Chapter 31
Killian
I wake up with her back pressed against me. The towel twisted around her body and my hand is resting on her bare hip. I don’t remember putting it there. My body does things around her that my brain doesn’t authorize.
She turns, pressing harder into me. A soft murmur escapes her lips, and I press my face into her hair and lie still. Her eyes flutter open, still soft from sleep.
For three seconds we just look at each other, and I don’t know what to do with the tenderness threatening to crack my ribs, so I kiss her forehead and roll off the bed.
Coward.
I go to the kitchen to make coffee, while she pulls clothes from my bag — one of my shirts and a pair of my shorts.
Everything she puts on is mine and I should not be this affected by a woman wearing my clothes, but I am.
The shirt hangs off her shoulder, the shorts are rolled at the waist, and her hair is wavy from sleeping damp. She’s never looked more like herself.
We move around each other in the small space, not touching each other. The charge between us is constant now — not building, just present, the way heat is present in summer.
I turn to cut bread and feel her gaze on my bare chest. I can feel the exact path her eyes take — collarbone, pectorals, abs, the stitched wound, and lower. When I glance at her, she doesn’t look away. She holds my stare for one second, then drops her eyes back to my body.
Fuck.
She reaches past me for a knife. Intentionally. Her body is pressing against my back, not moving away.
“Ivy.” I warn.
“You said not yet.” Her eyes are on the counter, not on me. “In the shower.”
I turn to face her. “I remember.”
Her eyes snap to mine, something flickering in them — not the clinical Ivy, not the hesitant Ivy.
“Is it yet?”
Three words and my entire defense structure collapses.
I have every reason to say no. She doesn’t know I’m Ghost. The lie is still between us.
The decent thing — the honest thing — would be to tell her before I touch her again.
But she’s inches from me and she’s asking and she’s present, not crashing, not running.
She’s choosing. And with every breath the lie gets lighter and the want gets heavier.
“If we start this,” I say, and my voice is barely holding, “I’m not going to want to stop.”
“Then don’t.”
“Ivy —”
“I’ve been waiting seven years to feel something. Don’t make me wait anymore. Please.”
One moment we’re standing apart and the next my hand is fisted in her hair.
My mouth is on hers and I’m not kissing her, I’m consuming her — taking her bottom lip between my teeth, my tongue finding hers, tasting the coffee and the sleep and the underneath of her that’s become the only flavor I want for the rest of my life.
I lift her. Her legs wrap around my waist and the heat between her thighs presses against me through the thin fabric, making my vision narrow to a point. My mouth doesn’t leave hers when her back hits the mattress and I lower myself between her thighs, hovering over her.
My mouth moves to her neck grazing her pulse with my teeth. She arches into me, her hips grinding upward, and the friction drags a groan from my chest.
I pull back and look at her. Her dilated pupils are eating the gray. Her cheeks are flushed and her lips are swollen. She looks like she’s already mid-orgasm and I haven’t even started.
“Tell me if you want me to stop.”
“I don’t want you to stop.”
I pull my shirt off her body, and the air leaves my lungs. There’s nothing underneath.
I lower my head and take one nipple between my lips, circling it with my tongue before biting down softly, then give the other the same attention. I learn what makes her back arch and what makes her hips grind.
My mouth starts moving down until I reach the soft skin below her navel where the muscles flutter under my lips. My fingers find the waistband of the shorts. I look up at her.
“Still good?”
“Yes.” Her voice is wrecked.
I pull the shorts down her legs. The damp spot on the cotton is visible and my mouth waters. I trace the edge of the cotton with my thumb, following the line where the fabric meets the skin. Her entire body erupts in goosebumps, and her hips lift off the mattress.
“Killian —”
“I’ve got you.”
I pull the last piece of fabric down, watching her face the entire time.
I settle between her thighs. My shoulders spread her legs wider, and I look at her. The sight of her — glistening, swollen, exposed — makes something possessive and feral take over every rational thought I have.
Mine. This is mine.
