King (Sydney Storm MC 7)

His fingers dug into my skin as he tightened his grip on my neck. “Someone woke with some fucking attitude this morning.”

I scrunched a handful of his shirt and pulled him closer. “You love my attitude, so I’m just giving you what you love.”

His nostrils flared. His eyes blazed with heat. And he kissed me again. This kiss was a much longer one. While I gave him the attitude he craved, King was giving me the hard, rough touch I craved. When we finally came up for air, he rasped, “You won’t be sleeping tonight. Be ready for that.”

He let me go and took a step away from me. After spending a few moments running his eyes down my body, he turned and left the kitchen.

“Fuck,” I muttered, reaching out for the counter to steady myself. That man.

Today was going to be a long day waiting for him.

5

King

Clark Kent eluded us for another fucking day. The address Zane got a hit on turned out to be a dead end. And although I waited all day for further news, no other location materialised. Whoever this Kent asshole was, he had magic fucking skills at hiding.

I arrived home later than I would have preferred, just after 7:00 p.m. The smell of roast chicken filled the house. I found Lily in the kitchen on her knees, ass in the air, as she rummaged in a drawer.

Resting my hip against the kitchen counter, I crossed my arms and settled in to watch her. I often found her like this. Cleaning out kitchen cupboards and drawers was one of her go-to activities when she was stressed. And while I didn’t like her being stressed, I loved the fuck out of watching her on her knees.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

She didn’t stop what she was doing when she answered me. “My bloody mother is what’s going on.”

“Care to elaborate?” Hannah pushed Lily’s buttons more than I did, and that was saying something, because I pushed the hell out of them at times.

She yanked a Tupperware container out of the drawer and added it to the pile of containers she had on the counter. Pushing up off the floor, she stood and faced me, eyes wild with anger. “Oh, she’s on her way over. You’ll find out soon enough. She thinks you need to make the decisions for our wedding. Apparently, I suck at making the right decisions.”

Lily had been to the hairdresser. Another sign of her stress. She hated going to the hairdresser and either went only when she desperately needed to or in times of stress. Since I knew she’d only just been a couple of weeks ago, this visit was due to her emotional state.

“What decisions?”

She rolled her eyes. “All of them!” Turning back to her containers on the counter, she started muttering shit under her breath I couldn’t make out.

Moving to her, I reached around and placed my hands over hers, stilling her. “Calm down. She’ll come over and I’ll let her know I want nothing to do with any of this shit.”

Her shoulders lifted as she took a deep breath. “You know it’s not that easy with her. She has it in her mind that I made all the wrong choices when I married Linc, and she’s determined to help me make better ones this time around.”

I turned her and found her eyes. “That makes no fucking sense, Lily. What

the fuck does your wedding to Linc have to do with ours?”

She was silent for a few moments before biting her lip. I didn’t miss the tears threatening to fall and wondered what the hell was going on here. Lily wasn’t the kind of woman to cry over much. She was a fucking soldier when it came to life, just getting on with shit. So whatever this was, it was big for her. “She made a comment yesterday that made me think that she thinks I screwed up my marriage to him right from the beginning. And her religious side makes her think some crazy shit, like that if I’d married him in a church, we would have lasted. Stuff like that.” At my disbelieving look, she added, “I know it sounds out there, but you know my mother, King. She’s fucking out there. And she’s driving me to drink with this!”

I studied her for a beat, processing what she’d said. Something was missing here. Lily didn’t cry over shit her mother said, so the fact tears were close led me to believe this wasn’t just about Hannah. “What else is going on here, Lily?”

She frowned. “What? Besides the fact my mother is causing me the kind of stress that—”

“No, I mean what else is going on with you besides what your mother is saying?”

Before we could get to the bottom of this, the front door opened and closed, and Hannah came our way with, “Lily, what happened to the front door mat? It’s raining outside and I couldn’t wipe my feet, so I’m traipsing mud through your house.” She stopped when she saw me. “Oh, King, I’m glad you’re here. We’ve got things to discuss.”

“So Lily tells me.” I jerked my chin at the table. “Sit. We’ll talk, but I’m not guaranteeing you’ll like anything I have to say.”

Lily and her mother were surprisingly alike in some ways, but vastly different in many others. The one thing Lily definitely got from her mother was her tendency to ignore some of the shit I said when she didn’t want anything to do with it. Hannah tended to ignore my tone when I was sending her a warning, and this time was no different. She brushed me off with an “Oh you’re going to love my ideas, King. I just know it.”

Lily sat next to me at the table, and as Hannah opened the folder she’d brought with her, she said, “Perhaps you can tell Mum that we haven’t decided on the location for the wedding yet, but that as soon as we do, she’ll be the first to know.” Her tone dropped to a low, pissy one when she added, “And that this decision is ours to make, not anyone else’s.”