Page 28 of Slay Bells Ring

Kane iskissingme.Kaneis kissingme. He’s kissing me—but the most surprising part is I’m kissing him back. I don’t know why. The only thing I should do to that man is push him away and maybe give him a slap for daring to touch me like this, but…

I don’t know. Maybe it’s the fact that I might die soon, or maybe it’s the fact that I’m being forced to rely on the same man who killed my parents to save me and keep me alive, but everything feels so out of my control. I want… God, as stupid as it sounds, as wrong as it is, I want to kiss him.

It’s funny. It’s stupid. It’s wrong—it’s everything all at once. The kiss is exactly what a kiss should be, and even though it shouldn’t be easy for me, it is.

Before the kiss can progress, Kane pulls his mouth off mine and turns away, giving me his wide back. “Fuck. I’m sorry. I… I don’t know why I—” The man is making excuses, about to say he doesn’t know why he kissed me.

And you know what? I don’t want to hear it.

I crawl towards him on the creaky bed, touch his arm and then practically fall in his lap as I curl around him like a snake. Before he can say anything else, I wrap my hands around his neck and pull his mouth to mine again.

This time when our lips meet, it’s pure fire with not an ounce of hesitancy. It’s heat and passion and hunger, the things true desire is made of. His mouth is rough like the rest of him, and his stubble is long enough to scratch my chin, but I don’t care. God, I just don’t care.

His arms wrap around me tightly, his hands large enough to swallow me whole. My chest presses hard against his, and my hands fall to his shoulders. I must get too close to the tender area around where he was shot, because he winces into the kiss.

I drop my hands off him as I whisper, “I’m sorry.”

Kane leans his forehead against mine, breathing hard. “Don’t be. I can take the pain. Touch me anywhere you want.” The way he says it, murmurs it like a prayer, like he wants me to touch him anywhere and everywhere, makes my heart do something funny in my chest.

Just because he said he can take the pain doesn’t mean I want to make him hurt—a far cry from my intentions when I first came to this cabin. I’m much more careful when I go for the bottom hem of his stained shirt and help him lift it up and over his head. I toss it to the side, my attention falling immediately to the hard, sculpted chest in front of me.

It’s not the first time I’ve seen it, but it’s the first time I’ve been so close to it without having to dig anything out of him. It allows me the time—and the daylight bouncing off the snowy world outside allows me the sight—to get to know his top half in a more intimate way.

He’s got two bandages. One where he was shot, just below his right shoulder, and one where I stabbed him on his left pec. To think, if I would have stabbed him a bit harder, I might’ve succeeded.

Of course, I didn’t take into account how hard it would be to stab someone who’s built like a fucking mountain, with muscles on top of muscles.

It’s not the bandages on his chest that draw my attention, though; it’s the rest of him. The clearly-defined abs beneath his chest, how he seems to have muscles on his torso I didn’t even know existed before now. It’s the way his skin tenses as I run my fingers down his chest, how he breathes in sharply when I trace a scar dancing across the middle of his abs. It’s how he watches me with half-lidded eyes while letting me explore him.

Kane is the epitome of what a man is. I shouldn’t be so attracted to him given our past, but sitting there on his lap while letting my hands roam over his muscles while he watches me… how could I not be?

The way he watches me… it’s like he’s enjoying my exploration, like he wants me to touch him wherever I please.

It’s only once I’ve danced my hands all across his chest and abdomen that I decide to even the playing field, so to speak. Kane holds onto my lower back to keep me steady while I take off my shirt and the bra underneath.

His eyes drop to take me in, and I swear to God no one has ever looked at me with such molten desire before. Like he can’t get enough and he wants to commit every single detail to memory.

Kane’s hands roam up the back of my neck, along my bare spine, and I shiver against him, knowing full well mynipples are now hard, pointed pebbles. Suddenly those hands drop to my ass as he forces me to kneel over his lap and bring my chest closer to his face.

“Fuck,” he breathes out the word against my chest, “what are you doing to me, Holly fucking Cooper?”

I could literally ask him the same thing. It’s like all logical thought went out the cabin door and neither of us can think straight anymore.

Kane angles his head back so he can look up at me from between my tits, the blueness of his eyes the opposite of what they usually are. Instead of icy cold, they radiate warmth, like the waters of the Caribbean.

No one’s ever looked at me like that. Like they don’t just want me; theyneedme. Kane looks at me like I’m the air that fills his lungs and he can’t get enough. It makes me warmer than the fire at my back.

Kane’s hands tighten on my ass for only a few seconds before he wraps his arms around me and flips us. Before I know it I’m beneath him, and he’s holding himself above me—but not for long. After another moment, his mouth comes down on mine again, and he kisses me so hard he pulls a moan out of me.

It’s strange. I spent the last thirteen years of my life hating this man’s guts, and here I am acting like an eager virgin, ready to give it all away.

After he ravages my mouth, he moves to my neck, his stubble scratching my jaw as he goes. He nuzzles into me, his lips trailing kisses along my neck, over my collarbone, and to my chest, where his hands have traveled. Those hands cup my tits and massage them, his fingers running over my nipples every few seconds, causing me to squirm.

I feel… out of my mind, like I’m ready to explode. It’s like nothing else matters. Not the past, not the fact that someone wants me dead, not even the possibility that my whole life has been a lie. The only thing that matters is the way Kane’s mouth feels as it continues to travel down my body, over my stomach.

His hands leave my tits, abandoning them, and shortly after his fingers work on my pants. The button, then the zipper. It all comes off, and as he’s working, Kane throws glances at me every now and then. Maybe he’s expecting me to stop him, to tell him we shouldn’t, to miraculously come to my senses and end this now before it’s too late.

But I would argue it’s already too late.

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