18. Kara
18
KARA
P anic trickled in slowly, a tiny stream of adrenaline that had me spinning around in the small room and grabbing for the handle that did nothing when I yanked on it.
The trickle quickly became a flood, my chest constricting until I couldn’t breathe.
Hayden’s arms came around me. “Hey. It’s okay.”
Except it wasn’t. It wasn’t at all. My throat felt thick. “I can’t breathe.”
He tightened his grip on me, lowering his face so his gaze was locked on mine. “You can. You were breathing a second ago before that door locked. The air hasn’t changed, and it won’t. This room isn’t airtight. I already locked myself in here the other day and I was just fine.”
But his calm words did little to ease the racing in my heart.
“Women need to be reborn when they have sinned. They need to prove their worth. Prove that the evil can be leached from their souls,” I mumbled, fighting the urge to claw at my skin.
Hayden’s face paled, understanding dawning in his expression.
I was back in that box.
Back beneath the dirt.
Gasping for air that had run out too fast.
Trembles wracked my body. Darkness surrounded me, blacking out the light, the food on the shelves, Hayden.
All I could smell was dirt.
“Women need to be reborn when they have sinned. They need to prove their worth. Prove that the evil can be leached from their souls,” I repeated, Josiah’s words burned into my memory, his words scalding my tongue, and yet I couldn’t stop myself from saying them over and over.
Hayden’s fingers gripped my arms. “Kara!”
It was my fault. The Lord was punishing me for my disobedience.
He always punished me.
“Kara!”
Hayden shook me hard enough, and I opened my eyes.
The pure terror in his shocked me.
“You aren’t in that box,” he insisted. “You’re here. In the kitchen at my restaurant with me. We’re locked in but we have enough air. We have food and water, and Hawk will be back soon to let us out.”
“I’m going to die,” I whispered, a sob building up my throat.
But Hayden’s expression was fierce. “Not today. Not in here. Not on my watch. Look around. Tell me what you see.”
I twisted to one side, forcing my eyes to focus on what was in front of my face instead of what was in my head. “Salt. Pepper. Oil.”
“Bread,” he continued for me. “Honey. Soy sauce.”
I tracked down those items, nodding when I spotted them on the shelves. “Yeast. Vanilla extract. Flour.” I gawked at the size of the bags. “Why on earth do you need that much flour?”
Hayden laughed, his relief evident as he leaned back on the door and then slid down it to the floor, taking me with him. “I don’t know. I got overexcited with ordering last week and now I have enough flour to last a year.” He put his arm around my shoulders. “Are you okay?”
I went to say I was, an apology for my embarrassing behavior on my lips. But I was so sick of apologizing for everything I did. What had happened to me wasn’t my fault, and I couldn’t control how my body reacted when reminded of it. “No,” I whispered. “I’m not.”
Hayden pressed his lips to the top of my head. “What can I do? I want to help but I don’t know how.”
I leaned my head on his shoulder, not sure how to answer him either. Until something popped into my head, something that almost had me smiling, despite the situation. “Tell me more about how you like Hawk.”
Hayden groaned. “You’re really fixated on that, aren’t you?”
“It’s that or I panic about not being able to breathe.” I hid a smile. “It’s coming back. You better tell me quick.”
“How about I tell you how much I like you instead?” He put two fingers beneath my chin and twisted my face up. “I don’t want to talk about Hawk when I could be kissing you.”
He lowered his mouth to mine, and all thoughts of Hawk and being locked in a tiny room evaporated from my brain.
All that existed was me and Hayden. My brain narrowed down to the places our bodies connected. Hands. Mouths. Fingers. Tongues. He kissed me until my heart was racing and my breathing was too quick, not because of being trapped, but because of how he wanted me.
We kissed until Josiah’s words floated away, and until the kisses became urgent, desperate, our moans of pleasure echoing around the room instead of my screams of panic.
“You’re killing me,” Hayden murmured over my mouth. “Fucking hell, Kara. I can’t keep kissing you like this.”
