Demand (Careless Whispers #2)(55)

With a moan I arch into his touch, panting as he leans down and licks and sucks my nipples, teasing, driving me crazy before he sits up, his hands bracketing my hips, his smoldering stare raking over my body. “Any man who had you naked and kept his clothes on is a fool—and I’m no fool, sweetheart. Don’t move. Wait for me.”

He releases me, leaving me naked, aroused, and willingly exposed with my breasts thrust in the air. And what I feel in this moment, in every moment with this man, is so many things beyond the word love that I don’t even try to understand right now. But some part of me worries that by taking the escape he offers me, I am hiding, and I don’t want to hide. He stops at the bed, his back to me, and in the next moment, his shirt is off, that ring of skull tattoos on his back reminding me of all he has lost before me. We could lose each other so easily, and I’m not denying myself every moment I can have with him.

He faces me again, and my phone is in his hand, and suddenly the song is playing louder, blasting through the air, and I am reminded that this isn’t an escape. This is him planning to mute the pieces of the past that incited me to dread. When he steps away the music is in my mind, stirring dark emotions, and I shiver, sitting up straight and hugging myself against the ice sliding down my spine. Suddenly I’m on my knees in another place and time, again. He is standing over me. He is planning what he will do to me next. He grabs my hair. He drops his pants. He makes me—

“Ella.”

Kayden’s voice once again brings me back to the present, and he’s squatting in front of me again, beautifully naked, his cock thick at my hip, his hands on my shoulders. And damn it, I’ve missed him undressing, because the past has controlled the present again.

“Please turn off the song,” I say, grabbing his wrists. “I need to cope with the past, but the night we went public should not be about that part of my life, no matter what pushed us to do it.”

“We are not turning it off,” he says firmly, his hand closing around mine. “We’re turning him off. Understand?”

“Clearly it’s not that easy.”

“I never said it was easy.” His arm wraps my waist, his palm on my lower back. “I haven’t even begun to show you how to make sex that dirty, dark escape I promised once before. But now is when you learn how to create a rush of adrenaline that wipes out everything, yet somehow forces you to deal with it at the same time.” He cups my backside. “I’m going to spank you, Ella.”

“What?” I gasp, and my hand flattens on his chest, panic rising inside me. “Kayden, I—”

“This isn’t the first time I’ve brought this up.”

“I know, but—”

“I would never do anything to lose you or hurt you, Ella.” He cups my face. “Trust me, and then let’s tear down every wall we can between us, and put one up in front of him.”

My fingers curl on his chest, and I wait for rejection of his idea to come to me—but it doesn’t. “I’m scared,” I admit freely, and I know it means something that I can voice this to him, and know that he will listen.

“Because it’s new, and because of what he did to you. But I am not him, and we are not controlled by him.”

He’s right. “What if I don’t like it?”

“Then we won’t do it again.” He lowers us to the carpeted floor, facing each other on our sides, his thick erection pressed in the V of my body, his leg tangling with mine. His hand possessively splays on my backside. “You are what I want and need. Pleasing you. Experience what we are together, Ella— and that’s better than apart.”

It is then that I step outside the circle of my demons and into his, realizing that this isn’t just about me. It’s about him. About those dark and dirty parts of him. “This means you have to have faith in me, when you’re the one coming unglued. I hate that you dressed somewhere else tonight.”

“I’ll face my demons with you, like you are with me now, and we’ll figure out what that means then.”

Considering the torment I’d seen in him earlier tonight, I know what this promise means. My fingers curl on his jaw, my decision made. It being my choice, rather than something forced on me, changes everything. It’s sexy and intimate and still scary as hell. “What happens next?”

“We let it happen,” he says, his mouth closing over mine, and in the depths of that kiss is trust, and I don’t need my memory to know that it is something I have never felt, any more than I’ve felt the kind of bond I have with this man. And this isn’t about the spanking. It’s not here, between us, but so much more is. He takes his time getting us there, touching me, letting me touch him, and I can feel his need growing, expanding, and with it, my own. We become feverish, our touches, our kisses, and he turns me, placing my back to his front. Adrenaline spikes through me with the certainty that he will roll me to my hands and knees, but he keeps touching me, stroking my breasts, between my legs, and my backside. And then he curls my legs in front of me, keeping me on my side, stroking my bottom, back and forth, up and down, until I’m going crazy, wanting his hand between my legs. Wanting him between my legs. “Kayden,” I plead.

He stills his hand, flattening on my cheeks. “I’m going to spank right here, just above your sex, so that you feel it everywhere. Five times, Ella. I’ll do more another time, but for now, just five times. And then I’m going to f*ck you hard and fast and ride that adrenaline with you. Are you ready?”