by Keta Kendric
“I fully agree. I was willing to allow myself to try with Desiree, but I do believe I dodged a bullet. Never again.”
She cocked a brow. “Never say never, future husband. My irresistible charm has gotten me stalked a time or two.”
I laughed. Mecca had unknowingly cheered me up during a time I assumed I’d be consumed with anger and bitterness. Strangely, all I felt was relief.
“We’ll see,” was all I said. I didn’t have another brother to lose Mecca to, so unless she changed her mind, I would have a wife soon. However, I believed it would be wise not to introduce her to my cousin Tywin until after we were married if I could help it.
Why the hell was I smiling about getting married again so soon after the disaster I’d just avoided?
41
Khane
The man who had been treated as an outcast most of his life was married, and the woman he was married to was the one from his dreams. I had never been the man that got what he wanted. I had always been the one who received the scraps, the leftovers, and the hand-me-downs in life.
This was the first time in my life that I understood the words, needed and wanted, and joy and happiness. Desiree wasn’t like any woman I had ever met. She had surpassed the version of her that I had spied on and had filled in what I had missed.
Spying had given me a linear view of her when she had many impressions that added an endless depth to her life. There was also a streak of darkness within her that had latched on to mine, and immediately afterward, she and her caring spirit had fed into every part of me and lit up the darkness.
Envisioning a future with Desiree had always been a fantasy. Now, my dreams were unfolding right in front of my face and I felt something I hadn’t felt in a very long time, afraid.
Despite our connection, I now harbored deep concerns. It wasn’t until after the adrenaline of the situation waned that I realized that I didn’t know how to be a husband. I had never even had a girlfriend, so how was I supposed to manage a wife? I had allowed my feelings for her to cloud my judgment. Now, uncertainty was weighing me down.
Dead silence loomed between us on the drive back home as we continued to soak in the events of the evening. The picturesque view of the clouds hanging low over the mountains wasn’t enough to ease my churning mind.
“Do you want a honeymoon?” I asked, feeling the pressure of whether or not I would be able to make her happy. What the hell had I gone and done?
“Maybe later. For now, let’s go home,” she stated. Home. I loved the word ‘home’ coming from her where it concerned us.
“Where do you want to live? We can get a house closer to the city if you want.”
Her hand found mine, and she gripped it as she rubbed her thumb caringly across the back.
“I want to live wherever you are. As a matter of fact, your home is perfect. I fell head over heels the moment I saw it. I didn’t think I’d like the solitude of being so far away from civilization, but it’s nice, peaceful, and fulfilling in a way I didn’t know I would appreciate.”
She squeezed my hand, sending a hint of her warm energy into me, but stress continued to make my muscles pull tight.
“Stop worrying. We’re going to be great together,” she whispered. Her delicate tone eased more of the doubt that kept lingering.
“Are you sure you don’t want to stop at Arjen’s to pick up your things?” We were an hour away, but if she said yes, I would turn in the opposite direction in a heartbeat.
“No. For what? There is nothing in my bags or purse that I’ll need anytime soon. Maybe I’ll release you in a few days to pick them up for me,” she stated.
“Release me?” I questioned, my grin wide.
“Yes. You are stuck with me now, so we can do whatever we want without worrying about consequences. As a matter of fact, pull over,” she ordered.
“We’re scaling the side of a mountain. There is nowhere to pull over to.”
“Stop anyway. It’s not like this is a well-traveled roadway since about five people on the planet know where you live.”
I eased down on the brake, but my eye was on her the entire time. Her dress crinkled and rustled as she hiked it up and wiggled her panties free before tossing them in my face. The moment her scent hit my system my dick was at full salute.
The truck came to a screeching halt, causing rocks and pebbles to keep sliding onward as the tires gripped the road, and the suspension kept us in place. The dimming daylight, along with the glow of the truck’s interior lighting, gave off enough illumination for me to see exposed legs and thighs.
“What are you waiting for? You need to be ripping that belt loose and unbuttoning your pants.” The big grin she cast along with her suggestion caused my smile to widen.
First rule of being a good husband, don’t argue with your wife, I decided. I cut the truck off and applied the emergency brake. Belt, button, zipper, lifted, swiped, and ready. I shoved my pants down enough for my dick to spring free before I reached out a helping hand to assist her across the center console. I adjusted the seat back and scooted lower to give her more room as she straddled my lap.
The warmth from her hot center flirted with my straining shaft, causing me to leak pre-cum. Her inner thighs caressed the hard plains of mine, her warm, soft skin flirting with me. She took her time unbuttoning my shirt before she left tender kisses on my chest and worked her way up to my neck. We didn’t bother taking my shirt all the way off as it would take too much maneuvering and waste too much time.
A sweet kiss graced my lips before her hand went around my neck for leverage as the other took a firm hold of my dick, making me hiss out my excitement. Heat lit my face, my erratic breaths got away from me, and my jittery body became flooded with energy. Desiree, even now, had no idea what she had the ability to do to me.
Were we about to fuck right here in the middle of the roadway? My heart thumped against my ribs hard enough to crack them as I fought to contain the overwhelming level of excitement that had been set loose to course through me.
