Flames licked across my skin, and just the sight of him had need coiling inside me so tightly I could barely see.
“Fuck, Hope. I want to give. You make me want to fucking give.” He blinked, sucking in a breath. “Let me make you feel good. Please. I want to make you feel good.”
I arched. “Nothing feels better than you.”
That smirk resurfaced, whatever reservations that had lingered in his eyes eradicated, that brazen confidence riding back.
Taking hold.
“This dress. What are you wearing, baby?” He ran his hands up the outside of my thighs, under my flimsy, beige dress, the material loose but the skirt short. “God, you are the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen. What do you think you’re trying to do to me?”
He dipped down and ran his lips along the inside of my thigh as he whispered the words. “Showing up at my house looking like this?”
I whimpered, threaded my fingers through his hair while I sank back into his couch, head rocking on the cushions as he made a delirium-inducing path upward.
Kissing up my bare thigh.
Shivers.
His mouth continued its assault, traipsing over the top of the material while his hands moved under it. He grabbed me by the outside of the thighs and dragged my bottom to the edge of the couch as he edged up, kissing higher and higher.
Over my belly that shuddered and shook.
Nose running across the top of one of my breasts.
Dipping between.
He kissed a path over my heart, which thundered and roared, until he buried his face in my neck and carved out a spot for himself between my knees at the same time.
I could feel his heat where he pressed eagerly at me.
The outline of his cock where he nestled between my legs.
Desire tumbled.
A violent twist.
Because I had never wanted a man the way I wanted him. I wanted to beg him to put me out of my misery. To release the ache. Wholly trusting in him that he would.
He leaned back down on his knees, taking me by surprise when he kissed across my belly.
Something about it so erotic that desire flooded, the feel of his mouth moving over the material driving me wild.
Both of my hands were in his hair, tugging lightly and caressing gently.
A whimper tumbled from my mouth.
“I don’t know what this is, Hope.” His mouth kept moving higher, whispering into the thin fabric.
My heart kicked. Bucked against its confines.
“What’s happening between us. All I know is that you’re making me feel things I haven’t felt in a long, long time, and it terrifies me.”
He pulled back and looked at me. His expression grim.
As if saying it brought him some kind of physical torment.
I wanted to ask him to show me what was hidden in his eyes. Trust me with it. Why this flirty, easygoing guy would suddenly lose himself to a place where it was dark and dismal.
I traced my fingers along the prominent curve of his powerful jaw. “Take me, Kale. Show me.”
A tremor rolled in his throat, and he shook his head, dipped his face away so I couldn’t see his expression.
As if he were pulling himself together. Getting himself back on that line he walked. When he looked back at me, his eyes glimmered.
Lust and need.
“You know that isn’t what you really want, Harley Hope. I refuse to become your regret. But I am going to set you free. Make you scream.”
He burrowed his face up under my jaw. He nipped and kissed at my pulse point, his body pressing deeper between my legs as he edged up higher.
My head rocked back, and my fingers sank into his shoulders.
A dark chuckle rumbled from his throat. “Look at you. Barely takes a brush of my body and you’re already about to go off.”
My arm curled around the top of his head. “That’s because you make me feel something, too.”
He inched back and set his hand over the thunder that beat at my chest, the intensity of his gaze meeting with mine. “Hope.”
I gulped around the emotion that suddenly felt prominent at the base of my throat. “When did you lose yours?”
Because that was what came in flashes.
From the depths of this man.
Grief.
I wanted to hold it, the way he was holding me.
He groaned almost painfully before he was back to kissing between my breasts, giving me no answer, hands riding back up the outside of my thighs.
He tucked me close. Rocked against me.
Sparks and shimmers lit up behind my eyes.
He kissed across the V neckline of my dress, inching it lower with each pass. Licking across the top swell of my breast. His fingers adept as he undid the three little buttons. He showed no hesitation when he pulled the fabric down, exposing me.
Cool air hit my sensitive flesh.
I gasped.
Kale glanced up at me with a smirk, running his thumb around a nipple that pebbled with his touch. “Perfect, Hope. Fucking perfect.”
“Kale.”
He was going to ruin me. Save me. I didn’t know. The only thing I knew was he held me in the palm of his hands.
To crush or protect.
“Hmm?” he hummed as he bent down and blew across the delicate flesh before he bit down lightly, tugging it between his teeth.
“Oh,” I whimpered, arching toward him. He must have taken that as an invitation because the next second had him sucking and lapping, and both my arms were curled around his head, hugging him to me, begging him for more.
For the kind of more I’d had no idea I needed until Kale swaggered into my life.
He was right.
That was exactly what this felt like.
Like I was colliding with what had been missing all along.
He released my nipple with a pop, his thumb back to circling the tight bud before he eased back and set both hands on my knees.
I sat there panting toward the ceiling, eyes cut down so I could take him in.
Blue eyes gleamed as he slowly ran his hands up the tops of my thighs. This time, they disappeared beneath the fabric.
Like a warning.
A promise.
