Chapter 9
Chapter
Nine
“Come on, man,” Smith muttered in disgust when he saw Kenny after her shower half an hour later. His eyes were fulminating as he raked them over her body. “I’ve been looking for that T-shirt for months!”
She was wearing a loose pair of shorts—one of her own this time—and a white The Smiths T-shirt.
“Oh.” Kenny hooked her thumbs in the bottom corners of the fabric and stretched out the front to look down at the image of the band. She’d just grabbed the closest clean T-shirt without really paying attention to what was on it.
“God, don’t stretch it out like that, for fuck’s sake,” Smith protested. “It’s vintage!”
“Do you like this group?” Kenny asked curiously as she limped to the kitchen table and sat down. “I never really heard of them before finding the shirt mixed in with my laundry one day.”
“And what? You decided it was a finders keepers kind of situation?” He looked and sounded peevish. He stood by the stove, hair standing up in tufts, with one of those all too familiar glares on his face.
It was becoming his default expression.
“It’s comfortable.”
“It’s blatant theft. The damned thing has my name on it and you still decided to keep it! Who does that?”
“It doesn’t have your name on it.”
“Close enough.”
“Wait, is that the only reason you like this shirt? Because the band kind of has your name? Not because of their music, or their politics, or their—”
“I like their music well enough,” he interrupted sharply, but he looked shifty as he said it.
“Oh, you’re so lying!” she accused, pointing a finger at him. “You totally got this vintage and probably expensive T-shirt because of the name.” Which was actually more than a little endearing. And would’ve been funny, if he wasn’t being such a dick about it right now.
“It doesn’t matter why I got it,” he insisted, a stubborn set to his jaw. “The fact is that it’s mine and you stole it.”
“Oh my God, you’re being such a child about this. You know you’re being really petty, right?”
She pushed herself up and out of the chair and awkwardly rounded the table until she was just a couple of feet away from him. Before she could think it through, she dragged his precious T-shirt up and off in one fluid movement, then rudely tossed it in his face.
He didn’t catch it.
Instead, the T-shirt slid down his body and draped over his bare feet, while he stood frozen and gaped at her chest.
Only when her nipples pebbled in the cool air-conditioned room beneath his intent stare did Kenny remember that she was naked under the shirt.
She gasped and cupped her hands over her exposed breasts, her gaze glued to his face. Smith’s eyes, now released from the hypnotic spell her naked skin seemed to have cast, looked a little wild as they darted around the room, clearly desperate to avoid contact with hers.
“Crap,” she whispered, appalled by her foolishness, and took a quick step back. The walking cast made her movements clumsy and she lost her balance in her haste to put some distance between them.
She felt herself going down and threw her arms out for balance, but he was there in an instant. One arm hooked around her waist, while his big, calloused hand splayed against the small of her back. The other was hand was clamped around her vulnerable nape.
All the breath left her body in a gasp and they both went very still as they came to the realization that her naked front was plastered against his chest with nothing but the thin cotton fabric of another one of his vintage tees between them.
Kenny’s hands were curled into loose fists and pressed against his chest. Only she wasn’t pushing him away.
Instead her hands unfurled and her palms stroked up over the hard surface of that beautiful chest until they came to rest over his broad shoulders.
“Why did you do that?” His voice was low and gruff—almost painfully hoarse—and that raspiness tightened Kenny’s nipples into even harder points.
She stifled a moan and shook her head helplessly, her mouth too dry to verbalize any of the words clamoring through her mind.
“Are you trying to drive me mad?” he asked, voice filled with accusation and resentment.
“I was angry. I-I wasn’t thinking.”
He made a rough, angry sound of denial.
“Why are your nipples hard?” The question was curt, breathless, pissed off.
“It’s cold.”
“Liar.” His rejoinder was quiet, gentler. As she contemplated the word and considered what her response should be, Kenny became aware of something else. Something hot and hard pressed up against her abdomen. Something she’d only come to recognize as she recovered from her shock.
“Why is your cock hard?” She flung the question at him, injecting as much accusation into it as he had into his.
