Page 17 of Knuckles

“No.” She chuckled. “I’m part of Bones MC. At least, that’s my home.”

“And your twin is part of Kiss of Death MC. That makes you ours. You want to do this, you’ll have help. Help I trust.”

“But --”

I cut her off with a kiss. We weren’t nearly done, but she wasn’t going to argue with me. If that meant I distracted her, I’d enjoy the shit outta distracting her.

My tongue tangled with hers and I loved the silky glide. The sweet taste of her mouth nearly drove me insane with want. I pulled back, my chest heaving as I struggled to maintain control. Hannah’s eyes were dark with desire, her lips swollen from my kiss.

Her hands tangled in my hair, pulling me closer. When I finally broke the kiss, we were both breathing hard. Her pupils were wide, and her face flushed with desire. God, she was beautiful, even with the bruising from that bastard’s fist.

“You can’t just kiss me to win an argument,” she whispered, but there was no conviction in her voice. In fact, she had an almost dreamy look on her face, and I began to realize I might have missed more social cues than I first thought. This woman wanted me, but it was more than simple lust. I’d had that with Beth in spades, and knew what that felt like. While there was definitely a healthy dose of lust with Hannah, I wasn’t willing to settle for anything less than her being mine.

“I’m not tryin’ to win,” I murmured against her lips. “I’m tryin’ to make you understand. You’re not alone in this anymore.”

She looked up at me, and I saw something crack in her facade -- a hairline fracture in the armor she’d built around herself since she was seventeen. “I’ve always been alone in this.”

“Not anymore.” I brushed my thumb across her lower lip. “You think I’m just gonna let you keep puttin’ yourself in danger without backup? Without someone watching your six? Think again, baby girl.”

“I’m not your responsibility or under your control. Like I said before, you ain’t the boss of me.” The callback was probably supposed to be funny, but to me it sounded exactly like what it was. Hannah’s attempt to justify her going it alone when she knew she was wrong.

“Nope. You’re mine to protect.”

That got her attention real quick. “What?” She sat up straighter and actually shoved at my chest. “I’m not yours,” she said vehemently. “I’m my own person.”

“Never said you weren’t.”

“I don’t even know you. Not really. You don’t know me either.”

“I bet I know you better than you think. And if I’m right, you’re doing everything in your power to make up for what you perceive as weakness on your part when Gunnar went to prison for killin’ the man who tried to rape you.”

Her tears, which had mostly dried, started again, and she let out a little sob. “He didn’t even tell the cops that much. He said Robert had threatened to hurt me. If he’d said he walked in on us while I was screaming for him to stop oranythingother than what he said, he might have gotten off. At the very least he wouldn’t have been locked up as long as he was.”

“He didn’t want any of that to touch you any more than it already had. He thought you havin’ to kill that scumbag was punishment enough. He said it gutted him to think of you havin’ to go through any kind of trial, so he got through it the fastest way he could. He said you’d been through enough.”

“He shouldn’t have been the one to make that decision! Don’t you get it? I should have told Mom and Dad at the very least!”

“Yeah,” I agreed, nodding my head but still gripping her hips so she couldn’t wiggle free. “You shoulda. Gunnar told me he made you promise immediately after he got there you wouldn’t say a word about what happened to anyone. He said he made you promise over and over and over when he knew you were most vulnerable, because he knew you would never break a promise to him. No matter what.”

“That was the one time I should have. Blind obedience is never a good thing.”

“You weren’t blindly obedient to your brother. You respected him enough to keep a promise, even though he’d extracted it under duress. He said you begged him several times to let you tell your parents or Mama and Pops, but he wouldn’t give his blessing.”

“Not even as they were leading him out of the courtroom to go to a juvenile detention center until he was eighteen. Then to a federal prison.” Her gaze was unfocused, obviously remembering the moment she was describing. “I knew he was scared, but he would never give in. For the first couple of years, every time I came to visit, I pleaded with him to let me tell someone. Then I just stopped. He was getting increasingly irritated when I’d bring it up, and I didn’t want him to hate me even more than he already did.”

“You know he never hated you. Right?” It hurt to think Hannah was unsure of her brother’s love. Gunnar adored his twin. If anything, he felt guilty for not going to their dad himself and saving Hannah the pain of him being in prison. But, live and learn. The sixteen-year-old Gunnar did what he thought was best and the thirty-two-year-old Gunnar had learned to live with his decision.

“He should have. He had every right to.”

“Past time you and Gunnar sat down and had a conversation.” I brushed a curl off her forehead and tucked it behind her ear. “While you’re havin’ that conversation, when you have him all high in his feels, I’ll let him know I’m claimin’ you. Maybe he’ll leave my balls intact.”

She gave me an exasperated look, which made me chuckle. “You’re not claiming me, Knuckles.”

“Tell yourself that all you want, but it’s happenin’.”

“We’ve kissed two times. One of those wasn’t even a real kiss. You were just trying to shut me up.” It seemed like her eyes were shooting daggers at me, but there was something else there…

Realization kicked me in the balls. I don’t think I would have been more surprised if she’d really had kicked me in the balls. “Oh, that sounded suspiciously like a challenge, baby girl. Is that it?”

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