Chapter 19 #2
He releases the beam to bury his hands in my hair, gripping the back of my head to hold me in place.
Hard, hungry kisses leave me dizzy. And when I gasp, he takes the opening, tongue sweeping past my lips.
Tasting of rain and anguish, he takes and he takes, more and more, as I find myself melting into him.
All of my anger and frustration morphs into pure, undeniable need, as something deep inside me chants yes, yes, yes. I moan into his mouth, arching my body away from the pillar to press against his bare chest. I clutch at his shoulders, squeezing, pulling, urging him closer.
The encouragement snaps whatever tiny part of him was holding back, and his hands leave my face to grip my ass, lifting me off my feet and pinning me hard against the wood beam.
I mold eagerly against him, my breasts pressing against his bare chest while my legs instinctively wrap around his waist. Everything I do seems to stoke the inferno inside him.
“Yes,” I breathe, and he groans, thick with a desire so potent it makes my knees weak. The hard ridge of his erection presses against me, straining with need, and my own body answers, a wet heat pooling between my legs.
In this moment, it doesn’t matter that I’m angry with him, doesn’t matter that he lied to me.
I’m lost in a kind of madness, but it’s a madness I welcome.
I want to drown in it, in him. My palms slide greedily over the hot skin of his muscled chest and shoulders, needing to feel him, all of him.
The slick feeling of his skin, both of us still wet from the rain, nearly undoes me right there.
Then his touch is everywhere, the weight of his hands fulfilling the promise of his heated gaze all these weeks, trailing a path of fire down my throat, over my collarbone, until he finds the collar of my thin, damp T-shirt.
He doesn’t hesitate, ripping it in one rough motion without ever slowing, the sound of tearing fabric loud in the quiet den.
Cool air hits my damp, heated skin. But it’s immediately replaced by the searing heat of his mouth as he abandons my lips to blaze a trail of wet, open-mouthed kisses down my neck.
My chest flutters with each kiss, each touch—not just with desire, but with something deeper, more dangerous.
Something that feels dangerously close to falling.
All the loneliness I’ve carried, the hollow ache of abandonment, the certainty that I’m always too much for anyone to stay—it all dissolves under his touch.
He kisses me like he’s starving, and for the first time in my life, someone isn’t trying to quiet the storm in me.
He’s hungry for every all-encompassing, chaotic piece of what I am.
I let my head fall back against the pillar, giving him more access to my throat, an instinctual surrender.
He pauses, burying his face in the sensitive crook of my neck, and I feel him take a long inhale, as if he’s trying to breathe me directly into his soul.
The animalistic desire in it sends a jolt of liquid heat straight to my core.
Every rational thought I’ve ever had evaporates, burned away by the sublime feeling of his tongue against my neck.
Goosebumps erupt over my skin, only to be instantly chased away by the fire of his lips and the rough scrape of his stubble.
His mouth at my neck does something to me, something I don’t understand, and my whole body goes tight with throbbing tension.
I have a strange, overwhelming impulse to ask him to bite me, hard.
But all that escapes me is a low moan, a sound I barely recognize as my own.
This is what my body has been craving, what it’s been screaming for in my dreams. This is the pull I’ve felt since the moment I first saw him in the library, a dangerous, magnetic force I didn’t understand until now.
It’s more than desire, it’s a profound sense of rightness, two halves of a whole finally crashing together.
Every touch, every kiss, feels laced with both desperation and an inevitable homecoming.
And I want more. I want all of it. My fingers dig into his powerful biceps, my hips grinding against him almost of their own volition, chasing a friction that is nowhere near enough.
A deep, possessive growl vibrates in his chest as he inhales deeply again. He pulls his head back from my neck, and his eyes are black with lust. He looks feral, dangerous, and completely undone.
“You smell like you’re mine,” he rumbles, his face overtaken by a lopsided, covetous smile that I haven’t seen before.
He keeps saying that I’m his, and right now, I can’t remember ever wanting anything else. “Yes,” I manage, my throat hoarse with desire.
