by Kennedy Ryan
I pull back to brush my thumb across the vibrant coat of lipstick, smearing it. Her lips are soft as petals under my finger. I do it again and again until nothing but the natural pinkish-brown of her mouth remains. Her breaths come harder every time I touch her lips, and she’s panting, her eyes never leaving my face. I cup the back of her head and bend, giving her one last moment to think better of it—to pull away. But instead she leans in, meeting me halfway, her mouth open and her sweet tongue seeking mine. I groan into the kiss, searching the silky interior of her mouth, my hands roaming down her back and squeezing her ass through the shimmering layers of fabric.
Just when I think I’ll combust, cold water sprays my face and back and arms.
“What the…?” I look up to the sky, expecting rain.
“It’s your sprinklers,” Kimba says, sounding horrified and wriggling to get out of my arms.
The hell I’m letting her go. The water dances over us, a shocking shower soaking me through. She squirms in my unbreakable hold. “Ezra! My hair!”
The silky, straight strands are wet and clinging to her neck. The perky layers of her dress now droop with the weight of water. I laugh and pull her even closer.
“Ezra Stern,” she grits out. “If you don’t—”
It only makes me laugh harder because if she could see herself, she’d laugh, too, but she can’t so I’m laughing for both of us. She turns in my arms, poised to run, but her high heel gets stuck and her foot sinks into the mud.
“Dammit.” She pushes the wet hair from her face and bats at my arm around her waist. “Let me go.”
“No way I’m letting you go,” I whisper in her ear through a clump of damp hair that’s already starting to curl. “You said yes.”
She goes still. Stops squirming and looks up at me over her shoulder, her lipstick smeared, her mascara streaked. The annoyance slowly dissolves from her expression, and a smile, the kind I haven’t seen since we were kids, high on anticipation and down for whatever, breaks out on her face. I spread my hand over her stomach and pull her back into my chest, angling my head so I can reach her mouth, and I kiss her.
It’s the kind of perfect kiss that has nothing to do with technique or experience. Nothing even to do with ardor, though that’s evident in the way we clutch, we cling. It’s perfect because it’s her and it’s me and it’s about time and it’s overdue. And we kiss like there’s no tomorrow because there have already been too many yesterdays, too many years we were apart. Centuries separated us, but now here we are and here’s our chance. It’s not ideal and it has its complications, but it’s ours. And we’re taking it.
Also, I was wrong. This sprinkler system? Perfect timing.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Kimba
I’m wet and past caring about it.
Ezra’s sprinkler continues its assault on my blow-out and my Jimmy Choos, but I can’t stop this kiss. He holds me from behind, his arm wrapped possessively around my waist. I reach up, clenching my fingers in his soaked hair and pressing his mouth deeper into mine. His lips are soft and starving, stirring all my senses to life. He moves his hand up from my waist and squeezes my breast. I turn into him, pressing my curves into the hard plane of his chest. He tugs at the bodice of my dress and runs a thumb roughly over my nipple.
“Inside,” he mutters, raining kisses down my neck. He grabs my hand and turns to run through the garden. My heels keep getting stuck in the mud and I turn my ankle every other step.
“My shoes.” I stop and bend to take them off, but he dips under my midsection and hoists me over his shoulder.
“Ezra Stern!” I squeal, bouncing against his back, the rows of vegetables a blur as he dashes through mud and squash and tomatoes. “If you drop me…”
When we reach the back door, he opens it and steps into the mudroom, my body still slung over his shoulder. He slides me down his front and carefully sets me on my feet.
“We’re a mess.” I laugh.
Lotus’ gorgeous creation may be unsalvageable, the vibrant wings limp and flopping around my hips and legs. My high heels squish as soon as they hit the hardwood floor. Ezra’s jeans and shoes are sloshed with mud. Water beads his face and hair, crystalline droplets suspended from his long lashes. His YLA T-shirt is transparent, plastered to the heavy muscles of his chest and tapering to his ribs and narrow waist. He reaches back and wrenches the sodden shirt over his head.
