Kimberly
There is no calculation for the moment the ice gives way; there is only the sudden, violent depth of the water
There was nothing patient about it.
His mouth was hot and firm and demanding, and I tasted whiskey.
I kissed him back.
I gave it all back with interest. My spine hit the terrace railing and his body pressed against mine, his hand cupping the back of my head to keep me from the cold stone.
He made a sound against my mouth, a low rasp that broke against my lips, more vibration than voice, and it traveled through every nerve I had.
When we broke apart we were both wrecked. His forehead rested against mine, his breathing ragged, his hands still tangled in my hair. His eyes were open, silver in the dark, and he looked at me like a man standing at the edge of something he couldn’t calculate the depth of.
"Kim." My name in his mouth sounded like a question he was terrified to ask.
I answered by pulling him back down by the collar of his shirt and whispering, against his lips, "Stop talking for once in your life."
He kissed me again, deeper this time, one hand sliding to the small of my back, pressing me flush against him until there was no air between us.
Then his arm hooked around my waist and he walked me backward through the terrace doors, through the dark study, into the hallway, his mouth never leaving mine, and I went with him because I was done pretending I didn’t want to be wherever he was.
We made it to his room. The door closed behind us.
Moonlight poured through the tall windows, throwing long silver rectangles across the dark floor and across the bed.
He stopped in the middle of the room and looked at me, and I looked back, and the air between us was so charged I could feel it on my skin, like static before a storm.
He reached for me first. Slowly. His fingers found the hem of my shirt and he lifted it, watching my face the whole time, his gray eyes asking a question his mouth wouldn’t form.
I lifted my arms. He pulled the cotton over my head and let it fall to the floor.
Then I was standing in the silver light in nothing but my bra and the pendant at my throat, the cold air on my bare skin, and I crossed my arms over my chest.
He caught my wrists and carefully pulled my arms apart, holding them at my sides, and he stepped back half a pace and let his eyes travel over me.
The way he looked at me made my breath catch in my throat.
It wasn’t an assessment. It wasn’t the cold, calculating gaze he used on quarterly reports and rival executives.
He looked at me the way you look at something that has knocked the air from your lungs and you’re still deciding whether to breathe again.
"Don’t," he said, his voice barely above a whisper. "Don’t ever hide from me."
"I’m not used to being looked at like that."
"Like what?"
"Like I matter."
His expression changed. The hunger was still there, hot and undeniable, but underneath it was something raw and unprotected, and he lifted his hand and brushed the hair back from my face, tucking a wild curl behind my ear.
His thumb traced the line of my jaw, slow, reverent, like he was memorizing the shape of me.
"You matter, Kim." He said it low and direct, the way he said everything that was true, without ornament, without performance. "You have mattered to me for longer than I was willing to admit. And if you let me, I’m going to spend the rest of tonight showing you exactly how much."
He kissed me then. Not the desperate, consuming kiss from the terrace. This one was slow. Deliberate.
His mouth moved against mine like he was learning me, tasting me, committing the shape of my lips to a memory he was building from scratch.
His hands followed. His palms traced the curve of my shoulders, unhurried, his thumbs grazing my collarbones.
Down my arms, raising goosebumps in their wake.
Across the dip of my waist, his fingers splaying wide against my bare skin, warm and possessive.
He unclasped my bra with one hand, a move that was so infuriatingly smooth I would have made a comment about it if my brain had been capable of producing words, which it was not.
"Show-off," I breathed.
"Efficient," he corrected, his mouth curving against my neck.
His lips traced a burning line from my jaw to the hollow beneath my ear, down the side of my throat to the spot where my pulse was hammering so visibly he pressed his mouth against it and held there, feeling the rhythm of me.
Then lower. The ridge of my collarbone. The pendant, which he kissed once, lightly, before continuing down.
He kissed the swell of my breast, and I made a sound I didn’t recognize.
His hand cupped me, his thumb brushing across sensitive skin in a slow, devastating circle, and my back arched off the bed of its own accord.
