Fierce to face each day.
But the only thing I felt then was fiercely vulnerable against the word, the part of me that wanted to be taken care of for once, adored, begging for it to mean something.
“A red would be nice.”
He looked back at her. “Get my girl some red.”
Cece smirked, and I knew Kale was making a statement in front of her, and she seemed to mind less than I did when she poured his whiskey into an ice-filled tumbler and pushed it his way, when she jerked off the cork of the half-empty bottle of Freak Show and filled me a glass to the brim.
“Enjoy,” she told me because, clearly, she already had.
“Thank you,” I barely managed, taking a long sip while Kale tossed two twenties to the bar.
It was in that moment that I realized there was so little I knew about him.
Nothing, really.
As little as he knew about me.
And part of me wanted to push him away and keep him there while the other side was begging for him to turn around, face me, and let me see inside.
Because I kept getting this feeling that he might need me the way I was beginning to feel as if I needed him.
That maybe it was okay to lean on someone once in a while.
He grabbed my hand again, not saying a word as he led me back through the crowd. I expected him to find a table around the dance floor, but he bypassed it, heading toward the stairs that led to the second floor.
The voices filtering from above were raucous, even wilder than downstairs.
The reason for it quickly became evident as we mounted the last step and found the rows of pool tables lining the back wall, country boys and city boys alike out shooting a few rounds, beers flowing as freely as the laughter.
My mama had always told me boys would be boys. Didn’t matter what fabric they were cut from.
She’d meant it as comfort.
After Dane, I’d taken it as a warning.
But I knew in my heart of hearts that no two were created alike. That no one person was a blanket statement. And someday . . . someday, I’d find the one who was created for me.
Kale didn’t pause. He just led me to the far left where a wall of windows blocked off a balcony.
A sign was set on an easel in front of it declaring that the balcony was closed, but Kale wasn’t deterred. He headed to the far end where the wall could be fully opened like an accordion, opened it just enough so we could slip through, and tugged me forward.
“Kale,” I whispered almost desperately, feeling as if we were committing some terrible crime.
A deep, dark chuckle rolled from him, the man dripping sex when he turned to tug me through the crack he’d made. “Call it the perks of putting up with Ollie.”
“You seem to have a lot of perks to offer.”
The chuckle that rumbled from his chest should have been illegal. “You have no idea.”
Those shivers were back, racing my flesh. There was no mistaking what was in his words.
The desire that soaked them. Drenched in gasoline. The mere brush of his hand a match.
That need was only stoked with each second that passed.
He shut and latched the partition, shutting us away from the rest of the world. Elevated above it.
The loud, boisterous voices had become a dull hum, just an echo of revelry that filtered through the glass panes. From below, I could feel the rumbling beat of the band, a vibration that traveled my legs and settled into my bones.
Only a trickle of the singer’s mesmerizing voice made it through, carried on the breeze that blew through the quieted, secluded space.
I released an awed breath.
I felt as if I’d been removed. Lifted from the realities of the world and was watching it in slow motion.
The city set out below us, the river a black, twisty, shimmery rope where it snaked behind the buildings on the opposite side of the street.
I edged up to the railing, leaning against it as I took in the view. “It’s gorgeous up here,” I murmured, never more unsure of what I was doing than right then.
Because I could feel that power blister over me from behind.
Hot, heated energy.
Billowing in waves and wrapping me whole. His voice enveloped me from behind. “I’m sorry about what happened down there.”
I almost laughed, and I bit my lip, gazing down at the couples that strolled along the sidewalk. “It’s none of my business who you sleep with, Kale. We just had a dinner date. That was it. Remember?”
It felt like a lie forced through my teeth.
“Was it?” he asked, inching closer, making me shake. He ran a hand from my shoulder down my arm.
I blew out a quivering breath.
Complicated. I could feel it compounding, amplifying in the dark.
“Because every time I get around you, it feels like something else.”
I gazed over at him for a long beat before I turned back to look over the twinkling lights. “My life is a mess right now, Kale.”
“Are you going to tell me about him?” There was no missing the hardness that lined his words.
He eased around the side of me and leaned against the ornate metal railing. He lifted the crystal to his mouth, the amber liquid glinting in strands of lights that crisscrossed like a starry ceiling above.
But his face.
His face was cast in shadows, eyes dimmed but no less intense.
So magnetically beautiful.
I took a steeling sip of my wine and fought to keep the tremor from my voice “What do you want to know?”
“You said husband. Not ex-husband.”
“I’m working on that.” I shifted my gaze to study him, searching for an answer. “You knew I was married and you still brought me up here.”
His head shook. “You’re no cheater, Hope. I may not know you, but I do know that.”
“No. I’m not,” I admitted, not sure how much to give him. Because some things were sacred and should only be trusted in the hands of those who’d earned it.
“So . . . you’re separated?” he hedged.
“Yes. For the last year.”
I might as well have been seeking refuge in the middle of a battlefield. Because I could feel myself rushing out onto uneven, treacherous ground. Where each step was perilous. Landmines underfoot.
