Chapter 7 #2
His thumb stroked the inside of her wrist in slow circles over the thin skin where her pulse beat hard against his touch.
“You think I haven’t noticed the way you look at yourself in the mirror lately?
Before all hell broke loose. The way your hands hesitate when you change?
And then attempting to do so quickly so that I can’t enjoy the view? ”
Her gaze dropped.
He stepped even closer, until the heat of her bare skin met the roughness of his shirt, and she let out a quiet breath against his throat.
“Look at me,” he said.
She did.
“I see you,” he told her. “All of you. The way you’re rounder here.
” His knuckles trailed down her side, over her hip, the curve of her thigh.
“The way your skin is hotter in places it wasn’t before.
” His hand moved up again, slowly, the back of his fingers grazing the underside of her breast. “The way your body is changing because it’s making room for our child. ”
Her breath shuddered out of her.
“That isn’t something I simply tolerate, Kara.” His mouth brushed her temple. “That’s something I worship.”
He bent his head and caught her mouth with his.
The kiss started slow, the way they always started, his hand cradling the back of her head and his thumb tracing the soft skin behind her ear.
He took his time tasting her, learning the way she felt against him tonight, the new fullness of her lower lip when he caught it gently between his.
Her body softened against his by degrees, her arms sliding up around his neck, her hands wrapping around the back of his neck.
His wolf rumbled approval low in his chest. He deepened the kiss in slow, deliberate increments, his tongue stroking into her mouth in a long, claiming pull that made her sigh against him.
Her hands slid down and fisted in his shirt and dragged it upward, and he obliged her without breaking the kiss, ducking his head only long enough to let her pull the shirt free and toss it somewhere behind them.
Her palms came back to his chest immediately, splaying flat over his ribs and skating up to his shoulders, and the soft, hungry sound she made when bare skin met bare skin nearly took the legs out from under him.
“Nick,” she whispered against his mouth.
“I’ve got you, baby.” His hand slid down her back, learning the new curves of her, and settled low at the base of her spine. “I’ve got you.”
He bent and caught her behind the knees in one smooth motion, lifting her into his arms. She let out a small, breathy laugh against his throat, her arms looping around his neck, and the sound of it loosened something inside him that had been clenched since the moment that ancient thing beneath the realm had touched her.
“Show off,” she murmured.
“Always.”
He carried her to the wide sleeping platform and laid her down on the furs with care that bordered on reverence, easing her back against the thick pelts until she was framed in the dark gray of them like something out of a dream he’d had every night for years and was only now allowed to keep.
Her hair spilled across the furs. The amber light slid along her bare skin and turned her gold, and he stopped breathing for a moment because she was his, and he had almost forgotten how to remember that without rage tangled into the gratitude.
He stripped the rest of his clothes off without ceremony.
Her eyes traveled over him as he did, slow and unhurried, and the warmth in her gaze was the only fire he ever needed to chase.
“Hey,” she said softly, holding out a hand to him.
“Hey, beautiful.” He took it, pressed his mouth into the center of her palm, and let her draw him down.
He covered her body with his own carefully, taking his weight on one forearm so that nothing pressed into the soft curve of her stomach. His other hand drifted up the inside of her thigh in a long, slow stroke that made her breath catch and her hips shift restlessly against the furs.
“Tell me,” he murmured against her throat. “Tell me what you need.”
“You. Always you.”
He grazed his teeth gently along the column of her neck and felt the shiver run all the way down her body. “Be more specific, baby. I want to hear you say it.”
A soft laugh broke out of her, half breath and half sound. “You're insufferable.”
“I’m thorough.”
“Same thing.”
“Tell me.”
Her hand slid over his shaved head, fingers tightening at the back of his head as she guided him down to her mouth. “I need you to put your hands on me, Nick. I need to feel you. All of you. I need to know we’re still here.”
His eyes closed for a heartbeat at the soft, honest weight of it.
“Then feel me,” he said. He took his time.
He kissed his way down her throat in slow, open-mouthed pulls that left her arching off the furs, and when his lips found her collarbone, he lingered there until she made a soft, frustrated sound that pulled a low laugh out of him. He smiled against her skin.
“Patience.”
Kara frowned at him, nearly a pout, which was sexy as hell. “I have been very patient.”
He gave her neck a quick lick. “Patience looks beautiful on you.”
“Nick.”
He moved lower. His mouth traced the soft slope of her chest, his hand sliding up to cup her breast with the deliberate care she needed now.
He learned the new fullness of her under his palm, the heavier weight of her, the way her breath caught harder when his thumb brushed across the tight peak of her.
He filed every reaction away carefully, the way he filed everything about her, and he used what he learned.
When his mouth replaced his hand, she gasped his name, her hips lifting off the furs, and his free hand pressed gently and grounding along her ribs to steady her.
“Yeah,” he breathed against her skin. “This is what you need, what I need.”
“Nick, I can’t, it’s, Nick.”
“Sensitive,” he murmured. “I know. I’ve got you. Just feel it.”
He kept going.
He kissed his way down the soft plane of her stomach, slowing when he reached the gentle curve at the base of it.
His mouth pressed there, lingered there, his hand splayed wide and protective over the warmth of her.
He stayed long enough that her hand drifted down to rest on his head, her fingers stroking once.
His throat closed for a beat. He kissed the soft skin again, low, reverent, and let her feel what he couldn’t get past his teeth.
Then he moved lower still.
He took his time with her there, too, slow and unhurried and ruthless in the steady, attentive way he had spent time learning her body.
Her hands dropped to the covers as she fisted them tightly, her thighs trembled against his shoulders, and the sounds she made tore through him and rearranged something in his chest. He brought her to the edge with deliberate cruelty, eased her back, and brought her up again, listening for every shift in her breath, watching her face, learning her all over again the way he learned her every single time, because she was his and he would never be done memorizing her.
When he finally let her fall, she came apart on a soft, broken sound of his name, and he stayed with her through every shudder, his hand stroking up and down her thigh in long, slow lines until she went boneless against the furs.
Only then did he move back up her body.
She caught his face in both hands the moment he was within reach and kissed him hard, her mouth open and hungry, tasting herself on him without hesitation, and his control slipped another notch sideways. He groaned into her mouth.
“I want you,” she whispered against his lips.
“You have me.”
“I want you in me, Nick.”
His forehead dropped to hers. He breathed once, slowly, the way he’d taught himself to breathe when she said things like that to him, because she could undo years of careful patience in a single sentence, and she knew it.
“Look at me,” he said.
Her eyes opened, dark and soft and entirely his.
“I love you,” he told her quietly. “More than I knew there was room inside me. You and the baby. There’s nothing in any realm that’s getting through me to either of you. Do you understand me?”
Her eyes filled. “I understand.”
He shifted between her thighs, his hand sliding under her knee to draw her leg up over his hip with care, and he eased into her slowly, watching her face the entire way.
Her lips parted on a soft, shaken sound, and his vision fogged at the edges for a moment as she took him in.
He stilled when he was fully seated, breathing through it, his forehead pressed to hers, both of them shaking.
“There you are,” he whispered.
“Nick.”
“I feel it, too.” Then he moved.