I’m brushing my stomach through the robe, the scars I used to pray would fade.
“There were lots of kids worse off than I was. So I tried to help them out. We did crafts. I kept their spirits up. It took my mind off things.”
“What kind of things?” Daniel’s jaw tics.
That my family forgot me.
“Let’s just say I’m not the girl people stick around for. I’m not strong like Liv or clever like Jules. I’m the one who fucks things up.”
“That’s bullshit.”
His vehemence makes my breath catch.
“Really? When you took Andy to his grandparents, you didn’t want me with you.”
Daniel folds his arms, his muscles flexing. “I didn’t want you with me because they would see the way I look at you.”
His rough words start a match low in my stomach, a heat that grows and swells.
“You’re a game I can’t stop playing. A puzzle I won’t quit solving. I’m obsessed with you, and it’s not going away.”
My pulse skips. We’re a breath apart, but it feels like a mile.
His expression is a storm of emotions. He reaches for the belt on my robe and tugs me closer.
His lips brush across mine, clinging, probing.
It’s deliberate, and even when I kiss him back, I’m not at all prepared for the way he hooks an arm around my robed waist and drags my hips to his.
Desire deepens into a throbbing pleasure from how he’s touching me arguing that he’s not doing nearly enough.
Yes, I want him.
Want this.
When he lifts his head an inch, his eyes are dark and half-lidded.
“I could build a fortress out of all the reasons we shouldn’t do this, Kat. But I don’t care anymore. Not tonight, and not tomorrow morning.” His mouth ghosts over mine. “Let me take you to bed.”
21
KAT
I stare him down.
Yes.
I’m going to fuck Daniel.
Judging by the expression on his face, he’s intending to fuck me.
We’ll argue about who’s fucking who later.
When his hands stroke my lower back, slide down to my ass, I moan against his mouth.
He backs me across the carpet and into the hall.
“Bedroom,” he murmurs through kisses.
“Overrated,” I reply, making him chuckle.
But when my bare feet are sensitive from scraping across the carpet and the backs of my knees hit a soft edge, I look up at him.
I grab the hem of his shirt and pull hard, tugging it over his head and off with his help.
The room is dark, the only light from the hallway, so I feel my way across his heaving chest and abs.
Suddenly, I’m in a hurry.
He pushes me lightly on the bed and follows me down.
I’m propped on my elbows when the tie on my robe loosens, then falls away.
The room—my room—is quiet and dark. All I can hear is my heart hammering and our mingled breath.
He shifts back and parts the fabric of my robe.
The soft material drags across my skin, making my nipples harden and my thighs tingle.
He sinks to his knees in front of the bed. When he does, a shaft of light from the hallway falls on my body.
He stops when he sees the scars on my stomach.
The lines are faded, but I remember each of those surgeries.
Talking to my parents on the phone, grappling with my fear and loneliness. Trying to understand why they were too busy with work or my brother to be there in person.
His finger skims across the small black script on my hip.
I got the word ‘Goodbye’ tattooed over the first scar as a joke the day I graduated high school. It was supposed to be a farewell to part of me I never needed.
Maybe the joke was on me.
“You’re so fucking beautiful.”
The way Daniel says the word beautiful makes me tremble.
His touch skims across the other scars and up to cup my breast.
Then he’s shifting forward, taking me in his mouth.
I arch under him, fisting his hair with impatient fingers. He alternates licking and sucking, his hips pinning the rest of me in place.
When he switches to the other breast, I moan.
His lips skim down across my stomach, slow and deliberate.
I’m arching off the bed before his thumbs stroke the insides of my thighs.
“You don’t talk about yourself, so I notice things.”
His touch skims higher, and my thighs shake.
“You have this smile that’s a defense mechanism, like if you pretend you’re happy, no one will look too close.”
His lips graze my stomach, tracing familiar lines.
“The genuine one’s for when you’re caught off guard. Your eyes light up. You blush. I’d give everything to see that one.”
In the light from the hallway, my body is on display for him.
I arch toward his mouth, needing him already. The words and his touch are making me come undone.
When he brushes between my thighs, desire explodes inside me. My hips snap toward him.
When he leans in to blow across my clit, pleasure washes over me.
He licks my skin in a long, wicked stroke.
Oh God.
My head drops back against the comforter.
When he licks another trail, as leisurely as the first, I yank on his hair.
He presses my thighs farther apart. “I’m going to enjoy every second of this. I suggest you do the same.”
Daniel returns to his task, his tongue flicking lazy circles around my clit.
This might actually kill me.
I’m used to sex that’s fast and fun.
This is teasing and exploratory and destructive.
“So fucking wet,” he murmurs. “I think you like watching me go down on you.”
Of course, he’s dirty.
Every touch feels like it’s more than skin deep. As if the darkness of my room hides us from the world but not from ourselves.
My legs clench around his head.
“That’s it, come for me.” His fingers stroke deeper inside my body, making me twist and writhe. “Fuck, you’re gorgeous when you come for me.”
I’m on the edge but those words in his rasping voice drag me over.
Pleasure slams into me, starting at my core.
He doesn’t pull back, wringing every last bit of release from me as if it’s his personal responsibility to make me come so hard enough I see stars.
After, I reach up to trail my fingers across the comforter by my head. My neck is damp with sweat that appeared who-knows-when.
Daniel shifts over me, his torso outlined by the hallway lights.
For a moment, the caring, concerned Daniel blurs with the hot, demanding one.
“You’re so damn sweet, Kat.”
My lips curve. “You clearly don’t know me at all.”
He brushes a damp finger down my cheek, then presses his thumb gently between my lips. “I know you more than you think. Now turn over.”
22
DANIEL
When Kat walked into my office in that robe, she might as well have carried a sign that said, “You’re fucked.”
Since our kiss at the frat house and groping on the couch, I’ve been imagining all the ways I want to make her come.