I press a kiss to her inner thigh, making her gasp, and another, higher. My breath ghosts over her and her hips rise off the bed.
I pause.
The way she responds — her eyes are closed, her hands are fisted in the sheets, and her chest is heaving. This isn’t a woman who’s done this before.
“Ivy.” My tone is gentle. “Have you done this before?”
Her eyes open and the vulnerability in them is staggering. “No.”
My entire body goes still.
No. Twenty-two years of Malachi keeping her pristine — preserved, maintained, untouched. Merchandise in its original packaging. And she’s giving this to me. The man who’s been lying to her since before he knew her name.
The guilt hits and it’s immediately, savagely overridden by something darker. Something possessive and primitive that grabs the guilt by the throat and shoves it into a corner.
First. I’m the first. I’m the first person who will ever taste her, touch her, make her come.
“Then I’ll make it so good you’ll forget every man who ever looked at you wrong.”
Her breath catches and my tongue slides through her folds. The taste of her floods my mouth and the world tilts on its axis.
I have killed men and felt nothing. I have been shot, stabbed, burned, and broken, and felt nothing. But this. The taste of this woman — salt, warmth, and something so purely, devastatingly her that my hands grip her thighs hard enough to bruise.
I will burn down everything I’ve ever built to taste this again.
Her hips jerk and I pin her down with one arm across her stomach. “Easy.” My voice vibrates against her skin, making her gasp. “Let me take care of you.”
I’m not taking care of her. I’m devouring her. My tongue finds her clit and I circle it — slow and deliberate, learning the pressure that makes her moan and the speed that makes her shake.
I’m mapping every inch of her with my mouth like she’s a landscape I intend to memorize. She’s making sounds she’s never made before — broken, raw, uninstructed. The sounds of a body that’s been locked down for twenty-two years finally being given permission to exist.
I slide one finger inside her. The tightness makes me close my eyes.
Virgin. She’s so tight it’s going to kill me when I’m inside her and I’m going to die smiling.
I add a second finger, stretching her. I curl them and my name is ripped from her throat like a broken prayer.
I work her with my mouth and my fingers together, finding a rhythm that makes her shake.
Her hands find my hair, pulling hard enough to sting, and the pain goes straight to my cock.
I groan against her and the vibration makes her gasp.
Her hips start grinding against my face and she’s not controlled anymore. She’s just feeling.
“That’s it,” I say against her, my lips moving against her clit. “Take what you need. Ride my face, Ivy.”
Her thighs start shaking around my head. I can feel her clenching around my fingers, as she chases her release.
“Killian —”
“Let go. I’ve got you.”
I suck her clit harder and curl my fingers deeper, making her shatter.
Her entire body convulses. Her thighs clamp around my head and her back arches off the mattress.
The cry that tears from her throat fills the cabin, raw and uncontrolled, the most honest sound she’s ever made.
I work her through it — slower, gentler, drawing every last tremor from her body until her hands push weakly at my head.
I press one last kiss to her inner thigh before I lie beside her and watch her come back to herself. She looks wrecked and luminous. I did that. I was the first person to give her that.
She turns her head. Her eyes drop to the outline in my boxers. Something shifts in her expression — not curiosity. Hunger.
“Killian?”
“Yeah?”
“I want to do that. To you.”
“Yeah?” My voice is wrecked. “Show me.”
She pushes up and pulls me down onto the mattress. I can see the uncertainty in her eyes.
“Don’t overthink it.” My voice is low. “Touch me the way you want to. There’s no wrong way.”
She pulls my boxers down and her eyes widen, pausing for a second.
She wraps her hand around me, testing. Her fingers are cold and the contrast with my heat makes my entire body go rigid. A sound tears from my chest — primal and involuntary.
“Fuck. Ivy.”
She strokes slowly, watching my face with those analytical gray eyes.
“Tighter.” I grit it out. “Grip me tighter. And twist at the top.”
She obeys and runs her thumb over the tip. My hips jerk and my hands fist in the sheets.
