It was more encouragement than she’d hoped for.
“KC.” Her back hit something—soft, starchy linens by the feel and smell—and for a moment she was at her nan’s, at a party, hiding under a table with a long tablecloth, looking at everyone’s fancy shoes. Then KC’s cheek was against hers, immediately transporting her to a different familiar place, every one of her senses so turned up that there was very nearly feedback, electric static, everything an ache or a throb or a hot pulse.
“I promise,” KC murmured against her cheek, as her other hand, the one not holding Yardley’s wrist, was suddenly raking through her hair, sending delicious prickles over her scalp, “I havethings I want to say, too. I want to talk about trust. I want to talk for a whole day. Maybe more. I want to see if we can even do that.”
Oh.Oh, if that wasn’t the most romantic thing anyone had ever said to her. It turned out Yardley had beenlongingfor KC to talk about the future. It meant they had a future, or at least that they might.
It meant she really could start to hope for something different than the ending they’d been headed toward.
“I can do that,” she said. “I may need to take a few breaks, but I will try my hardest.”
“Probably this isn’t a good idea,” KC whispered. The wordthiswas punctuated with a small press of her hips against Yardley’s.
“It’s true,” Yardley said, letting the feelings in her body melt against her overwarm skin, “that generally this kind of thing can confuse a woman. So let’s get any confusion out of the way.”
“About?” KC asked this question with her lips against Yardley’s neck.
“Your intentions.” Yardley couldn’t say this without infusing the phrase with prim tartness that made KC ease back.
“We just broke up again. I thought, this time, with a lot of emotional intelligence.” There was laughter in KC’s voice.
“But we also implied that we would like to give more talking a try. And I should correct myself, because Idon’tthink we’ve done this before. We’ve let ourselves get caught up, but we haven’t gone in fully knowing how we both feel.”
“Which is?”
Yardley bit her bottom lip. There was something serious in KC’s voice, and there should be. She was still holding Yardley’s wrist, which had the gold watch on it, reminding Yardley that her own intention wasn’t to hang on to the keys KC had givenher but rather to trade them for something that did a better job of encompassing what she thought she could feel for KC Nolan, given the chance. “I think we feel like there’s more to our story.”
“Yes,” KC said. “I think we do.”
“So our intentions…”
KC put her lips on Yardley’s neck.
With one warm, open-mouthed kiss, she dissolved every word from Yardley’s head. Her hands were at Yardley’s hips, sliding over her sides, up her back, and it had been so long since she’d felt KC’s body against hers like this—the way she surrounded her and teased her, asked her and promised her—that Yardley had forgotten how much everything inside her turned on in response.
It made her want to rush it. She wanted to press her thigh between KC’s legs and fit her mouth over her bottom lip. She wanted to get so hot, clothes were nonsensical, and she wanted to let the sweet ache sharpen between her legs until there was nothing to do but rub herself against it.
This wasn’t like their almost kiss in the conference room at headquarters, or when they’d tumbled to the rug before Kris knocked on the door of the safe-house flat. Those moments were echoes, old responses to tension and silence.
This was new. This wasnew.
But she had to ask. Even if she only wanted this long, private moment to go on forever, she had to know. “What do we call this?” She swallowed over a noise in her throat that KC provoked with a gentle scrape of her teeth against Yardley’s neck.
“This is for tonight.” KC’s voice was gentle and, for the first time in this space, uncertain. “If you can. If you want to give us this.”
KC’s mouth, and her want, and their promise to talk, felt likeit could be more than enough for tonight. It was more than Yardley had hoped for.
“I want to,” she said, and KC’s grip moved from her wrist to her hip. Her other hand slid from Yardley’s hair to her jaw, and Yardley tasted KC’s thumb on her bottom lip, so unexpected that she opened her mouth to take more. She would give KC whatever she wanted.
Their mouths met in a kiss, and the thud of desire that hit through her body was the surprise, because she wouldn’t have believed she could want KCmore.
She might have whimpered at the touch of KC’s tongue against hers. She thought she must have, but she wasn’t embarrassed. Her gift of that whimper to KC was what made KC press her body fully to Yardley’s and grip a fistful of hair at her nape. Their kiss tasted like a lazy summer morning in bed, filtered sunlight on bare skin, KC’s hard grip and her slow, explicit kissing that made the boundaries of Yardley’s body unwind.
She’d missed this. Summer was the last time they’d had this.
The zippers on KC’s jacket pressed into Yardley’s skin, drawing her attention to the urgent problem of the stupid, stupid clothes they were wearing and reminding her she had hands, too. She traced her fingers down the front of the jacket. “Take this off.”
KC kissed her again, open-mouthed, distracted. “You take it off.”
