It took a moment for his brain to focus and identify the warm, naked body snuggled against his. Kay. She was still asleep, her breathing soft and even, and he lay still, taking in the moment of peace.
Kay stirred and he ran his fingers down her arm, enjoying her small shiver. She lifted her head and smiled at him sleepily. “Good morning.” Her smile widened. “And thank you.”
God, this woman. So brave. So beautiful. And she was thanking him. “What for?”
“For everything. Helping with those boys, having my back. For last night.”
He chuckled. They had slept for a few hours, woken up hungry and eaten pizza in bed, laughed, showered together, and finished the night sinking into each other again before drifting back to sleep. “Yeah, it was a terrible hardship.”
She wrapped a leg over him as she nestled her face into his neck. “So sorry you had to suffer.”
He slid his hand up her side. “Well, I’m sure we could think of something to make me feel better.”
He could feel her smile against his skin. “What could you possibly have in mind?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he tangled his hand in her hair, angling her face up, and kissed her with slow open-mouthed heat, enjoying how she moaned, how her nipples hardened into points against his chest. He swept his other hand up and wrapped it around her ribs, reveling in the satin of her skin under his rough fingers, feeling how delicate she was under his hand.
She always came across as so confident and strong that it was easy to miss her softness. Her big heart. She had done everything she could to avoid hurting those boys, just like she had thrown herself into the fight to protect the mother and baby at the bus stop. She’d been determined to help him, too. She amazed him.
He pulled away for a moment to get a condom from his drawer and then rolled back toward her, guiding her to lie on her back so that he could run open-mouthed kisses across her shoulder and down her throat, sucking a deep red bruise on the smooth skin over her fluttering pulse.
She wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him closer while he tasted her. God. She was so warm and soft. His knuckles brushed the velvety skin under her breasts, and he took one into his hand, loving its weight in his palm as he flicked his thumb over her nipple.
He ran his tongue over her lips before sinking back into her mouth, feeling the Shadows inside him pulsing with his heartbeat, their power flowing through him. His Shadows flooded out, the dark green of the deep forest reaching through his body and weaving sinuously with Kay’s midnight blue.
She had given him this. Opened him. Made him feel alive. Truly, wonderfully alive.
Their kiss deepened, their bodies moving in a swirl of Shadows. The world spun around him as if he was drunk, and his only anchor was Kay’s smooth skin. Her body rose to meet his as he rolled again, guiding her over him, her dark hair just long enough to fall around their faces, curtaining them.
He reached both his hands up to push her hair behind her ears and then pulled her down into a languid kiss as she slid herself slowly over his aching cock. His breath caught and she did it again, gliding forward and then back as their kiss grew more desperate and their Shadows surged.
She paused, looking down at him, her eyes locked on his as she held herself just above him, torturing them both. Then she reached down to align their bodies and slowly impaled herself on him. He held her there for a moment, reveling in the perfection of it. He was embedded inside her. Surrounded by her tight, strong body. Enveloped in the midnight-blue of her Shadows.
Her head fell back as he ran his hands over her breasts, shaping and teasing them as she rocked, building the inferno between them. He slid his hands further down, one to her hip, the other pushing between them. He found the place where they were joined and added pressure from his fingers as she gasped and ground down on him, harder and faster.
Their Shadows boiled together, like dark clouds before a thunderstorm, as if his soul was reaching out toward Kay’s, and hers was responding.
They rode the storm together; her body rising like an angel above his, their skin flushed and muscles clenching as they found each other in the tempest.
He pulled her forward, changing the angle as he kissed her, encouraging his Shadows to surround her until it was impossible to know where he ended, and she began.
“I love how strong you are,” he whispered roughly against her ear. “God, Kay, I can feel youeverywhere.”
Kay whimpered as she clamped her body around his, and then he could feel her coming. Her inner muscles milked him as she gasped out his name, and he lost control, pumping up into her as the world throbbed around him.
Ethan dropped slowly back to earth. His Shadows retreated, settling into a leisurely background hum. Kay pulled her body free and then collapsed onto him, stretching her lean muscles and soft curves out over the top of him as he ran his hands over her back, drawing random patterns just to feel her skin. He arranged a blanket over her, and they drifted sleepily, skin to skin.
He knew he should be terrified. He was in far deeper with Kay than he’d ever imagined. Their Shadows had chosen each other, but it wasn’t only her Shadows that drew him in, it was her. She made him feel things that he hadn’t thought possible, especially in the short time he’d known her. Things that he hadn’t even felt for Amanda, and his ex-wife had cracked his heart with her lies.
Kay wouldn’t crack it if she betrayed him. After what they’d shared, she would shatter him completely. But, even knowing the danger, there was nothing he wanted more than to wake up beside her again. And again, after that.
Eventually, his alarm went off and she lifted her head blearily to glare at him.
Ethan grimaced. “Sorry. I have a shift.”
She rolled off him, taking the blanket, and rubbed her eyes, rumpled and soft with sleep. “Okay… just… coffee.”
He climbed out of bed and pulled on a pair of jeans as she stumbled around looking for clothes and yawning.