His comfort unsustainable. Fleeting. If I weren’t careful, I’d be carving out a place for him, giving him those pieces that were sacred, the most important parts of me.
But giving him this little bit felt right.
I looked down at the red fluid dancing in my glass and wet my lips. “We’re in the middle of a divorce. You could call it nasty. He . . .”
He’s cruel and wicked. Appearances are the most important thing to him, but he’s the one who’s truly blind. The one who can’t see the beauty right in front of him. The one who’d rejected the miraculous gift he’d been given.
A strained breath seeped free, and my voice lowered with the admission. “If he found out I was here with you . . .”
Anger bristled through the air. It strangled the words in my throat. I could feel it radiating from Kale. A severe kind of protectiveness I was unaccustomed to.
“Do you miss him?” he asked, something fierce barely checked when he issued the question.
Casting my attention to the street, I pushed out a weighted sigh and whispered, “No.”
I lifted my gaze to the potency of his. “Is it wrong that I lost faith in him a long time ago?”
I’d wanted to believe. Believe he would come to his senses. That he was just in shock and dealing with the blow life had issued. That he would see perfection came in all forms.
But there were some lines that couldn’t be uncrossed.
The smile that turned up the corner of Kale’s mouth was soft. So soft, and I was trembling when he reached out and brushed his fingertips across my cheek. “No, Hope. It isn’t wrong. Not if he can’t see you for who you are.”
I searched him in the flickers of light that danced against the darkness, illuminating the stunning lines of his face. “You don’t even know me.”
“Some things are just written on a person. You can’t hide who you are, just the same as I can’t hide who I am.”
“And who is it you think you are?”
He sighed with my question, as if this time it was me who was getting too close. Digging in too deep.
Straight on, he met my gaze. “A guy who probably shouldn’t be standing here doing this.”
Grief.
I saw the stark flash of it take him whole, the impact of it so severe it jarred me back a step.
I blinked at him, trying to make sense of this complicated man and piece together his complex layers. “What does that mean?”
“It means I don’t get close to women, Hope, and the only thing I fucking want right now is to get closer to you.”
Everything inside me took flight.
Kale set his tumbler aside before taking my glass and placing it next to his. Then he pushed to his full height, towering over me, pinning me with the power of his presence.
He framed my face in both of his hands.
Gently.
Tenderly.
That conflict raged inside me.
The push and the pull.
Gravity.
“Is there any chance you’ll take him back?”
“No.” It flew from my mouth like a curse. “Never.”
He stood there, staring down at me, rocking on his heels. “Good. Don’t settle, Hope. Don’t fucking ever settle.”
“I won’t,” I promised, swallowing over the lump that had grown thick at the base of my throat.
His forehead dropped to mine, and I reached up, wrapping my hands around his wrists, the man still holding me while I clung to him.
His breaths mine. My heart reaching for his.
He groaned a needy sound before he tilted up my chin, searching as he stared down at me.
Slow . . . so slow . . . he leaned down and brushed his lips across mine.
Fire.
Everywhere.
Racing my flesh. Hijacking my veins.
His tongue tangled with mine. Stroking, dizzying as he edged me back, deeper into the darkness that lined the far recesses of the balcony.
His kiss no longer gentle.
An all-consuming demand.
My heart rate kicked, drumming wildly.
I swore his caught, too.
Because the very air around us started to thrum.
Heads spinning and spirits soaring.
I gasped when I was suddenly propped on the very edge of a small bistro table that was tucked against the far wall, Kale’s fingers sinking into the outside of my thighs as he broke the kiss and dropped into a chair in front of me.
“Kale . . . what are you . . .”
I couldn’t think, couldn’t speak, not when he ran his thumbs over the flesh. “You said we had one night. I want to give you this. I want to make you feel good.” His voice deepened, so low it sounded like a threat. “Is that what you want? For me to make you feel good? Tell me, Hope. Tell me you want this. Let me make you feel good.”
My breaths came short, needy pants rising into the dense air, my heart manic where it pounded in my chest.
“I—”
He yanked me closer, my ass barely clinging to the edge. “Do you want me to touch you?” It was a demand.
Oh God.
There he was.
The confident, arrogant man.
Dangerous and perfect.
“Yes,” I whimpered.
He caressed his hands over the tops of my thighs and down to my knees. He started gliding his palms back down the inside of my legs.
Spreading me wide.
My pulse thundered.
I wasn’t sure I’d ever felt so exposed.
His thumbs traced along the inside edges of my underwear. Curling my fingers around the edge of the table, my head dropped back on a breathy moan.
I swore, I felt the ground quake.
“You are so sexy. So beautiful. Do you know, Hope? Do you have any idea the way you affect me?” he murmured, just a finger teasing over the lace that covered me. “Did you know the first time I saw you, you knocked the air right out of my lungs? For a fleeting second, I literally couldn’t breathe. How’s it possible you do that to me?”
