Page 38 of Her Reluctant Protector
"That's my name."
He makes a sound — somewhere between a groan and a laugh — and then his mouth is on mine again. Hungrier now. The restraint cracking at the edges. His hand slides down my stomach, unbuttons my jeans, pushes them down my hips with a efficiency that should feel clinical but doesn't. His fingers find the waistband of my underwear.
He pauses. Looks at me. Asking without asking.
"Yes," I say. "Stop checking and touch me."
His hand slips inside. His fingers slide between my thighs, and when he finds how wet I am his forehead drops against mine with a groan that vibrates through both of us.
"Christ, Kari."
"I've been like this since you told me about the pipe." Not entirely true. True enough.
His fingers move — slow, exploring, reading me the way he reads rooms. Two fingers stroke through the slick heat of me, circling my clit with a patience that borders on cruelty. My hips rock against his hand. Chasing it. Shameless.
"There?" His mouth at my ear.
"There. Don't stop — right there."
He doesn't stop. His fingers keep that rhythm — steady circles, the right pressure, the kind of focused attention that makes my thoughts dissolve into white noise. My hand tightens on his shoulder. Nails digging in. His cock strains against his jeans where my thigh presses against him, and the combination of his fingers on my clit and the hard evidence of what this is doing to him pushes me fast.
"I'm going to —" The sentence doesn't finish. The orgasm hits like a wall I didn't see coming — sharp, sudden, my whole body clenching around his fingers while I press my face into his neck and say his name in a voice I don't recognize.
He works me through it. Slower now. Letting the aftershocks roll while his mouth presses against my temple.
"Okay?" he asks.
"If you ask me that every thirty seconds, this is going to take a very long time."
The crack in the concrete. That almost-smile. "Noted."
The rest of our clothes come off with less finesse. His jeans. My underwear. His boxer briefs, which I pull down while he kicks them off the end of the bed. Naked, he's broader than thehenleys suggest. The scars don't end at his forearm — a raised line across his ribs, a faded mark near his hip. A body that has been through things. Still standing. Still here.
My hand wraps around his cock. He hisses through his teeth. Hard, thick, hot against my palm. His hips jerk forward — involuntary, human, the opposite of controlled — and I stroke him once, twice, watching the way his jaw clenches.
"You're enjoying this," he manages.
"The part where the man who catalogs exits can't form sentences? A little bit."
His eyes flash. Something shifts in his expression — the control slides back, just enough to be dangerous. He grabs my wrist. Pins it above my head against the cheerful yellow bedspread.
"Let me enjoy you, then."
My breath catches. Not from fear. From the low promise in his voice, the weight of his body settling between my thighs. His cock presses against me — not inside, just there, sliding through the wet heat between my legs. Teasing. My hips lift to meet him.
"Liam. Please."
"Please what?"
"Don't make me beg. I don't beg."
"You don't have to." He reaches between us. Lines himself up. Pushes into me in one slow, steady thrust that steals every word I've ever known.
Full. The stretch of him, the way my body opens around his cock — the reality of Liam Cade is better than every late-night imagining for being imperfect. His forehead drops to mine. His arms shake with the effort of going slow.
"Fuck," I whisper. Not an exclamation. An observation.
"Yeah." His voice wrecked. "Yeah."