He pulled away, breathing hard, but I dragged him back, demanding his lips this time, instead of just accepting what he wanted to give. I needed him. I needed everything he made me feel and everything he made me forget. I climbed into his lap, straddling his legs and wrapping my arms around his neck, demanding his kisses like they were air I needed to breathe.
His hands traced up my back, skating along my spine and drawing me closer. His tongue found its way into my mouth, and I moaned into him, my core igniting at being pressed against the very noticeable ridge in his black work pants.
“I’ve thought about kissing you like this so many times,” he whispered. “You aren’t real. I had myself convinced I made you up.”
I shook my head. “You didn’t. I’ve thought about kissing you too.” So many times. I’d lain in bed awake at night for years, believing he lived only in my head, but imagining him breaking down the gates of Ethereal Eden and whisking me away into the night like I was a damsel and he was a knight.
I’d had to save myself. A fact I’d begun to take pride in.
It didn’t mean I didn’t want a fairy-tale ending with the prince though.
Or princes, if I let myself think of Hawk. Though he would have hated being thought of like that. No good for his street cred.
Hayden drew back slowly, his unfocused gaze becoming clearer. “I need to tell you something.”
I waited.
His eyes smoldered in the dim light of the pantry. “I’ve thought about doing a lot more than just kissing you, Kara.”
My breath faltered. Suddenly I was that young woman, lying on her bed, broken by a man who should have loved her but had used and abused her until her soul wept for someone she barely knew. A man she’d thought was dead. Pining for a ghost had still been better than her reality.
I was stronger now, Hawk had built me up until I wasn’t just that shell of a woman who’d arrived at the Slayers’ compound, fleeing from danger.
But that broken woman inside me who had longed for Hayden, clung to him as the only safe place she’d ever known, was dying to know what he wanted from her.
And already desperate to give it to him.
“I want you naked,” he murmured. “I want to watch you take your clothes off for me.”
My breath hitched. It wasn’t a demand, the sort Hawk would have made of me. It was gentler. One I could have refused if I’d wanted to.
I didn’t want to. “Then tell me to do it.”
He groaned, searching my face and seeing clearly what I needed from him. “You’re submissive.”
I frowned. “I don’t know what that means.” Not in this context anyway.
Hayden watched me carefully. “You like being told what to do. At least in bed. It turns you on.”
Did it? I was just so used to taking orders. Josiah’s had certainly never turned me on. I shuddered at the thought of presenting myself to him, face down on the bed so he wouldn’t have to look at my face.
But Hawk had made demands of my body that had me tingling from head to toe with just a whisp of memory.
And Hayden’s gaze offered more of the same.
I nodded. Letting him know he was right.
He groaned. “Stand up, Kara. Take your clothes off for me. I want to see every inch of you.”
I widened my eyes at him. “Here?”
He kissed me deeply, then smiled against my lips. “Here. So every time I come in afterward, I’ll remember you standing here, so fucking sweet and naked, waiting for me to touch you.”
His lips traveled to my neck, kissing the sensitive spot beneath my ear. “Take your clothes off for me, Kara.”
A tremble of anticipation rolled through me as I pushed myself off his lap, leaving his erection to strain against his pants. I focused on it when doubts crept into my head about whether he’d find my body as attractive as Hawk did.
Or as repulsive as Josiah had.
I undid the row of tiny cardigan buttons that ran between my breasts. I only wore a bra beneath, and it wasn’t a pretty one, because I didn’t own anything sexy.
Josiah had been of the opinion that lingerie attracted the Devil.
But in that moment, I desperately wished for something more attractive. “I’m sorry.” My lack of confidence reared its ugly head. “I’m not pretty.”
Ever so slowly, Hayden moved his hand to the bulge in his pants. He flicked the button on his fly and lowered the zipper.
“Look what you do to me,” he whispered. “I’m so fucking hard over how goddamn sexy you are, Kara. Don’t ever tell me you aren’t pretty again.”
His hand slipped inside his underwear, and he hissed, wrapping his fingers around his shaft and pulling it out.
