THIRTY-ONE
Kayne held Jess close as they descended the stairs on Thursday night. They hadn't talked about what had transpired in Jess's office Monday afternoon, even if he still bore the marks on his back. He felt his dick stir at the memory. Down, boy! They also hadn't discussed whatever ghosts she'd been running from in that moment before she turned to him.
“Baby, are you feeling okay?” He brushed his lips across her forehead.
She’d been falling asleep the moment her head hit the pillow every night, barely rousing when he crawled into bed and took her in his arms.
She looked at him, her expression apologetic, and perhaps lined with a small amount of fear. “I'm so sorry, I'm just tired—”
He laid a finger against her lips. “Don’t. I'm the one who’s sorry. I've been keeping you up half the night, even though you're busy from sun up to well past time the kids go to sleep. I have no willpower when it comes to you, and I’ve been thoughtless to your needs. It’s okay to tell me ‘no.’ At least once in a while.”
“I like that you reach for me in the night,” she whispered so softly he wasn't sure he'd heard her.
“Baby, don't you know you're my lodestone?” He pulled her around to face him. “My needle always points toward your sweet little kitty,” he said huskily.
Jess giggled as he’d hoped she would. “My kitty?” She was so beautiful, but when she laughed, when she was happy, it was incomparable. Lord, how he loved her.
He brushed the hair back from her face with both hands. “My kitty,” he mock growled. “And it's a very nice kitty at that. It loves to be petted and purrs in response, and it's very happy when I feed it wild cock.”
Jess laughed and blushed a little. He loved that about her too. That beautiful sweet innocence that radiated from her, opposite of the life he'd lead before her.
He kissed her softly, then rested his forehead against hers. “I reach for you in my sleep because I dream of you, Jess. Hot erotic dreams where you're doing wicked things to me with your mouth, and I'm doing things to your sweet body that I'm sure are illegal in some states.”
Damn, if she didn't turn three shades of red at that admission. And that plump bottom lip of hers disappeared behind her teeth.
He gently ran his thumb across those lips. “Those fantasies are so vivid, sometimes I can't tell where dream ends and reality begins. Later, I realize all the while I was actually touching you, readying your beautiful body to take me, but it's not until I'm over you and in you that I know I'm awake. Then it's so clear what was dream and what is reality that I wonder how I could ever confuse the two.”
He felt her flinch and he knew what she was thinking, and his heart broke. How could anyone have ever made her doubt her worth? “Reality is so, so much better than dream. You are so much better than any dream I’ve ever had.”
Jess wrapped herself around Kayne and clung to him. Her heart physically ached from holding the words “I love you” inside. She couldn't say them first. Not this time, not with this man. If she voiced those feelings, she would be giving him the power to crush her. She now realized she'd never loved Jarred. Not really. She'd been in love with the idea of him. She'd loved the way he romanced her. In the beginning, he'd made her feel like she was the only one who mattered, but it had all been a lie. Now she understood there had never been chemistry between her and Jarred. She'd never craved him the way she did Kayne. Maybe that had been their downfall. Maybe Jarred had been in love with the idea of her, too.
Kayne was different in so many ways. He made her blood sing. Hell, she got wet merely talking to him over the phone. She loved the way he dropped his voice, all dark and husky, and it didn't matter what he said, it turned her on. He could probably make her orgasm reciting a grocery list if he tried hard enough.
She loved the way he constantly touched her. Sometimes sweet and innocent; a brush of lips to her temple, a caress of his knuckles down her cheek. Sometimes it was hot, frantic, have-to-have-you-right-now, vertical sex. Lots of times it was somewhere in between. Regardless of the setting, if she was within reach, his hands were on her, and it seemed he went out of his way to make sure she was within touching distance.
He gently tugged her arm. “Come on, baby, you're exhausted. I want to take you to bed. I want to hold you while we sleep.”
And he did. She slept wrapped safely in his arms until the wee hours of the morning when the dreams claimed him. She gasped awake as he surged inside of her, her body on fire from the dream he'd dragged her willingly into, and she clung to him as he took her with slow deep strokes, whispering her name again and again, as if he knew she needed to know he was with her, until orgasm claimed them.