Red from the flames that licked up inside me. Flames that spiked and flared and grew hotter with each decadent stroke of his mouth.
Igniting into a full-body blaze.
Blistering.
He tucked me closer, his hands on my bottom as he lifted me from the couch, his thumb doing magical things to the most private part of me.
Circling.
Teasing.
Easing into my ass.
“Oh, God. Kale . . . what—” The words were thready. Thin with the rasp. My fingers slipped frantically across the leather of the couch, searching for something to hang on to.
“Relax, I’ve got you,” he murmured. His low command reverberated through me. “I’ve got you. Trust me. I’ve got you. Want to make you feel good. Let me give you this.”
“I trust you.”
I did.
I trusted him with every part of me.
With the recognition, the acceptance, my heart clattered in my chest, and I whispered, “Please.”
Though I knew he didn’t know I was begging for so many things.
I gulped for the nonexistent air when he dipped his head back down and burrowed back between my thighs. With his other hand, he pressed two fingers into the well of my body. He moved in perfect sync with his thumb.
My walls clenched around him.
With his tongue, he laved at my clit, suckled and licked and tempted me into a boiling frenzy that gathered to a pinpoint.
It was unlike anything I’d ever felt.
An avalanche of sensation riding on every nerve.
Filling every crevice.
My head swished back and forth on the back of the couch, pleasure gathering fast.
Flashing of bliss. Flickers of ecstasy.
Then everything split.
Breaking wide open.
Streaking and spinning and spiraling.
Euphoria.
I wanted to stay there for all of forever, and I couldn’t help but whimper as I tumbled back down.
A weightless dive through limbless bliss.
When I landed, Kale was right there, placing gentle kisses along the inside of my thigh, holding me steady as my body twitched and jerked with the most powerful kind of aftershocks.
There was nothing I could do, my hands were on his face, pulling him up to me.
His jeans ground against my bare center, and I almost went off again.
I kissed him. Kissed him frantically. Maniacally. A frenzy that had taken hold. “Kale. Take me. I’m yours. I want to feel you. I need to feel you. Please.”
He groaned a sound of pain as he kissed me deeper, and his eyes squeezed shut before he palmed the side of my face and pried himself back. “You know you don’t want that.”
“I do.”
“No, Hope, you don’t. You told me you couldn’t afford another complication. And you know that’s exactly what I’d be.”
But he already was the most intricately exquisite complication.
I kissed across his jaw and up to his ear. “What if I want to take care of you, too? Make you feel good?”
Another groan, but it was one of those belly-flipping smirks that hitched up at the corner of his sexy mouth when he pulled back. “What exactly did you have in mind, Shortcake?”
This time, I did blush. Heat rushed to my cheeks. But I tried to remain bold, confident as I nudged him back. He eased onto his knees.
Fumbling beneath the hem of his shirt, I pressed my hands up under the soft material, inching it up.
My palms gliding over carved, defined muscle as I went. “I want to see you,” I confessed.
He shuddered and shook, but he was grinning when he lifted his arms over his head and let me draw his shirt from his body.
I blinked when I dragged it free.
Stunned.
Struck dumb.
Left in staggered awe.
Holy crap.
Jenna may let a ton of nonsense roll out of her mouth, but she’d had one thing right.
This man was delicious.
I let my fingertips run up his chiseled abdomen, fluttering across his huge, bulging pecs, running over both of his shoulders and down his arms, watching the path I made the whole time.
Sucking on my bottom lip, I peeked up at him. “And you said I was perfect.”
“You are, baby. So goddamned perfect. Just looking at you makes my guts hurt. Nothing should be that beautiful. But you are.”
My blush deepened, my hands shaking, unsure of where to go from there.
But Kale, he knew when he needed to take control.
When I wanted him to.
He slowly pushed to his feet, straightening to that towering height of security where he stood right in front of me.
Potent.
Powerful.
Persuasive.
While I still sat on his couch, nothing but a fumbling mess of need.
“You want to touch me?” he grated.
I could barely get out a spastic nod.
Staring down at me, he started flicking through the buttons of his jeans. “You sure?”
He almost grinned, but it was weighted with his own desire, held back by the tight clench of his jaw as he freed the last button.
Oh goodness.
My insides trembled.
A tiny earthquake.
“Yes,” I whispered.
He pushed his jeans and underwear down over his hips, and the little air I had left in my lungs jetted out on a panted heave when his cock sprang free.