” she answered, confused.
He laughed. “I meant, you want something you could sip on while we get to know each other better?”
He slid off the stool and offered it to her.
Valentina opened her mouth to refuse the chair; she wouldn’t have minded sitting, but not at the price of having to talk to this stranger. But she clapped it closed when two arms came on either side of her, trapping her against the bar and surrounding her. She recognized those wide palms, the blunt fingers.
“She’s got a boyfriend,” Kain’s voice said, practically in her ear.
She turned her head to see him and her temple brushed across the light stubble on his chin.
The dark-haired man shrugged and sat back down on his seat. Kain grabbed both waters from the bartender in one large hand and dragged her away from the bar with the other hand.
He didn’t look at her as pulled into a less crowded part of the bar and handed her glass over. Both of them downed their water in just a few huge gulps. He set their cups on an empty table and Valentina wiped her hand across her mouth.
It was then that she realized he’d pulled the hoodie on. He was wearing it. A spark of temper flared in her.
“That’s mine,” she pointed at the sweatshirt. “And no, I don’t.”
“This is ours,” he corrected, plucking at the shoulder of the hoodie. “We share it. And you don’t what?”
“Have a boyfriend.”
“What?” he shouted over the noise of the bar. Frustrated, he grabbed her hand and dragged her out into the parking lot. “Are you ready to go? It’s too loud in there.”
“I’m ready.”
He handed the hoodie over without complaint now. “You said you don’t what?” he asked again.
“Have a boyfriend. The way you said I did.”
Kain held the car door open for her and went around to the driver’s side. He remembered what Alec had said, that Williams wasn’t actually her boyfriend. That it was a different kind of companionship on Herta. Blech. He really didn’t want to talk about this with her. He slammed into the car and pulled onto the main road.
“Well, whatever Williams is. Your lover or whatever. I don’t think he would have wanted that guy buying you a drink and trying to cop a feel.”
Valentina studied him. “That’s very considerate of Williams.”
Kain shrugged. Like he said, he really, really didn’t want to talk about this. The car ride was extremely quiet. And it didn’t really hit Kain until he was pulling into his driveway that he was bringing them back to an empty house. He suppressed a growl. Something told him this wasn’t the best idea.
She didn’t wait for him to open her door for her and that irritated Kain. He followed her to the house but she stopped right before his porch steps. She turned around, an unreadable expression on her face.
“Williams isn’t my lover.”
He sighed, ignoring the twist in his gut. “Well, I don’t know what you guys call it on Herta.”
“You misunderstand.” Her honey-brown eyes were unblinking. “He has no claim to me anymore. He left me.”
“What?” Kain took a step back from her. “What?”
Valentina nodded. “Right after that last caravan. With the coyote shifters. The next day, actually.”
“He left you.”
“Because I’m stubborn and difficult and I cared more about freeing the enslaved than being close to him.”
“He said that to you.”
She shrugged. “It was all true.”
“So, you’re not with him?”
She shook her head, her braid over her shoulder and her eyes filling up her whole damn face.
“Mmph,” Kain grunted and dragged a hand over his stubble, eyeing her. “Are you all broken up about it? Sad?”
“Not really. I was never in love with him. But it had been nice to have a companion. I’d grown used to it.”
“Mmph,” he grunted again and paced away from her a few feet before he came back to stand right in front of her.
Kain took Valentina by the shoulders and picked her right up. He set her two stairs up on the porch so that they were perfect eye level with one another. She huffed in surprise but stayed right where he’d put her.
Kain stood there for three long seconds, right up on her, and then he paced away again.
He turned back to her, five feet away now, pulled his cap off and scratched his head with that hand. When he put the hat back on, it was tipped all the way back on his head.
So it won’t bump me when he kisses me, Valentina realized. He’s going to kiss me.
And then he was striding back until he was eye level again.
“Yeah,” he said, fiddling with his hat once more. “Yeah.”
His arms came around her, and hers came up fast, as if she might hit him, but her hands just streaked around the back of his head. Kain had one forearm banded across the backs of her thighs and the other hand against her shoulder blades.
He trapped her to him and lifted her clean off the steps. Her head was above his, she looked down at him.
Kain tipped his face back and immediately caught her lips with his.
He circled his head, and then, when her serious mouth stayed closed, he lightly flicked his head to one side. And when her lips started coming open for him, he immediately slid inside. Kissing all the dark smooth parts of her mouth he hadn’t realized he’d been dreaming about.
