15. AVA #3
His jaw is tight, the muscles working beneath his beard. His eyes are dark with want, his breathing ragged. Every line of his body is strung tight with how badly he wants to fuck me.
"I do."
I freeze, straddling him, my hand still between us. My body is slick and aching and so wound up I can feel my legs pulse.
"You're hard in my hand and you want to stop?"
“I’d rather stop than have your version of sex.”
I recoil and start stepping away. But his hands squeeze my butt cheeks, sending new sensations into me.
“Stop it,” I breathe out.
He sighs.
"I want you, Ava. That's not the question." His voice is strained, his breathing ragged. "But not in this disconnected way, where here you close your eyes and pretend I'm just a body."
My hand drops from his waistband. My face burns.
"I'm not pretending anything."
He releases my hips. Lifts his hands away from my body, palms open, giving me space I didn't ask for and don't want.
"What I want with you is your eyes open and both of us fully in it." His voice is quiet but absolute. "I want to feel you, Ava. Not just your body. Having sex with you while you hide from me isn't respect. It's not what you deserve, and it's not what I want."
I stare at him. His chest is heaving. His cock is still rigid against my inner thigh. The heat of him is making it almost impossible to think.
"And if I can't give you that?"
His hands flex at his sides like it's taking everything he has not to reach for me.
"Then we don’t do it tonight. I’ll wait until you can."
The rejection burns through me like a lit match. He's choosing not to touch me because what I'm offering isn't enough for him.
I climb off his lap.
Cold air hits everywhere his body was, and I want to crawl back into his warmth so badly my hands shake.
But what he's asking for is worse than the cold.
He wants more than my body. He wants the real, unguarded, terrified version of you that I've spent my entire adult life keeping locked.
How can I give that to him? That would mean being at his mercy.
That woman is not someone I hand over. Not to anyone. Especially not to a man who can destroy me.
I turn away and pull the robe closed. Tie it with fingers that won't cooperate. Behind me, I hear him picking up his henley.
He's leaving. Good. Fine.
Except that’s not what I want. I want to feel the warmth of his touch, to savor his caress.
"Where are you going?"
"Home."
Pulling the covers back, I climb into bed. My eyes sting.
I should tell him goodnight. But what comes out of my traitorous mouth next makes things worse.
"It's late and you’ve had the worst day of your life, Kai. Just get in the bed."
Silence.
"I mean it. Get in."
He stands by the doorway, looking from me to the mattress.
My eyes sting. I turn away from him and stare at the blank wall.
The mattress dips behind me. His body slides in next to mine, warm and solid and close.
His arms wrap around my waist, pulling me back against his chest.
I can feel every inch of him against me. The heat of his bare skin through the silk. The hard length of him pressing against my lower back, his body still wanting what his mouth just refused.
His lips brush the back of my neck once, a kiss so gentle it makes my ribs ache.
“Don’t do that.” My voice breaks. “Don’t reject me and kiss me in the same breath.”
"I'm not rejecting you," he murmurs into my hair. "I'm waiting for you."
I don’t answer because if I open my mouth, the rawness building in my throat will come out as tears or truth. I can't afford either.
He arranges the covers over us carefully. His arm drapes across my waist, heavy and warm, and he tucks his body around mine.
His erection presses against the curve of my ass through the silk. Thick. Insistent. A physical argument against every word he just said.
But he doesn't move or grind. He just holds me.
His breathing slows. Deepens. His arm grows heavy.
He's asleep.
And I am burning alive.
His arm is draped across my stomach, his fingers curled loosely against the silk over my hip.
The ache between my legs is unbearable. Every inch of my skin is sensitized, every nerve still lit from his hands, his mouths.
I could have had him. His hands pushing the lace aside. His body filling mine with the slow, devastating patience I already know he's capable of.
All it required was the one thing I can't give.
Biscuit pads into the room and collapses beside the bed with a heavy sigh.
Kai's breath is warm and even against the back of my neck. His arm tightens in his sleep, pulling me closer. His hips shift forward just enough that the hard ridge of him presses firmly against me.
A sound escapes my throat. Small, involuntary, swallowed before it fully forms.
I close my eyes but can't sleep. My body won't let me.
Because the man wrapped around me offered me everything tonight and I handed it back. And lying here in the dark, aching and unsatisfied and pressed against the warmth of him, I am terrified that the reason it hurts this much isn't the sex I didn't get.
It's that some part of me wanted to say yes.