So I grinned at him, and asked, “You like pie?”
His answering smile wasn’t as vibrant as the one saved for Kylie, but it was stunning all the same. “Doesn’t everyone?”
Wrath was sitting at my pretty island drinking a beer when King returned with a crate of apple and ink stains on his fingers. He clocked Wrath right away, but ignored him as he dropped the apples on the counter and reached around me to wrap his hand over my throat and tip my face for his kiss.
He tasted crisp and sweet as the apples he’d just picked.
“Caramel smells good,” he murmured even though it was me he was smelling. Running his nose down the line of my neck, he bit into the junction of my throat and shoulder. “Save some separate, yeah? I got a mind to test a theory and see what’s sweeter, you or the sugar.”
A shiver ripped through me, and my lids fluttered closed as he licked at my pulse, then lightly suck at the skin there. He could reduce me to ashes and embers with a single kiss, and he had no qualms about wielding his power, even in front of guests.
Actually, especially in front of guests if they were of the male variety.
“Stop being such a caveman.” I laughed, slightly breathless, and playfully shoved him away. “Get out of my kitchen and catch up with Wrath while you can. Eugene should be here any minute to reunite the lovers.”
“Good,” he said as he retrieved his beer. “Fuckin’ hungry and not just for that pie.”
Wrath laughed a rusty, almost painful sounding chuckle that spoke of disuse. “This from a man who writes poetry?”
King shrugged and pulled his folded, worn leather notebook from the back pocket of his jeans before tossing it on the table so he could sit down. “How do you think I got her in my bed? Dirty poetry’s the way to a woman’s heart and bed.”
“King!” I laughed, tossing an apple at his head that he caught all too easily. “Why do you always have to embarrass me?”
“’Cause I like the way you blush for me, babe.” He grinned, unabashed, and then abruptly sobered. “And I like braggin’ about the fact that all that’s you is mine.”
I pinked as rosy as the Ambrosia apples on the counter beside me and ducked behind a sheave of my hair as I poured the caramel over the apple mixture in the pie pan.
“Good to see ya, though, brother,” King said, clinking beers with Wrath. “What’s the news?”
“You should know, Farrah’s been hangin’ ’round Reaper,” he started off. “He’s callin’ her his Old Lady, so you know it’s serious for now, even if it’s temporary.”
“Yeah, got the knowledge from Zeus about two hours ago. How’s that play out for us?”
“He’s distracted, which would normally be good. Problem is, he’s distracted by your sister.”
“Fuck.”
I locked eyes with King over the counter and read the anger and helplessness in his eyes. He wanted to get on his bike and roar down to Vancouver in a blaze of gasoline and smoking tires, throw Harleigh Rose on the back, and steal her away to Entrance where we could keep her safe.
Only H.R. didn’t want that.
She wasn’t the kind of woman who waited for a man to save her. She was the kind of woman who stormed the battlefield herself, damn the consequences.
Even though she’d just killed the man who’d been abusing her for years, she was reluctant to accept help, even from the brother who loved her and semi-raised her or me, the woman she considered her friend and almost mother figure.
It killed me, but I knew it absolutely slayed King. He was just that kind of man.
“You keepin’ an eye?” he asked Wrath, voice calm but hands fisted.
“You know it. She’s keepin’ an eye on me while I keep one on her, though. She’s a smart one even though she’s dumb as shit for hookin’ up with Lion.”
“Lion?” I squeaked. “As in Lion Danner?”
“One and the same,” Wrath confirmed grimly. “Motherfucker doesn’t know I’m in with ya, so he thinks he’s got everyone fooled. Playin’ the biker part, tryin’ to take down the club, obviously. The thing is, he’s a good man, and I’m inclined to like ’im despite ’im bleedin’ blue.”
“That’s because he is a good man,” I admitted begrudgingly. So many years with The Fallen under the corrupted thumb of Staff Sargent Danner had turned my bias against the men in blue, but there was no doubt in my mind that Danner Junior was one of the good ones.
He had to be; he had practically raised King during the years Zeus was incarcerated.
King seemed to think so too if his pensive expression was anything to go off. He stared into the distance, thumb rubbing over his lower lip as it did when he was contemplating something.