Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 75547 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75547 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
I wasn’t sure what she had made up her mind about. But I couldn’t stop the smile playing on my lips at the fire that sparked in her eyes being back home.
“Kellum,” she whispers.
“Right here.”
She crosses the space between us in three quick steps and puts her mouth on mine. It’s not timid. It’s not shy. It’s not a question. It’s an answer she tried out on the ride in her head. Her fingers climb my shirt, catch in the shoulders like she wants to drag me down to her height. I let her because I want to meet her exactly where she is.
Her mouth tastes like salt and wind and the cheap ChapStick she keeps in that new tote like a treasure. The first brush is a shock—hot through the fatigue—and then it’s a drag, slow, confident, like she’s trying to measure the shape of me with the softest part of herself.
I should back up. I should say something practical and ugly that breaks the spell and puts us on opposite sides of a line. I don’t. I’ve had a bad day and a good ride and a woman who learned how to lean just asked for something without apologizing for wanting it. I’m hard but I’m not made of stone.
I kiss her back. Not the way I do with women who are looking for a patch and a story to tell a friend. Not the way I did with women who wanted my mouth to prove something to themselves about men like me. I kiss her like she’s the only thing on the table. Slow, deep, taking my time like I have some to take. Her breath stutters, catches, evens, breaks again.
When I finally pull back, she chases me half an inch and then blinks up, dazed but not lost. I rest my forehead against hers to get my own breathing under control.
“I don’t expect anything from you,” I explain, because a man who doesn’t lay ground rules ends up pissed off at a woman for his own shortcomings in not communicating where he is from the beginning.
Her smile is small and sharp. “We’re both adults and consenting ones at that.”
It’s almost my line from last week thrown back in my face, almost as a dare. It makes the corner of my mouth twitch. “You been practicing that?”
“Maybe.” She rises on her toes and kisses me again, deeper, like she’s memorizing this moment for us both so I can’t forget it. The drag turns into a pull. The pull turns into something with teeth. Her fingers slide under the edge of my shirt, flesh seeking contact.
I let it go as far as it should—no further. When I feel the moment start to tilt, I turn us. My back hits the wall. My hands frame her jaw, then slide down the elegant line of her throat, over the fluttering pulse, across the warm weight of her through the cotton. She shivers. It’s not cold. It’s relief. Her mouth breaks on a gasp against mine.
“Easy,” I murmur, and it’s not a warning. It’s a promise.
She breathes the word back at me like oxygen. “Easy.”
I edge us toward the couch without breaking. She comes because I’m taking her there and because she wants to see what happens when we run out of wall. We land, not graceful, half-laughing into the cushions, me caging her with my arms.
Her hands are in my hair. My lips sweep the hinge of her jaw, the hollow under her ear where women carry every bad thing anyone ever said and call it posture. She makes a sound that is not polite. I swallow it and give her back a better one.
This is not sex. Not the kind that counts in the way I mean when I say sex. It’s a fire that burns fast and clean because the wood is dry and the wind is right. I move down, mouth at her throat, hands sliding her shirt up that new, soft cotton that isn’t trying to sell anybody a lie. She lifts under my palms like the tide. I take my time. I don’t make her wait, not really, but I don’t rush because rushing makes the world smaller and I want this to be big for her. Big and simple and completely hers.
When I slide a hand under the waistband of her leggings, she doesn’t tense. She lets me in. Warm, wet, welcome. Her breath stutters into my shoulder, catches, breaks again. I work my fingers the way I work anything that matters—attention, patience, pressure where it pays. She arches, gasps my name like it’s something meant to be said out loud. The sound claws down my spine and takes a seat in my ribs, satisfied.
“Yeah,” I encourage, against her mouth, against the pulse in her throat. My fingers working inside her like I’m playing her body as an instrument. Hum for me. “There you go.”