Our kisses are soft at first. His lips tease mine, tasting, touching, pressing with such gentle sweetness, I want to remember these kisses forever. These are first-love kisses. First-everything kisses. The kind that makes the world around us collapse to nothing and every worry I have fade away.
I kiss him back, treasuring the feel of his strong jawunder my fingers, the way I have to lift on my toes a little, and that brings my chest even closer to his.
I lean into him, into the kiss.
The breaths we trade, the gentle tapping of our noses. The kisses are slow, our lips exploring at a pace that feels curious and gentle, tentative and shy.
But then his fingers tighten on my hips, and I whimper, the sound slipping past my lips before I can stop it. He echoes it, but where my noise was small and strained, his is feral, needy, and raw.
He sweeps my mouth open with the tip of his tongue.
Then everything changes.
The air around us.
The energy that holds us together.
It shifts from an ember to a flame, and before I know what’s happening, he’s kicking my door shut and full-body carrying me to the bed.
He sets me down gently, and his eyes rove over my body. I’m fully clothed, but he’s looking at me as if he’s about to devour a feast that can never, ever satisfy his hunger. My insides liquefy as I watch him unbuckle his belt and toe out of his boots. He pulls a couple of foil-wrapped squares from the back pocket of his jeans, and I stifle a smile.
“Better safe than sorry?” I ask.
He shakes his head and unzips his jeans. His dick is already hard, its thick length pressing against the front of his navy boxer briefs.
“Safe,” he says, working his jeans down his hips. “But never, ever sorry. Not when it comes to you.”
He climbs into bed shirtless and with only his boxer briefs on. We look at each other for a minute, and he kneels beside me.
“I don’t want just one night,” he admits. His voice is low and quiet. “I want more. I just don’t know how much more I can handle.”
I nod. I understand. He doesn’t have to say more. A lady with a past. A daughter from another man. I have no job, nothing to offer.
“I’m a lot to handle,” I say with a small shrug. I close my eyes. “I know that, Savage. I know.”
“No.” He’s got my hands in his, and he’s pulling me close to him so we’re both kneeling on the bed. “You’re under my skin, Claire. I think about you constantly. I’m falling for you,” he grits out. “And that’s something I just can’t do.”
I squeeze his hands gently between mine. “I used to be good at a lot of things,” I tell him, echoing the thing I tell myself when things look especially grim. “And I will be again someday. I don’t need you to save me—more than you already have. I don’t need you to raise my daughter. I just need your honesty. That’s all.”
He raises my hands to his lips and kisses my knuckles. “I want to taste every inch of you,” he murmurs. “I want to love you so hard that you forget there was ever anyone else but me.”
By love, I know he means fuck. So, I nod. “I want that too.”
“And more,” he tells me. “Claire, I want you to move in with me.”
11
SAVAGE
I letthe words come out of me, but I don’t bother explaining. Something about holding Aurora, watching her crawl on the floor of this compound spare room. I don’t know that I have space in my fractured heart to care for anyone for longer than a few nights, but I’m willing to try.
This woman cracks open every defense I have and sets every dark part of me loose.
And somehow, as much as I want to ride, as much as I want to pretend that everything that broke me is locked in a box where it can never hurt me again, she makes me face things, look at things. I can’t explain it. It’s like she’s a storm that blew in on a soft breeze and she’s shaking up everything I am.
She doesn’t say anything in response to what I said, and I don’t wait for her to speak. I reach for the cute little sleeveless thing she’s wearing, and I untie the black bows on her shoulders. The ties fall down,exposing the straps of her bra, and I caress her bare shoulders, my thumbs working the delicate divots above her collarbones.
“You’re so fucking beautiful,” I tell her.
