He’d lost that. Before he’d ever had it, he’d lost it.
“Babying her isn’t going to fix her, Jazz.” Cord moved slowly along the deck from the kitchen, a bottle of liquor in one hand, two glasses in the other.
“That’s my best whiskey, Maddox,” he sighed.
Cord snorted at the comment. “You think I was going to pick up that rotgut shit you keep for folks you don’t like?” Sitting down heavily a few feet from him, the other man placed the glasses on the bench and filled them halfway before sliding Jazz’s closer and placing the bottle between them. “Have a real drink, maybe it’ll help clear your head.”
“Or break yours,” Jazz suggested instead. That actually seemed like a better alternative.
Cord chuckled. “Hell man, I think you’ve forgotten how damned stubborn that girl has always been. If she decided she was going to do something, then she did it. She wanted to learn to hunt when she was fucking five.” Amazement still filled the other man, Jazz realized. “Five, Jazz. This pretty little princess who dressed in frills, lace, and ruffles, and she wanted to learn how to hunt.” He shook his head. “The first time she tried to follow me she was wearing sneakers, striped tights, a black ruffled skirt, and some tiger-print little velvet jacket mom bought her for a party. I could hear her coming for a mile and she thought she was being quiet.” Cord tossed back the drink and poured another. “She had her first buck that fall, even helped dress and skin it. She declared the whole process ‘gross’ and went back to her lace and ruffles until she was twelve and wanted to make sure she hadn’t forgotten how to do it.” His gaze met Jazz’s, amusement lurking behind the pain that filled the green eyes. “She had her first buck before I did and before I got to her she’d nearly completed field-dressing it.” He shook his head. “Dad had to teach her how to fish when she was three or four. Then when she was thirteen she was going to win that beauty pageant, remember?”
Jazz nodded, tossing back his own drink rather than think about the implications of what Cord was saying.
“She won, she was done,” Cord whispered again. “Then she was gone. And I couldn’t find her. I knew she was out there and I couldn’t find her.”
“And not once did you fucking tell me.” Grabbing the liquor, Jazz refilled his glass then rose to his feet. “You didn’t tell me she was alive. You never breathed a word that you were searching for her.”
“She was my sister.” Possession rang in his voice as Cord came to his feet, anger flashing in his face. “It was none of your business.”
Jazz nearly staggered back at the declaration.
None of his business?
“She’s a Maddox,” Cord snarled. “You are not.”
“Cord, go back up the mountain.” Kenni stepped from the kitchen, her expression so fucking calm it made the bitterness in his stomach intensify.
“He’s a big boy, Kenni,” Cord drawled. “He can handle it.”
“Go back home, up the mountain, hell, I don’t fucking care, but take your attitude and your anger somewhere else. Now.” Not once did her expression or her voice shift.
“And if I don’t?” he challenged her.
The smile that curled her lips actually had her brother wincing.
“Then the next time you piss Jazz off I’m turning my back and letting him beat the shit out of you. How does that sound?”
Cord was silent for long moments before reaching back to rub at his neck while shooting Jazz a brooding look. “Is she serious?”
“If I’m lucky,” Jazz promised him, wishing the other man would get cocky enough to warrant a fist to his dumb head. Kenni would forgive it then.
“Who says I won’t beat the shit out of him?” Cord sneered.
“You might.” She shrugged. “But he’ll have the satisfaction of trying. Now, I’m going to shower and go to bed. I’m tired of refereeing for you tonight.”
Turning, she moved back into the house, the weary droop of her shoulders a sign of the exhaustion he’d recognized earlier.
“Deacon and Sawyer will be here in a few hours to watch the house.” Retrieving the drink he’d set on the banister, Cord tossed the remaining liquor back, grimaced, and stared at the empty doorway a moment longer. “That’s not Kenni, Jazz,” he said sadly. “Kenni’s explosive, loving, she doesn’t do anything halfway, and she doesn’t hold back her heart. Is that really the woman you’ve waited on all these years? Really?”
“Whoever she is, Cord, she’s the woman I’ve waited for,” Jazz assured him.
Setting the liquor heavily on the small table next to the grill, Jazz stomped to the front door. “You owe me a bottle,” he snapped before entering the house and locking the door behind him. Minutes later, the shades over the kitchen windows lowered. He set the alarm control for the house before heading to the bedroom and the woman still running.
And she would keep running, he realized, until something or someone stopped her.
CHAPTER 17
“Is there a reason you feel the need to wake me?” Scratchy, drowsy with sleep, Jazz’s voice rumbled through the fog-shrouded morning light.
“Because I need you,” she whispered, the hunger for him rising hotter, charged with needs and hungers she no longer tried to make sense of.
Thick, heavy black lashes eased open and electric-blue eyes peered back at her with a matching heat.
“How do you need me, Kenni?” he asked as she curled her fingers in the quilt and slowly began dragging it down his body. “You’re overdressed, darlin’,” he pointed out, callused fingers running up her arm to the narrow straps of the sleep shirt.
“I can remedy that,” she promised.
She was going to remedy it as soon as she pulled the blanket free of his body. As it cleared his erection, though, she paused.
Good gracious.
Thick, heavy, a blunt spear of iron-hard flesh rose from between his thighs, lying nearly to his navel.
“Had I taken a moment to pay attention here, perhaps I would have had second thoughts,” she murmured, running a finger down the heavy, throbbing vein that ran the length of the shaft.
“I would have convinced you.” He grinned.
Oh, he was cocky, so very certain of himself. Jazz was like a force of nature, never changing course once his mind had been set and wearing away resistance as though it had never existed.
“Possibly,” she agreed.
“Definitely,” he promised her. “So, do you remove that very pretty article of clothing or do I tear it from you?”
A shiver raced up her back at the thought of him tearing it from her body. The image was completely sexy. But the thought of other alternatives, of being brave, of pushing her own boundaries, was sexy as well.
Easing to her knees, Kenni gripped the hem of the gown. Slowly, her eyes locked with his until the material blocked them as she eased the gown over her head and tossed it from the bed.
“Damn. How perfect,” he sighed, a grin tugging at his lips. “Touch them for me.”
Her brow arched. “Afraid you don’t know how?”
“Oh, I know how,” he promised wickedly. “I want to see how you do it. How do you pleasure yourself, Kenni?”
“How do you pleasure yourself, Jazz?” she asked then. “You show me and I’ll show you.”
Strong, broad fingers circled the base of his cock as his breathing grew harder, heavier.
“I pleasure myself with thoughts of you, darlin’,” he breathed out roughly. “Wondering if you’re thinking of me. If you’re pleasuring yourself with those thoughts and how damned sexy it would be to watch.”
Oh, she had, many times.
Tipping her head back, she gave him what he asked for. Finding one of the hard, sensitive tips of her nipples, she slid her other hand from between her breasts, down her stomach, to the bare folds already growing slick with the heat spilling from her.