My laughter evaporates along with all the oxygen in the mudroom when I come face-to-pectoral with his broad, wet, naked chest. His body is something beyond the basics of human anatomy, overreaching into divine engineering. With trembling fingers, I trace his abs, his chest and broad shoulders, strength and sinew draped tightly over bones. I touch his mouth, the well-drawn bow of his top lip, the alluring fullness of the bottom one. Ocean and midnight sky, desire and tenderness swirl in his eyes. A voluptuous silence swells and curves between us, thickening by the second.
“Tru.” He brushes his knuckles across my cheek and pushes the wet hair away from my face. “Let me see you.”
I jerk down the shade at his door and find the zipper at my back, tugging until the bodice gapes, liberating my breasts, proud and heavy, tipped up at the ends with large brown nipples.
“Shit.” He runs reverent fingers over them. My breath hitches. “You’re…”
He swallows and cups my neck, bends to run his tongue along my collarbone, lapping up the beads of water on my skin. He wanders to one breast, pulling on it with his mouth so softly, with such care, my knees literally go weak. He licks the halo surrounding my nipple over and over. The drag of his tongue provokes a shudder through my whole body. He takes my hand, linking our fingers, and gently pushes me, urging me to sit on the mudroom bench. Dropping to his knees, he removes my ruined heels and pulls my legs over his shoulders. His head disappears under the iridescent layers of my skirt and he strokes along the bare skin of my thighs, lifting my knees higher, wider. When his finger probes the edge of my panties between my legs, I instinctively tighten my knees. His head bobs beneath the skirt, lips tugging on my clit through the silk underwear.
“Oh.” I press my palm to the wall beside me. “Ez.”
He does it again, a teasing, tantalizing bite and suck, his mouth hot and wet through my panties.
I groan, shifting my hips, spreading myself wider, silently begging him to take it with nothing between us. His fingers are at my hips, slipping beneath the scrap of silk, tugging until the panties skim my flesh in a slow ride down my thighs, over my knees, calves and feet.
Off.
He reverses, kissing up my calf. He sucks behind my knee, disappearing again under the dress, dragging his tongue over the sensitive skin of my inner thigh. The blunt tips of his fingers pry me apart, hold me open. His breath caresses my clit, and my heels reflexively dig into his back. I press my palm harder into the wall, shaking with anticipation.
Before I’m reduced to begging, he licks me, whisper-soft and barely there. His groan vibrates against my thigh. Spreading me wider, he opens his mouth over me, running the flat of his tongue from my opening to the tight cluster of nerves at the top of my pussy. His thumb brushes my clit while his tongue plunges inside me, setting a steady, fucking pace. With his other hand, he cups my breast, squeezes, pinches, twists my nipple.
“Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God,” I chant, the words melting in my mouth, slurring drunkenly.
Mindlessly, I rock my hips in time with his mouth. I can’t stop my fist from banging the wall. I can’t stop my knees from tightening around his head. A moan climbs from my belly and wails out of me at the apogee of my pleasure. It feels so good, my mouth falls open on a silent sob. I’m rocking and writhing and his. I’m so completely his right now. He’s eating me out, but he has me eating from the palm of his hand. No one has ever taken care of me this way, this thoroughly, with such selfless abandon and dedication to my pleasure.
Even after I come, liquid bliss spilling from my body and I’m slumped against the wal
l, he doesn’t stop nibbling, tasting, squeezing my legs, dragging me closer like a bowl he has to lick clean.
“Tru.” Passion and layers of expensive fabric muffle his voice. With tingling hands, I push the skirt away so I can see his face. His mouth and chin glisten and his eyes are glazed. I rub my thumb across his bottom lip.
“I want to fuck you,” he says.
