His forehead dropped to mine, and I reached up, wrapping my hands around his wrists, the man still holding me while I clung to him.
His breaths mine. My heart reaching for his.
He groaned a needy sound before he tilted up my chin, searching as he stared down at me.
Slow . . . so slow . . . he leaned down and brushed his lips across mine.
Fire.
Everywhere.
Racing my flesh. Hijacking my veins.
His tongue tangled with mine. Stroking, dizzying as he edged me back, deeper into the darkness that lined the far recesses of the balcony.
His kiss no longer gentle.
An all-consuming demand.
My heart rate kicked, drumming wildly.
I swore his caught, too.
Because the very air around us started to thrum.
Heads spinning and spirits soaring.
I gasped when I was suddenly propped on the very edge of a small bistro table that was tucked against the far wall, Kale’s fingers sinking into the outside of my thighs as he broke the kiss and dropped into a chair in front of me.
“Kale . . . what are you . . .”
I couldn’t think, couldn’t speak, not when he ran his thumbs over the flesh. “You said we had one night. I want to give you this. I want to make you feel good.” His voice deepened, so low it sounded like a threat. “Is that what you want? For me to make you feel good? Tell me, Hope. Tell me you want this. Let me make you feel good.”
My breaths came short, needy pants rising into the dense air, my heart manic where it pounded in my chest.
“I—”
He yanked me closer, my ass barely clinging to the edge. “Do you want me to touch you?” It was a demand.
Oh God.
There he was.
The confident, arrogant man.
Dangerous and perfect.
“Yes,” I whimpered.
He caressed his hands over the tops of my thighs and down to my knees. He started gliding his palms back down the inside of my legs.
Spreading me wide.
My pulse thundered.
I wasn’t sure I’d ever felt so exposed.
His thumbs traced along the inside edges of my underwear. Curling my fingers around the edge of the table, my head dropped back on a breathy moan.
I swore, I felt the ground quake.
“You are so sexy. So beautiful. Do you know, Hope? Do you have any idea the way you affect me?” he murmured, just a finger teasing over the lace that covered me. “Did you know the first time I saw you, you knocked the air right out of my lungs? For a fleeting second, I literally couldn’t breathe. How’s it possible you do that to me?”
I throbbed, overcome with the ache that pulsed at the juncture of my thighs.
The ache to be touched. To be adored. Just for a little while.
“I couldn’t stop looking at you.” My wispy admission carried on the breeze. “Wondering what it might be like to be wanted by a man like you. Wondering what it would be like to go home with you. Wishing for a little while, that girl could be me.”
“She is you, Hope. I want to get inside you so badly, it’s painful. But the last thing I want to do is complicate things more than they are. I get it. So, let me give you this.”
Did he get it?
Because the man was so absolutely complicating things when he nudged the fabric aside, his fingers slicking through my folds.
“Oh God.” Jerking forward, my fingers burrowed into his shoulders, my forehead dropping to his.
His mouth pressed up under my jaw. “Is this what you need?”
His free hand wound in my hair as he kissed down the column of my neck. He tugged my head back, demanding more.
“Yes.”
His breaths came harsh when he pushed two fingers into me.
“Kale.” I shook around the intrusion, fingers fumbling to hold on tighter, my belly in knots, white-hot coils that glowed bright and blinding.
Jerking back, that dominating gaze raked over my body. Purposed when it dropped to watch where he touched me. “You are perfect. Look at you, always so shy, all spread out for me.”
He drove his fingers in slow, deep, maddening thrusts, and his thumb . . . I gasped and writhed as he began to rub it back and forth across my clit.
“Please . . . don’t stop.”
“That’s what I thought. Knew you’d like it hard and slow and a little rough. You deserve a man who’ll take the time to do it right. Give me that time, baby, and I promise you, the only thing you’ll regret is the fact you didn’t let me take you sooner.”
And God, I should be mortified, the way he was talking to me, that same arrogant, overconfident man who’d approached me last week making a reappearance.
But instead, I stared at him through the dimness. Through the shadows and questions and madness that swirled around us. As he stroked me and touched me so intimately. In a way that was one-hundred percent unlike me.