Page 17 of Kane's Kingdom

He goes still when I push at his shoulder. "Move."

He does immediately, and the loss of him is sudden and cold.

I scramble for my clothes, dragging the sheet around me while he disposes of the condom and pulls on his jeans.

"This can't happen again," I say.

Kane keeps his back to me for a moment, shoulders tight, before he turns.

He doesn't plead or ask whether I mean it. He doesn't throw the pendant in my face or demand I explain why I kissed him first. He just looks at me.

"I can't let myself want you," I say before he can get a word in.

His expression barely changes, but I see the hit land. "All right."

The calmness is unbearable. "That's all you've got?"

"What do you want from me, Bella?"

"I don't know. That's the problem."

At the door, he pauses. "I'll give you room."

Then he walks out without anger, a slammed door or any demand that I take back what I said. He simply leaves because I asked him to.

I sit on the edge of his bed with the sheet clutched to my chest and hate him for making respect feel like another kind of wound. But mostly I stare at the door and think about the tarnished silver resting over his heart. Twenty years, and he never took it off.

FOUR

KANE

Bella avoids me for twenty-seven hours. Not completely. That'd be impossible with her sleeping in my room, working at the Landing under club escort and crossing the common room every morning while I'm stretched out on a couch too short for me. But she doesn't look at me unless she has to.

She leaves for the cafe with Judge and Cash, comes back with Tank and Wilder after dark, eats in my room and locks the door.

I let her, but the door to my room stays closed.

I can still feel Bella under me, her nails in my shoulders, her legs around my waist and the sound she made when she came. Then I remember the way her face changed afterward.

I can't let myself want you.

She said it like wanting me was another thing the club had done to her. Maybe, in her mind, it is.

I've spent half my life wanting her and the other half making damn sure she never paid the price for it. One hour together in my room doesn't give me the right to start pushing now.

So I don't push. I sleep on the couch, make sure the Landing opens at six and closes at three without trouble. I give her exactly what she asked for, and what I promised.

By the second morning, Kingdom Come has turned Rourke's Landing into a statement. Two bikes outside before sunrise. A brother at the counter through breakfast. Nobody's been told to make a show of it. They do anyway.

Bella is under our protection, and the town understands.

Men who lowered their voices when my father's bike passed now sit straighter when mine does. Shop owners watch from doorways, and Landing regulars pretend not to stare at the skull-and-crown patches.

The answer travels faster than the threat did. Good. That's what I want.

Dekker needs the rest explained in person. We meet at an abandoned boat repair yard ten miles upriver.

Judge comes with me. Tank waits by the bikes. Three of Dekker's men stand near the corrugated-metal building, hands visible and jackets hanging wrong over their guns.