“It’s hot. You’re hot. I mean physically. Temperature. Your heat is—” The incoherent mess of words stumbled to a clumsy halt and he shifted the lower half of his body away.
“Liar,” she echoed with relish, and he moved his hands to her arms and pushed her away from him until that was the only point of contact between them.
He stared down at her, his gaze searching and she tilted her chin defiantly and met his eyes unflinchingly.
One corner of his lip lifted in a nasty sneer and he quite deliberately dropped his gaze to her hard, hot-as-coals, throbbing nipples.
Her breasts barely sagged beneath their own weight but her highly sensitive nipples were disproportionately large in comparison to the barely there mounds. Smith had always loved them, likening them to raspberries.
Now, his breathing was ragged as he stared down at them.
He swallowed and licked his lips. At the sight of his tongue darting out, Kenny moaned.
She had a sudden, desperate longing to feel that talented tongue laving her swollen nipples as he had done so many times before. It had always driven her crazy.
His breathing quickened as he seemed to understand what exactly she ached for.
He was watching her face, his eyes dazed, cheeks flushed, lips parted…and then his gaze dropped to her breasts again.
“Yes.” Her quiet whisper surprised her and she knew she should retract the crazy, impulsive assent immediately. But her tongue felt thick in her mouth, and that soft yes was the last coherent thought that she was able to verbalize.
He swayed toward her, wavering, fighting himself. Striving for the better judgment that had already deserted her.
She could tell the very second he lost the battle with good sense. The heat in his eyes blazed out of control, his jaw tightened, and his nostrils flared.
“One last taste,” he whispered. It sounded like a bargain he’d struck with himself, the words not meant for her.
He gave a decisive nod and stepped toward her, guiding her back against the table until her hips hit the edge of it.
He jostled the chair aside and lifted her in one swift moment, depositing her on the table and crowding his way between her thighs.
Once there, the big, hard bulge of his cock snugly fit into the notch of her pussy and he dipped his head before she had a moment to orient herself.
His mouth clamped around a nipple seconds later and she cried out, the sound low and prolonged. He gave no reprieve, and she found herself forced backward until her elbows hit the hard surface of the table, while he remained latched to that painfully sensitive knot at the tip of her breast.
Kenny hooked her left leg around his tight butt, dragging him closer until there was no room left between them. They were too close to move against each other, the press creating a throbbing sensation instead of friction.
One of her arms was wrapped around his neck, hand buried in his thick, silky hair. The other had burrowed beneath his T-shirt and was stroking the long, taut expanse of his back.
He switched to her other breast, sucking, licking, biting.
She loved it. Every sensation arrowed straight down to her clit, which pulsed in sympathy.
She was able to rock her pelvis, increasing and decreasing pressure against her clit.
And he moaned shakily against her tit as his cock began to jerk in unison to the orgasmic pulsating that was starting up in her clit.
She was nearly there, so close. Her eyes were streaming, her throat dry…
She coughed.
And coughed again.
“Fuck!” Smith swore as he dragged his mouth from her breast.
“Wha—” Kenny coughed once more and belatedly became aware of a very incessant beeping and…
Was that smoke?
Smith wrenched himself away from her. She sat up, completely dazed and bewildered as she watched him leap toward the stove.
He dragged open the oven and grabbed the mitts draped over the handle to drag the charcoal-black lasagna from the oven and drop it in the sink.
The room was filled with smoke and the smoke detector stridently blared a warning Kenny hadn’t even noticed until now.
She was still on the table, every nerve ending in her body as scorched as that poor lasagna. She sat up and slid off the table in an ungainly movement.
The Smith’s T-shirt lay forgotten on the floor and she stooped to pick it up and drag it on self-consciously, covering up her nudity as swiftly as possible.
Now that reason was returning, she felt so embarrassed. What the hell had she been thinking?
Smith was resetting the smoke detector. And Kenny wondered if this meant that the fire department would show up soon.
She crossed her arms over her chest, wincing as the soft fabric brushed against her over-sensitized nipples. And that wasn’t the only thing that was overstimulated. She’d need, as discreetly as possible, to change her underwear and shorts.
