Page 188

He shoves me back against the cold marble sink and forces my lips apart with his tongue. His fingers grab my hips and tug me into him. He’s taking whole handfuls of me like he’s been dying all night to find out what it feels like.

The porcelain against my spine is borderline painful, but my brain files that away under Do Not Give a Shit.

I’ve got other things to focus on.

His teeth catch my bottom lip and pull. When he lets go, I chase him. He lets me whimper for about two seconds before he takes over again.

We accidentally bump into the toilet and the seashell soaps go over. Three of them roll off the tank and hit the tile, and one goes skidding under the radiator.

“Whoops,” I breathe.

Kane clearly couldn’t care less. He knocks my knees wider with his hips and kisses me again, deeper, until my head tips back and bumps the mirror. His mouth goes to my throat.

He drags it down the side of my neck, open and wet, dirty and shameless.

My token resistance is a trembling whisper. I try to turn my head, to push him away, but his grip tightens. His thumb is pressing hard against my jaw, forcing my lips to stay locked with his. A feral growl rumbles out of his throat and vibrates against my skin.

When he finally breaks the kiss, a strand of saliva glistens between us.

“You get sweeter every time I taste you,” he breathes.

His hand slides down my belly, finds the hem of my dress, and pulls it up. The first touch of cool air on my thighs makes me shiver.

I get one powerful urge to push it back down and hold it there. The fluorescent bulb over the mirror is the least forgiving light in all of Brooklyn and there is a lot of me under this dress.

Kane catches my wrist without even looking at it. “No.”

“I’m just⁠—”

“I know what you’re doing.” He puts my hand up on the counter’s edge. “Keep it there.”

Then he looks at me. His eyes are tortured and swimming with heat. “Do you have any idea,” he growls, “how long I have wanted to do this?”

I don’t have a joke. For once in my life, not one. No puns, no quips, no nothing.

“I didn’t fucking think so.”

He hooks his fingers in my underwear and takes it down, past my knees, over one shoe and then the other.

Then he drops to one knee in front of me.

“Kane!” I hiss. “What the hell are you doing?”

He laughs, with a cruel, dommy tint to it that makes me flush from head to toe. “Do you really need it explained?”

“You can’t— We can’t⁠—”

“I dare anyone in this house to stop me,” he says.

He lifts my leg over his shoulder and puts his mouth on me.

He’s not in a hurry. I didn’t realize it until now, but I have a very old idea in me that this sort of thing gets done quickly and with a certain amount of holding of the breath, and that after it’s over, you say thank you and then get to work on the other person.

That’s the arrangement. The unspoken deal.

Kane is operating off a different playbook.

“Tell me what you want.” He lifts his head half an inch. “Where. How. Faster, slower. You’ll tell me, and I’ll do it.”