Because the dress gathered on his forearms the higher he went before he hooked his fingers at the sides of my underwear.
Deliberately slow, he dragged them down.
“Shit,” he hissed.
His thick throat bobbed, lust radiating from him as he watched himself peel them off.
Lace grazed my legs, tingles sprinting across my flesh as he pulled them down.
Shivers skated my skin, and my breaths turned ragged as he unwound the fabric from my ankles and heels.
He peered up at my face when he did. “You are perfect, Hope. Sweet, sublime perfection. The first time I saw you, I knew it. Had this feeling like I’d been struck. Like maybe I wouldn’t ever be the same. Know now that I never will.”
Then there was that grin. That wicked grin as his tongue swept across his bottom lip. “Not sure I really want to be.”
Then he spread me. Pressing my knees apart the way he’d done that night at the bar. But this time, there was no barrier.
My body completely exposed.
And he was diving in without further warning, his hot, hot tongue sweeping into my folds.
I yelped and desire tumbled.
Pleasure spiked on all sides.
Magnified.
Compounded as he licked through my sensitive, engorged lips, dragging up and circling around that achy spot that throbbed and glowed.
“Kale.” A whimper.
“I know, Hope,” he rumbled. “I told you I know what you need.”
But that was where he was wrong. Because I needed all of him. Every inch and every word and every smile.
A flicker of a warning rose up in my consciousness, telling me I was spiraling too fast, tripping into a free fall while Kale continued to drive me higher
.
Higher and higher and higher.
His kiss so intimate I would have blushed if my skin weren’t already covered in a flush of heat.
Red from the flames that licked up inside me. Flames that spiked and flared and grew hotter with each decadent stroke of his mouth.
Igniting into a full-body blaze.
Blistering.
He tucked me closer, his hands on my bottom as he lifted me from the couch, his thumb doing magical things to the most private part of me.
Circling.
Teasing.
Easing into my ass.
“Oh, God. Kale . . . what—” The words were thready. Thin with the rasp. My fingers slipped frantically across the leather of the couch, searching for something to hang on to.
“Relax, I’ve got you,” he murmured. His low command reverberated through me. “I’ve got you. Trust me. I’ve got you. Want to make you feel good. Let me give you this.”
“I trust you.”
I did.
I trusted him with every part of me.
With the recognition, the acceptance, my heart clattered in my chest, and I whispered, “Please.”
Though I knew he didn’t know I was begging for so many things.
I gulped for the nonexistent air when he dipped his head back down and burrowed back between my thighs. With his other hand, he pressed two fingers into the well of my body. He moved in perfect sync with his thumb.
My walls clenched around him.
With his tongue, he laved at my clit, suckled and licked and tempted me into a boiling frenzy that gathered to a pinpoint.
It was unlike anything I’d ever felt.
An avalanche of sensation riding on every nerve.
Filling every crevice.
My head swished back and forth on the back of the couch, pleasure gathering fast.
Flashing of bliss. Flickers of ecstasy.
Then everything split.
Breaking wide open.
Streaking and spinning and spiraling.
Euphoria.
I wanted to stay there for all of forever, and I couldn’t help but whimper as I tumbled back down.
A weightless dive through limbless bliss.
When I landed, Kale was right there, placing gentle kisses along the inside of my thigh, holding me steady as my body twitched and jerked with the most powerful kind of aftershocks.
There was nothing I could do, my hands were on his face, pulling him up to me.
His jeans ground against my bare center, and I almost went off again.
I kissed him. Kissed him frantically. Maniacally. A frenzy that had taken hold. “Kale. Take me. I’m yours. I want to feel you. I need to feel you. Please.”
He groaned a sound of pain as he kissed me deeper, and his eyes squeezed shut before he palmed the side of my face and pried himself back. “You know you don’t want that.”
“I do.”
“No, Hope, you don’t. You told me you couldn’t afford another complication. And you know that’s exactly what I’d be.”
But he already was the most intricately exquisite complication.
I kissed across his jaw and up to his ear. “What if I want to take care of you, too? Make you feel good?”
Another groan, but it was one of those belly-flipping smirks that hitched up at the corner of his sexy mouth when he pulled back. “What exactly did you have in mind, Shortcake?”
This time, I did blush. Heat rushed to my cheeks. But I tried to remain bold, confident as I nudged him back. He eased onto his knees.
Fumbling beneath the hem of his shirt, I pressed my hands up under the soft material, inching it up.
My palms gliding over carved, defined muscle as I went. “I want to see you,” I confessed.
He shuddered and shook, but he was grinning when he lifted his arms over his head and let me draw his shirt from his body.
I blinked when I dragged it free.
Stunned.
Struck dumb.
Left in staggered awe.
Holy crap.
Jenna may let a ton of nonsense roll out of her mouth, but she’d had one thing right.
This man was delicious.
I let my fingertips run up his chiseled abdomen, fluttering across his huge, bulging pecs, running over both of his shoulders and down his arms, watching the path I made the whole time.
