Page 136 of Property of Fang
I don’t deserve to have it now.
“Are you going to kiss me again?” she taunts, lifting one eyebrow.
“Do you want me to?”
Her lips twitch as though to answer, yet she doesn’t say anything right away.
I move my thumb against the soft skin of her wrist, rubbing slowly.
“I want you to,” she finally confesses. “But I know I need to respect myself better than to give a person who hates me that access.”
“I never said I hate you.”
“You didn’t have to.” She smiles sadly. “It’s there every time you look at me with suspicion in your eyes.”
“I can be suspicious of you and still like you,” I reason.
Her chin ducks. “No, you can’t, Fang.”
Finally releasing her arm, I use the same hand to coax her face up again. “Yes. I can.”
She inhales sharply as my lips touch hers, spine rigid against my palm. I take it slow this time, dotting small kisses at the corners of her mouth. Jenna relaxes against my hold, palm rising to rest against my chest when I go a little deeper, sweeping my lips over hers, intensifying the moment in small increments.
A soft sigh escapes when she gives in, her hand tightening to a fist at the front of my shirt.
There’s so much confusion. So much uncertainty. Anger.
But everything about this feels intentional. As though fate brought us together for a reason. As if the only way we could heal our wounds was to be challenged with somebody so paradoxically opposite to what we desire.
She breaks away first, hiding her face as she whispers, “We can’t do this, Fang. All we do is hurt each other.”
I thumb her jawline and force her head up again. “Maybe I like the pain.”
She gently removes my hand and steps out of my hold. “I don’t.”
FORTY-FIVE
JENNA
The momentit became clear the Kings had business to attend to last night, I took up Jezabel’s offer to stay in the spare room out the back, sharing the space with Molly. Secluded. Kept separate from the business of the main house. My only mistake was deciding a drink might help me settle in the small hours.
I roll to my other side, tugging the blankets up around my neck, and watch Fang’s daughter sleep. She lies sprawled atop a basic canvas cot, swaddled in a sleeping bag one of the guys provided. Her arms are askew—one above her head and the other tucked inside the bag. Lips parted, a gentle snuffle sounds each time she draws breath.
I wonder if I slept like that when I was a kid.
I wonder if Fang’s ever taken the time to do this; watch his daughter with wonder in her most innocent and vulnerable state.
My mind wanders to last night in the kitchen, my lips pressing against one another to relieve the ghostly tingles that tickle at the memory. He’s so contradictory, and yet, the more glimpses I get of the man beneath the curated exterior, the more hopelessly addicted I become to finding that piece of him sogoddamn conditioned by his upbringing that he can’t accept the truth his heart wants him to see: I’m not the enemy.
Not that it matters. My future isn’t here. And the longer I stay, the more complicated things between us will become.
I close my eyes and draw a deep breath.He’s not your focus anymore.
People arrived in the early hours of the morning, a steady stream of patched men with weathered faces and crooked backs, neither of which detracted from the immense presence they each brought to the room. It never occurred to me how young the officers of the Minnesota Kings of Anarchy chapter are until I saw their predecessors. A club shaped by men who no longer hold office at the table. No wonder the current committee struggles against the world: it wasn’t molded by them or their own beliefs.
It was fashioned by those who no longer claim responsibility for the result of their actions.
I lift an arm above me, stretching my fingers wide in the shards of early light. Darla slept upstairs with The Kid, wanting her separated from the visitors. I heard Kathy moved across to Circus’s bedroom to give them space. Something to ask about later. It surprised me that Fang was happy for Molly to share this room with me, but I guess that was just as likely to be the girl’s request as his desire.
