Lowlander Silverback (Gorilla Shifter Royalty 1) (11 page)

“Harder,” she said on a panting breath.

Kong grabbed her breast, other arm locked against the bed beside her ribcage. With a grunt, he thrust in until she’d taken all of him. His body was rigid, tensed, muscles firing and twitching as he pushed into her again and again. “Layla,” he gritted out in a helpless voice. Yes. Yes! She closed her eyes against the primal growl that rattled from his chest against her back.

“Harder,” she begged.

His powerful hips jerked as he slammed into her. His hand was rough on her breast, but she didn’t care. She wanted him like this. She’d been wrong to tell him to be gentle with her when they’d first met. Kong wasn’t a gentle man. He was rough and feral, and she loved that about him. She shouldn’t have stifled him. It was she who needed to compromise and accept his animal. And his animal liked to fuck. Hard. She gasped as he slammed into her faster. She was so wet. Could feel it every time he slid into her. Slick sound. Slick shaft. God, he felt so good inside of her.

The snarl in his throat grew louder. Almost there. The pressure filled her entire body, from her middle to her fingertips. She arched her back as he gripped her hair and clamped his teeth onto her shoulder. Not hard enough to break the skin, but hard enough to draw the first pulse of a body-shattering orgasm from her. Kong froze on the next stroke with her name rasping from his lips. Jets of heat shot into her, and he bucked into her again and again, matching her orgasm. With one last growl, he pushed her chest onto the bed and pumped into her again where he stayed locked deep inside of her, emptying himself completely. His body relaxed against her as he kissed the back of her neck, over and over.

“I love you. I love you,” she chanted in a whisper because it felt so important that he knew right now.

He smiled against her skin and bit her softly again. Sexy. Bitey. Kong. With a sigh, he slid out of her and pulled her flush against him on the bed. He spread the covers over their legs and kissed her softly. It wasn’t the passionate kisses they sometimes had when they were overwhelmed with each other. This one said those three important words back to her without any sound. He cupped the back of her head like she was precious and sipped her until she smiled sleepily and hugged him close.

He inhaled deeply and pulled her body close as he rested his chin on top of her head. “Thanks for forgiving me,” he murmured so softly she almost missed it.

Shaking her head against the soft pillow, she said, “There was nothing to forgive.”

And as she traced the scars on his body, the ones he’d received avenging Mac and choosing her, she was struck with how lucky she was to be in this moment. Wrapped in the arms of the man she loved. A week ago, this wasn’t a possibility, but here she was.

And suddenly, Kong’s earlier question took on a new meaning.

You ready to go home?

Home wasn’t a place anymore.

She smiled against his skin and kissed a scar right above his heart.

Home was Kong.

Kong’s cell phone rattled across the bedside table, kept from falling off the edge only by the cord that was charging it. He scrubbed his hands over his face and squinted at the glowing caller ID on the screen. Five in the morning, and why the hell would Kirk be calling him this early, or at all? Kong hadn’t talked to him since the night Fiona had given the order to kill Mac.

He accepted the call and murmured, “Hang on.” Then he looked over at Layla who was still sleeping peacefully beside him, her arm thrown over his middle and a slight frown drawing down her delicately arched, sandy-blond eyebrows. No make-up and clad in nothing but a pair of cotton panties and a tank top, and damn his mate stole his breath away.

He slipped out from under her arm and pulled the covers over her, tucking her in tightly before he unhooked the phone from the charger and padded out of the trailer.

“What do you want?” he asked low as he leaned on the front porch railing. The Gray Backs would be up soon to go to work on the landing, but he didn’t want to perk up their oversensitive hearing and make them lose any sleep.

“I just got a call from Fiona.”

Kong’s heartbeat stuttered and then picked up double time.

“Kong, she’s not done coming after you and Layla.”

“Why would you tell me this? Aren’t you one of her henchmen?”

“No.” Kirk’s voice sounded off. Defeated or disillusioned, perhaps. “I’m already dead, Kong. I have been since she gave the order to take out Mac. I was supposed to help Rhett, but I didn’t. Couldn’t.”

“I thought you were playing watch out while Rhett—”

Kirk made a clicking sound behind his teeth, and static blasted across the phone as if he had rubbed the speaker against his shirt. “I told you I didn’t choose to be your guard. This is a courtesy call. I’m handling the sawmill until you’re ready to take it over again. I just wanted to say you don’t have to worry about the business. I’ve got this until she comes for me. It’s the least I can do for what I was a part of.”

“But you said you weren’t a part of Mac’s death.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about. I mean for what I’ve had to do to you. Controlling you, watching you, berating every little thing you did wrong. You didn’t do anything wrong, Kong. You’re still not doing anything wrong. Our people are fucked up. Fucked. Up. I told Fiona I’m rogue now, but before I did, she asked where you were staying. I didn’t tell her anything, but she’ll find you. She asked me what happened to Gordon and Ivan. To Rhett. She said they hadn’t called or come home. I didn’t answer, but that was answer enough for her, you know?”

