Total pages in book: 153
Estimated words: 144571 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 723(@200wpm)___ 578(@250wpm)___ 482(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 144571 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 723(@200wpm)___ 578(@250wpm)___ 482(@300wpm)
It made sense. There would be way less drama and no need to worry about things like sexually transmitted infections. From him, obviously, not her since she hadn’t and never had wanted to sleep with anyone except him.
Would sleeping with Cooper awaken a sexual animal inside her? It was an outcome she hadn’t considered but could actually work in her favor. She’d always worried about her lack of sexual response to anyone but him. What if getting a taste of him opened her up to sex in all its various flavors? She might be normal. This might help her be normal in one thing.
Cooper stood there, staring at her, and she couldn’t quite name the emotion in his eyes. Or she was afraid to because she sometimes didn’t get the same cues her sister and friends picked up on. Was he changing his mind?
“I’m here, and now I don’t know quite what to do,” he said, his words cutting through the silence. “I feel like I’ve…like we’ve danced around this forever, and now I’m a little scared I won’t live up to what you expect.”
Good news for him. She expected nothing except awkwardness and probably disappointment. And yet she was still going to have this time. “Why don’t you kiss me? Forget I’m Mistress K. Treat me like you would any woman you want to sleep with.”
“Never.” His hands were on her cheeks, brushing back and sinking into her hair. “You are not any woman. You are the woman. You’re Kala, and I can’t ever forget that.”
She would have said something back, something like… She didn’t know what she would have said. Hopefully something sarcastic to break the emotional cocoon she found herself in, but it could have been something stupid and sappy because she felt it. He saved her by lowering his lips to hers and kissing her for the first time in over a freaking decade.
They’d only had three months of this. Three months where he’d put his hands on her and she felt like the woman she wanted to become. When Cooper kissed her she felt safe and normal. She felt like the Kala she was, and that it was okay to be her.
She knew now that was an illusion, but she sank into that kiss. For a moment, she allowed herself to be fifteen again, the world laid out in front of her, with all the roads still open and waiting for her to choose. She let her hands find his lean waist, brushing past the leather of his vest to soft, warm skin.
She followed his lead, the same way she had when they were kids. He was dominant but it didn’t bother her. This man would never harm her physically. She trusted him with her life, so when his tongue dragged across her bottom lip, she opened her mouth. His tongue found hers, and her whole body came alive. So often her body was nothing more than a tool, a weapon she used against the enemies. She trained it, fed it properly, maintained it, but now she realized she’d been missing something essential. Every inch of her skin hummed with need and he’d barely touched her.
He kissed her for what felt like forever, and the world fell away. The thoughts that were always in her brain, picking at her and nagging like incessant insects, were silent now, and she was nothing more than a body meant to touch and caress and kiss.
“I’m never going to be able to last, baby,” he whispered against her lips. “It’s been too long and I want you too much. So I need to get you across the finish line first. Turn around.”
Normally the bossiness would bug her, but she wasn’t the expert here and he was. So she turned and let him loosen her corset and drag it off her. When his hands slid up to cup her breasts, she practically melted against him. She let her head fall back on his shoulder as he played with her nipples.
“Have I told you how fucking hot you are?” He growled the words against her ear. “I can’t watch you work without wanting you. Hell, I can’t be in the same room without wanting to fuck you, baby.”
He hadn’t talked like this when they were kids, and the words felt jarring, a reminder that he thought she was used to this, that he believed she was the sexual being she presented herself as. It was easy to turn and kiss him again. When he kissed her she could pretend the years that had passed between them weren’t an ocean she had to find a way to navigate.
His fingers slipped under the waist of her shorts, easing them down.
She was comfortable with her body. It was certainly not the first time she’d been naked in front of a guy. She’d brought plenty of dumbass counteragents or dudes she needed something from up to her room and gotten them comfy and distracted. Boobs were great distractions. But this was usually the moment she knocked the guy out. Or killed him when he decided it was a great time to attack.