She wanted to breathe, but her lungs didn’t seem to work as well as they once had. Her knees were weak, her heart racing so hard she was breathless.
“Poppy,” she finally managed to breathe out, the tightening in her throat returning, her voice hitching, pain resonating through every part of her body.
“Kenni?” He took one step forward then looked behind her at Jazz desperately, and she knew who he was looking for. She knew that agonizing hope that filled his eyes and for the first time since she was eighteen her eyes filled with tears.
“Poppy,” she whispered. “They took her.” She had to swallow but a sob ripped from her instead. “They killed Momma.”
His expression collapsed. Tears filled his eyes as her own gaze blurred and burned.
“Kenni. Ah God, my sweet Kenni…” His arms opened and Kenni hesitated only a moment before releasing Jazz and racing to him.
* * *
Jazz let her go, the tension he’d felt since the moment he’d realized she was alive evaporating.
The woman he’d brought into the Maddox home wasn’t the lover he’d held in his arms for the past weeks. This woman was the sixteen-year-old girl who had lost everything in her world in one tragic, pain-filled night.
As Vincent Maddox clasped his daughter in his arms, Luce actually thought it a moment of weakness. Turning to run she barreled into Jazz when he moved into her path, nearly falling on her ass before Cord caught her.
Nylon restraints were snapped expertly around her wrists as several Kin waiting for that moment entered the room. The two men who had arrived at the house with Cord earlier as well as several others positioned themselves around the room to ensure that Luce didn’t escape justice.
Vinny was holding Kenni to him like a lifeline now, father and daughter weeping with a loss ten years past, yet never truly faced until this moment.
Jazz stepped back as Cord, Deacon, and Sawyer joined their surviving parent and the baby sister they could now realize as part of their lives again.
Swiping his hand through his hair, he looked around the room. He wasn’t needed here now, he thought wearily. This was a time for Kenni to share with her family; with her father and her brothers. He had no place here.
Turning, he left the room slowly, glancing back when he reached the doorway and letting the scene sink inside him. Kenni was home, that was what mattered. When everything had settled and she’d shed her tears with her family, then he’d come back. Maybe talk to her father again. Vinny was big on tradition sometimes.
Until then, it was time to go.
“Jazz?” The sound of her voice as he slipped past the doors drew him back. “Jazz, you can’t leave.”
Tears covered her face, and that need for him that he’d longed to see in her eyes was there.
She’d stepped away from her father, from her brothers, and they all stared at him like the interloper he’d feared becoming. All of them but the one who mattered most, the Maddox Princess.
His Kenni.
She reached out her hand to him. “You can’t leave…”
He shook his head slowly but went to her and took her hand to pull her against him and lay a kiss at the top of her head. “I’m not going anywhere, baby, just right outside with Slade and Zack. I’ll be here when your Poppy’s ready to let you go for a minute. How’s that?”
“Thank you,” she whispered as he pulled back and stared up at him, those tears still filling her eyes. “Thank you, Jazz.”
He brushed one from her cheek with the pad of his thumb. “Don’t thank me, sweetheart. No thanks are needed. Just remember, I’m right outside the door.”
“You won’t let me go,” she whispered. It wasn’t a question.
“No, Kenni,” he promised. “I won’t let you go.”
Releasing her to her father once more, he turned and left her with her family.
He had a chance, he told himself. A chance was all he needed to ensure she always ran back to him.
Where she belonged.
* * *
Joining Slade and Zack on the front steps he sat down slowly, glanced at them, and let out a hard breath.
“She’ll be safe now.” Once Luce was taken care of, once Kin justice took care of her, then Kenni’s life would be hers again.
“Looks like it,” Zack agreed.
“Tell her you love her yet?” Slade asked, the amusement in his voice pulling a frown to his brow.
Jazz frowned. “She knows.” Didn’t she?
“Bet she don’t,” Slade murmured.
“A hundred says she doesn’t have a clue,” Zack bet.
“Two hundred she moves in with Daddy within twenty-four hours.”
“A thousand says there’s not a chance in hell…” Jazz wouldn’t allow it.
24 Hours Later
Jazz let her get as far as packing that single leather pack she’d brought from the house days before. Sitting back in the easy chair next to the balcony doors, he kept his mouth shut and just watched and listened.
“Everything is still so messed up,” she was saying. “Daddy’s really upset over Luce…”
No doubt, bitch had killed his wife and conspired to kill his daughter. What had Luce expected? Rather than turning her over to Clan justice, though, Vinny had turned her over to his bosses, a division of the Department of Justice. One that didn’t look kindly on anyone attempting to sell their secrets.
“It won’t be for long…” Kenni continued.
Jazz just waited.
“Sawyer and Deacon will feel more comfortable as well,” she stated.
Fuckers, both of them, he thought furiously.
“You’ll have your life back, Jazz.” Her voice cracked when that slipped out of her mouth.
He stared back at her, his arm propped on the chair, one finger sliding back and forth over his chin.
Kenni’s gaze flickered nervously. “Jazz?”
“I love you, Kenni,” he said.
She seemed to freeze before her lips trembled in reaction. “What did you say?”
Jazz rose from the chair and moved to her slowly.
“Didn’t you know, Kenni, that I love you?” How could she not have known?
Her gaze flickered hesitantly. “How would I know?” she asked, barely above a whisper. “You never told me, Jazz.”
Fine, he hadn’t said the words, but surely he’d showed her. Hell, he knew he had.
“So actions don’t matter?” he questioned, stopping several feet from her.
“I didn’t say that,” she pointed out, frowning back at him now. “But the words are important too, Jazz. They’re very important.”
Yes they were, he admitted silently. They were very important. But some actions were just as important.
“You never protested that I didn’t wear a condom,” he said softly. “Are you on birth control?”
“No,” she whispered, linking her fingers together when she could find nothing else to do with her hands.
“I could be carrying twenty different diseases, Kenni.” He glared down at her in reproof.
To that, she shook her head slowly. “Jessie told me about sleeping with you,” she admitted. “And how particular you were about condoms since you began having sex. I didn’t fear diseases in the least, Jazz.”
“And you didn’t question why you were the only woman I’ve fucked without one?”
“I wondered.” Naked, hungry need filled her face now.
“You told me you loved me.” His dick was so hard he wondered if his zipper would survive it. “While I was coming inside you … How can you leave me, Kenni, if you love me?”
“Jazz…” she whispered breathlessly as he jerked his shirt off, then his hands moved to his jeans.
“Undress,” he growled. “Take those damned clothes off before I tear them off you.”
Stripping his jeans, he decided she was out of time.