Sweet Reckoning(46)

I flipped over and he loomed above me, both of us breathing hard. I stayed very still as Kaidan gave me a stare, starting from my rumpled hair all the way to my red-painted toes. I curled my finger through his belt loop and tried to pull him down to me, but he released my finger, lifted it to his mouth, and nipped it with his white teeth.

“I’m not done yet.”

I fell back, as his mouth lowered to my stomach again, working his way down.

Oh, wow.

Over that next hour I learned Kaidan was true to every claim he’d ever made about being good at what he did. It wasn’t fair to the rest of the world that a man like him existed. My body was spent as if I’d run a marathon, and considering that Kaidan was still mostly dressed, I knew he was just getting started.

System overload.

As he lay next to me now, leaning over me, placing angelic kisses on my lips, I was barely conscious enough to unscramble the single thought running through my mind.

I’m still a virgin.

“You can nap, luv,” he whispered.

That cleared my head. This was no time for napping! I pushed up on my elbows and glared at him. It must not have been scary enough because he chuckled.

“It’s your turn,” I said.

His chuckling stopped and turned to a heated stare as I moved closer to him. I leaned in and nuzzled his ear. He pulled my hip closer.

“My sweet little vixen.” I heard the arousal in his voice, so I licked his earlobe, and he hissed, trying to roll on top of me, but it was my turn to push him back.

No sex yet. I wanted to do to him what he’d done to me.

This time when my shaking hands went to the buttons on his shorts, he didn’t stop me. I could feel his racing heart against my shoulder. He let me undress him, and in that moment, as I acquainted myself with all of him for the first time, I learned the power of being a woman—the weakness in his eyes brought on by my touch—and the underlying trust and love I saw there. My nervousness disappeared, replaced by curiosity and a desire to make him happy. It brought me tremendous satisfaction as he reacted and lost himself in the caress of my hands and my lips.

Afterward we showered in the moonlight, lost in our new knowledge of each other. But each kiss and touch was overshadowed by one repetitive thought.

I’m still a virgin.

We wrapped ourselves in towels and went back in, eating sandwiches on the bed while Kaidan made fun of the pop love ballads on Marna’s playlist. Funny how he knew the words to so many of them.

When we finished dinner, I looked at the clock. Kaidan had walked to the window and stood staring out, towel still around his waist. I refused to let him think too much. I didn’t want any insecurities of his to rise up between us.

“Hey,” I said softly. “It’ll be midnight soon. Our wedding day is almost over.”

His face clouded, and my stomach tightened.

I stood on the far side of the bed. “Come here.”

Kaidan walked over slowly, keeping his eyes on me in my towel. When he got to the other side of the bed he put his joined hands on top of his head and eyed me across the king-size expanse. He made me feel crazy in so many ways.

I reached for the edge of my towel, and before I could think too much about it, I pulled it off, letting it drop to the floor. The cloudiness in his gaze turned stormy. I crawled across the bed toward him. I watched the surprise and lust flash across his features as I reached him and raised up on my knees to face him. My heart was beating overtime.

“Are you scared?” I asked him.

The master of lust seemed to have lost his cool because his response was a grunted, “Hm?”

“Been too long?” I cocked my head to the side. “Out of practice?”

He hadn’t been with anyone in eight months. For Kaidan Rowe, that was an eternity.

His eyes got wider than I’d ever seen them, full of indignation, and I felt a rush of mean potency in my blood. Acting as the vixen he often called me, I reached out and pinched his nipple. Hard.

He let out a small holler and grabbed my wrist. With my other hand I tore off his towel. In a movement too quick for me to comprehend, he was on top of me, pinning me to the bed.

“You win,” he ground out, breathing hard.

I wanted to laugh at the thrill of my victory, but his seriousness snuffed that urge. I tried to move my hips up to him, but his body pressed me down. I stroked his cheek, which had grown a five o’clock shadow, and he rested his forehead against mine. I felt his worries creeping in—the deeds of his past haunting him.