He made a noise into her mouth and Valentina tried to catch it in her teeth. She’d never heard a sound like that before. She would have put her legs around his waist but he held her so tight.
Kain sucked hard at her bottom lip and made a little d
issatisfied grunt when he didn’t quite get what he wanted. His tongue traced that lip, dragged it between his teeth.
His scent surrounded her, indescribable, pure Kain. It even rose up from the hoodie she wore. It even rose up from herself, from her own hair. The thought had the smallest noise escaping her.
He froze the second he heard it. And then he was stepping up the stairs. Her back pressed briefly against the front door as he pushed them inside. His lips never left hers. He set her down and started walking them backwards.
Yes.
It was the only thought in her head. The kiss was deepening and her hands were stuck in the collar of his shirt as he leaned down over her. They were still standing in the middle of the floor, though. She tried tugging him back toward the couch. He didn’t move.
“Couch,” she muttered against his lips.
“I, uh, can’t,” he said and then his mouth had dropped to the hollow under her ear and Valentina tipped her head back to give him access.
“Why?”
Kain groaned a little, taking her by the chin and giving her three firm kisses in a row. “Because if I get you on the couch, I’m definitely gonna fuck you on the couch.”
“Oh.” She shivered a little bit. Was that so bad? Sounded pretty good to her. But something held her back from suggesting it. Some note of pain she detected in his voice. “How about there, then?” She pointed to the kitchen. “Just let me sit there.”
“The counter?” he groaned. “That’s even worse. Val, I will definitely fuck you if you’re sitting on the counter. Or just go down on you until we both pass out.”
Again, Valentina wasn’t seeing the downside here. But her recovering leg was starting to shake just a little bit. The swimming, all the dancing, and now the raw pumping adrenaline of this kiss. She needed to sit down.
The movement caught Kain’s eye.
“You’re asking because you need to sit down. Oh, baby, I’m sorry.” He lifted her again, in the same way, so that she couldn’t wrap her legs around him still. Just a few of his long steps and he was through to her bedroom. He set her gently on the edge of the bed, tearing his lips from hers and striding back to her doorway.
She was shocked. He was leaving right now? “Kain?”
“Yeah,” he said again, more to himself than to her, as if he was reassuring himself that this was the right decision. “Yeah.” He took his cap and tossed it into the living room behind him. He grabbed at his short hair. “You need to rest and I need to not lose my fucking mind right now. So, goodnight.”
He stalked over and gave her one very firm and chaste goodnight kiss on her lips. He stood in front of where she sat.
“Goodnight,” he repeated, looking down at her. And then he was giving her that same firm goodnight kiss. He pulled back an inch and then he was kissing her again, the way he’d been on the porch. With everything he had. He crouched on the balls of his feet in front of her and his hands slid from her neck up to her hair and back. His tongue twisted with hers and she felt those dissatisfied sounds of his all the way down to her lungs. But then he was suddenly tearing away again.
He was all the way back to the door of her room when she said it. “Goodnight.”
“Yeah,” he responded and was back in front of her. Again with the firm kiss. She had the feeling that he was trying to kiss her firmly as a form of punctuation. A way to tell himself that there! That’s enough now. But this kiss melted into another and soon he was crawling her backwards onto her bed, one knee up on the mattress and a hot hand halfway up her shirt.
“Fuck!” He danced away, leaving cold air in his wake. He faced away from her in the doorway, his knuckles clutching the doorjamb. “I swear I’m usually not this much of a maniac. You’re just really, really… fuck.” He rubbed the heel of his hand into his eyes.
“Yeah.” He knocked his hand on the edge of her door. “Okay. My head is spinning. I gotta get out of here. Goodnight, sunshine.”
And then her door was shut firmly behind him.
***
“Kain?”
Valentina’s door was open. She blinked the sleep from her eyes. He leaned there against the jamb. Even his silhouette looked exhausted.
“I just realized something.”
“What?”
She sat up in the bed and the dim light from the hallway spilled over her. She wore a different tank top and her hair was loose over one shoulder. She blinked into the light. What time was it?
“That when you got attacked by the hunters you were alone. Alone alone.”
She cocked her head to one side, unsure what he was getting at. “You knew that already.”
“I know. But it really hit me. I knew you were physically alone. But I guess I always thought that if I hadn’t found you, Williams would have. That he would have been looking for you.”
“Oh.” She understood now. He meant that she’d been alone in every way possible.
He was right.
He stepped forward and she knew what he was going to do. He slid under the covers next to her and tugged her close, so far into him that he was almost on top of her. “I wish I’d been there,” he whispered into her loose hair.