Her forehead was pinned against mine, and her wetness lingered at the crown of my throbbing dick as I waited with bated breath. She was so sexy, and her body was my very own paradise and shit!
The first touch of her wet heat had me about to lose it. She kept her head against mine and allowed her body to dip an inch, closing my eyes and taking my breath at the same time.
Another inch of me slid in, and we released harsh breaths together. The clenching and tightening around me caused me to shiver, as I fought the urge to plunge into her tight cove with maximum force. However, this was her wedding night, and she could have it any way she wanted.
Second rule of being a good husband, let your wife have her way when she initiates sex.
She eased down farther as she sucked in large heaps of air, fighting to control her movements as much as I fought for control over mine. When she seated my full length, her nails raked my scalp on either side of my head before she got a grip on my hair. She wasn’t moving, only sat in place, enveloping me deep in a valley of her flowing hot magic.
“You feel so good. I missed you,” she whispered against my lips before she started a circular wave that caused us to moan. “I missed you too,” I moaned into her mouth. The windows had already started to fog from our heat. The raw passion, the uncontrolled lust, the pleasure. The freedom.
When her rotating rhythm picked up speed, I gripped the globes of her lush ass, wrinkling a portion of her dress while allowing my hands to aid in our quest for the ultimate high. I dragged the front of her dress down, exposing her full tits, unable to keep my mouth and hands off them.
“Khane, baby!” she yelled against my cheek. I struggled for every breath and allowed myself to sink deeper into the pleasure she dished out. She was so wet for me I could feel her juices leaking over my balls.
She slowed her rhythm again, and the pleasure came in sharp spikes that threatened to take me under with each jab.
“Khane?”
“Yes,”
fell between my moans and harsh breaths. Her movements were down to a crawl at this point. She eased back and stopped, causing a heavy tension to mix with the floating sensation.
“Is something wrong? Are you okay?” She didn’t answer, but leaned in and placed the sweetest kiss yet to my lips and cheek and kept her face against mine.
“Before you steal away my whole mind, I have to tell you something,” she whispered. A seductive moan wound into my ear when I lost control, and my dick moved inside her, excited for more action.
Her warm hands slid across my bearded chin until she had it palmed in a caring caress. She captured me completely, her stare reaching in so deeply, my breath caught. Not even the dimness in the cab could keep me from connecting with her, so profoundly linked that we stilled as our inhales and exhales filled the truck’s interior.
“Arjen blew me away with his actions, so I wasn’t in the mindset to say any wedding vows.” She wanted to say wedding vows at a time like this. While I was planted inside her, so hard my dick was at least an inch longer than it normally was, and probably as big around as her forearm.
Khane,” she started, and I took a deep calming breath. I was doing my best to concentrate on her words, not the wet heat flowing around my dick.
“You are without a doubt, the love of my life. No matter what path our lives had taken, I would have never stopped loving you. You are the center of my universe, everything I ever wanted but never believed I would have. You have given me the other half of my soul, the part I have been forced to live without until you. I more than love you, Khane. I’m in love with you, in every way a wife should be with her husband. There is no doubt in my mind that I will love you even after this life ends.”
I had surrendered to her, the impact of her words taking my breath as my heart threatened to break free and fall into her palms.
Her lips pressed into mine and reminded me to breathe. She pressed harder, capturing my trembling lips while I stammered for words, too overwhelmed with emotions to respond right away. She knew how to reach every part of me, pieces that had been created just for her as she was the only one that knew how to make them work.
The first time she’d told me she loved me, I had frozen, much like I was now, but in my defense, I assumed she was playing a game. Now, I knew that she loved me with a depth that I couldn’t have even imagined. This beautiful woman loved me, just the way I was, imperfect, flawed, and damaged.
Our kiss brimmed with the same intensity as her precious words, words that I would never forget. Words I never believed would be bestowed on me. Words that held enough meaning, they caressed me in their overpowering warmth. With my forehead against hers, our chests bobbing in time with our breathing, I spoke the words I would say to only her.
“Love will snuff out the fires of hell and breathe life into the blackest heart. It has the power to inject purity in the most contaminated mind. I had never believed people’s assessment of love, never even entertained the idea of it, until you. I showed you the most depraved part of me, yet you found a way to see right through the madness and touched me with love regardless. Now, I know. I know that love is more than a word. It’s a person. You are love. You are the reason I breathe. You are the reason I know how it feels to dream, to laugh, to share myself. You are the physical meaning of hope, the touch beyond my thoughts, a wish come true. My soulmate. My everything. I love you, Desiree. My beautiful chaos.”
Her lips curved into a smile against mine before she restarted our kiss, her tear-stained cheeks wetting mine. When her moist tongue swiped my lips, I opened for her with ease as I allowed her to consume me.
When her movement restarted this time, she didn’t stop, nor did she take it slowly. We didn’t care where we were. We enjoyed each other, a husband enjoying his wife, a wife enjoying her husband with no consequences or apologies.
I had been blown apart by beautiful chaos, but she had pieced me back together so that the best parts of me crested over a mountain of pain and ruin. If this was how our marriage was starting, there was no doubt that we were going to be fine.
