12. KAI
KAI
You'll Beg Me
She's standing by the closed door like she's blocking an exit, her chin up, her arms folded.
All afternoon I watched Ava pretend she wasn't watching me.
Every stolen glance across the yard. The way her jaw locked when Lena touched my arm. The way she stood up so fast from those porch steps that Biscuit flinched.
She's spent weeks telling me she feels nothing. Her body has been screaming the opposite since the hospital.
But this is new. It’s possession, and she doesn't even realize she's showing it.
"Well?" She shifts her weight against the door. "Are you going to answer me or just stand there looking smug?"
"Lena is a family friend. She introduced herself. I was polite."
"Polite?" She repeats the word like I've insulted her intelligence. "Her hand was on your arm. She was laughing at everything you said. You're not that funny, Kai."
"You seem to think I'm funny enough to visit five days a week."
Her nostrils flare. "That's different."
"How?"
"Because I'm..." She catches herself, swallows whatever was about to come out. "Because I'm helping you recover. That's the arrangement."
"And Lena was making small talk at a family barbecue. That's a normal Saturday."
"She was flirting."
"Maybe."
"Maybe?" Her voice pitches higher. "She was doing everything short of climbing into your lap."
"I didn't notice."
"You didn't notice? That’s the excuse you want to come up with?"
"I was distracted."
"By what?"
"By the woman on the porch steps who kept pretending she wasn't staring at me."
The flush starts at her collarbones and climbs. She unfolds her arms, folds them again. Unfolds them.
"This room is the problem," she says, looking around. "You put us here on purpose."
"My mother assigned the rooms."
"And you let her because it suits you." She pushes off the door and takes a step toward me. "You proposed this whole weekend so you could put me in this room with nowhere to go."
"You can go anywhere you want. The door's right there."
She looks at it then at me. I stand, take a step toward her.
"You want me to be honest? I'm not going to pretend I don't want you, and I'm not going to pretend you don't want me back."
Her breathing accelerates, her pulse hammering in the hollow of her throat
"You don't know what I want."
"You just interrogated me about a woman who was chatting with me in front of everyone. That’s basically announcing your jealousy on the rooftop."
“I’m not jealous of you, and I don’t want you.”
“Oh, yeah? Then why are you scared of staying in this room with me?”
“I’m not…”
“Because you’re afraid of making advances at me? Do you think your control would slip in the middle of the night and you’d…”
Her hands ball into fists at her sides. “Stop it. You’re the one who tries to kiss me every chance you’ve got. You’re the one who can’t get his hands off me.”
I tap one foot on the floor, staring at her. I shouldn’t be taunting Ava, but I’m tired of running around in circles.
If she can be jealous of Lena talking to me while we’re fake dating, then what she feels for me isn’t just physical. And I want to know how far it goes.
“And you’re the one who keeps kissing and touching back like you’ve been starved of my affection,” I say.
“Oh, please! You don’t have that kind of effect on me.”
I grin. “Prove it.”
"You want me to prove this is nothing?" She takes another step, close enough that I can smell the citrus in her hair and the heat rising off her skin. "Fine. I'll prove it."
She grabs the front of my shirt with both fists, hauls me down to her mouth, and kisses me like she's trying to win the argument with her tongue.
I chuckle. She thinks she can put her mouth on mine and walk away with her walls intact.
I let her believe it for a few seconds.
Long enough for the taste of her to hit my bloodstream. For the sound she makes against my mouth, low and furious and hungry, to travel down my spine and settle between my legs.
Then I take over.
My hand slides into her hair. I kiss her deeper, slower, turning the kiss from a weapon into something thorough.
She shivers against me, her fists loosening in my shirt and then tightening again. My tongue strokes hers and she makes a sound against my mouth, a frustrated, hungry vibration I feel in my back teeth.
Heat pools low in my stomach and spreads. Every place her body presses against mine burns through the fabric.
She bites my lower lip. I groan into her mouth.
I walk her backward until her shoulders hit the door. The impact jolts through her body and into mine.
She arches forward, her hips pressing into mine. The contact sends a jolt of heat straight through me that shorts out rational thought.
I let her feel what she's doing, the hard length of me pressing against her stomach through my jeans.
She gasps into my mouth. Her fingers claw at my shoulders.
My mouth leaves hers then traces her jaw then her neck. My lips find the spot below her ear where her pulse hammers.
