Page 56 of Faithful

“I’m dying for a fucking cigarette,” Kai mutters into the darkness of the room, interrupting my thoughts.

“Go for it.”

He reaches for the nightstand on his side of the bed and picks up a small sign, then waves it in front of my face.

The darn thing readsNo Smoking.

“For real?”

“Management wants me to quit,” he explains, slamming the plastic back on the nightstand.

An image of him on stage cradling a half-burnt cigarette, his lips caressing the mic, enters my mind. Iodine isn’t Iodine without Kai being who he wants to be. “Can they do that?”

He thinks for a long moment. “Yes and no.”

I roll over and push up on one arm, propping myself with an elbow to study the contours of his profile. The roll of his Adam’s apple as he swallows nervously. The slight movement of his lips as they part. The sweep of his lashes against tender skin as his eyes fall closed.

My blood stirs at the visuals.

He’s perfect, I find myself thinking. Also, that I have no freaking clue how I even managed to get it up in front of Emmalyn Hill when we lost our V-cards. Must have been a fucking brain glitch.

My hand seeks the warmth of his body.

Kai catches my wrist and shifts slightly to face me, slipping one knee into the space between my legs. Our gazes meet in the shadows of the suite, and I see it now, I see how vulnerable he is at this very instant, how naked and stripped of all his defenses. It’s all in his eyes. As if he’s offering something precious and there’s a time limit on this offer and the window is about to close.

My heart is pounding faster than ever.

“Did you miss me?” Kai rasps out, his tone serious rather than sexy.

“I did.”

“Say it,” he demands quietly, grasping the back of my neck and drawing me closer. The press of his fingers against my skin isn’t gentle.

My chest tightens. “I missed you.”

“No.” He shakes his head, then yanks me up so we’re both in a sitting position. The action is so sudden, it nearly gives me whiplash. “Say it like you mean it.” With one hand still wrapped around my nape, he presses his fingers into my face, worrying my cheeks and my lips. “Say it like youreally, reallymean it, babe.” The last word is more of a whisper. “Like I’m a worm, a parasite in your bloodstream. Like you can only extract me if you go under a scalpel.”

My pulse has hit the highest point and is now a roaring drill in my ears. My dick is hard, and my body is a thousand tiny fuses ready to go off at any second.

And all it took for him to make me this way was a couple of touches and a string of sentences about a predatory organism.

“I did miss you,” I breathe out, dropping my face to his shoulder and showering it with kisses, slowly making my way up the column of his throat to his chin, then to his mouth.

There’s the soft brush of lips. The meeting of tongues. The rearrangement of limbs. The glide of sheets and tangle of blankets. The shared need to possess one another.

“How much?” Kai asks as I nudge him down onto his back.

“Too fucking much.”

“Tell me. I want to hear it.”

I sink my fingers into the mess of black hair, pushing a misbehaving strand behind his ear. “I’d think about you day and night. First thing in the morning. Last thing before bed. Sometimes you’d enter my mind at random when I was at work or running errands and all I’d want in those moments was to talk to you, to touch you, to hold you…” I pause because I realize I’m telling him things I never intended to share unless he shared his own feelings with me openly. I’ve heard the half-truths. I crave more.

“Continue,” Kai whispers, looking impossibly in control despite being the one crushed to the bedsheets. “To hold me… What else?”

I grind myself against him to make my intent obvious (as if my aching erection pressed to his thigh isn’t enough). “To own you. To fuck you like you’ve never been fucked before.”

“How about fucking me now? Do you still want that?”

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