Page 73 of The Kings of Kearny

“Yeah,” he said. He hit a button on the dash, and the engine roared to life, nearly as loud as the Mustang.

“Did you intentionally seduce me just to get into Magnolia?” I asked. Might as well get the hardest question out of the way and know once and for all how mad I should really be.

He cut me a glance before putting the car into first and shooting out of the parking spot. “Not exactly.”

My spine went rigid. “Explain.”

“You seemed like my best bet on getting into Magnolia,” he said. “And I’ve wanted to fuck you since your first shift at Charley’s. So yeah, I tempted you over to my place, hoping to kill two birds with one stone, but the two aren’t connected. If you’d turned me down, I still would have asked you to lie and say I was your boyfriend to get me in there.”

The breath I’d been holding came out sounding more like a hiss.

He glanced at me as we roared out of the parking lot, biceps flexing as he shifted through gears and the car gained speed. “You know you still would have gone along with it to keep your gran safe.”

Yes, I would have gone along with it, but I didn’t like this. It felt too much like manipulation, and it made me wonder if he was still lying to me, withholding some crucial bit of information.

I thought back to the look on his face after I walked out of the police station, when he told me that it would have been harder to break me out of there than Magnolia. He’d seemed dead serious. Like I was worth mounting an assault on a building full of armed men and women with the law on their side.

He glanced over at me again, just a quick flick of his eyes. “I get why you’re pissed,” he said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know how to bring it up without making you question everything between us.”

“Well, congratulations on a job well done,” I said. “I’m now questioning everything between us.”

I let out a strangled gasp as he slammed on the brakes. We squealed to a stop on the side of the road. A car honked behind us, and the driver screamed, “Asshole!” as they passed. I eased the seat belt away from my chest and rubbed my breastbone. Ouch.

Jakob turned to me in his seat. “Everything between us is real. I’m not going to beg you to trust me, and I’m not going sit here and argue with you about it. You either believe me or you don’t.” He reached down and grabbed his crotch, and I was shocked to see that he was rock hard. “Even now, I’d rather be holed up somewhere making you scream my name than dealing with this bullshit, and if you don’t believe anything else I’ve said to you, believe that.”

Shit. I was in way over my head with him, because even though I was pissed, the bulge in his pants made me want to crawl on top of him right here in the car. Maybe the fact that I was pissed was part of it. Maybe deep down, I’d known all along that the realest we’d been around each other was when we were both naked and slicked in sweat.

I exhaled, long and slow, letting his words sink in, remembering everything that had happened between us over the past few days.

“I believe you,” I said. Because I did. I might not know how I felt about anything else he’d done, but I knew that he wanted me, and I trusted him enough not to lie to me about this.

Jakob let out a breath. It was a harsh expulsion, like he’d been holding it in, like he was relieved, and that, more than anything, drove home the fact that I wasn’t the only one losing my head over whatever this was between us.

“Good,” he said.

And then his hands were on my cheeks, sliding into my hair, his grip tightening as he dragged me forward. My seat belt locked up, and I could go no farther. He did the rest of the work, closing the distance between us to kiss me with breathless intensity. His lips were bruising, tongue demanding, forcing me to meet him stroke for stroke. I was still mad at him, but it only drove my need for him higher, wound me tighter, made me want to strip his clothes off and see the honest, simple truth in his desire for me.

He broke away too soon, breathing hard, and rubbed his thumb over my lips. “We need to get to Daniel’s.”

I nodded up at him.

He continued to stare at my mouth like a man transfixed.

Despite myself, I grinned. “Which means you should probably let me go.”

The scowl returned to his face. “Yeah, I should.”

Instead, he leaned in and kissed me again, and this time he kept kissing me, fingers digging into my scalp, teeth nipping at my lips. It reminded me of our first night together in his apartment, the marble of his kitchen island cold beneath me and him between my legs, burning like a fire, setting me aflame with his touch.

I was the one to break the kiss this time because if he kept it up, we’d never get to Daniel’s, and the entire world would implode around us before we let each other go. His grip on my neck eased as I pulled away, and he leaned back a little in his seat, enough that I felt like I could form rational thought again. The air between us still felt charged, heavy and electric, like lightning might strike at any second. We needed something to break the mood.

“How long have you suspected your father?” I asked.

Jakob let me go and straightened in his seat. A little thrill of vindication shot through me to see his cheeks were flushed. He shook his head like he was trying to clear it, then turned forward and shifted the car into first.

“Since I was twelve,” he said, checking his mirrors before pulling back onto the road.

I frowned. Maybe I’d misheard him because of the engine noise. “Since you were twelve?”

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