Page 21 of Not In Love

“Are you sure you weren’t a prickly cactus in another life?” His face pressed lightly against her stomach as his laughter spilled out.

The contact jolted her. It was too much, too intimate, his skin hot and solid against hers. She could feel every breath, every shift of his shoulders, the sound of his laugh reverberating through her ribs. Settling around her heart. Jolting the electric fence she’d built around it.

“Did you know that cacti absorb water drop by drop and then store it for months?” she added drily, realizing too late how nerdy she sounded.

“Ahh…” Diego said, pretending thoughtful interest, while his eyes glowed with muffled laughter. “I was right about that analogy then?”

She pinched, or tried to pinch, the smooth ridge of his shoulder. He was like velvet poured over concrete under her fingers and all she ended up doing was tracing the thick muscle. “How?”

“You’re storing all the pleasure I give you. Planning to ration it out to yourself? Use it as prime inspirational material for later sessions?” He licked around her bellybutton, and pressed a noisy kiss on top. “If you say please, I’ll record some of the filthier lines on your phone. For you to play back at leisure while you indulge yourself.”

Kash grinned, despite his words searing her, in more ways than one. Warmth pooled at her chest—how easy and comforting he made this, how effortlessly he unraveled her here too.

It was supposed to be sex. Only sex.

Not this warmth and laughter and the sheer joy of being alive in this moment.

She shoved lightly at his shoulder. “Get off me.”

He lifted his head, a wild gleam in his eyes, and again, her breath caught.

Spidery laugh lines creasing at the edges of his eyes, lips curved, dark hair ruffled where she’d tugged at it. His eyes gleamed, warm and sharp, smooth skin stretched taut over rippling muscles.

And it struck her then, how the confused, naughty, failing-in-school teenager who pushed himself, and his body to its edge, to succeed in soccer, had become this grounded, happy, gorgeous man.

And through a strange twist of fate, he was her partner in raising a child, the man who’d seen how close she’d been skating the edge, and he was here in her bed.

Possessiveness she’d never known before clawed at her.

It wasn’t that she wanted to own him so much as the knowing in her gut that he was letting her borrow him. That she only had a fragment of time with him while some other woman would get him for a lifetime. That for the rest of her own life, she would have to watch him find that woman and fall in love, from the sidelines.

It made the urgency under her skin, in her core, thrum keener.

“You look like my laughing’s a contagious disease you just isolated,” he teased.

Despite her gloomy thoughts, her lips twitched. “Why wouldn’t I,” she shot back, with a fake glare, “when you’re laughing at me?”

“Not at you,” he said, eyes never leaving hers. “I’m…” his Adam’s apple bobbed, “amazed by you.”

Her pulse jumped at his easy praise. He was right earlier that she hadn’t ever wanted praise or validation for showing up and being strong. For doing the right thing by her family. But she did wish that she didn’t have to be so, all the time. And only he had seen that. “Why?”

“You never let regrets or self-pity or anything else get you down.”

She shrugged.

He watched her for a beat, something unreadable flickering in his expression. “Since we only have one night, I shouldn’t waste any more time, right?”

“How magnanimous of you to let me have you,” she said, her smile slipping past her lips.

“I promised three orgasms.” He bent his head and pressed another kiss to her stomach. “Although now I wish I’d said ten,” he said, nibbling at her flesh like it was an appetizer.

His mouth moved higher as he crawled over her, making every point of contact tormentingly delicious. He cupped and kneaded her breasts, pressed them together and licked a path down her cleavage. Played with her as if he had all the time in the world and he’d rather be nowhere else.

“Neglected these earlier,” he murmured, almost apologetic, before blowing around the aching peaks.

Kash writhed beneath him, a fresh trail of needy fire licking down to her core. Then, he pinned her, his tongue flicking over her nipple until she gasped, hips shifting under him, seeking to trap that thick hardness where she needed it most.

“Jesus, you’re winding me up again.”

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