Page 52

“Fuck. What you do to me,” he breathes. He presses against me, sending a shockwave of pleasure through my sensitive core. “I never want to leave.”
“Doing every day activities might become difficult.”
“I can’t help myself,” he says. “I get next to you, and I can’t fucking hold it.” He holds our hips together before moving to his side. I match him, holding my head up with my hand and using the other to trace over his chiseled chest muscles and down to his bandages where I give them a quick once-over. How he was able to fuck me like that after getting shot and tortured just shows his persistence, confidence, and stubbornness. I fucking love him for it.
“I don’t want you to,” I say, smiling at him. “It’s nice to see that I have the same effect on you that you have on me.”
We lie there just staring at one another for a while. I never minded the silence with him, and I still don’t. I’m looking forward to doing this a lot when we get out of the Heights, but right now, there are things we need to discuss.
He smirks. “I see that look in your eyes. You have questions.”
“I just want to know what’s going on, Johnny.”
He takes several long seconds to gather his thoughts. He pulls back, his dick slipping out of me. Usually we would clean up at this point, but instead, he pulls the covers up and wraps them around us. When he starts to speak, he meets my gaze and doesn’t wander. “I sometimes wonder if my dad is missing basic human emotions. When he says he wants you in the Crew, I know what he means. He wants you in the Crew like my mom was in the Crew. As property. As an asset. Not in the same way that I want you with me.”
“Do you want to tell me about her?” I know what happened to his mother already, but I want to hear it from him.
His entire demeanor changes. The easy, post-sex serenity on his face wears off into a hard mask. “My dad wooed her, brought her here, kept her here to have me, and then she was no longer useful.” He dips his head. “I worry about that. That he only wants you here so you can do the same for me like she did for him.”
I think I know what that means, but I need that shit clarified. “And that would be?”
“It’s going to sound crazy,” Johnny says.
What part of Crew shit doesn’t sound crazy? “You can trust me.”
He moves his hand under the sheets and finds my core. “To have an heir, Kyla. To have a third in line.”
I blink, not sure I heard him right, even though that’s what I figured. “He wants you and I to have a baby?”
Johnny shakes his head. “He wants me to have a baby. He doesn’t give a shit about you. It sounds crazy. It sounds ridiculous, but you haven’t lived the life I have, Kyla. The things I grew up seeing. The things he’s told me. The plan he’s had in place since I was a kid. It wouldn’t surprise me if he’s ensuring the Marx’s future in the Crew and using you to do it. Because, make no mistake about it, as soon as my mom had me, she wasn’t useful anymore. She was nobody. She was nothing. Do you see any women around my father’s table? Do you see women anywhere?”
My mouth dries, and I shake my head.
“Exactly,” he says. “I can’t do that to you. I won’t. I actually love you.” He cups my cheek. “I love you so damn much.” He closes his eyes and swallows. “I won’t let him do to you what he did to her.” The tension in the room thickens until a buzzing nags in my ear. “She found a way out, and when he tracked her down, he killed her.”
I let out a whoosh of air as the turmoil in his eyes combat one another. This time, the emotion over his mother is winning, and it’s far less a war of good versus evil or wrong versus right. It’s the realization of the wrongness that has happened that darkens his gaze.
“I’ll kill him,” he says. “If he tries to take you from me, I’ll kill him.”
22
Idon’t know what else to do other than hug him. Walking this line with Johnny is fraying my already frail nerves. It all comes down to the fact that I don’t want to lose him, and I’m scared to death anything I say might do just that, despite what he just said.
He combs his fingers through my hair. “We’ll have to be very careful,” he says. “I don’t trust him. He wants you back at the tower, which makes me nervous. I moved you out so you wouldn’t be around here, and suddenly, he’s conceding the fact that we can be together even though I went against his orders. It’s not like him.”
I turn my head to kiss his bicep. Words are heavy on my tongue. Heavy on my mind. Johnny and I haven’t been as close as this moment right now, but still something tells me not to tell him my secret. It’s fear. A healthy dose of fear. I don’t know what I would do without him, quite honestly.
Throat thick, I ask, “What are you going to do about Gregory?”
He shudders. It’s so unlike him that I immediately gaze up into ice-blue eyes. He captures me there, the force of his gaze keeping me still. He licks his lips in an almost tantalizing tease. “I’ve killed people before, Kyla. I’ll have to kill Gregory. As soon as I find him, he’s dead.”
He waits for me to say something, but I just keep staring. We continue that way for a long time until I tilt my head to the side. “Did you think that was going to scare me off? I’m pretty sure all of us have a screw missing in the morals department. I want to kill Gregory for what he did to you. Just like I’d want to hurt anyone who hurt you or the guys...or anyone else I loved. That’s what we do, right? We fight for those we love?”
Johnny grips my hair. “One hundred percent. Nothing is going to happen to you while I’m around.”
“You can’t promise that. None of us can. Not with things the way they are.”
Johnny blinks. I trace my fingertips up his chest. My head is filled with all the words I need to say. They’re just sitting on the tip of my tongue, just waiting for the whistle to go off to tell them it’s okay to jump, but Johnny’s phone rings, and I end up swallowing everything back.