I throbbed, overcome with the ache that pulsed at the juncture of my thighs.
The ache to be touched. To be adored. Just for a little while.
“I couldn’t stop looking at you.” My wispy admission carried on the breeze. “Wondering what it might be like to be wanted by a man like you. Wondering what it would be like to go home with you. Wishing for a little while, that girl could be me.”
“She is you, Hope. I want to get inside you so badly, it’s painful. But the last thing I want to do is complicate things more than they are. I get it. So, let me give you this.”
Did he get it?
Because the man was so absolutely complicating things when he nudged the fabric aside, his fingers slicking through my folds.
“Oh God.” Jerking forward, my fingers burrowed into his shoulders, my forehead dropping to his.
His mouth pressed up under my jaw. “Is this what you need?”
His free hand wound in my hair as he kissed down the column of my neck. He tugged my head back, demanding more.
“Yes.”
His breaths came harsh when he pushed two fingers into me.
“Kale.” I shook around the intrusion, fingers fumbling to hold on tighter, my belly in knots, white-hot coils that glowed bright and blinding.
Jerking back, that dominating gaze raked over my body. Purposed when it dropped to watch where he touched me. “You are perfect. Look at you, always so shy, all spread out for me.”
He drove his fingers in slow, deep, maddening thrusts, and his thumb . . . I gasped and writhed as he began to rub it back and forth across my clit.
“Please . . . don’t stop.”
“That’s what I thought. Knew you’d like it hard and slow and a little rough. You deserve a man who’ll take the time to do it right. Give me that time, baby, and I promise you, the only thing you’ll regret is the fact you didn’t let me take you sooner.”
And God, I should be mortified, the way he was talking to me, that same arrogant, overconfident man who’d approached me last week making a reappearance.
But instead, I stared at him through the dimness. Through the shadows and questions and madness that swirled around us. As he stroked me and touched me so intimately. In a way that was one-hundred percent unlike me.
But with him . . . I felt different.
I felt confident.
Beautiful.
Brave.
Reaching out, I trembled my fingers across his lush, sexy mouth, felt the needy breath he released against my palm.
He wrapped his free arm around my waist, nearly pulling me from the table, his stare severe. “Kiss me,” he demanded, and I did, nearly desperate as I wrapped my arms around his neck, our tongues coiled, winding and teasing and tasting.
While this man drove me straight toward ecstasy.
Pleasure. It gathered from the ends of the earth.
Speeding as it converged.
Tightening to a pinpoint.
Kale curled his fingers.
My frozen world ignited in a burst of flames.
The most intense orgasm ripped through my body. Unlike anything I’d ever experienced.
Wave after wave. Crash after crash.
Staggering.
Kale continued driving his fingers as I rode them. As I let myself completely go for the first time in more years than I could remember. Flying.
I begged for him to never stop. To never let go.
But that was the thing about trusting someone. Wanting them in a way you shouldn’t. You started searching for ways to make them fit into the mix of all your complicated thin
gs. Wishing there was a way to carve space for them without sending that precarious balance toppling over.
My chest heaved, and Kale held me steady, edging back to eye me with satisfaction.
While I clung to his shoulders, a gasping, heaving mess.
And just for a little while, I allowed him to hold me up before the weight of my world could come crashing back down.
He straightened my underwear and my skirt while I bit my lip and fought the creeping awkwardness that began to seep into my veins, climbing my chest and heating my cheeks.
Laughing a rugged sound, he gripped me by the chin and forced me to look at him. “You aren’t going to get shy on me now, are you?”
“I don’t know . . . it seems you have me at a disadvantage.”
He laughed lower, pushed back his chair, his grin easy when he gestured to the huge bulge straining at his pants. “You’re the one with the disadvantage? I wouldn’t be so sure about that. Look what you’ve done to me.”
His words were playful.
No expectation behind them.
My hands flew up to my face, and I frantically shook my head, the mortification finally taking hold. “I’m so sorry.”
Kale pried my hands away. “I’m not.”
A line pinched my brow. “You aren’t?”
“No, Hope. The only thing I asked of you was to let me make you feel good.”
A smile pulled at the corner of my mouth. “I think it’s safe to say you accomplished that.”
“Yeah?” he asked, voice winding into a tease.
I couldn’t help but utter my own. “Gold medal. Perfect ten.”
He pulled me onto his lap so I was straddling him. “What, you think this is the Olympics? I know you didn’t get to experience my stamina firsthand, but I was thinking more like this knight deserves a promotion from his princess. Maybe then he’ll get to make her his queen.”
I ran my fingers through his hair and played along, though I couldn’t keep the tenderness out of my voice. “I think you may already be royalty, Kale Bryant.”
Because that was the way he made me feel. Special. Wanted. The girl who got her fairy tale.
But the clock was getting ready to strike midnight. “I’m sorry, but I really should get home. I wasn’t planning on staying out this late.”
His lips flattened, though he nodded in understanding. “Okay then, let’s get you home.”
Fight for Me: The Complete Collection Page 40