Energy lapped, mounting and building in the dense, dense air.
Severe.
Intense.
That storm I’d felt coming for weeks was suddenly overhead. Battering at the walls and howling at the windows.
Hope didn’t look back at me as she led me through the living room, her head bowed, her motions somehow deliberate. Like she was moving through honey.
The minutes set to slow. Like we didn’t have to rush.
But there was no doubt, no hesitation in her decision.
I could feel it galloping ahead of us. This girl already riding toward a divine destination.
Inviting me to join her.
Part of me screamed and raged, tearing at my insides, shouting at me to go. To tell her this was a horrible idea. It was four in the morning and our walls were down.
I needed to leave because I had no idea where this path was going to lead us, and if I hurt her, I wasn’t sure I’d make it through this time.
Because she brought every old feeling back. Ones I’d never thought I’d feel again. Then she multiplied it by something that was brand new. Bigger than anything I’d felt. Not once. Not ever.
Only her.
Blips of the day flashed through my mind. The girl blowing my mind. Confessing to her that I’d lost the first and only girl I’d ever loved. The sheer terror I’d felt over Evan. The fact I hadn’t been able to walk away when I’d brought them back here.
And I knew.
I knew.
I wanted to try.
God. I wanted to try. Hope’s breaths turned shallow when she guided me through the threshold of her doorway and into the dimmed, shadowy glow that clung to her bedroom.
Golden shadows and a lusty haze.
Just inside, she dropped my hand. Slowly, she swiveled around to face me, her chin lifting on a lurching breath. I saw the offering just as clearly as I heard the plea.
Her legs were bare beneath that tiny slip of a gown.
Every damned inch of me grew hard at the sight, my chest tightening and my dick thickening, begging at my jeans.
I shifted to quietly latch the door shut and flicked the lock.
The promise of it hit the room like a sonic boom.
I stepped forward, erasing the distance between us, my fingertips reaching out to flutter along the delicate column of her neck.
Her pulse thrummed an erratic, reckless beat. I trailed them back up, over the divot in her chin, and ran them across the pout of those lush, full lips. “You are so beautiful, Hope. So beautiful that I think I have to be dreaming right now.”
“I need you, Kale,” she whispered across my fingertips.
It sent a spiral of need curling through me.
Lust.
Greed.
Possession.
“I need you,” she whispered again.
Every muscle in my stomach clenched when she stepped back and gathered the hem of her nightgown in her hands. Slowly, she peeled it over her body.
Exposing herself. Inch by delicious inch.
After tugging it over her head, she dropped it to the floor.
That mass of hair fell around her bare shoulders, caressing over her collarbones. Kissing her tits.
Pink, pert, pebbled nipples peeked through the long strands like the most brutal kind of tease.
Her belly flat and her waist narrow, hips flared and wide, thighs full.
Pussy covered by the same scrap of underwear that had earlier been on my floor.
That felt like a lifetime ago.
Like everything had changed. Like time had shifted and I no longer knew where I was.
A shudder took to my spine, lighting up my insides.
I ran the back of my knuckles across one peaked nipple.
She emitted a tiny moan.
“Is this what you need? You need me to touch you?”
She looked up at me. Baring herself. “I just need you. The only thing I need is you.”
“Hope,” I murmured, knowing exactly what this girl was saying.
Her heart and spirit soaring through the room.
Spinning around me.
Sucking me in.
I gripped her by the back of the head, my fingers splaying wide, drawing her to me.
I kissed her slowly. Deeply. Because right then, I got that this girl needed to be treated delicately.
Carefully.
That in her amazing strength, she was fragile and vulnerable, and she needed someone to hold her up. Treat her like a queen.
And I wanted to be him. That guy she said she saw when she looked at me. The guy who might make her better rather than destroy her a little more in the end.
“I need you,” she muttered again, a sigh against my lips.
“I need you, too, Hope. Fuck. I need you, too.”
There was so much in that statement. Things that burned in that cold, dark place. Impaling the numbness I’d surrendered it to.
Her light threatening to bring that dead place back to life.
My kiss was a slow claiming, as I backed her across her room until she butted against the bed. She didn’t hesitate to crawl on top.
Our breaths heaving into the dense air when we broke apart.