His hands held the back of my thighs and rubbed up and down. My body began to heat. His forehead pressed against my belly. And with every pass of his hands as they reached just below my ass before he ran them back down to my knees, something stirred inside me.
My fingers ran through his hair. I held his head and tipped it back, staring into his eyes. Silently, I begged him to see what I was saying. Pleading that he wouldn’t make me say the words out loud.
Chapter Forty-Three
King
She was trying to run.
I held her in my arms. My hands rubbed the back of her legs. I wanted to continue under her shirt and up over her plump ass. I wanted to lift my shirt over her head and take my fill of her naked body.
But I couldn’t.
She wasn’t ready. She might never be ready. My dick was hard as steel behind my zipper. I groaned inwardly when she ran her fingers through my hair. Then she tilted my head back.
And I saw it.
The fear.
Not of me. Fear of herself.
“I’m just like her, King. I didn’t see it before. I didn’t know what it was. But there was something wrong with her. Something wrong with me.”
“With whom, baby? What are you talking about?”
“My mother. She used to tell me men leave. But I think she pushed them away. I think she knew there was something dark in her that she couldn’t control. She was different when we left Arkansas. Sullen, but not.”
She was rambling, and I was torn between stopping her and letting her continue. She didn’t talk much about her mother. I knew she loved her. I knew she’d had a good mom. One who loved her unconditionally. But everything she told me was surface shit.
“Grace, I want to talk to you about all of this. I want to hear all about your mom, about your life before I met you. But first we need to talk about us.”
“There can’t be an us, King.” She tried to step back, but I held her legs. I knew I shouldn’t do it, but I pulled her in closer, until she had no choice but to straddle me. I waited for her to fight me. Waited for her to slap me the way she did that day downstairs when I kissed her for the first time in front of my brothers. If she did, I would have let her go. But instead, she settled against me. Her arms around my neck and her face buried against my throat.
“This feels an awful lot like us, baby.”
She shook her head and groaned. When she lifted her head and looked into my eyes, my heart broke. I saw her shut down a second before she spoke.
“We can’t be together. I’m not good for you. Everything I’ve done since the moment I came here has hurt you.”
“That’s bullshit, Grace, and you fucking know it.”
“I tried—”
“Shut the fuck up and let me speak,” I growled. If I was going to lose her, she was going to hear it all. “I forgave you for that shit the minute you told me what you planned. I didn’t fucking care, and if you hadn’t been drinking, I would have crawled between your legs and fucking moved in. You were never the reason I stayed away from you. I don’t know how many fucking ways to say it.”
“You don’t know who she was. Who I am.” She sighed. “I don’t know who the fuck I am. What if the man who is my father is worse than Steele? What if the darkness in her is also in him? I can feel it, King. I wasn’t mad at you for fucking me. I was mad at me, and I wanted to hurt you. So I left the clubhouse after you told me not to, and I dragged Karlyn with me. It’s my fault she was hurt. Johnny and Indigo. Jackson. If I had just stayed put, he never would have been shot.”
“Jackson was shot to shit when he fucking walked in the clubhouse, baby. This life has risks. We all knew it when we signed up. We all accept it.”
“But if I hadn’t done—”
I leaned forward and pressed my lips against hers. I felt her stiffen and pulled back, but just before my lips left hers, she relaxed against me and kissed me back. My hands roamed over her back, doing my best to tamp down the raging desire I had for this woman.
Her arms tightened around my neck as she pressed her body against me. She was so fucking sexy, and all I wanted was to sink my dick inside her. But I couldn’t. Not until she dealt with the shit that happened to her. She needed to talk to Haizley.
She needed to talk to me.
I pulled away, and she followed me, biting at my lips.
