When her hands settled on my chest again, her palms pressing into my pecs and her head tilting back, I gritted my teeth. “Kitty?”
It was the only time I’d let this become an issue.
She knew what I was.
What I’d done.
Who I’d have to be?—
“You promise to try?”
I blinked at her. “What?”
“I’m not an idiot, Stan,” she chided, sounding more like her regular self, which went a long way in calming the dangerous racing of my heart. “You cantryto find an antidote, but you might not. Red’s out of the bag. Some creeps might like the result of their addiction, and not every man would take a drug to counteract its onset of actionifyou even managed to create one. But you promise to try?”
Her eyes pleaded with me, and I was only one weak, weak, weak man staring at his salvation and knowing I couldn’t let her down.
“I’ll spend the rest of my life making this right, Kitty.”
A wispy breath drifted from her mouth, but then my dreams came true because she leaned up on tiptoe, hands sliding over my chest to cup behind my neck, fingers toying gently with my hair. She was so much goddamn smaller than I was, and that had never been more evident now that I could hold her in my arms. Now thatsheheldme.
Nothing could compare.
No one.
And there wasn’t any space in my mind for guilt—because my angel was here.
She was fucking here.
She was touching me.
Her presence alone was a benediction, never mind her kiss.
As my eyes closed, behind them, the nerves responded to the red-hot flames in the distance, but that was nothing to the fire licking at my nerve endings.
When she shivered as our lips connected, I released a pained moan. Hefting her high, I was beyond grateful that she parted her legs and hugged my hips, those torturous jeans she wore like they were a second skin a boon in how freely she could move.
My hands remained at her waist. Stuck fast there by the terror she’d realize she was kissing a monster like me. The urge to burrow my claws in deep remained, to bind her to me. Never let her fucking go. Tie her to me until I was all she goddamn saw?—
No.
You can’t tie angels down.
I exhaled the poison.
They fly away.
I inhaled her grace.
Her fingers drifted over my beard, tracing the shape of my jaw as she allowed the kiss to flourish into more.
No longer a soft brush of that tantalizing mouth but harder. Faster. Lips parted. Teeth nipping. Tongue swiping. Soft moans and urgent sighs. Fingernails through my hair, knees digging eagerly into my hips.
Grounded by her touch, I shuddered beneath her, the quake of the earth under my feet something I experienced alone as she put me in the epicenter of her attention.
“Bedda mia.” I groaned, my face dipping closer to hers, my soul needing this connection more than my lungs burned for air.
“I don’t know what that means but please, for fuck’s sake, Stan, kiss me back!”
