“Fuck,” he said, imbuing the word with at least ten times as many vowels as it actually had. “That was...”
“Awful,” I hurried out, unwilling to hear anything else.
His chest heaved with formless laughter. “Right. Precisely the word I was looking for. I don’t know that I’ve ever suffered anything that torturous.”
I slid my hands along the planes of his back, finding him slicked with even more sweat than his lawn battle had earned him. Something about that delighted me, knowing he’d had to work harder for this than for anything else. “It was...unique, though,” I said. “As experiences go.”
“Yes, well. I would’ve called it singular, myself.”
Singular. Even that was an understatement. Zephyrine knew I loved sex, but I hadn’t known it could feel likethat. Nor did I know how I was supposed to content myself with the stock variety again, now that I did.
He lifted his head. Sweat dimmed his hair to dark bronze while a rosy afterglow lit his face. “I suppose we’ll have to do it again. See if it can get even worse.”
My stomach tightened. Which verged on comical, considering I’d just had the best orgasm of my life, five minutes ago. “You’re right. You’ll probably have to try everything you can think of.”
One eyebrow kicked up. “Oh, really?Everything?Because I can be surprisingly creative, when I put my mind to it.”
A flutter rolled through me. “Is that a threat?”
“Do you want it to be?”
I lifted my chin. “Maybe.”
“Fine.” He chuffed a soft exhale. “Then yes. But you’ll have to tell me where the line is.”
Something twinged beneath my ribs. “There isn’t one. Not tonight. You can do whatever you want to me.”
“Anything?”
“Well, within reason. I’ll tell you if it’s too much.”
His expression darkened into something diabolical, and my pulse gathered speed like a stone bouncing downhill. I might regret this in the morning. Goddess, I hoped I would regret this in the morning.
“What about you?” I whispered. “Any hard lines I should know about?”
His blue stare skewered me to the bed. “Yes. There is one thing. Something I absolutely, unequivocally refuse to do with you tonight.”
“What’s that?”
“Sleep,” he said.
I squeaked, then caught myself and glowered. “Fine. I guess I can live with that. If I absolutely have to.”
28.
Ilost track of the many times and ways in which Kai dismantled me, only to piece me back together and do it all over again.
Some things, I committed to permanent memory, like the way his every muscle contracted when I sucked on his birthmark, or how his neck arched when I wrapped my hands around it and rode him like it was my only purpose in life.
Eventually, a dull yellow glow brightened the windowpane, and Kai brought me over the edge one final time. I knew this was the end because he didn’t join me, just slowed to a stop while the blissful ripples ebbed from my limbs. He hovered, smiling like a cat who’d just nabbed a whole coal-mine’s worth of canaries.
Once my vision stopped wobbling, I oriented myself to the north star of those blue, blue eyes. Goddess, but he was magnificent. So much that a flood of tenderness broke loose inside me. I tucked a lock of damp hair back from his forehead, my heart fracturing.
“Well?” he murmured.
“Well what?”
“Are you willing to admit you’re half in love with menow?”