“Just like that. Fuck. Just like that.”
She finds a rhythm — steady and precise, the surgeon’s hands applying their skill to something medical school doesn’t teach. I’m watching her face while she watches her hand and the concentration, that focused intensity, is pushing me toward the edge faster than anything she’s doing physically.
“Use your mouth.”
She lowers her head and takes my tip between her lips.
I curse loud enough to echo off the stone walls. Her tongue swirls over the head and this woman who’s never done this before is dismantling me with the same precision she uses to kill.
“More. Take more of me. As much as you can.”
Her hand wraps around my base, taking me deeper, finding a rhythm between her hand and her lips that’s instinctive. She’s learning in real time — reading my responses, adjusting pressure, cataloguing what makes me groan and what makes me shake.
My hand ties itself in her hair, guiding her. “Flatten your tongue. Fuck — yes, like that. Now suck. Harder.”
She obeys every instruction and hollows her cheeks. She looks up at me through her lashes with gray eyes as she speeds up. Her face gets messy and the sounds she makes are obscene and perfect.
“Ivy — God — your mouth —”
She takes me deeper until she gags, making my entire body shudder. She swallows around my tip, tears running down her face, and the sight of her — crying, refusing to stop, looking up at me with wet eyes and swollen lips — pushes me to the edge.
She pulls back just enough to speak, her hand still working me. “I want to taste you, Killian.”
Something inside me breaks. “Fuck. Fuck, Ivy —”
She takes me back in her mouth and the orgasm tears through me so hard my vision goes black. She works me through it, milking every drop of cum, before releasing me with one slow, deliberate lick that makes my cock twitch.
I’m destroyed. This woman who’s never done this before just took me apart with surgical precision, swallowed the evidence, and licked her lips after.
She crawls up my body and settles against my side. My arms wrap around her immediately, like she’s something I’m afraid will be taken.
I turn my head. She’s looking at me with something that might be pride.
“Where the hell did you learn to do that?”
“I paid attention.”
“To what?”
“You. What you reacted to. It was like… research.”
I stare at her. “Research.”
She conducted research with my cock in her mouth, and I’ve never been more attracted to anyone in my life.
“Observation is how I learn. I’m a scientist.”
I pull her closer and kiss her, tasting myself on her tongue. The combination of her taste and mine in her mouth is the most obscene and perfect thing I’ve ever experienced.
“Fuck, I love how you taste with my taste on your lips,” I murmur into the kiss.
The cabin fills with golden light. We’re tangled together, her head rests on my chest, and my fingers are tracing her hip. The quiet is total — no city noise, no sirens, no threats. Just our breathing and the distant sound of wind through wheat fields.
“Killian?”
“Mm.”
“Why not… everything?” She traces a scar on my chest absently. “Why stop where we stopped?”
I close my eyes. The honest answer is the lie — I can’t be inside her with that secret between us. But I can’t say that. Not yet.
“Because when I’m inside you, I want nothing else in the room. Just you and me and a choice we both made with clear heads.”
She’s quiet for a moment. “Okay.”
She accepts my answer, because she trusts me. She’s lying on me with my taste in her mouth and my handprints on her thighs, trusting me, and I’m holding the biggest lie of her life against my ribcage.
“Watching you take control of something for the first time is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” I pause. “And the hottest. Mostly the hottest.”
She buries her face in my chest. I can feel her smile against my skin.
“You’re going to ruin me,” I say quietly. “You know that, right?”
She kisses my chest. Then my jaw. Then the corner of my mouth.
“I was planning to.”
She falls asleep and I stay awake, because that’s what I do. I stay awake and watch her sleep, thinking about what I’ve done and what I haven’t done and what I need to do before this gets any deeper.
I need to tell her the truth.
Before the next time. Before I’m inside her. Before she gives me the last thing she has to give and I take it with a lie sitting in my mouth.
Her taste is still on my tongue. The taste I will burn down everything I’ve ever built to have again.
I hold her tighter and I make myself a promise. Soon.