Page 35 of Uppercut Princess
Finally, he starts to talk. “I know the way I do things can seem confusing. I haven’t had a chance to talk to you much after I—”
“Claimed me?” I throw out there.
He snickers like that’s such a funny way to see it, but it’s true. It’s one-hundred percent true. He saw something he wanted and he did the equivalent of a dog marking his territory. That’s what this is about.
“Yes, but I hope it’s more than that too. The world I grew up in is different from the world everyone else has. We love fiercely. Quickly. If we want something, we take it before someone else claims it.” He stops working on my wound and breathes out. His hot breath hitting my bare skin. “The way you fought did something to me, Kyla. I don’t know how to explain it, but I had to have you. And I will have you. I could tell we were meant to be together.”
In any other world, this might be the sweetest conversation ever. Except, this is the gang world and instead of professing love, Johnny’s professing a claiming. A want. A need. A desire he just couldn’t hold back.
“I promise to never throw things like what just transpired in your face. Like I explained at the store, you’ll have a role fit for a queen. People will fear you. Respect you. Love you,” he says, his voice trailing off as his fingers brush my skin. “That’s all I want. Respect is everything in the Heights Crew.”
His touch passes over my bare back and sneaks around my front. His fingers stretch out, his thumb a centimeter away from my breast. I can tell he wants to touch me. I can tell he wants to move his hand to cup me, but Johnny’s a good little soldier. He might not go against his father after all.
He drops his forehead to my spine and breathes in, his hold tightening around my midsection. “I want you to be happy here. To do that, there are only a few rules for you. Don’t ever disrespect me like you did in there.” His hand tightens again, his nails biting into me. I close my eyes through the pain, focusing on the prize at the end of all this. “You don’t disrespect the Crew, and you honor me and my family by doing what we say and knowing that it’s for your own good or for the good of others. Do you understand?”
Bile rises up my throat. Johnny will never be married to anything but the Crew, and that’s sad. He doesn’t know any other way.
“Kyla?”
I nod.
He sinks his fingers even further into my skin. “I need to hear you say it.”
“I understand,” I say quickly.
Johnny immediately releases his hold on me. “I’ll take care of you. I only ask for a few things in return.” He presses his lips against my bare skin like he hasn’t just asked me to give up myself for him. I would never be my own person with my own thoughts and feelings. Or at least have any I could act on independently. He doesn’t get that. “Hopefully, eventually, you’ll fall for me despite all of this.”
His words stop me. Just when I was thinking love didn’t come into the equation for Johnny at all, he says that. I let out a breath. My back heats at Johnny’s proximity. His fingers trail over me almost reverently. He’s an enigma. A riddle I bet he himself doesn’t even know how to solve.
He moves my shirt back down when the car comes to a stop. My ears ring from all the conflicting thoughts warring in my head, but some part of me understands that we’re at my apartment building. Vaguely, I hear Johnny telling me that he has to go to a business meeting. When he opens the door for me, I step out, blinking at the bright sun. I can’t even enjoy that I’m free. That the sun is shining. That the fresh air blows on my face. I can’t enjoy that I’m out in the real world because his words still bang around inside my head.
A strong, stern voice says, “I called ahead to have Brawler meet us.”
Just as Magnum says that, Brawler emerges from the front door of our building.
Johnny takes my hand again, kissing my knuckles. He just loves doing that. I tell myself not to pull awayandnot to get caught up in his gravitational pull again. Then I’m being led up the stairs and into my own apartment like I could never make it there myself.
I get out my key, but Brawler’s beat me to it. He has a replica of the key I’m searching for already in the lock and pushing the door open despite the fact that he’s also carrying every single bag from the clothing store in his hands. “What the fuck?”
Just how did he get his own key tomyplace?
Brawler ushers me in and slams the door behind us. He drops the bags of all the clothes Johnny’s bought me just inside the door.
The events of today have caught up with me. I’m boiling. I’m madder than mad. I’m fucking furious, and there’s nothing around me to take this out on because it’s all my own fault. This was my idea. This was my plan.
I was never big on self-loathing though. I scream out in frustration and slam my hands into Brawler. “Fuck you!”
The look he gives me in return could crack marble.
14
Brawler staggers back a few steps, surprise lighting his face.
“Fuck this!” I scream again.
I move forward to push him, but he grabs my arms, holding me in place.
“Don’t,” I say. Everything in me is telling me to lash out. I never wanted to be anyone’s property. Hell, that’s why I came here in the first place. Big Daddy K owned my thoughts. He owned everything. Day after day was just a running scene of how he took my parents from me. I’m doing this to stop that scene. I’m doing this to take back the narrative. To make my own scenes. I don’t know what they’ll be, but they have to be better than the two gunshots to the head, ending with my parents lying in a deserted, dank, gross, forgotten alley with blood running toward drains like water. Anything is better than that.
