Chapter 20
Chapter
Twenty
Christ.
Smith flinched at the heart-wrenching admission. He hadn’t known the words he’d flung at her so impulsively all those weeks ago would hit quite so hard.
He’d said them out of anger, pain, frustration, and even meant them. But if he’d known then what he knew now, he would have picked his words more carefully. Because he’d inadvertently chosen the perfect words with which to punish her.
“Kenna, the things I said that night were…” He shook his head as he considered what to say.
He needed to take more care with his words around her and think where and how they would land.
“Cruel. I said a lot of really cruel shit. That awful comment I made about you being the last woman on earth I’d ever want to have a child with… ”
She paled, her eyes gleaming with tears of remembered pain and his heart just about broke at the sight of them.
“It was so fucking unforgivable. I wanted to inflict the maximum amount of damage. I wanted you to understand that there was nothing left between us. I chose to go scorched earth with you because I thought it was the easiest, fastest way to end things. It was a disgraceful way to speak to you. Shameful and disrespectful and showed none of the regard and deference due to you as my wife. You didn’t deserve it. And I’m so fucking sorry.
“I can’t say I never meant to hurt you, because that would be a lie. I wanted to hurt you, so I spewed out all of that poison. And then I walked out believing that you were bulletproof, and that nothing I had said would even leave a dent.
“It was only later, halfway to Riversend, that reaction set in. For the first time, I actually heard what I’d said to you.
My own words kept echoing around my head.
Over and over again. The ugliness of them.
The cruelty. And I don’t remember much after that.
I pulled over somewhere, I know that much. And threw up on the side of the road.”
A small, painful sob shuddered through her body and she retreated even further into herself.
“You only said those things because I let you believe that I was thick-skinned, unfeeling, and uncaring,” she whispered.
“Don’t you dare take the blame for my dickholeishness, Kenna. Let me have this one.”
He was gratified when his silly words teased a rusty, wet giggle from her.
“But you’re Mr. Nice Guy, Smith,” she croaked, her voice still thick with tears. “Nobody would believe for a second that you’re a dickhole. Better to leave me as the villain of the piece. More plausible.”
“You saying I don’t have it in me to be a villain, sweetheart?” he asked in mock outrage. “I’ll have you know I can brood and glower and snap and snarl with the best of them.”
“Yes, I’ve noticed,” she said quietly.
God, he had really fucking done a number on her. Smith, along with the rest of the glowering, glaring, snapping, and snarling men in her life.
“And I’ve noticed that you’re more of a Miss Nice Girl than you believe, Kenna.”
She smiled through her tears, and the brave beauty of it wrapped around his heart like a fist and squeezed. He lifted a hand to her face, wiping the tears from one wet cheek.
“I hate it when you cry.”
“I’ve turned into the proverbial watering pot this week.
After you left, I allotted myself one day to cry.
Compartmentalizing, like I’ve always done.
Only it didn’t work this time. Every time I slowed down and had a moment to think and remember, more pain would come.
Along with the tears. I couldn’t function like that.
That’s when I decided to come here. I needed some kind of…
I don’t know. Closure, maybe? And I do think that I needed to hear some of what you’d said that night, ugly though it may have been.
I’d kept you out. And I thought, maybe if I could find a way to let you in, we could figure everything out. ”
He planted a soft, achingly sweet kiss at the corner of her mouth and she lifted her wet eyes to his and smiled. A small, tremulous, lovely thing.
“I missed you, Smith,” she said softly.
He groaned and kissed her again, deeper and longer this time. His hand moved to her still-damp hair, wrapped a handful of the silken strands around his fist, and gently tugged her head back to give him better access to her succulent mouth.
She moaned, the sound a surrender, and parted her lips. He suppressed a surge of triumph at the acquiescence, urging himself to be gentle, go slow, give comfort rather than take passion.
But the already tenuous grip he had on his control slipped completely when one of her soft, capable hands slid beneath hem of his T-shirt and found his bare skin.
He grunted in surprise at the tentative contact and then groaned, low and long, when that impudent hand slid up over his abs and toward his chest.
He breathed a reverent “fuck” into her mouth when she scissored one of his hard nipples between her index and middle fingers and squeezed. She knew exactly how sensitive they were.
