Chapter 32
B eth jerked her head back. Her heart stuttered as she stared at Kane. “What?” Had she heard him right? She waited another erratic heartbeat, then another, but his lips didn’t twitch into a smirk. Was he serious? “Did you just ask me to?—”
The ludicrous question disintegrated on her tongue as his lips crashed to hers. The kiss, no, the onslaught, shocked her heart into overdrive.
“You heard me right, sugarplum.”
His words hummed across her skin in a desperate yet firm confirmation as he kissed her so hard, so deep she didn’t doubt his sincerity, but she doubted her sanity because her first instinct had been to say yes.
“Marry me, Beth. You said that you can’t lose another boyfriend. Marry me and I won’t be your boyfriend. I’ll be your husband.”
“Kane.” Her breath hitched on his name. “We can’t.” The idea was absurd. Certifiably ridiculous, yet…
A vision of him in uniform, waiting for her at the end of the aisle in her favorite church by the Washington Monument flashed in her mind.
She shook her head. “No. You’re not making any sense.”
“You know what doesn’t make sense? The fact that my cock isn’t between your gorgeous lips yet.”
Her jaw fell open. Watching him go from hardened warrior to joking cowboy still awed her. But his one-eighty from marry me to suck my cock triggered a riot of need in the place that burned for him again.
He smirked as he caught her bottom lip between his fingers. “See what being married to me will be like? Constant one-liners.”
And a constant ache to taste.
To suck.
To indulge in every part of his gloriously flawed and magnificently rebuilt body.
She reached for the button on his black pants and yanked it open, powerless to stop herself, even if she wanted to. “And what about the marriage thing? Was your proposal a one-liner too?”
“What do you think?” He pushed her hand to his erection.
She smiled at his sharp inhale. “I think you’re insane.” But God help her, she was just as insane as him because she dropped to her knees in the middle of the wildest conversation she’d ever had.
A low growl grated from his throat. “My proposal should make perfect sense in your mind.”
The only thing that made sense was finally tasting him. Cupping the bottom of his shaft with one hand, she drew the tip into her mouth. His cock felt like his body. Satin over steel. So did his groan. Like pure, silky pleasure rasping from a rough warrior. His eyelids drooped as he wound his hand through her hair. She sucked him in a bit deeper, swirling her tongue around his rigid length and hummed against him.
“Was that an agreement, sugarplum?”
She tried to pull her mouth away to tell him no, that she couldn’t marry a man she’d only known a few weeks, and for such a bizarre reason to boot, but he tightened his grip on her hair.
“Oh no, darlin’. You started this. Don’t you dare stop.”
Humming louder, she sucked him in deeper. Harder. Relished his taste. The blatant, desperate need in his voice. The firm grip on her hair that roused just the right amount of pain and felt like he’d never let her go. Like he’d use that fantastic body to shield her from anyone who barged through the door. Had he locked it? She didn’t recall and didn’t care. The whole VIPER team could shoot V-Strikes around them and she wouldn’t stop digging her fingers into his muscled thigh and even harder steel.
“Fuck, Beth. Your mouth feels like…”
She raked her fingers around to his magnificent ass and squeezed. He jerked his hips. His cock hit the back of her throat. Tears danced in her eyes. She welcomed them and looked up at the breathtaking catalyst.
Brutal need smoldered in his gaze as he braced a hand on the wall behind her. “If you keep sucking me like that, I’ll haul you to the closest church right now and marry you if it means I’m the lucky bastard who gets the privilege of this every night.”
Every night. For the rest of their lives. Could they really be together? Could he survive her curse?
“Look at me, Beth.”
She raised her gaze. The tense set of his jaw as he fought for control nearly toppled her over the blissful edge. Was that one of his superpowers? Almost making her come without even touching her? Or maybe it was making her believe they had a future and he wouldn’t be number four.
