17. AVA #2
Kai leaves cash on the table and stands. His hand finds the small of my back as he guides me through the restaurant.
I keep my chin up, blinking hard, refusing to be the woman crying in public on a first date. The night air hits my face when we step outside.
Neither of us speaks on the drive. I press my forehead against the glass, watching the city slide past as I try to breathe around the knot in my throat.
"Pull over."
He does on a side street with dark trees overhead, engine idling.
"I'm sorry." I wipe my eyes furiously. "I don't know why I'm crying. I'm not a crier. I'm being ridiculous and hormonal and I'm ruining the best date I've ever been on."
He's quiet. Then: "Come to my place instead."
"Why?"
"Because you're hurting and I'd rather you not be alone when you are."
The gentleness in his voice is worse than if he'd argued back.
Anger I know how to match. This patient, immovable tenderness makes me feel like I'm swinging at a wall that absorbs every blow and stays standing.
My fight bleeds out of me.
"Fine," I whisper.
The penthouse is dark when we walk in. The city burns through the windows, scattered light across a skyline I've memorized from this angle over weeks of visits.
Kai doesn't turn on the overheads. Just the lamp by the bed, warm and low, turning the room into something intimate.
I'm standing by the window, arms wrapped around myself, when he crosses the room and turns me to face him.
His thumb traces my cheekbone. Catches a tear I didn't realize had fallen.
"I'm not going anywhere," he says.
The lamplight carves his cheekbones, the line of his jaw, the shadows beneath his brow. His brown eyes are dark, focused, holding me with an attention that makes me feel like the most important thing in his world.
I reach up and trace the crooked bridge of his nose with my index finger. Down the slope of it, across the bump where it healed wrong.
"You don't know that," I say.
"I know enough."
His hands slide down my arms. His fingers lace through mine. He lifts my hand to his mouth and presses his lips against my knuckles. His eyes never leave mine.
Then his mouth finds mine. The kiss is soft, a promise delivered with his mouth because I'm too raw to hear it as words.
Something inside me surrenders.
I pull his shirt open. My palms flatten against the warm planes of his chest and I feel his heart hammering beneath his ribs, steady but fast.
The kiss deepens. His tongue slides against mine and heat blooms low in my belly, spreading outward until my skin is humming with it.
"Eyes open," he says.
I should stop this madness right now, but I have no fight left in me.
So I let him unzip my dress. The green silk whispers down my body and pools at my feet.
Cool air meets my skin and I watch his eyes darken as he takes in the black lace, the new fullness of my body, every change I've been trying to hide.
"You are so beautiful it makes me stupid," he says.
My eyes sting. A laugh escapes me.
If you knew why, you wouldn't touch me so gently.
He lifts me. My legs wrap around him, and the contact, his bare chest against mine, the heat of his skin, the rigid length of him pressing between my thighs, sends something molten flooding through me.
He lays me down. Follows me onto the mattress. His weight settles over me, heavy and grounding.
The full length of him presses against me, and the ache that's been building since the restaurant becomes a living thing clawing at the base of my spine.
"Tell me what you want," he says against my mouth.
"You."
"Tell me exactly."
"I want your mouth everywhere. I want to feel you on every inch of me until I can't remember being afraid."
His eyes flare. He kisses my jaw, the hollow between my collarbones. Each kiss is slow, pulling out sounds from me that I can't control.
His mouth travels lower. Over my breast, where his tongue circles my nipple through the lace until the friction has me writhing. His teeth scrape the peaked bud and I cry out, my fingers knotting in his hair.
"Sensitive," he murmurs.
"Painfully."
He pulls the lace down. Takes my bare nipple into his mouth and sucks.
The sensation rockets through my body with a force that makes my toes curl and my hips roll upward, searching for contact.
"You taste incredible," he says against my skin. "I could spend all night right here."
"Don't you dare stop there."
His low laugh vibrates against my breast. He moves to the other side, giving it the same devastating attention while his hand slides down my stomach. He hooks his fingers into the lace at my hips and drags it down.
Off.
Gone.
Then his mouth follows the path his hand traced. Down my ribs. Across my stomach. A kiss pressed to the curve below my navel that makes my heart stop for reasons he doesn't understand.
Lower.
His breath hits me first. Warm against the wettest, most swollen part of me. I'm so aroused the cool air stings.
"Look at me," he says.
I lift my head. His brown eyes hold mine from between my thighs, dark with want. His lips are parted, his breathing ragged.
The sight of Kai looking at me like I'm the only thing he'll ever need is devastating.
"I want to taste every part of you." His voice is raw. "Say yes."
"Yes. Please, yes."
His mouth closes over me.
The first stroke of his tongue parts my folds and drags flat and slow over my clit.
My entire body jolts. My hands fly to his hair, anchoring myself to something solid because the sensation is so intense I feel like I'm coming apart at the molecular level.
He groans against me. The vibration shoots through my core and my thighs clamp around his head.
"You're shaking," he says.
"Because you're destroying me."
"Good. I want to destroy you."
His tongue works me with a patience that borders on cruelty.
Long, slow strokes interspersed with tight circles on my clit that make me see stars.
His hands grip my thighs, holding them open, keeping me spread for his mouth when my body tries to close around the pleasure.
"Talk to me," I gasp. "Tell me what I taste like."
He lifts his head just enough to speak. His lips are glistening. "Like mine."
The possessiveness in those two words detonates something in my chest. A sob or a moan or both tangles in my throat.
His mouth returns, more insistent now. His tongue plunges inside me, fucking me with it, then drags back to my clit where he sucks the swollen bud between his lips.
"Kai..." My voice is unrecognizable. "I'm close. I'm so close."
"Not yet."