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Stronger together.
I kissed the top of her head, and she shifted in my lap until she was straddling me, her thighs on either side of mine. “Even if we all die tomorrow, Wildcat, I’ll die a free man. Happy and madly in love, and I can’t think of a better way to go,” I murmured, linking my fingers around her body at the small of her back.
Her sigh hit my bottom lip. “Neither can I.” We pressed our foreheads together and stayed that way for God only knows how long. It was so easy and felt so natural to be with Haina this way.
“I need you to know,” she started, breaking the companionable silence that had settled between us, “that no matter what happens, I’m not like other Kappas, okay?”
She blinked at me, but even in the dim candlelight and with her face pressed against mine, it was tough to see her. I gently pulled away and cocked my head. “What do you mean?”
“I pushed Zane today, asked questions trying to get him to break so that he’d finally tell me why he doesn’t trust me. I mean, I know a part of him still hates me, but a bigger part of him doesn’t.”
I couldn’t stop the snort that burst past my lips. “I’m bigger, though. Don’t forget that, baby.” For good measure, I thrust up against the juncture of her legs, even though I wasn’t hard.
She rolled her eyes and smiled. “Yeah, that part of him has never hated me. And you are the biggest … we all know that.”
“Just reminding you, but go on.”
Another eye roll preceded her explanation. “I’ve put some pieces together, and I think something happened with Zane, Chance and a Kappa. When I asked him if the reason he didn’t trust me was that he and Chance trusted another Kappa, his composure disintegrated. That’s when he threw the axe.”
“At you?” I blurted out, ready to go and punch my brother in the face for throwing an axe at my woman.
She shook her head, placing a hand on my chest. “No. He lifted it behind him up in the air. I asked the triggering question, and it slipped out of his hands and went flying behind him.”
“Oh.” My desire to go and punch Zane in the nuts slowly faded away.
“I like that you were willing to go kick his butt for me, though,” she said, pressing a soft kiss to my jaw.
“Always, baby. Never forget that.”
“I won’t. But Idothink that either Chance or Zane or maybe both of them got mixed up with a Kappa and made a mistake, and in order to remind them who is in charge and to not do that again, they made an example out of Chance and killed him. Since he was your leader before Zane, right?”
I nodded. What she was saying definitely made sense. Though Zane had said none of this to us, he’d certainly taken Chance’s death the hardest out of all of us.
“And the fact that Zane has been through the withdrawal and detox before but you guys haven’t … I think that was a message, too. Because I’ve been trying to figure out why they put him through that torture but not you and Jorik. And yet, you and Jorik still toe the line and return for your fix, even though you don’t know what awaits you if you don’t get it.”
Scratching my head, I exhaled a long, slow breath and glanced out the window into the blackness, only seeing our reflection and how sexy and right she looked straddling my lap. “I mean, the addiction kept us going back. The need for that next high, that next fix. Even though we’ve never gone through detox, we know what it feels like to lose the high, to lose that adrenaline surge, for our enhancements to fade, to want more. But I get what you’re saying. Zane, who is now our leader, has also kept us coming back, kept us in line because he knows what will happen if we don’t.”
“Plus, the kill switches. But it’s the addiction that keeps you from killing yourselves. Chasing that high.”
My head bobbed. “Yeah. Because I would have ended it all ages ago if there wasn’t that voice in the back of my head telling me to return to the compound to get my next fix. That everything would be okay, would be better again once I got another dose. And then it wasn’t even a voice in my head, it was Zane. When Jorik and I suggested we just let the kill switches happen and end our lives rather than go back to that hellhole, Zane would talk us out of it. He would say that that was just the depression of coming down from a high talking and that once we got back to the compound and got another dose, we’d feel better.”
“Because he is probably responsible for Chance’s death. Or partially responsible and can’t bear to be responsible for something happening to you or Jorik as well.”
“Damn, Cat, you’ve given me a lot to think about. But you’re probably right. It makes sense. And it makes sense that a Kappa was involved and that’s why he doesn’t trust you.” I pulled her closer until her breasts were smashed against my chest. Despite our morose topic of conversation, having her near, her scent, her heat and her softness right on top of me, it was impossible not to get hard.
And thankfully, I could smell her arousal and feel her heart rate picking up, so she was feeling the same way.
Her fingers had been playing with my hair, but she tightened her grip and dropped her mouth to mine, feathering her lips across my lips. “I am not like other Kappas,” she whispered. “I am capable of love. Empathy and guilt. No matter what happens, please remember that you three are my life now, and I would never do anything to jeopardize what we’ve become.”
Before I could answer her or question why she was saying these things, she sealed her mouth over mine and pressed her hot pussy against my cock. Grinding up and down hard enough, it pulled a moan from deep in her chest.
She’d thrown on a baggy T-shirt and pants when we came in from the rain, so it was easy for me to push my hand up her shirt to find her heated skin.
I was about to cup her left breast when the crack of thunder and a bright flash of lightning made her scream and jump in my lap. The lightning, for just a second, illuminated the cabin, and the fear that danced in Haina’s eyes struck me in the solar plexus hard enough to make me wince.
Her heart was pounding, and her fingers dug painful trenches into the back of my neck.
“It’s okay, baby, I got you,” I said, pushing my other hand beneath her shirt, sliding both hands up her back and along her spine in comfort.