He yanked her up to him. “I fit perfectly in you.” Gathering the moisture on her lower lip with his thumb, he bunched up her skirt with his other hand and grazed his fingers along her wet pussy. “Perfectly. In every fucking place.”
“Yes. Perfect.” She ground her hips against his as she wrapped a leg around him, needing to get closer but knowing she’d never get close enough.
“This is going to be fast and hard, but I promise you when I get back from extracting Dr. Sable, I’m going to lay you out on my bed and take my slow, sweet time tasting every inch of your body.”
“Promise you won’t die?” She knew he couldn’t promise immortality, but based on the show he’d put on, he could promise to use every advantage VIPER had enhanced him with so he’d come home alive and fulfill his decadent vow.
“I won’t die.” He fisted the sides of her thin lace thong. “Not even the devil is cruel enough to deny the plans I have for you.” With a sharp tug, he tore her panties.
Beth gasped as the material ripped against her aroused skin. “More, Kane. Fast and hard. Now.”
Hooking both hands under her ass, he raised her off the floor. “Wrap your legs around me.”
She clung to his shoulders and anchored herself around his waist. “Against the wall. That’s how I want you.”
“Been thinking about this moment, sugarplum?”
“Yes.” Her desperate admission matched the salacious grin on his face. “Have you?”
“I’ve been training for it my whole life.” He shifted her hips with ease as if she weighed nothing and lined up his cock with her eager pussy. Staring at the impending union, leg jittering, he groaned. “Damn, Beth. See how good we are together? Tell me you feel it too.”
“I do.” She felt everything. His tight grip on her ass. The wall against her back, his unyielding body at her front, but instead of feeling trapped, she finally felt free in the arms of the most lethal man she’d ever met. “I do, Kane. I trust you, now fuck me.”
He held still, denying her more of him. All of him. “I knew you were my kind of girl the moment I met you. Fire and snark all wrapped up in a sweet package for me to enjoy. Only me, Beth.”
“Only you, Kane.” She clung to the biceps she couldn’t get enough of as she rocked her hips against him.
As he slid inside her, she dropped her head to his shoulder. Another rock of his hips had him fully seated within. Her head snapped up and she met his gaze. She thought he’d filled her completely at the safe house, but this angle let him hit a place so deep she knew she’d be marked forever with a new kind of curse as beautiful and unbreakable as the man claiming her.
“Only us, sugarplum.” He pulled his hips back until his cock hovered at the entrance to her pussy. “No regrets, no matter what the future holds. You’re mine and I’m yours. Got it?”
Hooking his hands around her knees in a grip so strong she’d have marks in the morning, he drove into her with the force of a tsunami. Her body slammed into the wall, but she didn’t feel any discomfort. All she felt was the power in his promise, the strength in his conviction, and the truth in his tone.
“No regrets, Kane.”
He froze, his gaze fastened to hers as if processing her words. She caught the exquisite moment the vow cemented in his heart. Those flecks in his eyes blazed like sapphires for a heartbeat before they seemed to burst into hundreds of fiery stars. She held her breath, committing the moment she made him lose control to memory as he unleashed himself like a soldier fighting for his life and rammed into her without mercy.
She lost herself in the cadence of their hips slamming into each other, her release building along with her pleas for him to fuck her harder, faster, to never stop. Every scrape of his teeth against her jawline, every guttural sound from his lips obliterated the cobwebs smothering her hope and crippling her happiness. As he splintered the last cursed bond caging her in a dark hell, her orgasm crested.
She shuddered from the internal explosion that abolished her fears and fallacies and cracked open her guarded heart. The shroud she’d been hiding behind for so long lifted to reveal Kane. Glowing like the warrior he was, willing and eager to battle the devil himself to protect not just her but their future, he roared her name on a promise she’d take to the grave.
As she rode out the ecstatic storm against his unfaltering strength, everything clicked into place. She finally understood what she’d been afraid of all along, and it hadn’t been a stupid curse.