Page 16 of The Kings of Kearny

“Krista?” he asked, voice rough with sleep.

“Yep. Still here.”

“Sorry,” he said, rubbing a hand over his face.

“No problem.”

Note to self: don’t try to wake Jakob Larson out of a dead sleep ever again. I should have known better than to do that to a combat vet, but with only six hours of sleep myself, my brain was still sluggish.

Now that the threat of violence had passed, I pulled my hands away from him and struggled upright. My leg was stiff, but last night made it well worth it.

“I need to go back to my place and get changed before heading over to see Gran,” I said. “Want to meet at Magnolia Hills around twelve thirty?”

He nodded and sat back against the headboard. “Sure.”

His hair was disheveled from sleeping with it wet. He looked tired and sated, at ease in a way I had never seen. The blankets pooled around his waist, revealing the full glory of his chiseled upper body.

I pulled my eyes away from him and rolled out of bed. My right knee buckled, and I had to grab the headrail for support.

Jakob’s hands landed on my hips, bracing me up. “You got it?” he asked.

“I got it, just a little sore.”

The hands disappeared. “I have that effect on women.”

I shot him a look over my shoulder. His smug grin matched his smarmy, goading tone. I narrowed my eyes at him, and his grin widened. Well, damn. Jakob Larson had a sense of humor.

“I meant my leg. Not my vagina,” I said, trying to let some air out of his giant ego.

His shirt fit me with all the flattery of a potato sack, but from the way he looked me over, I might as well have been standing there stark naked. “I knew I should have dragged it out for longer,” he drawled.

“My God, you are full of yourself,” I said, scooping my clothes up. I had to pee so bad. The weight of his arm had been crushing my bladder.

He leaned back, bracing his hands behind his head, biceps flexing in a way that tempted my gaze, and sent me a dark grin made of pure masculine smugness. “Said the woman who practically begged me for a next time.”

I snapped my mouth shut and shambled out of there to go hide in his bathroom. I really had said that, hadn’t I? Lord help me, I’d meant it. Even now, the sight of his big body leaned up against the headboard filled my mind with dirty thoughts, and I imagined myself doing all sorts of things to him that would wipe that smug look from his face.

We didn’t have time for any of them. Gran came first. I needed to get the hell out of here, get changed, and make sure she wasn’t being fed Tic Tacs instead of the cholinesterase inhibitors that were supposed to help with her memory loss.

I saw to business and then changed back into my clothes from last night. There was no avoiding the mirror over Jakob’s bathroom sink, and I tried my best to set myself to rights in it. My dark brown eyes were a little bloodshot, and my already full lips looked even fuller, evidence of how well they’d been used last night. Between them and my hair, which had gone into full revolt while I’d slept, I looked like I’d been well and truly fucked.

By the time I reemerged, Jakob was in his kitchen, wearing a pair of faded jeans that sat low on his hips. He was shirtless, and my breath whooshed out of me in a low “Oof.” It was different, seeing all that muscle in broad daylight. In the soft glow last night, shadows had played over his skin, softening his hard lines, making him seem less massive, more pliable. And looking down on him while he sat in bed this morning had badly skewed my perspective, made me momentarily forget the sheer size of him. Now he seemed unbreakable. Now there was no ignoring the fact that he looked like some sort of weaponized version of a human. His biceps were as big as my thighs. I could have swung from his trapezius muscles. He didn’t have abs so much as he had bricks stacked over his torso.

He paused at the counter and turned toward me, and the smell of freshly brewed coffee hit my nose. “How do you take it?”

However you want to give it to me,I almost blurted.

Most people were repelled by things that intimidated them. I’d always been drawn to them instead. It must have been some sick need to prove myself. To convince myself that I could be just as bad, just as mean, just as dangerous. Or that nothing frightened the great Krista Evans. Whatever the reason, Jakob drew me like a magnet. He was half-feral, had a horrible reputation for violence, and yet all I could think about right now was how to convince this big bad man to let me tie him to the nearest piece of furniture. The fact that I was fantasizing about someone so dangerous choosing to submit themselves to me was another topic entirely, one it would take my therapist to untangle.

“Krista?”

I blinked.

Jakob stood holding the coffee carafe, staring at me. Amusement and arrogance spread over his features. “Thought you were stroking out for a second there. Need me to go put a shirt on, or are you okay now?”

My face burned with the strength of my embarrassment. I wasn’t someone who blushed easily, but goddamn it if he hadn’t just caught me drooling over him.

Well done, Krista. Instead of deflating his ego, I’d hooked it up to a tank of helium. From the shit-eating grin on his face, I would never live this down.

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