And his lips touch mine, ghostly soft. It only begins soft, however. Quickly, I hunger for more, and I am the one to open my mouth to his and seek his tongue with mine. He responds with equal hunger, and soon, we are battling with our mouths, and I am tugging at his hair. I scrape his hat off and bury my fingers along his scalp, pulling him closer.
“Jesus, Anjalee,” he growls.
“What?” I ask.
“You kiss me like…like you’re dyin’, and I’m all that’s gonna keep you alive.”
I smile. “I cannot think of anything I enjoy more than kissing you, Kane.” I nuzzle my lips to his ear. “Excepting when you gave me the orgasm. That was…oh, it wasmiraculous.I think I would like another one.”
He rumbles a laugh. “Yeah? You think so, huh?”
I nod. “I have been thinking very much of how I want that feeling again.”
He glances at the tent. “Could take this party in there.”
“Is anyone going to come here? To our fire?”
He shrugs. “Not likely. Possible, though.”
I shiver. “Perhaps…when we are sleeping under the sky, and there is no one close for many miles…” I nose his neck, embarrassed but determined. “We could be together outside.”
He presses a kiss to my cheekbone. “You really like being outside, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I say. “All of my life, I have been indoors. The only times I have been outside is to go in an automobile or to a restaurant, like this. In Las Vegas, it is so hot all the time that you cannot be outside anyway.”
He grins. “Yeah, babe, I know. I live in Vegas myself.”
I pull back, surprised. “You do?”
“Yeah. The club I work for, Sin, it’s just outside Vegas. Why I was where I was when we met.”
“Oh. I did not realize.”
“Not that I don’t get it, because I really fuckin’ do, but why are you so drawn to being outdoors?”
I understand the true point of his question—to understand me. I look up, see the stars twinkling through the canopy of trees. “It makes me feel…real, I suppose.” I glance at him. “Do you understand this?”
He shakes his head. “Not really, no.”
“I do not know if real is the most correct word. Alive, maybe. Or…free? All of these. You keep saying I grew up in a tower—you mean like the princess with the so very long hair? Rapunzel? Yes? I think you are not wrong. I am much like her. I only knew the very few things my father allowed. So, now that I am experiencing all of these new things, like the small and dirty diners by the freeway, and the Ding Dongs, and swimming, and riding a motorcycle, and…” I swallow, giggle, whisper, “and kissing and having the orgasms. It makes me feel as if before I was not…real. I do not know how else to put it. I was alive, a person, but only just…there. Like a decoration, perhaps? And now, with you, I am finding out who Anjalee Sharma truly is. And I am a woman who likes to be outside. I like to see the stars above me. No walls around me. No rules I must follow. No one to tell metalk like this, Anjalee, walk like this, Anjalee, have these boring and shallow friends, Anjalee.”
“I get you, darlin’.”
“You do?”
He nods. “I was a whipping boy, for my dad. You know what that is?”
I nod. “The one to receive the punishment in place for a royal boy who was naughty.”
“Right. My dad was angry. I dunno about what, just…pissedthe fuck off at the whole world. He loved my ma, though. He’d only knock her around if he was so wasted he didn’t know what he was doing. The rest of the time, it was me. I just…I took the brunt of his anger. It’s all I knew—pain and fear.”
My heart breaks for him, again. “Oh, Kane.”
I do not know what else to say, how to comfort him, so I do the only thing I can—snuggle closer, cling to him with my thighs and my arms and kiss his cheek and his ear and his neck and his temple.
He inhales sharply when I do this, and I feel his jaw tighten and grind. “I’m okay now, honey.”
“You were a little boy. You should not have known only pain and fear.”