She turned to him, confused. “You were. You rescued me.”
“No,” he corrected her. “I mean I wish I’d been there the whole time.”
She wasn’t totally sure what he meant by that. But she only pondered it for a moment before she relaxed into the weight of him. Let the warmth of his skin pull her down to where all things were soft and safe and no one was lonely.
CHAPTER SIX
He was alone in her bed when he woke up. The smell of her was everywhere. On his own skin, even. He felt like he’d been struck by lightning. Buzzy and numb and utterly confused. Every time he tried to get his thoughts to go forward they just turned around and went right back to the beginning.
The bathing suit. The dancing. The swimming. The man at the bar. The swimsuit. Boyfriend. Lover. The hoodie. Kissing. Kissingkissingkissingkissingkissing. The swimsuit. Putting her to bed. Goodnight. K-I-S-S-I-N-G. Goodnight.
And then crawling into bed with her. Everything smelling all faint mint and fresh earth.
“Mmmph,” he groaned and rolled over. “That fucking swimsuit.”
He and Valentina had kissed. Real kissed. Kissed hard.
That was the kind of kiss you couldn’t take back. Just a hop and a skip from fucking. Intimate and irrevocable.
“Shit.”
He pulled himself from bed. He already knew that she wasn’t in the house, it was silent and cold. He’d slept late, he realized as he saw the clock in the kitchen, and on the counter, a note.
-Went with Ruby to do wedding errands.
That’s all. No heart. No x or o. Not even her damn name. He stroked a finger over her almost illegible chicken scratch and then tucked the note carefully into a drawer. God. Even that nothing little note was plucking some chord in him.
She was with Ruby.
He froze. Would she tell Ruby? Was there a chance that John Alec would find out before Kain could tell him?
Oh fuck. His heart froze.
Kain had crossed a major line last night. With both John Alec and Milla. And he needed to talk to them stat. Sooner than stat.
He really needed to have talked to them yesterday before he’d tongue-fucked Valentina’s mouth for half an hour. But that had gone out the window the second she’d looked up at him from the bottom of those stairs, looking like she thought she deserved loneliness.
He grabbed his phone from the bathroom and texted his sister while he brushed his teeth and started the shower. He had to come clean and soon.
***
That late afternoon, though, he still hadn’t been able to catch up with either of them. Milla was out doing wedding crap with the rest of the girls and John Alec wasn’t answering his damn phone.
Kain was going out of his mind with equal parts guilt and self-righteousness. He hadn’t done something terrible. But she was Joh
n Alec’s sister.
His leg jumped as he sat at his kitchen table and waited for her to come home. He wished very much that she’d woken him before she went. He wanted to talk to her, see how she was feeling. Maybe kiss her again. NO! Not until he talked to John Alec.
Kain checked his phone. Nothing.
He rose up, grabbed his keys and was pulling into Ansel’s driveway a few minutes later. And there was Ansel, hauling some boxes around to the back of his house. Kain popped out of the car and grabbed a few himself.
“Hey,” his deep-voiced, squinty-eyed, extremely quiet brother grumbled at him.
“Hey.”
“What is it?” Ansel asked as they dropped the boxes in the backyard and Ansel started stripping them open. It looked like the pieces to build a swing set. Cool. Kain loved doing stuff for Carmen. He watched as Ansel tossed the instructions aside and started pulling stuff out of the boxes. He wasn’t surprised that his brother had instantly caught on that something was bothering Kain. He’d always known that sort of stuff.
“Ah. Nothing,” Kain handed over a monkey wrench. “Just did something kind of stupid.”
“You hooked up with Valentina,” Ansel supplied easily, studying a piece of the swing set.
“What?” Kain blinked. “She told you? Or she told Ruby and Ruby told you? Fuck!”
Ansel grinned. “Nobody told me. But I’m not blind. You’ve got a shine for her. And now you’re all mixed up. It wasn’t that far of a leap for me to make.”
“Oh. Yeah. Alright. We just made out. But I haven’t talked to John Alec about it. And now I can’t get ahold of him. Driving me nuts.”
Ansel studied his brother, watched the way he fiddled with his hat. “So you’re gonna do it again?”
“With Valentina? Uh—I mean, I want to. But not until I talk to Alec. And I haven’t even really talked to her about it. It was just this wild, 30-minute, late night… lightning strike. And now I’m here.”
Ansel squinted and scratched at his stubble. “Are you serious about her?”
Yes. “I don’t know. Too soon to tell.”
