“Slade, you and the others go on to the kitchen. Show Deacon, Sawyer, and Cord’s men the evidence. We’ll be down in a few minutes,” Jazz stated as he headed for the stairs, drawing her with him as she fought to keep from stumbling, to make her legs move correctly, to keep her body functioning.

Shock perhaps? She didn’t think she’d been in shock since that first night, just after seeing her mother hanging in a murderer’s hands. The bullet in her shoulder, the horrific feel of having it cut from her, unable to pass out from the pain or the mental fury that kept exploding through her senses.

Gunny had knocked her out. She wished someone would be that merciful now.

The bedroom door closed behind them before she realized they had entered the room and Jazz was pushing her into a chair before hunching down in front of her.

“Look at me.” The growl in his voice was firm, too demanding to ignore.

It hurt to meet his gaze. Her throat was so tight that swallowing was nearly impossible as the band around her chest tightened further.

She’d lived with that band for so long. Like a restraint encasing her heart, her soul, and it let her know it was there by restricting her ability to breathe, reminding her that she couldn’t let herself feel whatever she was feeling. But now she didn’t know what she was feeling. It was clawing at her chest, raking over something exposed and raw as Kenni fought to breathe through the pain. That band across her chest restricted her ability to do that, though; it weakened her and stole some of the hard-won control she’d prided herself on.

“Momma loved Aunt Luce,” she whispered, remembering many of the conversations they’d had on their shopping trips. “She said Luce was always sick when she was young. Momma stayed with her and looked after her. She thought they were so close. And she knew that last summer, didn’t she? She knew her sister had betrayed her.”

Her chest actually hurt. A heart attack perhaps, she wondered fatalistically. How very apt. How many times could a person’s heart be broken before it was irreparable?

“Maybe she didn’t,” Jazz whispered, his fingertips whispering over her cheek. “Whatever she was supposed to have, she didn’t give you, and neither did your uncle. If she had known, Kenni, she would have called your father, your brothers. Wouldn’t she?”

That made sense. It made more sense than to believe that her mother knew and would have put them both in danger. Sierra Maddox had always placed her children above everyone else. Above everything else.

The band loosened enough to breathe. Staring into Jazz’s eyes she could feel his strength enfolding her, wrapping around her like a soft, age-worn quilt.

“I’m going with you.” Her voice sounded stronger now. She could do this. She could see it through. “I have to face her.”

“Kenni…” He began shaking his head.

“You don’t want to push me out of this, Jazz,” she warned him, determination hardening inside her. “I’m the one she’s hunted for ten years. It was my mother, my uncle, friends who wanted only to protect me, that were murdered on her orders. Push me out and I won’t forgive you.”

His expression tightened dangerously. “You want to be a part of it, then show me you can hold it together until we’re finished. You break in the middle of it, Kenni, and you endanger not just the Kin that follow us, but your brothers…”

“Don’t treat me like a child, I know who will be endangered,” she snapped, glaring at him. “I’m not sixteen, Jazz. I have it together.”

He stared back at her intently for long moments before his expression eased enough that the savagery softened minutely.

“Yeah, you do,” he finally agreed. “Let’s get it done then.”

Straightening, he held his hand out to her. Strong, broad, it was callused and roughened, but gentle when he touched. And the offer he was extending to her was one she didn’t mistake. Even Gunny had never shared her protection with her. He’d always pushed her back; he’d never extended his hand to her in an offer to be a part of it.

Laying her palm in his, feeling his fingers close around her hand gave her more strength than it should have. It gave her hope. And hope, she realized, was something she’d been living without until she returned to Loudoun. Until she returned to Jazz.

Rising, she stood before him and placed her other hand against his chest, just above his heart.

“Jazz,” she whispered.

“Yeah, Kenni?” His lips brushed against her hair before he leaned back to stare down at her.

“On the ride to New York, I told Momma you were all I could think about,” she whispered. “She said if there was a more worthy young man to be fascinated with, then she couldn’t think of him.”

“Your momma was a good woman. A smart one.” His lips quirked with his trademark smile.

She’d told her mother she wasn’t just fascinated, but that could wait, she decided. It could wait until the past was resolved and she had a future to look forward to.

“Ready?”

She nodded, still staring up at him.

When his head lowered, his lips covered hers in a kiss that bonded any part of her soul that might have been free. She felt him, felt the hunger and the need fusing together in a heat that was always there, always ready to warm her.

Holding tight to his arm as the fingers of her other hand pressed against his chest, Kenni let that kiss have her. Her lips parted, her tongue meeting with his, tasting the passion and the power of his hunger and becoming intoxicated with it.

He was like a drug.

Irresistible, addicting.

There was nothing as filled with pleasure, heat, and solace as his kiss and his touch, his possession and his passion. She’d dreamed of it, fantasized about him, yet she’d never come close to the pleasure she’d found in his arms and in his bed.

She had fought for eight years to return to him, she finally admitted to herself. She’d fought to survive, to live, because in the back of her mind she knew that dying meant never seeing him again. Never having a chance to touch him, or be touched by him.

When his head lifted he still held her close, his arms wrapped securely around her.

“I have you, Kenni,” he promised, his voice soft, filling her with the knowledge that she wasn’t alone anymore. “I’ll always have you, right here. Whether you stay or leave, no matter where you go or what you do, baby, I have you.”

He had her.

Did he know, though, he’d always held her heart? Ragged, often broken and filled with all the tears she’d never been able to shed, but still, he’d always held it.

Whether she held his or not.

CHAPTER 19

They really didn’t need a plan. They had all the evidence they would need, Cord informed them when they stepped into the kitchen. But to enact Kin justice on the wife of a Clan leader, that leader had to be in agreement.

It wasn’t just Luce they had to face, but also Kenni’s father. And no one knew what he may or may not feel for the young wife he’d taken mere months after his first wife’s funeral. Though her brothers were all in agreement that it wasn’t possible their father had been messing with his wife’s sister before her death.

Cord, Deacon, and Sawyer would return to the house and make certain Luce was there. Once they had the house secure and any chance she had of escaping eliminated, then Jazz and Zack would bring Kenni in.

Kenni could feel the nervous tension filling her as she sat in the truck with Jazz a mile from the house. She could see the top of the roof peeking from above the trees as childhood memories rushed through her mind.

Many of those memories included Jazz. He’d been friends with her brothers for as long as she could remember. He, Slade¸ and Zack had been three of her father’s favorites, and he often joked that if he could have handled more boys, then he would have adopted them.