Sucking on my bottom lip, I peeked up at him. “And you said I was perfect.”
“You are, baby. So goddamned perfect. Just looking at you makes my guts hurt. Nothing should be that beautiful. But you are.”
My blush deepened, my hands shaking, unsure of where to go from there.
But Kale, he knew when he needed to take control.
When I wanted him to.
He slowly pushed to his feet, straightening to that towering height of security where he stood right in front of me.
Potent.
Powerful.
Persuasive.
While I still sat on his couch, nothing but a fumbling mess of need.
“You want to touch me?” he grated.
I could barely get out a spastic nod.
Staring down at me, he started flicking through the buttons of his jeans. “You sure?”
He almost grinned, but it was weighted with his own desire, held back by the tight clench of his jaw as he freed the last button.
Oh goodness.
My insides trembled.
A tiny earthquake.
“Yes,” I whispered.
He pushed his jeans and underwear down over his hips, and the little air I had left in my lungs jetted out on a panted heave when his cock sprang free.
Massive, thickened, and throbbing with his need.
Pointing toward the sky, it bobbed in front of my face, swaying just to the right, just as arrogantly confident as the rest of this mesmerizing man.
“This is what you do to me, Hope. This. Every time I see you. Every time I think of you. This.”
A shiver rocked me to the core.
My core, which had been sated to a simmer, was stoked into an all-out blaze again.
My tongue darted out to wet my dried lips, my fingers shaking and shaking when I reached out and tentatively traced them down the velvet skin.
His hips bucked, and his stomach clenched.
“Hope, baby, are you trying to embarrass me?”
I peeked up to find him gazing down at me, as if he were riveted by the feel of my hands on him. Touching him.
“I don’t think that’s possible, Kale Bryant. I don’t even know what to do with you.” It came on the huff of a breathy laugh, a tease and the utmost truth.
The truth was, my stomach was twisted in a million intricate knots when I took him in my trembling hands, circling him at the base. The crash in my heart an uncontrolled bang, bang, bang.
A groan jutted from his mouth. “I think you’re doing just fine starting right there.”
“This is okay?”
“Yes.” It was a long moan when I ran my hands up and back down before I picked up a slow pace, letting one hand glide over his dripping head each time.
“Just like that,” he said.
Leaning forward, my tongue darted out, flattening across the tip.
Tasting him.
“Or that. Yes, that. Fuck, Princess. I think it’s me who doesn’t know what to do with you.”
But he did.
Because his hands landed on either side of my face, and I held him while I looked up at him.
The man lit up in the blaze of the sun.
A conqueror.
A champion.
“Suck me, baby.” It was a grunt, his tip nudging at my lips. “Let me have that sweet mouth.”
I wanted to tell him I would give him anything, but he was already tugging me forward, begging his own plea.
My lips parted, and I drew him into my mouth.
My insides clenched.
Why did I love the feel of his flesh on my tongue? Why did I ach
e with the impact of his soft grunt?
He drove his fingers into my hair. They dug in deep, spreading out, all the way over the back of my head until his fingertips were brushing the back of my neck.
“I’m going to fuck your mouth, Hope. Hold on, baby.” His hips surged forward, my hands and mouth and heart full of him.
Overflowing and somehow wanting more.
More.
I whined around him, trying not to gag as my trembling hands spread out to clutch his hips.
He drove deeper and deeper with each of his slow thrusts. As if he were carefully claiming me while I felt frantic to demand all of him.
“Fuck . . . so good, baby. Just like that. Your mouth is perfect. So perfect. Just like the rest of you.” It was a muddled jumble of pleasure that tripped from his tongue.
His wicked, delicious tongue.
More.
My spirit sang, and those hidden places that Dane had beaten down danced.
Freed.
There was some kind of magic in touching Kale this way. Power in making him moan. Power in hearing his pleas rumble from somewhere in the depths of him.
Both of us unchained and unbound.
His stomach tightened just the same as his fingers tightened in my hair. He gave a little yank, and I tipped my gaze toward his magnificent face.
I was literally brought to my knees by the magnitude of what I saw there, my body slipping from the edge of the couch to kneel on the floor.
Held by the raw, unbridled possession.
The passion and the need.
Hunger.
Never before had it been so fiercely directed at me.
“I’m getting close. Can you take it?” It was a warning that pressed between his lips, grit and lust and desire. Every inch of him trembled in restraint, muscle rippling and twitching as his own pleasure gathered.
My hands moved to his chiseled ass, gripping him, my eyes wide, begging him to let me be the one to give him what he needed.
To be the one who believed in him. To hold all his secrets and hidden desires. To be the one to cherish him in the highs. To stand beside him on the lows.
Because I wanted him to be a part of all of mine.
“Sweet girl,” he murmured. So softly. As soft as his gaze that traced over my face.
Riddled with affection.
Lined with fear.
One second later, Kale let go.
I let him possess me as his hips began to snap, desperate in their play.
His thrusts wild.
Fight for Me: The Complete Collection Page 50