CHAPTER 17
On the other side of the door, Kage turned the lock.
“You didn’t shower after the fight again.”
“Are you complaining?”
“No, I like the fact that you brought it with you. To me.” I walked over to him and ran a hand up his chest and onto his shoulder. “By the way, that song you chose was perfect. And the…” I mimicked the way he’d tapped the tattoo and then his lips. “It made me feel so good.”
“That’s my goal.”
“Well, that and world domination through brute strength?”
“Yeah.”
I was suddenly very nervous, because we both knew what was supposed to happen, and I wasn’t sure how to make it happen. Never before had I felt so intimidated by another person as I felt by him. And it wasn’t in a bullying kind of way. He was just so overwhelming to me, larger than life. From the beginning of our relationship I’d always felt more like a satellite orbiting him. He was just so strong, and so much more than other people, at least in my eyes.
I lifted up and kissed him on the lips. Then I dropped lower, running kisses along his jaw and his throat. I was so hesitant, like a virgin on his first date. Kage must have sensed it, and he dropped a hand to my ass and squeezed, pulling our groins together and rubbing his against mine.
“Get the lube,” he said.
I hurried over to the bedside table, pulled the bottle out of the drawer, and handed it to him. He dropped it onto the floor, and then everything changed. He snatched me hard up against his body, and all I could do was cling to him, kissing him like my life depended on it, his beard stubble rubbing the skin around my lips raw. I clutched at his back, pulling the fabric of his shirt as if I would rip it off, the feeling of those muscles I knew by heart driving me to distraction. I needed to get his shirt off, to touch what was underneath, to get a fix of my addiction. I wanted nothing between us but our breath and the frantic thumping of our hearts.
Kage dug his fingers into my hips and pulled me beneath him, lowered his own hips to mine, and my legs wrapped around his waist like it was exactly where they belonged.
I glanced over at the door when I hear voices in the hall. “What if someone hears? We shouldn’t do this here.”
“I don’t care,” he said. “I’ll make love to you with the door standing wide open and people watching from the hall if I have to.”
“But it’s so risky for you. What if somebody talks? There are a lot of people here tonight. All it takes is one comment on a sports blog to ruin everything you’ve worked for.”
“Everything we’ve worked for,” he amended. “And I don’t care. Let them talk. It’s not the way I want things to go down, but I swear to you… I’m through pretending. I just got engaged to someone I don’t love just to prove I’m something I’m not.” He lowered his head and rested his forehead on mine. “I can’t do that anymore, Jamie. Won’t do that. Not when I know how it can be.”
“But it wasn’t a real engagement, right? Was it?”
He captured my lips in a gentle kiss, and I opened to him, letting his tongue have its way with mine. It was a slow, torturous kiss that left me breathless and wanting more.
“Doesn’t matter if it was real. It hurt you anyway.”
I tightened my legs around his unyielding midsection, pressing my pelvis hard into his, as if I could meld our bodies together by sheer force. He lifted higher on his knees, and I wrapped my arms tightly around his neck and hung on as my body came up off the floor. Then he was kissing me and rocking back and forth, the motion of his body creating friction between our groins, the feeling of almost fucking driving me mad.
“Do it,” I gasped, breaking free of our sloppy, desperate kiss. “Just do it.”
I didn’t have to tell him exactly what it was that I wanted him to do. We were both driven by a mutual need that we’d waited far too long to satisfy. Now it was more than need. It was a requirement, and in that moment, I believe we both would have died to get it.
Kage growled and slammed me back down onto the floor with the weight of his body, nearly knocking the breath out of my lungs.
Fuck breath, I thought. I don’t need breath as long as I have him.
His hips rocked against me as if he thought we could finish this thing with our clothes on. Maybe we could, but I didn’t want to find out. I wanted to see my fighter in all his naked glory. God, it had been so long.
I struggled to get his t-shirt pulled over his head, fighting him all the way as he covered my face and neck with hot kisses and ran his calloused fingers up my sides and over my chest. I let out a moan when he found my nipples, rubbed them to tight peaks, then pinched. “Dammit, get your clothes off,” I managed to say.
He leaned up and tore his shirt off before moving to slide his gym shorts down. I took in a sharp breath when I caught a glimpse of his torso. A nasty purple-and-red bruise mottled his skin from the bottom of his ribcage to his waistband and stretched halfway around his side. I reached out and touched it lightly with my fingertips, feeling the intense heat radiating off of it. Tears welled up in my eyes.
“Jesus! You need a doctor, Kage. That’s horrifying.”
He winked down at me. “Nothing a little sex won’t fix.” He stretched into a plank position long enough to work his shorts down his legs and off. Then he set to work on mine, dragging my shorts and my underwear off in one motion. I lifted up to help him, feeling guilty about making an injured guy work so hard to get at me.
“You lie back,” I suggested in a shaky voice. “Let me do the work tonight. You’re hurt.”
He laughed. “Jamie, I’ve had much worse. Just quit reminding me of it. When I’m all into making out with you, I don’t even feel it, okay?”
I nodded, still unconvinced. But the least I could do was honor his request to quit reminding him of it. Suddenly I remembered sparring with him only moments before, doing my best to hurt him. I felt so deeply ashamed.
“I didn’t do that, did I?”
He smiled gently, his eyes softening and losing some of the hard edge of lust. “No, baby. You didn’t do that. This is the handiwork of Cristiano Diaz, and believe me, he looks much worse. Did you see his face? I cranked his arm good, too.”
“I love you,” I said, throwing my arms around his neck and squeezing as the tears came. Just a few, but enough to make me sniffle and feel weak and embarrassed.
Kage laughed quietly into my hair. “Um, you too, college boy.”