He watched my face while he did it, his eyes dark and intent, cataloging every gasp, every shiver, every involuntary response.
"Jackson." His name came out wrecked. "Please."
"Please what?" He was enjoying this. The bastard was actually enjoying watching me come apart under his hands, his expression a mix of concentration and barely contained satisfaction that made me want to slap him and pull him closer in equal measure.
"You know what."
"I need you to be specific, Ms. Bishop. I run a data-driven organization." He kissed the space between my breasts, slow and hot, and his hand slid down the flat of my stomach, his fingers trailing the curve of my waist, tracing the line of my hip, and I nearly came off the mattress.
"I need you to stop teasing me before I lose my mind."
"That’s more specific. I’ll take it under advisement.
" He didn’t stop. He kissed lower, his mouth hot against my navel, his teeth grazing the skin below it, until my hands were in his hair and I had genuinely lost the capacity for rational thought.
He was in no hurry. He was methodical, thorough, relentless, taking me apart one nerve at a time like a man disassembling a machine he intended to put back together better.
I pulled at his shirt. "Off. Now. If I’m the only one undressed in this room I’m filing a formal complaint."
He sat back on his heels and pulled the shirt over his head in one motion, and the moonlight hit him and I lost my train of thought completely.
Broad shoulders, the hard planes of his chest, a scar on his ribs I’d trace later, the defined line of muscle that ran from his hip downward.
He looked like he’d been carved by someone who took the assignment personally and then decided to make the rest of us feel inadequate.
"Stop staring, Ms. Bishop. It’s unprofessional."
"Fire me."
That earned me a real laugh, and it was the most beautiful sound I'd ever heard him make. Then he was over me again, his skin against mine, chest to chest, and the sensation of him, all that warm bare skin pressed against me, made every thought I’d ever had about keeping my distance feel like the most ridiculous lie I’d ever told.
He kissed down my body like he was writing something on my skin.
My throat. My breasts, where he lingered, his mouth and his hands working together until I was gripping the sheets and breathing in fragments.
My ribs, each one. The curve of my waist. My navel, where his tongue traced a circle that made my hips lift off the mattress.
The jut of my hip bone, where he pressed his lips and stayed, his breath hot against the most sensitive skin I owned, and I buried my fingers in his hair and forgot my own name.
He came back to me slowly, trailing kisses up the center of my body, and when his face was level with mine again he braced himself on his elbows and looked down at me, and the look on his face was the thing that undid me completely.
Want was there, yes, but underneath it lived something terrifyingly tender.
He'd been alone a very long time, and he was looking at me like the first person he'd ever wanted to let in.
"Tell me you want this," he murmured.
"I want this." I held his face between my palms, my thumbs tracing the sharp line of his cheekbones. "I want you. Every impossible, maddening, insufferable part."
He turned his head and kissed my palm. Then he pressed into me, slow, careful, and my breath caught.
My fingers dug into his shoulders. For one suspended moment neither of us moved.
We just held there, forehead to forehead, breathing each other’s air, adjusting to the reality that every barrier we’d built between us was gone.
"Look at me," he whispered.
I opened my eyes. His were right there, silver in the moonlight, and there was nothing corporate and nothing cold and nothing controlled left in them. Just a man, holding the woman he wanted, asking her without words to stay.
He moved. Slow at first. Watching my face like I was the only readable thing in a world full of data he’d stopped trusting. I wrapped my legs around him and pulled him deeper, and the sound he made against my neck dragged fire all the way down my spine.
The slowness didn’t last. It couldn’t. There was too much between us, too many weeks of fighting and wanting and refusing to want, and when the dam broke it broke for both of us.
He gripped the headboard with one hand and my hip with the other and moved with a rhythm that was no longer careful, it was desperate and deep and consuming, and I matched him, my nails raking down his back, my mouth against his shoulder, saying his name in a way I could never take back.
"God, Kim." It came out broken. Almost pained. He pressed his forehead into the curve of my neck and I could feel the tension in every muscle of his body, the restraint giving way to something raw. "You have no idea what you do to me."
"Show me."