“Alanna,” he groans my name in a ragged combination of pleasure and pain. “Are you going to let me have you?”
The question, torn from his kiss-swollen lips, utterly unravels me.
A burst of white light blooms behind my eyes at the thought of finally taking him inside me, of feeling him where I need him most. I want to tell him that I’ve been dreaming about this, about him, since the day we met.
That all these weeks together, I’ve been fantasizing—of tasting him and feeling him and fucking him—to the point of questioning my own sanity.
I want to tell him that it’s not just his body I find irresistible but his dedication to doing what’s right, his playful teasing when he lets his guard down, his steadfast loyalty to those he cares about.
I want to tell him all of that and more. But I can barely form words, releasing only a pathetic whimper and a whispered affirmative, as I roll my hips eagerly in a shameless plea.
The possessive darkness that flashes in his expression thrills me. His reaction is instant, and his cock pulses against me as his smile widens.
Then I’m in motion, his formidable arms holding me tight against his body, as he pulls us away from the pillar.
My entire world is narrowed to the feel of his muscles shifting and my legs wrapped around his waist as he stalks across the den, until the backs of my thighs hit the edge of the wooden table I use for my research.
When he sets me down, I wiggle to the edge of the table, grasping for him. I reach for his sweatpants but before I can hook my fingers in, he catches my wrists and pushes me back until I’m lying prone on top of the table.
“Stay like this,” he growls in my ear, holding my hands over my head.
God, why is that so hot when he says it? My body instantly obeys, remaining in place even when he pulls back and his gaze roams over me hungrily. He lingers on the outline of my hard nipples beneath my bra, on the curve of my hip, and finally stops at the apex of my thighs.
“Fucking perfect,” he murmurs, almost to himself.
Without delay, he attacks the fastening of my jeans with demanding, impatient movements.
His fingers graze so close to where I want him, sending a quiver of anticipation through my spine.
He doesn’t stop there, aggressively dragging my jeans, along with my soaked underwear, down my legs.
I spare a grateful thought to my IUD as I kick the discarded clothes away until I’m completely bare from the waist down, exposed.
My breath hitches, my entire body thrumming with need. This is it. He’s going to sink into me, finally fill the aching void the way I need him to.
But he doesn’t. Instead, he takes a step back, his dark eyes roaming over me with a look of awed reverence.
If I thought he looked at me hungrily a moment ago, I didn’t understand the true depths of his appetite.
A low groan builds in his chest, a tormented sound.
He’s staring, consuming me with his eyes, and the intensity of it is more intimate than any touch.
A blush heats my cheeks and I start to close my legs, feeling too exposed, but Kade’s big hands come down on each of my thighs to stop me.
“No,” he orders, holding me open.
I swallow as I let him look his fill, squirming under the weight of his gaze. He strokes the inside of my thighs with his huge thumbs, and every swipe across my sensitive skin sends a quivering ripple through me.
I’m getting impossibly wet, and I need more. Need to feel his body covering mine, need his touch, need to feel his cock.
But he still doesn’t shove down his sweatpants like I expect. Instead, he drops to his knees before me on the rough timber floorboards. Pushing my legs farther apart, he brings his mouth to the inside of my naked thigh.
I lose my breath in a choked gasp as he presses his hot, wet mouth to my inner thigh.
I want to sit up, to clutch at his long hair, but I’m still lying back with my hands above my head like he told me to, while he licks a slow, torturous path upward.
He hums against my skin, primal and approving, before he finally finds what he’s been hunting.
When his tongue lashes out, swirling over my clit, I can’t stop my hips from bucking off the table.
Like the kiss that started this, it’s not slow or delicate.
It’s a devouring. He devours me, sucking and laving with a greedy, relentless rhythm, and all I can do is writhe beneath his expert assault.
My world narrows to the slick, hot pressure of his mouth and the insatiable work of his tongue.
He seems to know every secret place, every nerve ending I didn’t even know I possessed, and he plays them with an obliterating, single-minded focus.
