Demand (Careless Whispers #2)(13)

“You are beautiful,” he declares, flattening his hand between my shoulder blades, molding my naked chest to his, skin against skin. “If I can hold you like this every day for the rest of my life, I’ll die a happy man.”

“If,” I repeat. “I hate that word. I hate all of the uncertainty between us.”

He stands and takes me with him, stroking the hair from my face and tilting my mouth to his. “If is a reminder to never take anything for granted. That every day, and every moment—”

“Could be our last,” I supply, the words reminding me of Enzo, of his loss, and our fight to save his life, which ended in his death.

“Which is exactly why we need to f*ck like it is.” He kisses me then, a short, hot claiming that is all about demand, two parts fierce, one part a question I don’t understand, before he tears his mouth from mine and walks me backward. “You have too many clothes on,” he declares, going down on one knee again and wasting no time removing my Keds.

My hands settle on his shoulders, his mouth finding my belly, his tongue flicking here and there, and my nipples ache to feel the same. And when he moves lower, exploring the bare expanse of skin just above my waistband, my fingers slide into his hair, tangling in the soft stands. But they do not stay.

Almost instantly, Kayden catches my wrist and presses my arms and hands behind me. “Lace your fingers together.”

“What?”

“I’m going to make sure you can think of nothing but us. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I say, my certainty that I want whatever he offers absolute. “That’s what I want.”

“Then do as I say. Lace your fingers together and don’t release them until I tell you to.”

The idea of submitting to him, of willingly giving him control, is sexy in ways that defy what I know of my past. I am even wetter and hotter than moments before. But Kayden has declared my submission to be my choice, while the man of my past took it. I twine my fingers beneath his grip, and there’s no mistaking the satisfaction that lights his eyes, a satisfaction that I know isn’t about sex. It’s about trust—something that I don’t believe either of us have known much of in our lives.

His finger trails my waistband, his mouth following, his tongue flickering above the denim, a touch and a lick I feel in places he hasn’t yet explored, but I have no question he will. My lashes lower, my breasts feel heavy, my sex is tight, slick, ready for the moment Kayden is inside me.

“Ella,” he says, softly, the rough timbre of his voice compelling me to look at him. “Tell me that the birth control you started has kicked in, and I can be inside you with nothing between us.”

“It has,” I say, and for several beats we stare at each other, a new level of intimacy between us that has nothing to do with our naked bodies, but everything to do with our newly formed, fragile commitment to each other.

He suddenly averts his gaze, resting his cheek on my belly, his energy shifting, darkening, several heavy beats passing. I want to touch him, to drive away the torment coming from him. “Kayden,” I whisper softly, and when he looks at me, those shadows of minutes before are thicker, more intense.

“I’m going to make you forget everything but us. I’m going to make me forget. I’m going to f*ck you every possible way I can before this night is over.” He cups my sex. “I’m going to lick you here, over and over, until you cry out because you want to come so badly it hurts. I’m going to make you say please. Do you have a problem with that?”

“Maybe I should just say please now.”

“No. When it hurts so good that it’s almost pain, you say please.”

He unsnaps my jeans and then unzips them, his hands slipping under the denim, and my panties, to my hips, sliding them down. They pool at my feet and I have a second at most to be self-conscious before he’s standing. He wraps his arms around me, covering my hands with his behind me, and then he arches backward, lifting me as he kicks away my pants. But he doesn’t put me down. He holds me there, cradling my body with his, and I can’t move, but I don’t want to. I just want him. This. Nothing else. The air around us crackles, stealing my breath. Stealing time and washing away everything else before this moment.

Slowly he lowers me, walking me backward, and then easing us down again so I’m sitting on the couch, and he is in front of me between my open legs. Leaning into me, he presses my hands into the cushion behind me, and then drags my hips forward, forcing me to support my weight on them. I’ve barely steadied myself when he twines rough, erotic fingers in my hair and kisses me, before ordering, “Shut your eyes.” I do it, no hesitation, wanting whatever unknown he intends, and when I do, he adds, “Don’t move.”

And then he is gone, and I can hear the sounds of him undressing, an erotic thrill that promises soon he will be naked, inside me, touching me. Me touching him. But unbidden, an image of that necklace is in my mind and then me holding a gun on Kayden. I jolt upward. “Kayden,” I say, at the very moment he shoves his jeans and underwear down his legs, giving me a delicious view of his amazing backside and the circle of skulls tattooed on his back.

He faces me, tossing his jeans aside as he does, and I inhale at the sight of him, every delicious, long, muscular inch of him now exposed, his thick shaft jutting forward. And somehow we are frozen in place. He doesn’t move. I don’t move. Seconds tick by, and every moment we’ve ever shared, including the one in the shower with me holding the gun on him, is between us, but there is only one question that I have to have answered right now. Before I can ask, though, he’s walking toward me, and in another few beats, he is sitting on the couch, pulling me over his lap to straddle him, his erection pressed to my belly between us.