He urged her closer, never lifting his lips from hers, and readjusted their position until she was straddled across his lap, knees digging into the firm seat on either side of his thighs.
She eagerly ground her heat against his aching cock and he bucked violently in response against her, nearly unseating her.
His palms splayed over her narrow hips to both anchor her in place, as well as slow down her eager movements. He ignored her protesting moan when he curtailed her movements and continued to voraciously devour her mouth.
Embracing Smith like this, especially after the highly emotional and intense last half hour, felt exactly right. Kenny needed this. They both did. A release from all the tension and complex emotions. Sex would likely complicate matters between them even more, but right now, she didn’t care much.
She needed this. Needed him.
Her right foot was weighed down by the stupid cast and she impatiently struggled to undo the Velcro straps with one hand without breaking their kiss.
Smith laughed, the muffled sound swallowed by Kenny, and shifted his head back to give them both some breathing room.
“What are you doing?” he asked, sounding hoarse and dazed and amused all at the same time.
“Help me get this damned boot off,” she muttered, panting as she tugged at the straps with fumbling fingers.
He wrapped an arm around her narrow waist and pulled her closer until her chest was flush against his and her pussy was plastered against the hard ridge of his cock, allowing him easier access to the boot.
He pushed her hand aside and made quick work of peeling away enough of the straps to loosen the boot.
Gravity did the rest and the boot met the floor with a muted thud.
“You okay?” he asked, his ferociously intent eyes already back on her mouth with all the focus of an obsessed man.
“Hmm?” Her dazed brain couldn’t quite make sense of the hoarse question.
“Foot?” He didn’t seem much more capable than she at coherent speech or thought.
And that was okay. Kenny was all talked out for now.
“It’s fine,” she promised, leaning in, wanting his mouth on hers again. But he drew his head back, remaining just out of her reach.
“Smith,” she implored, her voice low and terse with frustration.
“I don’t know how far, or where, we should take this, Kenna,” he confessed. His face was flushed, lips swollen, eyes smoldering and heavy-lidded. That, combined with the very hard cock throbbing against her wet, spread pussy was giving her clear signals of exactly where they should take this.
So his hesitation confused her.
“Just throwing this out there,” she murmured, her voice thick and fractured. “But I’m thinking you put your penis into my vagina and slam it around a bit until we both come?”
He buried his face into her neck and groaned a chuckle.
“Slam it around a bit?” His voice was incredulous but also so light and happy. Happier than she’d heard it in more than a year. “Sexy.”
She slid her hand down his hard chest—his T-shirt had to go soon—and wedged it between them to cup his thick cock.
“Allow me to elaborate then,” she rasped as her hand squeezed the turgid bulge through the soft fleece of his sweatpants.
“You take this big, beautiful cock, and shove it hard and fast into my hot, dripping wet pussy. And then you fuck me until neither of us can see straight. Until the only word I’m capable of speaking is Smith and the only voice you’re able to hear is mine. ”
He jerked in her hand and she felt his lips press into the vulnerable cove of her neck.
“I don’t have any condoms.”
“I’m on birth control.”
“Kenna, you’re sure? You won’t regret—”
She shut him up with a kiss and he inhaled sharply, arms tightening around her almost painfully.
It felt like the beginning.
The intensity, the frantic lust…
The all-consuming desperation to tear each other’s clothes off and fuck until nothing else mattered and nobody else existed.
Calloused hands moved, one down to the small of her back and the other to the back of her head, where his fingers wove themselves into her long hair.
Her mouth opened helplessly beneath his and his hungry, questing tongue responded to the invitation without a second’s hesitation.
It was like nothing else she’d ever experienced.
His kiss was all-consuming and Kenny luxuriated in it.
She wanted to crawl into his skin, become a part of him. Surrender herself completely to him.
It should terrify her, this need to give herself up so entirely. But she couldn’t care.
He groaned, and wrenched his mouth from hers.
“Wait,” he whispered urgently, she made a high-pitched sound of protest and her mouth followed his. But to her frustration, he avoided her. “Wait a second, Kenna. I want your skin on mine!”
He frantically pushed her hoodie up over her chest, a satisfied sound rolling from him at the sight of her naked flesh beneath, dragging it up over arms and head to carelessly toss it aside on the sofa next to them.