“Kirk, you didn’t have to go rogue for me.”

“It wasn’t for you, man. It was for me. I want my pride intact at the end. Besides, Fiona has no use for me anymore. She won’t give me a family group, and I suck at murdering people for her. I just wanted to warn you it isn’t over with her yet.”

Kong slammed his fist onto the railing and ran his hands through his sleep-mussed hair. “I don’t get it. Why this obsession with me? It can’t just be the birthmark. Why can’t she just let me go?”

“Don’t you see? It
is
the birthmark. Every generation sired by the silverback with the mark of the Kong has gone down in our history books as the strongest. The smartest. The ones who made a difference in our survival. It isn’t you. It’s your genetics she needs.”

“Needs?”

“Kong, the family group she’s put together for you? She’s in it. She’s the head female.”

Shock slammed into him, stealing his breath away. No. “Fiona wants to breed?” She was forty and still capable, but she’d only ever shown interest in ruling the gorilla shifters.

“Yeah, man. But she won’t bear offspring for just anyone. She wants you to father her get. She wants her offspring in the history books.”

A hundred things snapped into place. Fiona searching tirelessly for him after his mother had stolen him away. Her putting so much effort into breaking him when he was a blackback. Her obsession with the contract and not allowing him to taint his seed. It wasn’t for the betterment of a family group. It was because he was being groomed to be her claim.

His stomach curdled with a gritty, nauseous feeling as he sank onto the cedar floorboards, his back against the railing. “Holy shit,” he murmured, shaking his head in disbelief. If this was true, she would never give up, and Layla would never be safe.

Kirk swallowed audibly over the line. “Anyway. I just wanted to give you a heads up. I actually like Layla for you. Can you tell her…” His voice cracked, and he cleared his throat and tried again. “Can you tell her I’m sorry about Mac?”

Mac’s death wasn’t Kirk’s fault, but he got it. He’d been blaming himself for the better part of a week now, too. “Yeah. I will.”

“I’ll be at the sawmill if you need me,” Kirk said. “For backup or whatever. My days are numbered, so for the rest of them, I’m good with making up for what I’ve had to push you into all these years. I’d better go. We have a few orders to fill today.”

“All right, man. Kirk?” Kong asked before he could hang up.

“Yeah?”

“It’s okay. What you had to do? It’s
okay
.”

Kirk was quiet for a long time before he said, “It’s not, but thanks for saying that. Goodbye, Kong.”

The line went dead, and Kong rested his head back against the railing and stared at Layla’s bedroom window.

He’d thought this was over, but the scars on his body were just the warm-up.

Layla wasn’t any safer now than she had been before he’d challenged Rhett and the others.

****

When Layla woke up, Kong was sitting on the edge of the bed with his back to her. She slid her hand up the uneven skin of his back, over the bumps and ridges of the scars she had now memorized with her touch. Over the long, dark shape of the birthmark that had almost come between them.

“Good morning,” she murmured sleepily.

He looked over his shoulder with a ready smile, but his eyes were green.

“What’s wrong?”

“I want to take you on a date.”

She ducked her face and hid her flattered smile as butterflies fluttered away in her stomach. “Where?”

“Willa told me about this bait shop she sells worms to. She said the owner just expanded and added a barbeque joint onto it for the tourists who fish up here. It’s only half an hour away, so we wouldn’t have to make another drive all the way into Saratoga for me to take you out.”

She angled her face and frowned. “Why are your eyes glowing?”

His smile faded slowly, and he shook his head. “No reason.” But his voice sounded off, hollow, as if he didn’t believe in the words enough to put force behind them.

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yes, I’ll go on a date with you. Silly monkey,” she said through a giggle, “you’ll talk about starting a family with me, no problem, but you get nervous asking me out?” She bit her lip against the smile that cracked her face wide open. Then she jumped up and climbed on his back like a koala bear. Wrapping her legs around his middle, she said, “Take me to the shower, silly monkey. I want to get pretty for our date.”

Kong chuckled and bit her arm gently. “As you command, my queen.”

“Mmm,” she said, laying kisses along the tense muscles of his neck. “I like that. You can use that nickname whenever you want.

It was late in the morning, and she couldn’t believe how long she’d slept, but perhaps she’d needed the sleep. Maybe her heart and head had needed a break from thinking and grieving. Even though her chest still felt heavy with Mac’s loss, she felt better this morning than she had since he’d passed.