I want that. Even though I just came hard and long, an emptiness swallows me from the inside out. Need burgeons from that void—the need to feel him pistoning in and out, to know the intimate slide of our bodies. I stand on wobbly legs, pull his hand, pushing his shoulder until he takes my place on the bench. He runs his knuckle between my breasts and over my belly until he reaches the band of my skirt where the bodice hangs useless. I reach back and undo the button at the base of my spine. The dress falls to the floor in a vivid cascade, fanning around my ankles. I’m naked and barefoot in his mudroom. I haven’t shed all of the extra weight that comes with this damn condition, but I’m not self-conscious. Not ashamed. He’s looking at me like I’m the sunrise and he’s grateful for a brand new day. He runs his palms up and down my thighs, over my hips. He squeezes my ass, brushes my nipples. I sway under a fresh wave of pleasure but help slide his boxers and jeans off.
“Come here,” he whispers, curling his fingers around my leg and urging me toward him. I lift my knees on either side of his hips, straddling him. He grips my ass, lining our bodies up.
“Shit.” He presses his forehead to mine. “Condom.”
I reach down to grab my discarded clutch and quickly pull out the little sleeve containing credit cards, my license and, in a hidden compartment, a condom.
Taking him in my hand, I rub my thumb over his leaking tip, squeezing the slightest bit. His head falls back, exposing the corded strength of his throat. I stroke up and down, gently at first, learning the hot slide of silk over steel. And then faster, firmer until his hips jerk and the muscles of his thighs flex beneath mine. He mumbles something incoherent. I don’t let up, pumping his dick and bending to suck his nipples.
“In,” he rasps.
“What?” I mutter at his neck, drowning in the earthy scent of him, fascinated by all his male textures—rough, smooth, hard, velvet, silk, stone.
“In,” he says abruptly, clearly, gripping my hips and sliding me forward. “Let me fuck you.”
I slide the condom over the hard, hot length of him, and then slowly interlock us. The first time Ezra enters my body, the world cracks open. Tectonic. Like two plates of earth shifted, melded to make an entirely new plane. We go still in unison for just a second, the newness of a completely unique dimension comprised of his body and mine settling into place. And then we move, a slow, sensuous give and take of soul and flesh that makes us pant and moan and grind and groan. Our mouths open, gasping. He fills me completely. I press my temple to his and rock my hips over him. He maps my back, my ass, my thighs. I’m territory he claims with his hands and lips and the covetous heat of his eyes. And I take possession of him. Squatter’s rights, a field Aiko abandoned that, whether she knows it or not, is now mine.
He reaches between us, rubbing his thumb over my slick clit. The pace quickens; the need is feral. My breasts bounce as I ride him hard, one palm slammed into the wall over his shoulder and one hand squeezing my own breast with just the right pressure to send me spiraling. Another climax jerks my body forward until we’re heart to heart. He pounds up into me, squeezing, spreading my ass open and stiffening, the hard muscles of his stomach contracting. A moan wrenches from him as he empties himself. I grab his chin, tugging his mouth open, and lick into him with long, languid kisses that bob our heads and twist our bodies and wall out the world. The years fall away like a torn veil separating him from me, then from now. It hasn’t been years. There has only been one long day for us on which the sun has never set. We were never lost, and this place has always been waiting for our wandering hearts, for our prodigal souls to finally, together rest.
Chapter Thirty
Ezra
“Tell me about your first time.”
Kimba asks the question in the middle of the night. After we dragged our limp bodies from the mudroom and up the stairs, we stumbled into the guest bedroom and made love again, this time a slow, savoring union, commemorating what was the best sex of my life. I spoon her under the covers, pushing the damp hair, half straight, half coiled, away from her neck and ghost kisses over her soft skin. She presses her naked back into my chest.
“My first time?” I tighten my arms around her middle and spread my hand over her stomach. “It should have been with you.”
“Obviously.” She reaches back, scraping her nails through my hair. “But who was the little wench?”
I chuckle and push my knee into hers from behind. “Francesca Aldi. I was fifteen. She was sixteen. My first time. Not hers.”
“Where was it?”
“Rome. Her house. Her parents were away. She didn’t know it was my first time. I was too embarrassed to tell her.”