I stared at the thick head of his erection, the rest of him engulfed in his hand. I’d thought Hawk big. His dick more than any I’d seen before him. But Hayden’s was bigger again. Probably the same length but thick enough my legs trembled at the thought of how he’d stretch me if he were inside me.
I clamped my thighs together, needing something there to ease the throbbing need building inside me. I stared down at the beautiful man sitting at my feet, well aware he wasn’t in my league. “My clothes…” I protested. “My underwear—”
“Will all look best on the floor.” He pushed to his feet and took off my cardigan, dropping it by the door. He reached behind me, undoing the wide, unattractive backstrap on my bra and freeing my heavy breasts.
They hung lower than I thought was nice, but if Hayden noticed, his gaze didn’t give it away. He just continued undressing me, undoing the zipper at my hip and letting my skirt fall to join the rest of my clothes.
It wasn’t cold, but I shivered at being naked for him, his erection straining toward me, but him otherwise dressed. I eyed him, lowering his pants and underwear so I could get a better look.
“Do I scare you?” he asked softly.
I glanced up at him. “You’re big. I don’t know if I can take you.”
He chuckled. “That wasn’t what I meant.” He placed a kiss on my shoulder. “I have no doubt in my mind you’ll take my cock, Kara. I’ll get you so wet I’ll slide in without a second of resistance from your sweet pussy. But I can only get your body there if you aren’t scared of me.”
I focused on the buttons of his shirt, undoing them one after the other to reveal the golden skin beneath. “I’m not scared of you.” I drew the shirt off his shoulders. He’d kicked off his shoes and socks while I’d been working on his top half.
For a second, both of us just drank the other in. For the first time, there were no barriers between us. His body was all hard lines of muscle with dustings of golden hair across his chest that darkened as it trailed down his abs and met with the patch of hair at his base.
His gaze ran over me in a similar way, trailing across every curve as if committing it to memory, lingering on my breasts and hips and the junction of my thighs. But then he forced his gaze to meet my own. “I didn’t protect you when I should have. I kept you against your will. I’m as bad as—”
I silenced him with fingers to his mouth, my voice turning fierce because I knew exactly what he was going to say, and none of it was true. “Don’t ever say you’re anything like them. Caleb and Josiah and Luca…you’re nothing like them, you hear me? Not a thing. You’ve never hurt me, and I know you never will. You’re the reason Hayley Jade is even alive. We both would have died in that house if it hadn’t been for you. Don’t you know you’re my hero? One day, you’ll be hers too.”
He slowly shook his head. “I don’t deserve that.”
I wanted to argue. Wanted to wipe away the disgust he held for himself for the mistakes he’d made in the past. Except I knew he had to fight that battle on his own. It wasn’t one my words could forgive.
He had to find forgiveness in himself. I already had, from the moment he’d placed my daughter in my arms.
I kissed his lips. “Make it up to me then. Right now. Here, in this room where it’s just you and me. Make it up to me now and then we never talk about it again.”
He trailed a finger down my chest then pressed his hand over my heart, rubbing at the spot, his head low. “I wish it were that easy.”
I clasped his hand, moving it lower to my breast. “It can be.”
He cupped me there, squeezing my nipple between his fingers.
A jolt of pleasure erupted at his touch, and I let out a moan to encourage him, to show him I liked what he was doing.
He smiled, then leaned over, plucking a bottle of honey from the shelf beside me. He uncapped it and squeezed a dollop over my skin.
It was cold and sticky, but in the next second it was followed up with the warmth of his mouth, licking me clean. My nipples went hard, aching for more.
“Lie on the floor,” he whispered. “I want to put this all over your body.”
Heat flared inside me, reminding me I did indeed like when he told me what to do. It took away the awkwardness I felt at being less experienced. It let my brain shut off for just a while, which was a blessed relief considering it didn’t stop whirling at a million miles a minute every other hour of the day.
