Desperate to give him that, I shove against him, tearing my mouth from his. “I’m not going there again, Kayden. And really, truly, I was never mentally or emotionally anywhere but here with you. I choose you and I choose us. I will always choose us.”
His eyes darken, then heat. “Then you’ll marry me?”
“I thought you had already decided for me?”
“Will you marry me, Ella?” he asks with a gravelly quality to his voice.
“Yes,” I whisper, so many emotions welling inside me that I’m trembling. “A million times over, yes.”
His lashes lower, relief showing in the way his shoulders ease, the way his expression softens, telling me that this amazing, powerful man was that on edge over me, confirming what I’d suspected. I hurt him today. “Kayden—”
I never finish the sentence. His fingers tunnel into my hair and his mouth slants over mine again, tongue licking, caressing, tasting, his hands now at my waist, moving, touching, and suddenly it’s just not the time for words. I need what he does, what I feel and sense he craves. Body against body. Passion meeting passion. And I stop holding back. I meet his kiss with a demand of my own, with hunger. I savor and use his touch, his taste, to try to drive away the fear that lives inside me, the fear that I can’t deny. Not when it’s what drove my hesitation earlier today, not when it haunts my every waking moment. Fear of losing him. Fear of this being our last kiss, our last touch, our last taste. It has me tugging his shirt up, urging him to remove it. It has me pressing my hands to his warm skin. He feels the same; it’s on his lips. It’s in the way he tears away my clothes while I tear away his. And when our clothes lie on the floor, he gazes at me for several intense, emotionally charged moments that I swear steal my breath, and then as I’ve become accustomed to, he scoops me up and starts walking.
I curl into him, my hand settling on his chest, his heart thundering beneath my palm. Because of me. This man, who I called beautiful, who I thought was too perfect to be real, is affected by me in every way that I am by him. All the emotions, all the desire I feel, I don’t even question him sharing. Nor do I discount what a gift it is for two people to share that same intense reaction to one another. Or what it is like to feel safer with him than alone. I never thought I’d ever feel that—and with that realization, splintered pieces of the past, the damaged parts of my life that formed that opinion, promise to reveal themselves.
He settles me on the mattress, the sweet weight of his body on mine, his hips spreading my legs, the thick pulse of his erection between my thighs. His elbows frame my face, his lips close, his breath a warm trickle on my mouth and cheek. And then it happens, the way it happened that very first night together. We linger there, breathing together, being together, feeling every inch of each other where we touch, and where we soon will touch. Slowly, he pulls back, those blue eyes of his hot with desire, with love. They meet mine and I am naked, inside and out, in every way with this man.
He rolls with me, settling us on our sides facing each other, his hand cupping my backside, his shaft settling between my thighs. “No spankings,” he says. “Nothing to prove, Ella. No point to make. Just us.” His lips brush mine, a seduction and a tease that still manages to be a promise. No, many promises that manage to be both erotic and romantic. Sexy and sweet. And then he is kissing me again, a slow, sensual slide of his tongue against mine, which I feel in every part of me as his fingers lightly caress my nipple, then the side of my breast.
I moan with the sensations rolling through me, with the way he feels so much a part of me, the way I know he wants to please me, to love me. Things no other man has ever made me feel. Even before I knew my past, I knew Kayden was different, a part of me in ways I didn’t understand. His hand slides down to my hip, his lips trailing my jaw, finding their way to my lips. “Where do you want me to touch you?”
“Everywhere, please,” I whisper. “But right now I just want you inside me.” I can feel him grow harder between my thighs, and I grow wetter. “I need to be that way with you right now.”
“You won’t get any resistance from me, sweetheart,” he promises, lifting my leg to his hip, his teeth giving my lip a gentle tug, his tongue licking a soothing, seductive line over my bottom lip before he presses inside me.
My breath lodges in my throat, my fingers flexing into his shoulders with the feel of him stretching me and slowly inching deeper and deeper, until we are fully connected, bodies melded together.
“Is this what you needed?” he asks, with that low, gravelly sexiness in his voice.
“Yes,” I say, barely finding my voice. “Oh, yes.”
“Like I need you, Ella.” He cups my backside, pulling me more snugly against him. “You understand that, right? I need you.”
“I need you, too, Kayden,” I whisper, and he swallows my words, his mouth coming down on mine, hot with a demand that says “you are mine, you belong with me.” And he belongs with me. It is a powerful taste and feeling and I press against him, trying to get closer, to get more of everything and anything that is this man.
Then comes the welcome squeeze of my backside, followed by a deep, intense thrust of his body into mine. I gasp and then pant into his mouth where our lips have parted, my fingers stroking the rough stubble on his jaw. And what follows is this sultry dance of bodies, moving, touching, melding together. It is perfect, and yet Kayden proves that not even perfection is enough with him. There will never be enough of anything with this man.
It is slow, sexy, romantic, and erotic. And yet we aren’t wild and frenzied, although I love wild and frenzied. That would end too soon. There’s just this savoring of each moment between us that creates this burn and ache in every part of me. But it is too good not to take me to that sweet spot that’s the edge of release, where I’m about to tumble over that edge. “Kayden,” I warn, “I’m—”
“No,” he orders, no longer moving, no longer giving me those seductive strokes of his cock. “Not yet.”
I swallow hard and bury my face in his shoulder, breathing deeply, calming my body. He must know the moment I’ve succeeded, because only then does he kiss my neck and whisper in my ear, “I get to own your orgasm for the rest of my life.”
Kayden Wilkens announcing he owns my orgasm isn’t exactly the way to prevent me from having one. “Careful,” I murmur, tilting my head back to look at him. “Or you’ll own it right now.”
He laughs, a low, sexy sound that strokes along my nerve endings, the sound a promise that I’m about to be right back on the edge any moment now. Kayden must know it too, because he doesn’t start moving again. He kisses my neck, teases my nipples, and scrapes his teeth on my shoulder. And then finally, finally, the slow, seductive sway of our bodies begins again.
Twice we
repeat this process, starting and stopping, but there’s a point where we both cave to the inevitable, and he promises, “We have all night for repeats,” before he thrusts us both into oblivion, a place where pleasure and forever live, but nothing else can survive. A place we linger even after the storm of pleasure has become the calm sea of its aftermath, holding each other. Breathing with each other.
“I’d better get you a towel,” he finally murmurs, dragging my head back and kissing me before he pulls out of me and disappears.
I inhale and somehow, of all the things I could remember in this blissful moment, the words You’re CIA are the ones that come to me. But I shove away the million questions I still have about his meeting and this Trigger person. Kayden matters right now. What happened this afternoon matters right now. Remembering that moment when he’d walked out of the office, leaving behind jagged, broken emotions, and fixing it. That’s what comes first.
Kayden reappears, now wearing his jeans low on his hips, sans underwear, offering me the towel.
I accept it and as he takes my arm, helping me sit up, the chill of the stone walls has me shivering. “For you,” Kayden says, indicating his shirt in his hand. “Because it’s cold in here and I like you in my shirt.”