Love in the Light (Hearts in Darkness, #2)(15)

In fact, the prospect of declaring how he felt scared the shit out of Caden. Because it felt like tempting the fates. Hey, lightning, let me show you what I really care about so you know where to strike next!

The past. Anxiety. Fucked-up fears. He knew it.

Didn’t change that he felt that way though.

Which brought him back around to the gut check that maybe he wasn’t good enough for her.

Because didn’t Makenna deserve to hear those words? And if Caden couldn’t give them to her ….

Then what?

Stop it. Get back in there and be with her. That’s how you keep her.

He scrubbed his hand over the scar on his head. “Fuck,” he bit out. And then he turned on his heel and got back in the house. He could pull himself together. Nothing had happened, nothing had changed. She’d show him.

“Hey, there you are,” Makenna said, standing at the kitchen counter stirring a cup of hot tea. “I was looking for you.”

“Just needed a little air,” Caden said, joining her at the counter.

“Family proving a little too much?” she asked with a smile. She wrapped her arms around him. “Oh, you’re so chilly. I better warm you up.” Pressing herself tight against him, she held him closer and tucked her head in against his throat.

The embrace was f*cking life.

He hugged her back. “Not too much,” he said, clearing the roughness out of his voice. “I like your family. It’s been a great day.” And it was. He’d meant it when he told Mike he hadn’t had a Thanksgiving this enjoyable in years.

“Would you like anything?” she asked.

His appetite for that turkey sandwich was long gone. “No,” he said. “I’m good.”

“Would you like to go be alone, just the two of us?”

He didn’t even have to think. “That sounds like heaven,” he said.

Makenna’s smile was like the sun coming out from behind the clouds. See how she’s looking at you? Trust that look, Grayson. Nothing else matters.

She grasped his hand. “Then come with me.”





CHAPTER SIX



When they made it to her room, Makenna closed the door. “It’s only a double bed, so I hope you’re not too cramped tonight with me.”

“We’re sleeping together?” he asked, looking around her childhood room. Pieces of her youth remained tacked to the lavender walls and hung from her mirror. Ribbons, photographs, posters of bands. The room spoke of a person who grew up in the warm embrace of family, happiness, wholeness. “Your father doesn’t mind?”

Chuckling, Makenna shook her head. “We practically live together, Caden, which he knows. I’m sure he’s figured out that his twenty-five-year-old daughter has had sex before. Collin and Shima are sleeping together, too.”

“Shima’s pretty awesome,” he said, wondering if Makenna would say anything to him about her conversation with Cameron.

“She really is,” Makenna said with a smile. And then she unbuttoned her jeans, pushed them down, and took them off altogether, leaving her standing there in an oversized, faded red and blue Penn sweatshirt that was just long enough to cover her panties. “You should get undressed, too,” she said, coming to him and starting on the buttons of his shirt.

Press and release, press and release. Until she was pulling his shirt from his dress pants and exposing his skin.

She gave a little moan and kissed the center of his chest. “Just like unwrapping a present.” She trailed a line of kisses and licks from one nipple to the other.

“Fuck, Makenna,” he whispered. “What are you doing?”

“Tasting you,” she said.

The words were like a blowtorch to his blood. He was hard in an instant. “We can’t,” he said, though his hands went to the back of her head, encouraging her, guiding her as she continued to kiss and tease and drive him wild with her mouth.

“We can if we’re quiet.” Slowly, she dropped to her knees and bared him to mid-thigh. She took his cock in hand and gripped him firmly, tearing a soft grunt from his throat. “I’ve been wanting you all day,” she whispered, her lips teasing his head with soft kisses. “Wanting to touch you and kiss you and hold you. I can’t hold back anymore.” She licked him from root to tip. Once, twice, three times. And then she sucked him into her mouth.

It felt so f*cking good that Caden’s hands flew to her hair, digging in, grabbing hold. She moaned at the contact and pushed herself deeper, burying his cock in the back of her throat. The intensity of it nearly took his knees out from underneath of him.

Makenna pulled off his length. “Lay down on the floor.”

He was too far gone to debate the wisdom of having sex in her father’s house. He needed this. He needed her. He needed the connection and the coming together of the act. Caden locked the door, took the rest of his clothes off, and spread himself out on the beige carpet.

She undressed, too, all that beautiful red hair spilling around the bare porcelain of her shoulders and making him think of peaches and cream. And, f*ck, he was starving.

Caden grasped his cock. “Take me back in your mouth.”

He didn’t have to ask twice. Makenna settled herself between his legs and wrapped her lips around his cock. She sucked him deep and slow, than fast and shallow, her baby blues flashing up at him so f*cking sexy. He needed to see her eyes, so he fisted her hair into a ponytail to keep it out of her face. He used his grip to urge her harder, faster, deeper. He needed it. God, he needed it. And she took it. She took everything he gave her and so much more.