Epilogue
Eyes closed, legs still spread, face pointed at the ceiling. A deep inhale made my chest rise before I released and sank back into the soft comfort of the bedding. Who knew marriage could be this glorious? We were only a few weeks into it, but I knew without a doubt that I would be with Khane until the day I died.
I knew marriage was more than just about sex, but damn if Khane didn’t have me thinking about it morning, noon, and night.
He’d had to go off on a five-day hunting trip, and it had felt like a lifetime. Now, after his return, here we were, spread across his big bed, naked and satisfied.
His movements ruffled the bed, but I didn’t move a muscle, not even when his big hand started sliding up my side.
“Can I ask you something, Desiree?”
“You can ask me anything you want.”
“When I was on my trip, something that I had shoved to the back of my mind kept nagging me.”
I peeled my eyes open to stare up at him. His body was angled over mine now as he caressed one of my tits and twirled one of my locks with the other hand. I loved that he enjoyed touching my locks, a gentle tug, a twirl over his finger, a feathery stroke.
“You remember when we were sitting around Angel’s table in Mexico, and you were talking to your father on the phone?”
Oh. Hell. “Yes, I remember.”
“I couldn’t help but sense that your father was getting ready to confess something that you didn’t want him to say. You cut him off in the middle of his sentence.”
A flock of crows had been set loose inside my body and were actively pecking my nerves to pieces. Although I attempted to stifle it, Khane’s acute senses read me like a book.
“Relax,” he said, before bending and placing a delicate kiss on my cheek. “Is there something you want to tell me, Desiree?”
My hard swallow sounded and my shoulders tensed hard enough for my back to crack. The words that I couldn’t put in order inside my head had dropped and gotten hung up in my constricting throat. I didn’t know how to answer his question. The silence that stretched between us made fear creep into every crevice of my body.
Khane rolled over and slid from the bed. I sat up in a rush when he reached down beside the bed for something. When I noticed it was my long black robe, I breathed a sigh of relief.
“Put this on. We need to take a walk.” Those were the words he left me with before he sat my robe on the bed and walked into the bathroom.
I was in so much fucking trouble right now. You’re stressing for no reason, my conscience spoke.
When the bathroom door opened and he stepped out in shorts and the white T-shirt I had stripped off him earlier, I sat, frozen. He glanced down at my robe and back to me, hinting that I needed to be putting it on.
I reached for the robe, noticing my damn hands were shaking. After I eased out of bed, I slung the robe around my body and tied the knot so tightly it pinched my stomach.
Khane reached for my hand, and I glared as his big hand closed tightly around mine. There was no way he didn’t feel the tremble in my hand, and I still hadn’t answered his question.
He kept a tight grip as he led me through the house. I prayed we were going to the living room or kitchen until he turned into the lonely hall. The sight of that mysterious door sent sharp spikes of fear racing through me that caused my legs to go numb and my heart to triple-time in my chest.
“Khane,” I called, my tone low and shaky.
“Yes,” he replied.
“You know, don’t you? You figured out what my father was about to say before I cut him off.”
“Yes. I know, Desiree. I could hear in his voice that he wasn’t concerned about you being in danger. At first, I thought it was because he was a horrible father, but the more I went over his words in my head, the more I started to realize that he was convinced that you could get yourself out of whatever trouble you were in wit
hout him. He also said that he was leaving the organization in the hands of the two most capable Evans.”
“Why are you taking me down there?” I asked as he pushed the door open, and the crumbs of broken stones on the steps started to poke into the pads of my feet. Once we made it to the bottom of the stairs, I put a little resistance in our connection, but Khane only tightened his hold on my hand and kept us moving.
“Khane, it doesn’t matter that I’m the Bookkeeper. I don’t have any real power. Those people were after the Bookkeeper because they assumed I would know where my father had hidden large stashes of money. Gambling took most, if not all of his money, and I’m pretty sure gambling is the reason for all of my father’s bad decisions.”
Khane finally stopped and turned to face me. His torture table behind us captured my gaze for a paused moment.
“What do you mean, it didn’t matter? You help to run a multi-million dollar drug empire, secretly and successfully for years. You know as well as I do that your role as the Bookkeeper was much more involved than you helping your father stash away money. I believe you had more power than he did. Tell me this. How long were you his Bookkeeper?”
He started moving again, leading me closer to that horrifying table.
“Since the night we first met at that event six years ago. It was his way of showing me many of the major players in the criminal world.”
“That makes sense. It also explains why Angel Ramirez was so determined to take you and so reluctant to let you go. He knew what you were too, didn’t he?”
His gaze seared into mine before his eyes squinted in thought.
“Yes. I believe he knew, but I never admitted anything to him.”
We were standing in front of the metal table now. The man I saw Khane torturing on that table kept popping into my head. I could still hear his screams, taste his blood at the back of my throat, and see his severed arm and mutilated body.
Khane turned my stiff body so that my back was to the table. My shaky legs and the knots in my stomach made me nauseous. As Mecca would say, I was shitting bricks at this point.
