Page 193

FORTY-ONE
KANE
I gazeddown at the woman who had shattered every belief. Blonde air strewn around that gorgeous face. Toffee eyes swirling with the affection she’d been fighting.
Breaths short and panted, her heart this thundering beat against mine.
I exhaled heavily as I shifted off to the side, ridding myself of the condom and tossing it into the trash. Then I laid back onto my side and dragged her against me so that we were facing each other. All that hot, sweat-drenched flesh tucked up close to me.
Right where she belonged.
Emery let go of a contented sigh, and fuck, I didn’t think there was much that sounded better than that.
The woman finding her peace—her comfort—in me.
Especially after what had gone down this afternoon.
“How do you feel?” I finally asked, voice rough with the lust and relief that still barreled through my insides.
Emery blinked. Blinked those fathomless eyes that had the power to suck me down to the very depths of who she was. A looking glass into her soul that she kept under lock and key but had somehow granted me access to.
Yet, somehow, I felt as if I’d recognized them all along.
“Amazing,” she quietly admitted, lashes fluttering low as those tender fingertips danced across my chest.
“That so?” I kept it soft. Close to a tease. Probably should have been impossible with the way this moment felt profound.
Emery sucked her bottom lip between her teeth, so fucking cute when she got coy, and she gave a slight nod. “You want me to sing your praises, my dragon?”
It was her own tease. Something playful ridging into her features, her tenderness so deep and wide I thought there was a chance we might be floating in it.
“Well, a man needs to know if he lived up to expectations.” A smirk hitched at the edge of my mouth.
“I think you already know you by far exceeded my expectations.”
My brows lifted. “An A+ performance?”
“A perfect ten.” She might have been playing along, but she whispered it in awe.
My tone intensified as I let the pad of my thumb caress along the defined angle of her cheek. “That’s what I want to be for you. A perfect ten.”
“I think you’re proving yourself to be so much more than that.” All the ribbing had drained from her words, and I drew her even closer, needing to feel her life beat burning through my veins.
I ran my lips across her forehead. “Guess that’s fair since you’ve become my everything.”
We stayed like that for the longest time, just existing in those words. In the silent promises that were woven in between.
Finally, I broached the topic that I didn’t want to give any credence to. The topic I didn’t want anywhere between us, tainting the moment. But it was there, anyway, a part of Emery that I needed to understand.
A piece I needed to hold.
Share with her because when I told her she didn’t have to go it alone anymore, I meant it.
Because fuck. I didn’t want any secrets between us, which I recognized the irony of considering the charade that I lived.
“What you said at the doctor’s office…you couldn’t let it happen again.”
The question darkened the air like a wraith had just crawled in through the cracks in the walls.