Page 57 of Torn In Two

We kissed until Josiah’s words floated away, and until the kisses became urgent, desperate, our moans of pleasure echoing around the room instead of my screams of panic.

“You’re killing me,” Hayden murmured over my mouth. “Fucking hell, Kara. I can’t keep kissing you like this.”

He pulled away, breathing hard, but I dragged him back, demanding his lips this time, instead of just accepting what he wanted to give. I needed him. I needed everything he made me feel and everything he made me forget. I climbed into his lap, straddling his legs and wrapping my arms around his neck, demanding his kisses like they were air I needed to breathe.

His hands traced up my back, skating along my spine and drawing me closer. His tongue found its way into my mouth, and I moaned into him, my core igniting at being pressed against the very noticeable ridge in his black work pants.

“I’ve thought about kissing you like this so many times,” he whispered. “You aren’t real. I had myself convinced I made you up.”

I shook my head. “You didn’t. I’ve thought about kissing you too.” So many times. I’d lain in bed awake at night for years, believing he lived only in my head, but imagining him breaking down the gates of Ethereal Eden and whisking me away into the night like I was a damsel and he was a knight.

I’d had to save myself. A fact I’d begun to take pride in.

It didn’t mean I didn’t want a fairy-tale ending with the prince though.

Or princes, if I let myself think of Hawk. Though he would have hated being thought of like that. No good for his street cred.

Hayden drew back slowly, his unfocused gaze becoming clearer. “I need to tell you something.”

I waited.

His eyes smoldered in the dim light of the pantry. “I’ve thought about doing a lot more than just kissing you, Kara.”

My breath faltered. Suddenly I was that young woman, lying on her bed, broken by a man who should have loved her but had used and abused her until her soul wept for someone she barely knew. A man she’d thought was dead. Pining for a ghost had still been better than her reality.

I was stronger now, Hawk had built me up until I wasn’t just that shell of a woman who’d arrived at the Slayers’ compound, fleeing from danger.

But that broken woman inside me who had longed for Hayden, clung to him as the only safe place she’d ever known, was dying to know what he wanted from her.

And already desperate to give it to him.

“I want you naked,” he murmured. “I want to watch you take your clothes off for me.”

My breath hitched. It wasn’t a demand, the sort Hawk would have made of me. It was gentler. One I could have refused if I’d wanted to.

I didn’t want to. “Then tell me to do it.”

He groaned, searching my face and seeing clearly what I needed from him. “You’re submissive.”

I frowned. “I don’t know what that means.” Not in this context anyway.

Hayden watched me carefully. “You like being told what to do. At least in bed. It turns you on.”

Did it? I was just so used to taking orders. Josiah’s had certainly never turned me on. I shuddered at the thought of presenting myself to him, face down on the bed so he wouldn’t have to look at my face.

But Hawk had made demands of my body that had me tingling from head to toe with just a whisp of memory.

And Hayden’s gaze offered more of the same.

I nodded. Letting him know he was right.

He groaned. “Stand up, Kara. Take your clothes off for me. I want to see every inch of you.”

I widened my eyes at him. “Here?”

He kissed me deeply, then smiled against my lips. “Here. So every time I come in afterward, I’ll remember you standing here, so fucking sweet and naked, waiting for me to touch you.”

His lips traveled to my neck, kissing the sensitive spot beneath my ear. “Take your clothes off for me, Kara.”

---