A tremor rolled in his throat, and he shook his head, dipped his face away so I couldn’t see his expression.
As if he were pulling himself together. Getting himself back on that line he walked. When he looked back at me, his eyes glimmered.
Lust and need.
“You know that isn’t what you really want, Harley Hope. I refuse to become your regret. But I am going to set you free. Make you scream.”
He burrowed his face up under my jaw. He nipped and kissed at my pulse point, his body pressing deeper between my legs as he edged up higher.
My head rocked back, and my fingers sank into his shoulders.
A dark chuckle rumbled from his throat. “Look at you. Barely takes a brush of my body and you’re already about to go off.”
My arm curled around the top of his head. “That’s because you make me feel something, too.”
He inched back and set his hand over the thunder that beat at my chest, the intensity of his gaze meeting with mine. “Hope.”
I gulped around the emotion that suddenly felt prominent at the base of my throat. “When did you lose yours?”
Because that was what came in flashes.
From the depths of this man.
Grief.
I wanted to hold it, the way he was holding me.
He groaned almost painfully before he was back to kissing between my breasts, giving me no answer, hands riding back up the outside of my thighs.
He tucked me close. Rocked against me.
Sparks and shimmers lit up behind my eyes.
He kissed across the V neckline of my dress, inching it lower with each pass. Licking across the top swell of my breast. His fingers adept as he undid the three little buttons. He showed no hesitation when he pulled the fabric down, exposing me.
Cool air hit my sensitive flesh.
I gasped.
Kale glanced up at me with a smirk, running his thumb around a nipple that pebbled with his touch. “Perfect, Hope. Fucking perfect.”
“Kale.”
He was going to ruin me. Save me. I didn’t know. The only thing I knew was he held me in the palm of his hands.
To crush or protect.
“Hmm?” he hummed as he bent down and blew across the delicate flesh before he bit down lightly, tugging it between his teeth.
“Oh,” I whimpered, arching toward him. He must have taken that as an invitation because the next second had him sucking and lapping, and both my arms were curled around his head, hugging him to me, begging him for more.
For the kind of more I’d had no idea I needed until Kale swaggered into my life.
He was right.
That was exactly what this felt like.
Like I was colliding with what had been missing all along.
He released my nipple with a pop, his thumb back to circling the tight bud before he eased back and set both hands on my knees.
I sat there panting toward the ceiling, eyes cut down so I could take him in.
Blue eyes gleamed as he slowly ran his hands up the tops of my thighs. This time, they disappeared beneath the fabric.
Like a warning.
A promise.
Because the dress gathered on his forearms the higher he went before he hooked his fingers at the sides of my underwear.
Deliberately slow, he dragged them down.
“Shit,” he hissed.
His thick throat bobbed, lust radiating from him as he watched himself peel them off.
Lace grazed my legs, tingles sprinting across my flesh as he pulled them down.
Shivers skated my skin, and my breaths turned ragged as he unwound the fabric from my ankles and heels.
He peered up at my face when he did. “You are perfect, Hope. Sweet, sublime perfection. The first time I saw you, I knew it. Had this feeling like I’d been struck. Like maybe I wouldn’t ever be the same. Know now that I never will.”
Then there was that grin. That wicked grin as his tongue swept across his bottom lip. “Not sure I really want to be.”
Then he spread me. Pressing my knees apart the way he’d done that night at the bar. But this time, there was no barrier.
My body completely exposed.
And he was diving in without further warning, his hot, hot tongue sweeping into my folds.
I yelped and desire tumbled.
Pleasure spiked on all sides.
Magnified.
Compounded as he licked through my sensitive, engorged lips, dragging up and circling around that achy spot that throbbed and glowed.
“Kale.” A whimper.
“I know, Hope,” he rumbled. “I told you I know what you need.”
But that was where he was wrong. Because I needed all of him. Every inch and every word and every smile.
A flicker of a warning rose up in my consciousness, telling me I was spiraling too fast, tripping into a free fall while Kale continued to drive me higher.
Higher and higher and higher.
His kiss so intimate I would have blushed if my skin weren’t already covered in a flush of heat.