And maybe she does. Her notebook falls to the ground. I glance at it, then at her.
“Good stuff?” I ask, voice low.
She nods, eyes shining. She moves into me, and I’m lost. I kiss her like I never want it to end.
“Mm,” she murmurs. “I think it just got better.”
I kiss her like I’m starving. Because she has a way of making mewant more, and when she kisses me back, it’s as if I’m the luckiest man in the world.
The way her body presses into mine, as if she already knows tonight will end with us tangled in the bed sheets. Maybe my name is written somewhere in the lines of her next song. And if it is, I plan to earn every word of it.
Her lips are warm and urgent, her fingers are tangled in my hair, and her body is so close, there’s no light between us. It’s as if she can’t get close enough. I lift her easily, and she gasps into my mouth as I carry her through the house.
We crash through the hallway, half-dressed, breathless, laughing between kisses that leave no room for second thoughts. By the time we reach the master bedroom, we’re both wrecked and wanting.
She’s still wearing skimpy undies—the ones that are more ripped from wear than sculptured to make a fashion statement.
I drop her on the bed and kneel between her legs.
“Can I?” I ask, even though we’re far past permission.
She nods, her eyes dark with heat, and her chest is rising and falling like she just ran through a fire.
I peel her panties down slowly, reverently, baring her skin inch after delectable inch. My mouth follows the path my hands take, trailing heat where the fabric used to be.
She arches into me, a soft sound escaping her lips.
“God, Kate…”
She’s everything. Raw and real and wild under me.
I kiss the inside of her thigh, then look up at her. “You know this isn’t just sex to me, right?”
Her eyes flicker. Fear flashes in her eyes, followed by want and maybe… hope.
“I know,” she whispers. “I just don’t know what to do with it.”
I rise over her, kissing her slowly, deeply, with everything I can’t say out loud.
“Let me show you,” I murmur.
And I spend the next two hours making every inch of her a slave tomy touch. We come together, and it’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced.
There’s no pretending, there’s no hiding. It’s her and me, and it’s raw emotion. She’s still trembling when I pull her into my arms.
The room is dark, except for the faint glow of the full moon that fills it. Our clothes are scattered across the floor like dropped armor. The sheets are twisted, the air still thick with the kind of heat that lingers long after the flames are gone.
She’s quiet now, her head resting on my chest, fingers drawing circles over my ribs.
What we just shared—there’s no way to explain it, so there’s no need to dress it up. It wasn’t just incredible. It was something else entirely. Something that makes me want things I shouldn’t want.
To keep her. To make this real.
Her breathing slows, and I run my fingers through her hair. She’s quiet, living in this moment. Unguarded. Like all the walls she’s built to survive us, don’t exist anymore.
And maybe they don’t. I press a kiss to her forehead and feel her press closer, like perhaps some small part of her is beginning to trust this. To trust me.
God, I hope she adjusts to this life. I hope she stops flinching at luxury like it’s going to bite her. I hope she lets herself believe that this—we—can be something more than a PR headline or a contract.
