King (Sydney Storm MC 7)

After we’d extracted the information, Devil eyed the guy on the floor. “What do you want to do with him?”

I stood and pointed my gun at the guy’s head. Extracting information from him had taken some of the edge off my need for blood. Pulling the trigger contributed to that. But until I had Kent’s blood on my hands, that need would not be fully satisfied.

“Call Nitro,” I answered Devil. “Tell him we have what we need so he can send everyone home.”

As he called Nitro, I called Scott Cole. He answered on the fourth ring. “Fuck, King, it’s late. What’s up?”

“I’ve got a job for you. And I’ll be in town tomorrow.”

8

Lily

King was leaving town.

The man had practically forced a change of wedding date on me yesterday, and now he was fucking leaving town for an unknown amount of time.

Deep breath, Lily.

You’re used to this.

This is what he does.

He makes plans and then he changes them just as fast.

You’ve got this.

Deep fucking breath.

“Lily,” he demanded, “did you listen to anything I just said?”

I stared at him as he sat on the end of our bed lacing his boots. And I took that deep breath and nodded. “Yes, I heard you.”

He took that in, narrowing his eyes a little as he did so. Like he was trying to gauge my feeling about this new development. “My guess is I’ll be home by Thursday. Friday at the latest.”

I couldn’t with him. I just couldn’t. Not today. The kids had given me hell this morning and I’d been late getting them to school. Linc had given me grief over my request for him to cough up his late child support payment. My mother had left me a weird message on my phone that I couldn’t, for the life of me, figure out. The general gist was that she was cranky with me. I’d deal with her later. And on top of all that, the washing machine had died this morning, and when I’d mentioned it to King, he’d shrugged his fucking shoulders and told me it’d have to wait until he got home from Brisbane. At that point, I didn’t even know he was going to Brisbane.

I continued staring at him, because really, there was nothing else to do than that. I mean, I had no clue what would come out of his mouth next. “I should hope you’ll be home by Friday since we have a wedding to attend on Saturday.”

Before I knew what was happening, he’d stood and taken hold of me as he walked me backwards to the wall. “Do we have a problem?” he growled, his hand around my neck.

I attempted to pry his hand from my body but failed. “Let me go, King. This is not the time for you to be manhandling me.”

Dark, stormy eyes locked onto mine as he refused to let me go. “I’m going to be away from you for days, Lily, and the last fucking thing I need to be worrying about is whether you’re in a fucking mood with me. Tell me if you have a problem with this.”

I placed my hands to his chest and pushed him away. He hadn’t seen that coming, so I was successful in escaping his grip. “Yes, I have a fucking problem with this! You forced me to change the wedding date. You told me you’d help me with the plans. You said it would all work out okay. And now you won’t even be here this week while I probably have a fucking meltdown over all the shit I have to take care of!” My body flowed with the same stormy energy King’s did as I let all my frustrations out. “I don’t have a problem with you going. You know I never do. But fuck me, I would have preferred it to not be this week.” As he came for me, I stabbed my finger in the air and added, “And now I sound like a whiny bitch! You should have just left and I would have called Brynn to get all that off my chest. Why do you always have to force me to tell you stuff I don’t want to?”

He crashed into me, his strong arms lifting me and throwing me on the bed, his hands ripping my clothes off, his lips devouring mine. When he came up for air, he rasped, “Because I need to fucking know what you’re thinking. I don’t give a fuck what you sound like; all I care about is that we get that shit out and we deal with it. You don’t want to fail at another marriage? You fucking give it to me straight. That’s how we don’t fail.”

My breaths came hard and fast as I took all that in. Fuck, he was right. Why did he always have to be right? I wrapped my legs around his naked body and took hold of his face. “God I love you, but fuck you annoy me sometimes!”

As I pulled his mouth back to mine, he thrust inside me. Our bodies moved together, fast and furious as we each chased our release. Anger and love and hope met head-on, our own special kind of alchemy. By the time we came, King had worked my frustrations out of me and all that was left was the deep love I felt for him.

After, as he zipped his jeans, he said, “I’ll do my best to be home on Thursday.”

I slipped my T-shirt over my head and nodded. “I know you will.”

We watched each other silently as we finished dressing. Then, pulling me to him, he ran his hand over my hair, smoothing it. Kissing my forehead, he exhaled and said, “Fuck, I love you.”