I pull back enough to look at her flushed, swollen lips swollen.
"You broke the rules," she breathes.
"Which one?"
"No kissing on the mouth."
"You kissed me."
"That was to prove a point."
My lips twitch. "What point?"
She tips her head back. The surrender in that motion makes me want to fuck her right there.
“That you don’t affect…”
I don’t wait for her to finish.
My mouth drops to the spot below her ear that makes her knees buckle. I suck gently and she makes a sound that goes straight to my cock.
My hands find the hem of her sweater, pulling it up slowly. She lifts her arms and I drag the sweater over her head.
Her bra is simple white cotton, nothing designed to seduce.
She doesn't need design. The swell of her breasts above the fabric, the rapid rise and fall of her breathing, the flush spreading down her chest; that's more than enough.
I unhook the clasp. She lets the bra fall.
Her breasts are full and soft, her nipples already peaked and dark pink against her flushed skin. The sight hits me somewhere primitive. I want to put my mouth on every part of her and take my time doing it.
So I do.
I start at her collarbone, kissing along the ridge.
My lips trace the upper curve of her left breast while my hand cups her right, my thumb finding her nipple and circling it with a pressure that makes her arch off the door.
Her skin is hot under my palm. Her nipple hardens against the center of my hand and I press my thumb against it, rolling slowly.
Her fingers dig into my shoulders.
I take her left nipple into my mouth. Light suction first. Then harder when she gasps. My tongue circles the peak, flattening against it, flicking.
Her hips jerk forward, grinding against my thigh.
The response sends a surge of heat through me so strong my hands shake. I press my thigh harder between her legs and she rides the pressure, her breath coming in short, ragged bursts while I work her with my mouth.
My other hand works her right breast, kneading, rolling the nipple between my thumb and forefinger. It’s gentle at first, pinching just enough to make her breath catch. Then it twists the nipple slightly, a fraction more pressure each time I feel her body respond.
I switch to her right breast. My mouth is wet and thorough, sucking her nipple deep, scraping gently with my teeth before soothing with my tongue.
My left hand finds the breast I've just left. The nipple is slick from my mouth and I roll it between my fingers, pinching just enough that her breath catches on a moan.
She's rocking against my thigh now in small rhythmic motions. Her fingers are buried in my hair, pulling, holding me against her chest.
I increase the pressure, sucking harder. My teeth close around her nipple and she cries out, the sound raw and uncontrolled.
I do it again and again. Each time I vary the intensity, reading her body. When her rhythm speeds up, I match it with my mouth. When her legs tremble, I press my thigh firmer between them so she has something to chase.
Her breathing fragments, becomes small, climbing sounds that vibrate through my skull and pulse straight to my cock.
I'm so hard it's painful but I don't adjust or take a single thing for myself because right now the only thing that matters is the woman coming apart against my mouth.
"Kai." My name comes out fractured. "What are you... I can't..."
She shatters against the door. Her spine bows, pressing her breast harder into my mouth.
A broken sound tears from her chest, half my name and half something wordless. Her thighs clamp around mine and I feel her whole body clench and pulse in waves.
I hold her through it. My mouth softens but doesn't leave. I press gentle, open kisses against her breast while her breathing heaves.
When she opens her eyes, the look on her face is stunned.
"Did I just come?"
"Yeah."
"From you kissing my breast?"
"Yeah."
"That's not..." She shakes her head, still breathing hard. "That doesn't happen."
"It just did."
She stares at me. Her expression cycles through disbelief, fury, then settles on determination.
Her hand drops between us, finds my cock hard and straining through my jeans.
Her squeeze is firm. “I’m going to prove to you that you’re more affected by my touch.”
The sensation is so sharp that my next breath comes out as a hiss through my teeth.
“That whole thing you just witnessed was a mistake,” she continues.
She unbuttons my jeans, pulls down the zipper. Her knuckles drag against the rigid length of me through my boxers. My teeth clench.
“It was just pent up frustration. I’m not affected by you in any way, but you can’t do without my touch.”
Her hand wraps around my cock and she strokes slowly while watching my face with intensity, like she's trying to take me apart one nerve ending at a time.
The first stroke steals my breath. The second buckles something in my spine. By the third, I've given up pretending I'm composed.
My hand braces against the door behind her. My forehead drops to her shoulder.
I can feel her heartbeat against my temple, rapid and fierce, and her breath is warm against my ear.