Page 40 of King of War

Jesus fucking Christ, give me strength! I have to close my eyes and take a breath to stop myself from berating her for being so goddamn reckless. “Why didn’t you just kill it? Or have me kill it for you?”

Her mouth drops open in horror, like I just suggested she drown a puppy. “We don’t kill bees, Enzo. They’re harmless.”

“One just almost fucking killed you, Rayne.”

She hums. “Yeah. That one was mean. But usually they’re sweet.”

This woman is going to send me to an early grave, one way or another. “Bees are sweet?”

“Yes.” She gives me the faintest, most incredible-sounding laugh and it soothes away the last drop of my anger. “With their little fuzzy black-and-yellow sweaters. Such a shame I’m so allergic.”

“Again, I’ll remind you, one just almost killed you.”

“Only almost,” she murmurs, still snuggled against me.

I suspect she’s too drained to move of her own accord, and I have no intention of going anywhere right now. Unless we need to. “Do I need to take you the emergency room?”

“And risk someone seeing us together? We can’t do that. Carmine could find out.”

“I’ll deal with that if and when it happens. Do you need to go to the hospital?”

She sighs, her breath warm against my skin. I’m only wearing shorts and now I’m hyperaware of our bare flesh touching, of the warmth of her skin against my chest and thighs. Of her ass nestled against my cock. My cock, who has no idea how to read a room and is getting harder by the second.

“No hospital. I’ll be okay. Thank you for saving my life.”

I’d fucking die for you, Rayne. I have no fucking idea where that thought came from because it’s not true. Who the fuck am I kidding with that though? I honestly have no clue why I’m trying to convince myself that she’s not the most precious thing in the world to me, even after everything she did. “You’re welcome.”

“Still hate you though,” she murmurs.

I suspect she’s lying to herself as much as I am. “Of course you do. You sure seem comfortable there though.” She’s curled up on my lap, cheek still pressed against my bare chest.

“Yeah, well a near-death experience will do strange things to a girl. Can we have a ten-minute truce? I’m not sure I can trust my legs to walk yet.” She lets out another soft laugh that makes her breath dance over my skin.

I could carry her back to her room so she wouldn’t have to walk. Then lay her down on her bed. Peel off her clothes. Kiss her better. Every-fucking-where. My dick jerks in my pants, very much favoring this plan. I tell my dick to shut the fuck up. “We can stay here as long as you need to.”

She mumbles something I don’t quite hear, but she doesn’t move, content to let me hold her for now. And it doesn’t hurt as much as I’d thought it would—caring for her. I’ll always protect her, even if she doesn’t know it, but that stuff comes naturally to me. This though, does not. Except with her.

I kiss the top of her head, let her scent fill my nose. For the first time in six years, the hurt I felt at her betrayal matters so much less to me than having her here in my arms. How did it take me until now to recognize that the pain of seeing her and Tommy together is inconsequential to the agony of losing this incredible woman from my life? What if there was a way to forgive her? To move past all the hurt we’ve caused each other and start again?

I’m not sure I’m strong enough to risk giving her that kind of power over me again.

But I do know I’m definitely not strong enough to let her go.

Chapter

Eighteen

RAYNE

His heart thumps a pounding rhythm against my cheek, hard and frantic and entirely too human. Evidence that he was scared too. Maybe just as scared as I was. The realization lands somewhere vulnerable inside me, a place I’ve spent years boarding up and pretending no longer exists.

I go through my whole adult life not being stung by a bee, and the fuzzy little devil decides to sting me today, giving Enzo the perfect opportunity to rush in and play the hero. Not that I can really hold that against him. He actually did save my life. That’s twice in less than two weeks now. He needs to be careful, or I might start to think he doesn’t hate me at all.

Although, of course he doesn’t actually hate me. Not in the clean, simple way he wants to. I can tell by the racing heart beneath my cheek. The deep breaths he keeps dragging in and forcing back out, as though he’s trying to calm himself down before I notice he needs calming. The way he’s holding on tighter than he has to, one arm locked around my waist, the other curved around the back of my head like he can keep the whole world from touching me if he only grips hard enough.

His fingers keep stroking through my hair in slow, almost absent-minded passes, but there’s nothing absent-minded about the way he checks me. The subtle brush of his thumb against the pulse point beneath my jaw. The brief pause of his hand at my wrist. The way his gaze keeps dropping to my mouth, my throat, my chest, making sure I’m breathing, making sure I’m still here.

It would be so easy to sink into this. Into him. Into the enormous reassuring comfort of his body wrapped around mine. He always used to make me feel safe. Protected. Like the world could try and hurt me all it wanted because Enzo Medici would stand between me and anything that truly could. And I hate that my body remembers that before my brain can stop it. I hate that being tucked against his chest, blanketed in his warmth and surrounded by the clean, expensive scent of him, makes something inside me relax.