She bit his ear playfully before he leaned over with her weight still on his back. He turned on the hot tap and shimmied out of his cotton sleep pants that were light blue and thin enough she could always see his morning wood through the material. The kind that hung low on his hips and showed off those two yummy strips of muscle that wrapped around his waist. “Sexy mate,” she murmured, slipping from his back.

“I like that nickname.”

“Mate of many muscles.” She peeled off her shirt and wiggled her boobies at him when she caught him looking.

“Mmm, keep going.”

“Not
the
Kong anymore.
My
Kong.”

“That’s the one,” he said through a dazzling smile as his eyes faded to muddy green. “That’s my favorite.”

He lifted her off the bath mat and wrapped her legs around his waist as he stepped into the shower. He pressed her back against the plastic shower wall and slid into her slowly, eyes on her. Always on her. This wasn’t about covering her, or pheromones. It wasn’t about practicing for a family. Something in Kong’s soul was aching, and he needed her. His eyes dimmed to the soft brown she’d fallen in love with over the years. He dipped in to kiss her, only to ease back and watch her face again as he stroked slowly into her. And when they were both close, he rested his forehead against hers and whispered that he loved her. And when he’d met her orgasm with one of his own, he pulled every pulsing aftershock from her, then slid out and washed her body as if she was a goddess. As though she truly was his queen.

He kept her off balance as the morning faded to afternoon. Playful, happy, serious, troubled, playful again. He carried her over his shoulder and gripped her ass through her sundress on the way to his Camaro.

Willa and Gia waved to them as they pulled away, and Layla beamed. “I like it here.”

“Yeah?” he asked, pulling her fingertips to his lips as he drove away from the trailer park.

“I know we have to go back to Saratoga soon, but that place made everything easier. The people there and the woods.”

“Ten-ten.”

“Yeah.”

“Told you it was magic.”

“You. You’ve made everything okay.”

He threw her a questioning glance, and there it was again. The speckles of green, just starting to glow like fireflies in his gaze. He rasped his newly shaved jaw across her knuckles but didn’t say anything as he dragged his gaze back to the road and slid on a pair of sunglasses.

“Would you be mad if I put my feet on the dashboard?” she asked, slipping her feet from her sandals and wiggling her toes right over the finely detailed glove box.

“Maybe.”

“You know, if I make footprints, you’ll always think of me when you get in and see them.”

He ghosted a glance at the dashboard, then nodded his head. “Do it. I like thinking about you.”

“Really?” She was shocked to her bones. Kong loved his car.

“Really.” He pressed her knee so her left foot touched the warm dash. “Leave your mark on here, woman.”

So she did. She rested her feet there the entire drive to Moosey’s Bait and Barbecue. When she took them off in the parking lot, the dash still looked pretty shiny, but if she squinted and looked hard at just the right angle, there were two faint smudges, and that was good enough. “Now, if anything ever happens to me, you’ll still have a part of me with you in the passenger’s seat.” Ugh. Where had that morbid thought come from?

Kong stared at the prints too long after putting the Camaro into park.

“Did you change your mind? I can polish it again.” Layla turned and reached for the detailing wipes he kept in the back seat.

“No,” he rushed out. “I like them. Leave them.” He leaned over and kissed her. Just a sweet sip with a gentle smack at the end, and then he was getting out of the car, leaving her off-balance as he’d done all morning.

Kong was a tall glass of arctic water on a hot day. His legs were long, lean, and powerful against the hole-riddled jeans that clung to his waist just right. The thin V-neck white T-shirt that hung over his defined chest was enough to draw a gulp from her lips. Aviator sunglasses hid his eyes, and scars peeked out from under the neck of his shirt. He was rocking that sexy, clean-shaven jaw that was sharp as glass with thick, dark hair styled longer on top and, holy hotness, she couldn’t believe he was hers.

Hers in all the ways that mattered. Her mate. Her love and, someday, he would be the father of her children. Over the past week, he had held baby Rowan anytime Gia and Creed would let him, and Layla had fallen in love with the way he looked at the infant. A tiny baby cradled so gently against his chest as he rocked slowly back and forth and talked to her. Kong would make a great father and teammate to raise a family with. She’d never admitted it to anyone other than Mac, but she wanted lots of kids. She’d grown up lonely, confused by the definition of family, but with Kong, she could have something special—a sense of belonging that filled the hungry hole in her heart.

He opened her door and held out his hand. “You ready, beautiful?”

Grinning, she slid her palm against his and allowed him to help her out of the car. “You know, I always imagined what it would be like if you asked me out. I would see you at the bar and daydream about what you would say and where you would take me.”

“Disappointed?”

“Not at all. Being with you is better than I could’ve imagined.”

His throat moved as he swallowed hard. She wished she could see his eyes, but all she could see was her own smiling reflection in his sunglasses. Turning, he linked his fingers with hers and led her into Moosey’s.