That made me laugh, too, and soon our laughter turned into more kissing and more petting. Kage dipped his hips down to mine, and I felt the familiar drag of his cock head on my belly. I moaned and raised up to meet him, the bruise all but forgotten.
My tough little fighter. Well, maybe not so little.
My chest squeezed.
I felt the slippery ooze of precum, slicking the way as Kage’s cock kissed and caressed mine between our bellies. Then he rolled us over and removed my shirt.
When I was on top of him, he maneuvered us to where I was between his legs. I sat back on my knees and looked down at his beautiful body. The bruise didn’t mar his beauty at all, but it made me feel sad.
“Stop looking at that bruise and fuck me already. That’s what you want, right?”
I nodded, feeling like a virgin on my first date.
It felt strange climbing between Kage’s muscular legs with the intention of penetrating him, but my brain was the only nervous part of me. My cock was not nervous at all. It strained toward Kage’s hole, hidden somewhere in the shadows and beneath the hair. I’d always loved the crisp feel of the hairs beneath my fingers as I grabbed onto his ass. But that was while he was pounding me, and I was hanging on for dear life. This was a new and mysterious thing altogether, and I was absolutely fascinated.
I grabbed the lube and poured it out into the palm of my hand. Then I looked uncertainly up at Kage. He smiled and spread his legs farther apart in invitation.
When I pressed against his hole with a lubed finger, he sucked in a breath and bit down on his lip. That had me even harder, and so ready to get inside him. Still, I didn’t want to hurt him, so I slid that finger tentatively inside.
All of a sudden, Kage reached up and pulled me down on top of him. “I’m ready,” he said.
I pushed the tip of my cock against his hole, planning to go slowly, but Kage just yanked me right on in there.
“Good God,” he cried out. “What do you have down there, a fucking two-by-four?”
I bit back a laugh. “Have you never done this before, Kage?”
“No. Fuck no. Jesus, that fucking hurts.”
My eyes widened in alarm. “Do you want me to stop?”
“Hell, no. Give it to me. Come on, harder.”
“Your voice is getting a little loud,” I warned. “If somebody hears you, I don’t think they’ll have to wonder what we’re doing in here.”
He pulled me down on top of him and kissed me hard and thoroughly. “Mmmm, I told you I don’t care about that. Do you?”
Trick question. And I was surprised to discover that, after all we’d been through together, my answer was a very emphatic, “No.”
“Well, then get to it.” He gyrated his hips, urging me on while he continued to kiss me. In reality, I think it was Kage who was fucking me, regardless of whose dick was in whose ass. He manipulated my cock with his ass and moved me where he wanted me until I was ready to pop. I was moaning like a brainless thing by the time I finally came, shuddering at the feel of Kage’s muscles stroking me all the way down.
Before I was even done coming, Kage had pulled off of me and flipped me under him. Using traces of lube and my own semen, Kage slicked himself up and plunged into me. I groaned loving the feel of him inside me even after I’d already come down from my own orgasm. In fact, because he did it before I’d even finished, it seemed to reset my switch. Within minutes, we were both howling in mutual pleasure as I came for the second time. Kage must have been saving up since I’d left Vegas, because it seemed like he came gallons.
When we were done and lying side-by-side on the floor, he twined his fingers in mine and sighed. “You said you loved me,” he pointed out, as if maybe I hadn’t realized the words had come out of my mouth. “That’s the second time you’ve said it.”
“Yeah.” I cut my eyes over at him. “Does that freak you out?”
He shrugged. “It’s just… You caught me off guard. Maybe I’ll have a better answer next time.”
“Kage, I wasn’t fishing for an answer. It’s just how I felt — how I feel — and I wanted to say it.”
“Yeah, that’s cool,” he said. “I’ve just never said it before.”
“I haven’t either. I’ve dated a lot of girls, but I never said that. Never felt it before.”
“Oh. But have you said it to, you know… other people?”
“Like guys? I think you know the answer to that question. You’re the first guy I’ve ever been with.”
Kage bit his lip, looking as nervous as I’d ever seen him. “But like, besides that. Like your parents or something?”
“Well, yeah, of course. I mean we’ve all said it to our parents, but—” I stopped, realizing that Kage could barely even remember his parents, and he seemed to pretty much hate his uncle.
“You mean you’ve never said it at all.”
He nodded.
I rolled over and wrapped him up in a hug and kissed him on the forehead, then the cheek, and then the lips. “It’s alright. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’ll keep on saying it, and you don’t ever have to say the words if you don’t feel comfortable. But if you do ever get ready to say it, I’ll be right here waiting, okay? And they’ll be all the more special because you’ve never said them.”
He squeezed me, then dragged me over his body to spoon with me. I’d meant for us to get up onto the bed, but we both fell asleep just like that. It was the most satisfying night of my life. That is, until three o’clock in the morning rolled around, and Kage was crying out in his sleep again.
I woke to the sound of his frantic voice, mumbling incoherent things out into the semi-darkness and squeezing my body way too tight.
“Kage,” I gasped, finding it hard to get air into my lungs from within his iron grasp. “Baby, let me go. I can’t breathe.”
I was able to squirm out of his arms eventually, and then I set about trying to rouse him like I’d always done before. I shook him for ten minutes, at which point his cries were really scaring me. He truly sounded like a child in distress, but I was scared to hold him. Scared he’d catch me in his grasp again and squeeze me to death.
Finally, he woke with a huge, desperate gasp of air, like he’d been underwater almost to the point of drowning.
“Kage, are you okay? Breathe, baby, breathe. Are you okay?”
“Oh my God,” he cried. “Oh my God. No.”
“What is it? What’s wrong?” I shook him, and he turned wild, unseeing eyes on me.
“Oh my God. I just killed my brother.”