To that end, she picked up her bag and retreated to the bathroom while Smith was still busy discarding the burnt lasagna.
She rinsed her face with cold water, and braced her hands on the vanity as she glared at her dazed expression, noting the hectic flush of arousal that wouldn’t abate, no matter how much cold water she splashed onto her face and neck.
Her nipples were still hard, her clit still throbbing, and she was seriously considering giving herself an orgasm, because she was still so damned primed.
She changed into fresh underwear and shorts but even the fabric rubbing against her was too much.
The last time she’d been this turned on had been the night she’d first met Smith.
The urgency, the heightened awareness, the borderline pain in the pleasure they’d given each other, had been unprecedented until now.
And they hadn’t even kissed.
She frowned. The whole thing had been so clinical. Smith knew how to make her come. Knew where to lick and suck and press and touch.
It was as if he’d set out to make her—and himself—climax as quickly as possible. With the least amount of intimacy allowable.
Her overly aroused body finally began to settle down as she contemplated that fact. Hating how used it made her feel.
She now understood what he’d meant when he told her that the sex between them after her miscarriage had been cold and passionless. How had he put it?
Very fucking unsatisfactory.
Because while, for her, what had just happened had felt hotter than hellfire, Smith had been rushing them both to orgasm with ice-cold efficiency.
Exactly what he’d been doing whenever they’d made love—fucked—in the last six months.
Why?
Upon reflection she recognized how cynical his actions had become. It was as if he’d divorced himself from any emotional aspect, and it left her feeling sick to her stomach. And made the whole encounter feel sordid and ugly.
She slicked the straight fall of her black hair back from her face with shaky hands.
“You okay in there?” Smith’s voice called through the door.
She shut her eyes and dropped her head, fighting back tears.
“Yes,” she replied. “I’ll be right out.”
She gave herself one last look in her mirror. The flush had faded. She was now deathly pale, which made the dark shadows beneath her eyes even more pronounced.
Wonderful.
She’d gone from bargain-basement Lara Croft to low-budget Morticia Addams.
Well, there was no helping that.
She straightened her shoulders and opened the door.
He was back in the kitchen, the place still smoky, but he’d opened all the windows and doors to air it out.
“Hey,” he said as she limped to the sofa and sat down. He seemed to be avoiding looking at her, which suited her just fine.
She was drained and devastated after her revelation in the bathroom and her appetite completely lost. She just wanted to get some sleep and get out of here in the morning.
“Will the fire department come?” she asked, not particularly interested. She listlessly plucked at the fringe of the lap blanket draped across the arm of the couch.
“No. I called and explained the situation.”
“Right.”
“I’m gonna make some sandwiches and—”
“I’m not hungry. Please don’t bother making one for me.” She hadn’t put the boot back on and lifted her legs onto the sofa.
She sensed him looking at her. The first time his eyes had touched her since she’d returned from the bathroom. She didn’t turn her head to meet his gaze and instead dropped it on the sofa arm.
“Are you okay?” The question was tentative.
“Not really,” she admitted, closing her eyes. “But I will be.”
She curled on her side and drew her knees up to her chest, tucking her hands between her thighs.
She opened her eyes to find him staring at her with a concerned frown.
“That was a mistake, right?” she whispered. “What happened before?”
She saw his throat move as he swallowed and he nodded.
“I think so.” His voice was equally quiet.
“It felt so good,” she confessed. “But just now, in the bathroom, I realized that it wasn’t. It was like you said. No passion. Cold. You wanted me. But not really. Not in any meaningful way.”
“Kenna.” The two syllables were coated with sadness, defeat, and censure. Even her name had been reduced to nothing but a rebuke and it shredded the last remnants of her heart.
“I’m sorry I did this to us.” Her eyes drifted shut again as the last forty-eight hours began to take their toll. She was so exhausted. And the soporific effects of the painkillers she was taking didn’t help.
She sighed deeply as her body and mind shut down—a trauma response to the immense emotional, psychological, and even physical, damage of the last few days—and she fell asleep.