“Hi.”
She wheeled around. Kane had come down the steps and was on the last one, staring across at her as if he didn’t know what to do.
“How did this happen to both of us?” she demanded.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “I wish I did.”
Nadya turned back to her reflection.Herreflection. As in the one of the female that she had been before the acid attack.
“It’s so…” When she trailed off, Kane came up behind her so that she could see his face as well. “I’m back.”
Before she knew what she was doing, she turned and threw her arms around him and held on hard. As she squeezed her eyes closed, she thought it was absurd to think that what she saw now—what she once again saw of herself—was who she had always identified as even after the attack. Because she had been scarred for longer than she had been unmarked.
But then she had had her face stolen from her. And though her insides had remained the same, the outside world would only see the crippled stranger she’d become.
She had hidden herself to avoid the pain of what she had lost.
“I want you to know something,” Kane said, his voice rumbling up through his chest. “You were always whole to me.”
She eased back and looked up at him. Then she touched his face. “And you were always a gentlemale of worth to me.”
As her eyes went to his lips, she wanted him so badly—
“Lucan and Rio are asleep,” he whispered. “Mayhem and the medics, too. We have a little time.”
“Kiss me, Kane. Oh, God, kiss—”
She didn’t have to ask him twice. His lips found hers, and were not gentle. As the toolbox that hid the stairs slowly closed—because clearly he had willed it back into place—he picked her up and carried her over to a cot that was so small, she didn’t think he would be able to fit on it with her.
Unless, of course, he mounted her.
Which he did.
Their clothes were a tangle of interference, but the desperation she had to get him inside of her made the desire to be fully naked something to be pushed aside. With his lips grinding on hers, and her breasts arching against his chest, she split her legs and welcomed him to her core. Everything was fast, fast, fast, for they didn’t know when someone would rouse and there was little privacy here.
“Let me get…” She shoved her hands between them and started yanking at the surgical scrubs she had borrowed from the ambulance. “My bottoms are stuck.”
“Here, maybe I can—”
Bang!
The sound and shock of the hard impact were enough to stop them both, and at first, Nadya thought they’d been shot at or maybe even bombed.
But then she realized they were both on the floor.
“We broke the wolf’s cot,” he said.
“Oops.”
They both looked to the toolbox and stopped breathing. When no one came down, their laughter was shared, and then cut off by more kissing—and now that they had no distance to fall, he just rolled them over so he was on the bottom.
Splitting her legs over his hips, she rode his length, rolling her pelvis, stroking them both. And as he jerked his head back in response, shehad never seen anything so beautiful. He was so different from her, thickened with muscle now, broader, bigger. Harder. In so many places.
But he was beautiful. Her eyes could have drunk in his appearance for hours.
Maybe longer.
It was hard to tell exactly when the urgency got out of hand, but suddenly she couldn’t wait any longer. Easing back from him, she doubled-checked the stairs one last time—and then took her bottoms off.