This man had spent hours on end—literal hours—fucking the sanity straight out of my body last night, exploring every last inch of it without hesitation, and yet he still found new ways to make me blush.
“I missed you too,” I whispered, the confession feeling strange as I traced patterns against the broad expanse of his chest with my fingertips.”
“What, while you slept?”
I nodded, cheeks warming beneath the weight of this exchange and what it truly meant to me.
“Gods, this is…” Kieran trailed off, the rime of his gaze affixing itself somewhere distant.
I slipped my fingers through his hair, running my nails against his scalp with affection, giving him time to drift wherever his mind had wandered. His locks were so damn soft, thesilkiness of his raven-black strands all sorts of tousled and mussed from last night’s various…activities.
“This is…?” I eventually prompted, surprised to see him bite his lip nervously before glancing back at me.
“So much better than I’d let myself imagine,” Kieran breathed, his eyes brimming with an awestruck sort of affection. “I thought I was still dreaming when I woke up next to you.”
As did I, Captain. As did I.
“Yeah?” I breathed back, leaning in closer.
“Very much so.”
Gods,he wasn’t wrong. This was more than I could’ve possibly dreamed of, reality eclipsing even my most furtive of fantasies. We had held back so much, and for so long, that now it was only full-body exhaustion and a hint of rising anxieties that prevented me from launching myself on top of him and riding what I knew was already hard for me. It was an effort to keep my eyes trained on his face,onlyhis face, because if I let my gaze wander…I was done for.
But even in my periphery, I could see the blossoms of pink and purple, the pretty little bruises and bitemarks I’d left littered across his throat. And I knew damn well that for every mark I’d left on his golden brown skin, he’d left at least three more on mine. Hel, I couldfeelthem, warm and aching. The man had that effect in multiple places, it would seem.
A breath caught in my chest at the notion Kieran hadclaimed melast night.Fucking finally. And I had claimed him right back.
“Mine,”I had panted deliriously in his bathing suite, bent over the tub and meeting his harsh thrusts with equal force as I clung to the porcelain. We had failed in our pursuit to rinse off, chasing the sixth or seventh orgasm in our frantic fervor.“This dick is fucking mine.”
“Yes,” he’d crooned back, bending forward so his lips had brushed my ear. “All yours, Asher. Only yours. And you take it so fucking well.”
Another burst of anxiety surfaced, my cheeks heating with embarrassment as I recalled the assertion, feeling rather exposed by the searing truth in the light of day. I’d clearly been referring to his cock—absolutely lust-addled and sex-drunk from the flawless fit of the damned thing—though even now, in the privacy of my own thoughts, I could admit I wanted to claim so much more than that.
Fear began to ricochet through my veins, not only at the notion of losing this but the possibility ofhavingit, which somehow left me just as nervous. My breath hitched in my throat before I released a ragged exhale.
Fucking Hel, woman. Get a hold of yourself.
“What are you thinking?” Kieran murmured, running a calloused finger across my collarbone with lazy, unhurried fascination.
Please don’t leave me. I don’t want to lose you over this.I flinched at the raw honesty of the intrusive thought.
“Last night,” I murmured instead, my voice sounding more wistful than I had intended.
If my tone concerned Kieran, he didn’t show it. His fingers simply continued their patient foxtrot across my skin.
“What about it?” he asked softly.
The way last night felt like so much more than sex. The way I now know, deep within my bones, that you’ve ruined me for any other. The way I know I’ll never be able to fall into bed casually with anyone else, man or woman, without comparing them to you. Because the moment you slid inside me, it was the first time in my life I’d ever felt whole, and now I feel safer in your arms than anywhere else in this realm. I’m afraid of what I want from you, what I fear I might need from you now thatI’ve tasted just a drop of this exquisite drug. I want more than I deserve—more than I could ever bear to ask for.
But I didn’t dare confess any of those words out loud, not now. Not…yet.
“Do you regret it?” I asked instead.
Kieran looked incredulous as he snorted. “Fuck no. Do you?”
“No, but…” I paused, biting down on my lower lip. “Do you think we should stop?”
Should we quit while we’re ahead? Just say that we finally fucked and got it out of our system? Is this where we move on and pretend like something between us hasn’t shifted irrevocably?