Chapter 11
A Woman Like You
Kian
He'd known, from the second his lips touched hers, that Katelyn wasn’t like any other woman on earth. He felt the desperation in her kiss, in the way she threaded delicate fingers through his hair, in the little whimpers she made. Her scent, rising up around them, was rich and heady and fueled his own needs.
It’s been so long. Which was the understatement of the century. After the accident he’d shut down human interaction to the point where he kept it at a bare, necessary minimum. He never thought there would be a time when his lost, painful isolation would be shattered so thoroughly.
His tongue stroked hers in hot passes as he ate at her mouth, sipped the rose red sweetness of her perfect, soft lips. He thought of his bed, the loneliest place in his house. He thought of taking her there, stripping away her clothing and showing her just what true passion could be. He figured it had been a long time for her too. Or at least, a long time since someone had touched her with the intent to give her true pleasure as well as take it.
The walls he’d hammered up around his soul slowly lowered, exposing a part of him that was as painful and raw as the day the accident happened. Because he couldn’t help himself, he imagined waking up beside her, the woman who was an angel, staring into her deep blue eyes; a time when his bed went from not just being his alone, but to theirs. He imagined sharing all the parts of himself he’d kept hidden for so long. Damn, even telling someone else the stupid news from his day, sharing all those things he had to keep shored away because he’d made himself that way… it was unimaginable. It hurt. It damn well twisted his already aching heart.
Katelyn placed a delicate hand on his chest and gently pushed as she pulled away. She blinked large, wide blue eyes. The color of them was almost obliterated by her pupils. Her shoulders heaved sweetly as she forcefully took air into lungs that probably screamed like his own did. It stung him deep that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d kissed until he had no breath left.
“We shouldn’t do this,” she gasped. “This isn’t right. Not after…”
Kian should have let her go. He should have agreed with her and watched her walk out his front door. Back to her own world, where she was safe. Safe from him and the pain he could only bring her. He imagined his hand sliding over her bare skin, darkening all that pale, creaminess that lay below her clothing. He was like a dark stain that could only bring misery.
A sick feeling twisted in his gut and he pulled away. It actually hurt to physically set himself apart from her. Which was pretty damn ironic considering he always thought the greatest damage would be caused by getting too close.
Katelyn, sensing his detachment, moved closer on the couch. She reached out, so very gently, and slowly ran her hand over the length of his beard. Her kiss swollen lips, lips that tasted of the sweetest nectar, lips that were entirely divine, curled up in a radiant smile. The scent of her, when he breathed in, filled up his nostrils again. The sweet floral fragrance that drifted from her hair or her wrists, her neck- maybe even her skin itself, aroused a host of feelings from the past. Most of them he feared. Sorrow. Love. Pain. Wild ecstasy. Danger.
“I like this. It’s so much softer than I thought it would be.”
Hell. Doesn’t that imply she thought about touching it? Kian reacted viscerally, leaning into her touch as though she could somehow save him from himself.
“I know I should go- but- I’m not going to. I- I can’t imagine I look very pretty right now… maybe if it’s dark…”
“No,” he said thickly. “A woman like you doesn’t belong in the darkness.” Because he couldn’t stop himself, he wrapped his hand around the porcelain column of her neck. The way her lips parted, the wildfire in her eyes fed his own hard need. A need he was going to surrender to, because at that point, he could do nothing else.
His lips slanted over hers again, searching, aching, hungry. She responded, twisting her body into him. The press of firm, ripe breasts in his chest drew a tortured groan from his throat. She swallowed it as she kissed him furiously. She nipped at his mouth hungrily, becoming the aggressor in a way that was both startling and erotic as hell.
It had never truly been like that between him and Cynthia. Or at least, he didn’t think so. He always expected that being with a woman again, after the accident, would feel like a betrayal of all that he held sacred. His wife’s memory. The love they’d shared. The love that had been ripped apart long before they were ready. The lifetime of memories and special moments denied. The future that was theirs was never meant to be. Grief encompassed it all. Not just the loss of the person in itself, but the loss of everything they embodied. It was a grief he alone had to walk through. A private road of purgatory that no one could venture on. He walked it. Day in and day out. The guilt he felt, the guilt that somehow it was his fault, the accident, that he’d done it to his family, to himself, walked right along with him. He’d cut everyone off. Cynthia’s family. His own. He’d moved away because he had to. Started a new life and rebuilt what was left of himself.
“Kian…” He startled out of his lost thoughts, struggled to pull himself from the gray haze that often swallowed him whole. He felt Katelyn’s tender hands caressing his hair. She pulled the thick, dark strands away from his scalp before she combed her fingers through, right to the ends and started it again. She’d broken the kiss and he hadn’t even noticed. “Just stay with me.”
He blinked and found himself staring into eyes that were all too knowing. “I…”
“Shhh. I know what it’s like to get lost in the past. Believe me. I don’t know what your story is and you don’t truly know mine. For tonight, let’s just have no story. No past. Let’s just be us, whatever that means. We can find it in each other. We can define it, create it. We can do it, if you just stay here with me.”
Her voice was so soothing, so sweet, so utterly gentle, that unmanly tears sprang to his eyes. He blinked them away quickly, the burn of shame crawling up his throat. He swallowed back the acrid taste of grief and regret.
“Yes,” he found himself agreeing, though he didn’t fully know how he’d ever do it. “I don’t know how. I don’t know how to stay… here and forget.”
Those hands, those angelic hands kept caressing his hair. “Take off your clothes,” she whispered, right by his ear. Her breath warm and fragrant, sent a host of shivers racing over his skin. “And then take off mine and I’ll show you.”