Page 55 of The Kings of Kearny

The look he sent me said it could. “You’re cute when you’re naive.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Har har.”

He reached out and tucked a stray piece of hair behind my ear, then slid his hand around to cradle my neck. The pad of his thumb was rough against my skin as he rubbed it back and forth. His gaze fell to my lips. “I’m glad you didn’t get arrested.”

“Yeah?” I said.

His hand flexed, drawing me forward. “Yeah. It would have been harder to break you out of there than it was to get you out of Magnolia.”

I smiled at the joke. He didn’t. Shit, he was serious. Note to self: never get arrested.

He leaned forward and stopped with his lips an inch away from mine. “Why did you change?”

I glanced down. I’d tugged on a pair of jeans as he drove and then slipped my dress off overhead, torturously slow. He’d almost wrecked the car. Now I wore a low-cut tank top that put my boobs on full display.

“You don’t like the new outfit?” I asked.

His gaze dropped straight into my cleavage. “I like the outfit.” He dragged his eyes back up to mine slowly, like he didn’t want to look away from my tits. “Why are you avoiding the question?”

I let out a breath. “Jesus, you really aren’t into small talk, are you?”

He shook his head, thumb still sliding over my neck, lips tantalizingly close.

“I changed because I didn’t want to deal with ten thousand questions from shit-faced bikers about my scars.”

“You’re here with me,” he said. “They won’t bother you.”

The sheer ego of that statement. My God. Trouble was, he was probably right.

I shrugged. “I’d rather not risk it.”

He nodded like he understood. Maybe he did.

“What happened to your leg?” I asked him. I’d been curious about it since our first night together, and thanks to the intimacy of this moment and the fact that he was being kind of sweet with me right now, I thought he might actually answer a question for once.

“Shrapnel,” he said. “An RPG round hit the rooftop I was rappelling onto from the helo, and I took a big-ass chunk of steel to the thigh. Carved the muscle right out.”

“Does your leg bother you?” I asked.

“Not always, but yeah,” he said. “It doesn’t help that I hyperextended that knee, landing hard on another mission and tore every tendon that runs through it. Surgery helped, but the leg’s still fucked.”

Just like mine. What a pair we made. “Hopefully we never have to outrun anyone.”

He pulled back a little, gaze boring into me. “Do I look like the kind of man to run?”

I rolled my eyes. “Oh, my mistake. I forgot who I was talking to for a moment there. I’m sure you can just flex at our enemies, and they’ll swoon at the sight of all that rippling muscle.”

He cocked a brow and shot me an arrogant grin. “Worked on you.”

“Temporary insanity,” I said. “Now are you going to kiss me or what, Jakob?”

In answer, he let out a low growl and dragged me out of my seat. I swung my leg around as he spun me and ended up straddling him. It hurt my hip, but fuck it, this was worth a little pain. He leaned up and captured my mouth in a hot, searing kiss that didn’t last nearly long enough. I gasped as he pulled away, my lower lip pinched between his teeth. He bit down, hard enough to sting, before releasing me.

“One of these days, I’m going to figure out what to do about that mouth of yours,” he said, pale eyes flashing in the dim light.

“Don’t lie. You like my mouth.” I slicked my hands up the hard plane of his chest and laced my fingers behind his neck. “You like that instead of bowing and scraping like all your cronies, I call you on your bullshit.”

His eyes met mine in challenge, but he didn’t deny what I said.

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