I lay out on a nest made of our discarded clothing, not caring the cold floor seeped through in a couple of places. The heat building inside me at the thought of him licking honey off my body was hot enough to keep me warm.
He balled up his shirt and put it behind my head, then squeezed the bottle, covering my breasts in sticky liquid, pooling it in my belly button.
“Spread your legs, Kara.”
Trembling, I widened my thighs, exposing my glistening pussy to him, already wet just from watching him.
Cold honey hit me there, and I cried out in pleasure.
“So fucking sweet,” he growled. “I almost wish I hadn’t put it anywhere else.” He knelt between my legs, bracing himself over me to lick my breasts. He suckled my nipples until they were pink and swollen and clean. Then he trailed his tongue along the soft rolls of my stomach, lapping up the trail of golden liquid.
I laughed when his tongue swirled across my belly button, tickling my skin, but the laughter quickly turned to moans when he kissed and sucked and licked his way lower, over the uneven skin and stretchmarks that had formed when I was pregnant.
His fingers traced the now silver lines reverently, and he gazed up at me. “These were red before.”
I nodded. They’d been red and angry and even sore sometimes, when my belly had been swollen tight with the baby growing inside me. But they’d settled over the years. They’d healed to be barely noticeable unless you touched me there, or you were all up close and personal with them like Hayden was right now.
“This is what makes you sexy,” he whispered, kissing my belly. “This is what turns me on. Knowing that even after everything you went through, you were strong enough to heal.” He kissed my mound. “That’s hot as fuck to me, Kara.”
His tongue pressed between the lips of my pussy, licking the honey from my core along with a generous dose of my arousal. He didn’t stop. He sucked and licked me, cleaning off every trace of honey and whispering sweet words about how beautiful I was in between.
This might have been rough and dirty, on the floor of a pantry, but even if I’d been on a bed somewhere with thousand-thread-count sheets, I wouldn’t have felt more like a queen.
He licked me until my thighs trembled with the force of an impending orgasm. He had to be uncomfortable in the tight space, but if he was, he made no complaint, and I forgot all about how small the space was when he slid his fingers inside me, hooking them to stroke the spot that never failed to get me wet.
The orgasm built quickly, fueled by his praises that I couldn’t get enough of and the talented way he knew exactly how to put his mouth on me. It shook my core until I clenched down around his fingers and grasped the back of his head, holding him there where I needed him, while I moaned his name as loud as I wanted because there was no one outside to hear it.
He finally lifted his head, with lips sticky and glistening with honey or my arousal, I didn’t know which. His fingers were coated in it too, and he wiped them off on his erection. I moaned when he gathered more from my sensitive slit so he was coated in my juices.
Widening my legs, I braced for the thick spear of his erection entering me.
He shook his head, pumping his shaft. “You aren’t ready.”
“I am,” I insisted.
But he wasn’t having it. He stared at the opening between my legs, and then at my breasts, his grip on his cock quickening with every stroke. “I want to come on you,” he murmured, eyes hot. “Hawk filled your pussy. I want me everywhere else.”
My gaze flared, wondering if everywhere else meant my mouth and my breasts and stomach.
Or if it also included my ass.
I trembled, wanting him there but knowing if he didn’t think my pussy could take him, then anywhere else would be impossible right now.
Hayden swiped his cock through my folds, not trying to enter me but keeping his shaft well lubricated.
“Hawk has been working my…” I flushed pink. “But I can’t… Not yet anyway.”
Hayden’s dick wept with precum. “Jesus, are you fucking serious? That hadn’t even crossed my mind. I just wanted to come on your clit and your tits. But now knowing that…” He groaned. “Fuck, that’s so hot. He’s not small. If you’re working up to taking him…” The look on his face was so full of heat and desire there was no mistaking what he was thinking about.
I flushed, but this time it was with pleasure, liking that he enjoyed what I was doing with Hawk and that he found it as hot as I did.
He brushed his cock over my ass, nothing more than a promise of what could come when I was ready, and then he jerked himself, squeezing his balls with his other hand and made a sticky mess of all the places he’d just licked clean.