“Oh, Ezra.” Kimba turns to face me and rubs a thumb over my eyebrow and down my cheekbone. “I bet you were so dear.”
“I hope not.” I choke out a laugh. “‘Dear’ is not what a guy wants to be his first time having sex.”
“How was it?”
“I remember feeling deflated. Disappointed, like everyone had played a trick on me—convinced me sex was this amazing thing I wouldn’t be able to get enough of. Don’t get me wrong. It did feel great. Better than my hand and a fistful of lotion.”
She snickers and pulls the comforter higher over our naked shoulders.
“But I always thought my first time would be fireworks.” I hesitate and then tell her the truth. “I guess I always thought my first time would be with you. I don’t think anyone could have lived up to that.”
She nods. “Same.”
“What about you? Who was it? Where? Was it good?”
I want to know everything all at once so I can stop thinking of her with anyone else.
“Terrell Anderson.” She chuckles. “It was a total cliché. Prom night my junior year. He was a senior and got us a room. I had to lie to my parents to stay out. Kayla covered for me and made sure I had condoms.”
“And was it good?”
She laughs, but it’s laced with regret. “I guess for him. Not for me. I was disappointed, too. Even more for how he acted after it was over.”
“What’d he do when it was over?”
“Another cliché.” She rolls onto her back and studies the ceiling. “He told all his friends he’d fucked Joseph Allen’s daughter.”
“Bastard,” I mutter, wishing I could find the piece of shit and tear him apart.
“Very much so. When I found out he’d told people, I confronted him and dumped his ass. He didn’t like that. I was a junior who should have been happy he’d deigned to take me to the prom, much less pay for a hotel room and dispose of my virginity.”
“What’d he do?” Because I can already tell he did something I’ll hate him even more for.
“He told me if I didn’t let him fuck me again and suck his dick this time, he’d post pictures of me in the cafeteria. Pictures he took while I was asleep. He even threatened to send them to my father.”
“Motherfucker. What’d you do?”
“What I always did with my problems.” She smiles sadly. “Went to my father.”
“You told him—”
“I told him everything. I always could.” Her naked shoulders gleam in the moonlight when she shrugs. “He told me not to worry. Said he would take care of it, and he did. I don’t know exactly how, but there were no photos and Terrell couldn’t even look me in the eye to the day he graduated.”
“I hope your dad did something incredibly painful that ruined his future.”
Kimba slants an amused glance to me. “He might have. Daddy did have his ruthless streak.”
I shake her playfully under the covers. “That’s where you get y
ours from.”
“Damn right.” She laughs but sobers after a moment. “Terrell ended up going to Morehouse. If I hadn’t known before that I didn’t want to go to Spelman, I knew then. I didn’t want to be that close, to run into him.”
“Did that idiot affect your decision not to go to Spelman?”
“Not just that, but it did kind of push me over the cliff I was already standing at the edge of. My family name, reputation here in this city, started feeling like an albatross. I wanted to set it aside for a little while and have a clean slate in a new place. Arizona gave me that.”
“That’s where you met Lennix Hunter?”
“Yes.” A wide, open smile touches her lips. “We were two peas in a pod from day one and have been best friends ever since.”
“Is it silly that I still get a little jealous hearing you call someone else your best friend?”
“Yeah, that’s really silly.” She throws her leg over mine and pulls me close until her breasts are crushed between our chests. “Because you should know by now that no one could take your particular place.”
I search under the covers for her hand, link our fingers. “I didn’t even know how much I missed you until I got you back.”
“I felt it at the funeral.” She breathes out a shaky laugh. “As soon as I saw you again, I knew it would be like this.”
“Is that why you shut me down?”
She gnaws at the corner of her lip. “When I saw Noah and Aiko, realized you had a family, knowing the pull I felt between us right away, I knew it would be too dangerous to stay in touch.”
“We’d been having problems even before that, and we’d gone to counseling, but I wonder if some part of me gave up after I saw you, hoping our lives might intersect again.”
I hate to even say that out loud. I hear how it sounds. It was a subconscious thought I’d never given voice to.