“He seems harmless as far as anyone can tell.” Kade sat down on the edge of my bed. “Seriously, you don’t have to try to take care of everyone. We’ve got it under control.”
“Absolutely.” Janice leaned back against the wall and crossed her arms. “We’ll all be meeting tomorrow, and you can join in after you get off work.”
“Work?” I blinked up at her.
She paused, narrowing her eyes at me. “Yes. After you catch up on your day job. Of all of us, you’re supposed to stay most connected to humans. You need to do that.”
Even the thought of work made me yawn involuntarily.
Kade laughed and I was reminded briefly of how, even in the darkest moments, there are flashes of joy.
“Go home,” Janice said. “You can’t do anything more until tomorrow, at the earliest. Rest. I’ll be in touch.”
IN SOME WAYS, IT FELT like a cop-out—but I let Janice and Kade convince me to go home. We stopped by the NICU long enough to see the two new babies. They were snuggled in their incubators, eyes closed, tiny hands and feet curled in.
“Do you have names for them yet?” Kade asked quietly.
I shook my head. “Not yet. I almost want to wait until we find their sibling—God, I don’t even know if it’s a boy or a girl.”
“No one does,” Kade said quietly. “That’s not as easy in serpent-born lamias as in the human-born ones. We didn’t have time to find out before the wolves took it.”
Tears pricked the corners of my eyes and Kade wrapped his arms around me, whispering words of comfort. “It’ll be okay. We’ll find the baby.”
I nodded. “And then I’ll name them all.”
As Kade drove us home, I threaded my fingers through his, thankful he understood me so well.
We walked in the door and I shut it behind us, wrapping my arms around his neck and pulling him down to me. The heat of his lips slanting across mine sent chills racing down my spine, and my shiver seemed to move through me and into Kade.
Kade pulled away long enough to brush strands of hair from my face and stare into my eyes. “This okay tonight?” he asked softly.
“Yes,” I murmured, standing up on my tiptoes to wrap my arms around his neck and pull him back down into another kiss. “I need this.”
Sliding his palm down my back and settling it in the small indentation just above the top of the scrubs I’d borrowed to wear home, he pulled me closer to him, molding my body to his until I couldn’t tell where I ended and Kade began.
The realization that he wanted this comfort every bit as much as I did lit me from within, and I met his heat with a fire of my own, pressing hard against him and pushing his lips open with my tongue, deepening our kiss.
With a groan, Kade skimmed his mouth down the side of my neck, dropping tiny kisses along the way until he reached the hollow just below my collarbone. When he licked that spot, I whimpered. Then he was pulling off my shirt and casting it aside, and then tugging my bra with one hand. He drew me tight against him with the other hand against my back and sucked my breast into his mouth, running his tongue over my pebbled nipple.
Streaks of heat sparked from my nipple straight down to pool in my abdomen, where it seemed to throb in time to my heart, every beat a pulse of sheer desire.
“Please,” I whispered, not even sure why I said it—but the single word seemed to act as a spur for Kade, who pushed off my pants and swept me up with both hands under my ass and lifted me from the floor, moving his mouth back to mine for another deep, tongue-tangling kiss.
Instinctively, I wrapped my legs around his waist, crossing them at the ankle behind him, and tightened my arms around his neck.
I could feel him hard against me, our underwear between us an irritant. With tiny, inarticulate noises, I wiggled a little, as if I could dislodge the fabric between us by motion alone.
I gasped when, having donned a condom, Kade pulled my panties out of the way. Then I moaned as he guided the tip of his cock to my slick entrance, wiggling as he barely pushed up and then slid back out without fully settling me onto him.
“Hang on,” he whispered, then thrust upwards at the same moment he loosened his grip enough to let me drop down onto him.
The sudden sensations as I stretched to take him in completely made my eyelids flutter closed and all I could do was repeat “yes,” over and over, even as I tightened and loosened my thighs to meet him, thrust for thrust, as he pumped into me.
Fucking as soon as we walked in the door wasn’t exactly what I had planned.
Then he was inside me again, and there was no more room for thought. I pulsed around him, pulling him into the deepest, hottest part of me.
Kade shifted his hands to grip my ass tightly, pulling me closer as he drove into me. I whimpered, and he moved his hands again, this time making sure he could still hold me with one hand while he slid the other between us.
For just an instant, I wished I’d had the foresight to take off my underwear before he picked me up. But I discovered quickly enough that he could fit his hand down the front of them.
Lightly, he dragged his knuckles downward through my curls until he brushed them against my clit. My sharp inhale and the tightening of my pussy around his cock made him swell even more, and he began to circle my clit with his thumb as he moved inside me.
My own rhythmic motions grew faster. Throwing my head back made it more difficult for Kade to hold me in place, but I don’t think he would’ve stopped for anything.
When I leaned my forehead against his and stared into his eyes, my breath hard and fast and mingling with his own, it was all I could do to keep from coming right then.
Yes. This man.
Now.
Always.
I closed my eyes, my breath ragged and my movements wild as I ground my clit against his hand and pulled myself down onto him until he was as deep as he had ever been before—deeper—and I could feel from the way he grew harder and harder the pressure building, ready to explode into me, and still he tried to move even closer to me, further into me, as if he could reach the very core of me.
I came with a cry, shudders wracking my body as I clung to him, tightening around Kade in waves that seemed to match the sound of his heart. And then he was pouring himself into me, every pulse of his own orgasm a hot reminder of how much he loved me.
Chapter 32
WHEN I COULD THINK again—beyond simply “Yes” and “don’t stop”—I realized Kade’s legs were trembling. I wasn’t surprised. The way he had swelled and heated inside me just before his orgasm had triggered something inside me—either a second orgasm, or a continuation of my first, I wasn’t sure.
In any case, that white-hot passion had wiped out everything else from my consciousness, leaving me draped helplessly, almost bonelessly, around Kade. Apparently, he had managed to keep us upright. If I had been in charge of the standing, I wasn’t sure I would have done as well.
The thought made me giggle against the crook of his neck, and I dropped a kiss against the hollow there as Kade asked, “What?” His voice was more than a little breathless.
“You can put me down now, I think.”
At that, he laughed, too. “I’m not sure I can. But I’ll try.”