Kiss the Stars (Falling Stars 1)

I leaned in and kissed across the marred flesh.

“Fuck, Mia,” Leif grunted in shock, a hand fisting in my hair like he wanted to stop me. I grabbed him by the back of both thighs, letting my lips lightly brush the injury.

“Mia . . . what the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

“Adoring you. The person you are. The sacrifice you made.” My hands shook harder. “You could have been killed, Leif. I . . .”

I trailed off, unable to finish the statement, knowing it would reveal too much. That he would see he had already gotten to me.

He wasn’t even mine and losing him would destroy me.

Those eyes flashed. Desperation and desire.

He tugged at the hold he had in my hair, urging me up onto my feet.

“Angel,” he mumbled.

In a flash, I was propped back onto the table, and he was taking me by the knees, spreading me so he could make room for himself. My nightgown bunched at my waist, and he pushed his bare cock to the sheer lace of my panties.

“Fuck. Can’t get you off my mind, Mia. Tried, baby, I tried. But I close my eyes, and it’s you I see.”

I gasped. Moaned. Begged. My hands sought refuge under his shirt, pushing it up as I let my palms run the contoured lines of his abdomen. He tore it the rest of the way over his head.

One second later, the man was completely naked.

Glorious.

Magnificent.

Muscles hard and lean.

Rigid, brutal beauty.

His chest packed and the skin clean, a single tattoo of a palm tree marked on the underside of his bicep.

Scars littered the lower left side of his abdomen, a spray of four or five deep, discolored indentations.

I brushed my fingers over them. He flinched and I had the urge to kiss across them, too.

I did, leaning in and brushing my lips across the marred skin, not knowing what happened but sure whatever it was, it was wholly significant.

Part of what had shaped this broken, guarded man.

Rain pounded and the storm grew strength, and my chest was heaving while he stood there looking at me while I touched him.

Explored him.

Tenderly.

For a moment, he just watched.

Taken.

All that firm, toned flesh shivered beneath my touch.

Then he dove for me again.

Mouth capturing mine as his hands pushed under the material of my nightgown. His fingers found the edges of my panties, and he hissed when he dragged them down, the fabric eliciting a chill as it skimmed the length of my legs.

He dropped them to the floor.

“It isn’t right, Mia. What I’m about to do to you. But I need it. Fuck, I need to feel something good. You, beautiful girl. I need to get inside of you.”

His kiss was manic, a hand at the back of my head, angling me to take control.

He tasted of whiskey and sex and grief.

With the other hand, he gripped me by the hip and tucked me close.

Our bare skin grazed.

Shock streaked through my body.

Electric.

The barest brush, and I was already being burned alive.

My fingers searched, palms gliding over his chest. His muscle rippled beneath my touch. I kept going lower, dragging over his abdomen that twitched and shook until I held him in the palm of my hand.

My belly flipped as I stroked him.

“God. Mia. Yes.”

The words wheezed from his throat, and his hand slipped from my head to my shoulder where he jerked the strap of my gown free, exposing one breast. He dipped down and swirled his tongue around my nipple.

I whimpered and gasped when he dragged his fingers through my center, the flesh drenched and throbbing.

He slipped two fingers inside of me, and I was already coming undone, his name a plea.

Bliss built. Too fast. Mind-numbing. I could no longer think.

“You want me, sweet girl?” The words might have been nice, but they came out a threat.

Raw hunger had taken to his gaze when he edged back to look at me, lust flexing every gorgeous muscle of his body.

“Yes.”

“Tonight, I own you, Mia West.”

My chest tightened, and my heart did that stupid, stupid thing.

Because falling for this man would only break me in the end.

He kissed me again, and I’d never been kissed this way.

In a way that was all consuming, desperate and dire. As if both of our lives depended on it.

I was terrified that maybe they did.

Our mouths at war.

Our hands an entreaty.

Our mingling breaths a covenant.

He dragged me to the very edge of the table, so close that my bottom was barely hanging on, and his hand clenched down on the side of my neck when he edged back to position the head of his cock between my trembling thighs.

He barely pressed in an inch.

I thought I might pass out right then.

He tightened his hold, fingers curling into my hair at the back of my head.

I could feel his manic heart going boom, boom, boom. In sync with the storm. In sync with my mind.