Page 58 of So Close

It only takes two more precision thrusts to hurl me into orgasm. I breathe your name as my body shivers violently, my legs shaking with the surfeit of delight. I hear you groan, then your head bows like a supplicant between your straining biceps, your damp forehead resting on mine. Your breath hisses as your climax grips you, your body shuddering, your hips surging rhythmically.

Moments later, you slump against me, breathing hard.

“Jesus,” you wheeze, struggling for breath. Your tone is both awestruck and chagrined, and it makes me laugh.

“Stop that,” you order gruffly. “You’ll make me hard again, which will definitely kill me.”

Sliding from me in a wet, heavy glide, you shift between my hip and the sofa back, then flip us both to drape me over you.

“Even you can’t go again.” I lift my head to look down at you because I’m not absolutely sure that’s true.

Your brow arches. “If you’d asked me this morning if I thought I could screw us both to death, I would’ve said those days are behind me. Now I understand my cock isn’t a team player. It doesn’t care if it kills me. And while dying making love to you is exactly the way I’d choose to go out, I have a lot of bucket-list items to check off with you before then.”

I rest my chin atop my crossed arms. “Like what?”

“Like catching up on all those spy-movie franchises you love and eating cold pizza.”

“You haven’t been keeping up?”

“Without you?” Shadows flicker in your fire-lit eyes. “It would have shredded me even to try.”

My palm presses flat over your heart. I study your face. Release has softened your features, and there’s the liquid shine of love in your eyes. I want to touch you all over, claim every inch of rough-silk skin.

“A kiss, my queen,” you murmur, licking your lower lip. “My kingdom for a kiss.”

Nuzzling the tip of my nose against yours, I whisper, “What if it’s just the king I want?”

“He’s already yours. He always has been.”

I take your mouth, my skin hot and sensitive as if I’m sunburned. I’ve danced with fire in your arms and feel the effects.

I’ve died for this, for you.

Now, I’ll have to kill for it.

32

AMY

A hot,wet, horrible-smelling tongue drags across my face. My arms flail, pushing at a heavy, muscular body covered in hair. “What the fuck?”

God, my jaw aches like I’ve got an ice pick rammed into the bone.

The tongue licks my upper arm, and my eyes pop open. I squint against the sun’s bright light. “Damn it. Get the fuck away from me.”

Pushing onto my elbows, I find myself on a low-slung, wide-seated cream sectional sofa. It takes me a moment to survey the space and figure out I’m in Suzanne’s living room. Landscape tapestries and carved wooden masks hang on cheerful yellow walls, intensifying the sunlight already burning my eyes. A high-pitched whine turns my attention to the black Labrador sitting impatiently and expectantly beside me.

“Oh, fuck. I’m sorry, Ollie.” I rub his head in apology. “I’m not a morning person. Also, your breath is horrendous. But I still love you madly.”

“It’s not morning,” Suzanne says drily as she enters from the kitchen. A colorful head wrap restrains her dark curls, her face is devoid of makeup and a stunning silk kaftan drapes her voluptuous figure. “It’s nearly three in the afternoon. And I’m giving Oliver the probiotics the vet recommended for his breath. It’s definitely better.”

“Ugh. If that’s better, it must’ve been like decomposition before.” I sit up and rub sleep from my eyes. “What the hell am I doing on your sofa? And where is my purse? I need my pills.”

She grabs my Gucci Dionysus bag off the mirrored console table by her apartment door and brings it to me. “What are you taking? And why?”

“I had an emergency root canal a few days ago. They gave me Norco and some megadose ibuprofen.” I throw the blanket off and sit up. I’m dressed in the pajamas I’d put on the morning before, the wide-legged pants being the closest I could find to what Lily wore at the family meeting in Kane’s library. My lingerie set has a matching top with a corseted back that shows off my stomach. Really, my ensemble is sexier and more comfortable than what Kane’s bitch was wearing.

Standing, I walk over to Suzanne’s brass and glass bar cart and pour myself a gin and tonic. Keeping my head down, I hide my horrified expression. I’m sore between my legs and sticky. There’s no mistaking that I’ve had sex, but I don’t remember it.

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