AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Stood in front of a camera? Cashed in on something she had nothing to do with? While you use your heart and your mind and your soul to produce images that stir all those things in others?”
She was still staring up at him, but he saw something change in her gaze, in her eyes. And her voice matched that new softness when she asked quietly, “Like you do?”
He opened his mouth to say there was no comparison. But something in the way she was looking at him stopped him. Stopped his words because it fired something else in him, that sudden, fierce heat that shot through him like wildfire. He was staring at her now, at the warmth and softness in her eyes, at the spray of tiny freckles that danced across her pert nose, at the way her lips were parted, as if her breathing had kicked up just as his had.
“I love your freckles,” he said, inanely.
She blinked. Looked startled. More than startled. “You do? I’ve always…hated them.”
“Don’t you dare. They’re real. They’re you.”
And then, because he didn’t seem to have any choice, he kissed her.
This time, it seemed as if she’d been waiting for it, maybe even hoping for it, because her response was instant, and eager. He tasted her hungrily, driven to prove to himself that it was as he’d remembered, hot and impossibly sweet. He deepened the kiss, much more quickly than he had before, because he felt driven. More than he had ever felt before. He knew on some level this was about what he’d just said about her heart, her mind, her soul, that he wanted, needed, had to connect with all three, because with her nothing less would do.
But then he could barely think at all, because every nerve in his body had snapped to life with only one end in mind, slaking this ferocious need that only she had ever roused in him. Nothing else mattered, not who she was, not who he was, not even the people who had made them what they were, for good or ill. The one thing that mattered was that triumphant cry he heard in his mind, his only coherent thought.
At last.
Chapter Thirty
Her head wasspinning. Maybe because this time she wasn’t caught off guard. She wasn’t stunned.
She wasn’t resisting. Wasn’t resisting how this made her feel. Wasn’t dwelling on how she didn’t deserve this, or him.
You’ve proven yourself worth so much more…
He’d meant it. All of it. What he’d said about her had come from what he believed about her.
With the last bit of her mind that was still functioning amid the sudden flood of heat and sensation, she shoved away all her thoughts that no man like this would ever want a woman like her. Because it was so obviously not true; he was here, kissing her, tasting her, driving deeper with every moment, with a hunger even she couldn’t deny. And even if she could, there was no way she could deny the readiness of his body, his erection was close and hard, prodding her. If it had been anyone else she would have assumed he just wanted sex and she was handy. But this was Ry, and he wasn’t one of those. Which left her with only one answer.
He wanted her.
He truly wantedher.
And no matter what happened after, no matter if this was the one and only time, she had to have this, had to have him. If she had to, she would live on the memory of this for the rest of her life.
He broke the kiss, but pulled back only far enough to softly speak. “Kaitlyn?”
“Yes.”
She heard him suck in a breath. “What are you saying yes to?”
“Who.”
“What?”
“You mean who am I saying yes to.”
“Me, I hope?”
“Back to answer one. Yes.”
And she couldn’t help it, the silliness of the exchange made her smile. And the smile she got back from him made her feel crazily giddy.
And then he was kissing her again and her world was spinning in a new, different way. Joy was building inside her. Joy, and a hunger she’d never known. She wanted him, wanted that lean, muscled body next to hers, preferably naked. But she couldn’t find the words, so she used her hands to stroke him, savoring the feel of him as she urged him on. And when he began to tug at her clothes she took it as the signal she’d wanted and began to do the same. She was vaguely aware of the tangle of fabric and the clunk of boots as they hit the floor, but then they were skin to skin and she could think of nothing else.
She ran her hands down his back, to that taut backside she’d so often admired in his jeans. He made a low, harsh sound, and then his hands slid up to cup her breasts, her nipples rubbing against his chest as he lifted them. She moaned at the arrow of heat and sensation that shot through her, awakening part of her that had been yearning for him forever. And then his mouth was on her, teasing those nipples to a tightness she’d never experienced, and she moaned again, nearly gasping this time.