My hips thrash on the hard table until Kade tightens his grip to keep me where he wants me.
Then I’m no longer conscious of what my body is doing, lost chasing the white-hot pleasure that’s coiling tighter and tighter in my core.
I am a bowstring being pulled taut, the tension building to an almost unbearable point.
A stream of incoherent pleas and curses falls from my lips, begging him for release, begging him not to stop.
Just as the first tremors of my orgasm begin to quake through me, just as the pleasure is about to crest into a shattering wave, he pulls away.
A broken cry of protest bursts from my throat at the sudden loss.
I try to follow him, my body desperate for the final touch.
But his grip clamps down, refusing to let me chase the friction.
I blink my eyes open, my vision blurry with unshed tears of pleasure, to see him rising from his knees, his dark eyes blazing with a conquering, triumphant fire.
He’s panting, his lips wet, and the sight of him, so undone and yet so in control, is the most erotic thing I have ever seen.
Before I can even process it, he’s surging forward, his massive body covering mine on the table.
He captures my mouth in a deep, searing kiss, one hand tangling in my hair while the other slides down between my legs.
His fingers find my slick, swollen clit, and he begins to circle it with a firm, knowing pressure that immediately sends me right back to the edge of a screaming orgasm.
The pleasure is so intense, so overwhelming, my eyes squeeze shut.
He pulls his mouth from mine, his voice a low command against my ear. “Look at me, Alanna.” My eyes flutter open. “You’re going to look at me while I undo you.”
I’m pinned under his rapacious stare while his fingers continue their ruthless, perfect rhythm.
My breath starts coming in quickened, ragged gasps, but I keep my focus locked onto his handsome face, burning every contour of it and the way he’s looking at me into my memory forever.
He’s not just going to make me come; he’s determined to own every second of my pleasure.
I coil tighter, a white-hot knot in my core, until I finally shatter.
Crying out as my orgasm rips through me, my back arches off the table and I lose control of my body completely, writhing as wave after wave of pure bliss washes over me.
I fragment into a million glittering pieces, and the only thing holding me together is the searing intensity of his darkened gold eyes locked on mine.
I lie there, still trembling with the aftershocks of my release, a boneless, languid weight on the hard table.
Kade’s fingers slow their rhythm, his touch now a gentle, soothing caress against my still-sensitive clit.
He drinks in every twitch of my body, every hitch of my breath, his own breathing harsh and uneven.
Then I feel his heavy body press down on mine.
This is it, I think, my body still humming with a desperate, residual need.
He’ll tear off those sweatpants and then he’s going to be inside me.
He lowers his head, but not to my mouth.
Burying his face in the crook of my neck, he takes another deep, shuddering inhale, as if to brand my scent into his memory.
A rumble of possessive satisfaction vibrates in his chest. I want him so badly; even after my release, his touch makes me clench, impatient for more.
He presses a string of open-mouthed, voracious kisses along my throat, almost frenzied, like he can’t stop himself. Then a sharp pinch—his teeth nipping at the sensitive skin just below my pulse point.
I let out a startled whimper. It’s not painful, but it shocks me, sending a wicked thrill arcing down my spine.
At the sound of my voice, whatever spell held Kade seems to break. He freezes against me, every muscle in his powerful body going rigid.
He rears back, staring at the spot on my neck in unadulterated horror. His eyes, which moments ago were burning with desire, are now wide and shaken.
“Oh, fuck,” he says, sounding close to panic.
He wrenches himself away with a strangled cry, stumbling backward as if he’s been burned. I push up onto my elbows, my body screaming at the loss of his heat, my mind reeling in confusion. He’s staring at his own hands, then back at me, looking sickened.
“I . . . I’m sorry.”
Before I can say a word, before I can even process what just happened, he turns and flees, the heavy warehouse door slamming shut behind him, leaving me naked, trembling, and utterly abandoned in the echoing silence.
He said I was his. Then he left me here.
Alone.