But she preferred where she was going.
11
The next morning, she woke to Kris whispering her name. Gentle, like the stroke of his calloused hand down her back; disorientating, like waking up in her best friend’s bed and not needing to freak out about it. Her lungs filled on a large breath, and with her eyes still closed, she stretched out on her stomach in the cool linen sheets. One leg straightened sideways, aiming to stick over the far side, but her toes moved through nothing but deliciously soft bedding.
Frowning, she pulled her head out from under the pillow and blinked at Kris. “You on the edge?”
He was propped up on an elbow facing her, watching her, his hair a mess. Shirtless, with the sheets pushed low over his hips, he was a sight of muscles and radiant sexual potency.
She shivered as he continued stroking her back.
“The edge of something,” he said, with a slow half-smile. “Not the bed.”
“Huh.” She looked around. The mattress was endless. “Bigger than a king.”
“Palatial?”
“Huh.” She settled down again with a groan. The drapes were still closed, but a pale predawn light was seeping around the edges. “What’s time?”
“Five-thirty.” His fingertips reached the small of her back and started tracing circles, casual and tender. “I didn’t know what time you had to be up.”
“Usually briefing six o’clock.” She wasn’t awake enough for full sentences. “Don’t today because last night.”
“So, what you’re saying is,” he said, his low voice seeming to caress between her thighs. “We have time.”
Insides twisting, she nestled deeper onto her front. “Maybe.”
Those lashes dipped to her body, then back up. He looked surprised. “Are you hiding from me?”
“Maybe,” she said again, tucking her chin down to rest on her shoulder. She hadn’t exactly concealed her modesty the night before, but that had been a heated moment. “It’s just . . . this is new.”
“Then let’s make it familiar.” He raked his hair off his forehead, elbow at the perfect angle to show off his rounded bicep. “Would you rather go back to sleep before breakfast,” he said, “or work up an appetite together?”
Biting her lip, her gaze drifted down.
He was hard, straining against the sheet. A significant early-morning proposition.
“Yours if you want it,” he murmured, and her body melted like the thick wax of a candle.
She hummed, pretending to consider.
“Last night.” The sheets rustled as he shifted. “I’ll never forget.”
She let her gaze continue drifting over him. “You mean the part where I was raised as a con artist, the part where you got rid of my father, the part where anarchists probably want you dead, or the part against the wall in my office?”
“As far as memories go, the office wall has the most staying power.”
Her lips quirked.
“You can go back to sleep, if you want,” he said, and despite being rock hard and ready down there, he sounded like he meant it.
“You’re not fussed either way?”
His voice dropped. “That’s not what I said.”
She pretended not to hear. “You could take me or leave me?”
“Take you.” The words were rough. “Ask me to take you.”
Lust ran a finger over her abdomen and she shivered. “Kris?”
He inched closer and practically growled, “Yes?”
“Will you take me,” she said, and as desire curved like an arched spine across his lips, she finished, “to breakfast?”
He made a noise of pain, but his eyes were sparkling. “Not yet.”
Her muscles loosened, aroused, as something flitted from her chest to her belly and back again. Light, an airborne sensation that darted and tumbled, wingtips grazing her sides and gliding up her sternum. No barriers in its flight path this morning, nothing to knock it out of her skies, and it swooped low in her tummy when Kris held her stare and arrowed up to nest in her heart when he smiled just for her.
So, this was happiness.
“Not yet?” She grinned at him. “What are we waiting for?”
“This game to end, so I can make you come ten times harder than last night.”
Her breath caught. Last night had been the best sex of her life. What did he plan on doing, growing a third hand? Curious, she stopped teasing him and asked, “You still on fire for me?”
“Ravaged by flame,” he said. “Day and night.”
“What else?” She hardly knew what she meant, but still wanted to hear his answer.
His gaze was unwavering in the dull light. “I’ve woken up next to my best friend. And I can’t believe it’s really happened—that you’re here, looking sleepy and sexy, and the same but somehow so different in my bed without clothes on. I can’t believe I’m going to wake up next to you every morning. That I’m going to learn more about you—little things, amazing things, like that sound you made right before you woke up or how hot you take your showers.” He paused, voice dropping to a rumble. “Or the feel of your release when I’ve had you for longer than a few minutes.”
Her skin flushed, and emboldened, she rolled onto her side to face him. His attention leapt to her breasts, hungry, yet holding back.
“Want to learn that one now?” she asked.
“God, yes.” She felt his answer in the pit of her stomach. “Yes.”
Then his hands were on her, drawing her to him as his lips found hers. Slow and lavish, his tongue took her straight back to the night before. That’s right, her mouth remembered, that’s his taste. His naked skin sparked against hers, waking her in a rush before he pressed her onto her back with the hard length of his body.
She tensed, and he drew back in silent question.
“I—don’t generally like missionary,” she admitted, curling a hand around his shoulder, somehow seeking his protection against the threat of his own position.
“Doesn’t feel good?” A line appeared between his brows. “Or something else?”
She swallowed at the old memory of the Burberry boy—at how she’d felt powerless and scared and trapped within his braced forearms. “Something else.”
He scanned her face, serious. “You want to sit up? Turn over? Choose a wall, any wall? Table, chair, windowsill?”
She rolled her lips together a moment before she laughed. “All of the above.”
“Anywhere except on top—not yet,” he said, kissing outward along her left cheekbone. His breath was a soft shock in the shell of her ear. “I get to do things to you first.”
She heated at his wicked promise, and found herself relaxing, loosening back onto the bed. On her back, with him above her. “I think this might be fine.”
She wanted it to be. For her—for them.
He grinned back. “It’s going to be more than fine.”
Then he kissed her again, banishing thoughts of her past while his hand moved down to the waistband of her underwear, toying with the elastic, his fingers dipping beneath as far as his first knuckle and running across her stomach from one hip to the other. The touch teased her, flared heat between her legs in calling. Down here. His fingers ran back the other way and she lifted her hips a little with a gasp. Come all the way down.