Page 16 of Kane's Kingdom

There's nothing careful about the way he lays me down, but the second his weight comes over me, he pauses. Even now, he gives me the choice.

"Bella."

"Yes." One word is enough.

He strips my tank top over my head and looks at me like he's spent half his life imagining this and the other half punishing himself for it.

His mouth closes over my breast, and the pull of it draws a sound from me I didn't know I could make. His tongue circles, then flattens, and his teeth graze the peak until my spine lifts off the mattress.

Pleasure spears through me. I arch, nails dragging over his shoulders while his mouth moves to the other side and does it again, slower, harder. Learning me by the sounds I make. He works me with his mouth until I'm shaking, then moves lower, his beard scraping a trail of heat down my stomach.

When he pulls my shorts down, I should feel exposed. Instead, I feel seen. His gaze burns over me.

"You're going to ruin me." The words come out low, almost angry.

I reach for him. "Take your clothes off." He does, pulling off his shirt to reveal ink from collarbone to knuckles, heavy muscle and the pendant against his chest before shedding his jeans.

I stop breathing. His mouth curves, a flash of the boy I knew inside the man he became.

"Problem?"

"I hate you."

"No, you don't."

Then his hand slides between my thighs, and the argument dissolves. He knows exactly how to touch me. Slow enough to make me frantic. Firm enough that I can't pretend this is anything but what it is. His fingers find the rhythm my body begs for, and when I try to close my thighs against the intensity, he holds them apart with his free hand and keeps going until I can't think, can't breathe, can't do anything but feel.

I come panting his name. He catches the sound with a kiss and settles between my thighs, and looks at me.

The clubhouse carries on beyond the door. Boots in the hallway, music through the wall, laughter from the bar. In here, there's only him.

He pushes inside me slowly. The stretch is sharp, full, almost too much. My fingers dig into his arms.

"Easy," he murmurs.

"Don't tell me easy."

Something dark flashes in his eyes. He drives the rest of the way in. I cry out.

He stills, breath ragged against my mouth, body shaking with the effort of holding back.

"Still want to fight me?"

"God, yes."

"Good."

Then he moves hard and deep, every thrust carrying twenty years of silence behind it. I meet him, angry and desperate, dragging him closer when there's nowhere closer to go.

He kisses me like he can't decide whether to devour me or keep me, and maybe he wants both.

The pressure builds again. His hand slips between us, and I break apart beneath him. Kane follows with my name rough against my throat.

For a few seconds, neither of us moves. His weight is heavy and warm, the pendant pressed between us.

Reality returns in pieces. The missing photographs, my father's empty place on the wall, Kane still inside me.

Shame hits before I've caught my breath. "What the hell did I just do?"