“Get off me.” I grunted. I was cold, I ached, and he felt like an intrusion. Like something that shouldn’t be inside me.
“It’s okay,” he whispered under his breath, gently pushing my hair out of my eye. “It’s okay.”
“You got what you wanted, so get off me now.”
I was breaking, and the tears broke free, running down my temples, into my hair. I was ruined. Damon was going to hate me now.
But Kai just shook his head slowly, still looking down at me befuddled. “I didn’t know. I…I thought…” His fingers fell down the side of my face and then down my arm. “What the fuck is happening?”
His forehead dropped to mine, and I was about to shove him off, but I hesitated. Why the hell did he care? Wasn’t this what he wanted? Whether it was my first time or my hundredth, he’d used me like the toy I was to him. What did it matter?
“Who are you to him?” he asked, lifting his head up to look down at me.
“It doesn’t matter. I’ll still choose him. He never hurt me like this. Not like you did.”
He winced, and I could tell I’d cut him. Kai worried he was bad, and he tried to be sinister, but not so deep down, he was good, and it was who he was. He would never change.
He didn’t like hurting me.
He shifted his body, pulling out of me, and I flinched at the renewed soreness between my legs as I tried to close them.
But he didn’t move off me. He stayed nestled between my thighs.
“Look at me,” he told me.
Slowly, I raised my eyes again, and he touched my face.
“I would’ve been gentler your first time,” he said.
“I don’t care.” I shook my head. “I don’t care about any of it.”
Shoving my palms into his chest, I pushed him off me and shot off the bed, bolting.
But he caught me from behind. Wrapping an arm around my waist, he hauled me back, and I gasped, both of us falling back on the bed. I laid on top of him, my back molded to his chest.
My scream was cut off by his mouth as he threaded his fingers through the back of my hair and twisted my head, holding my mouth to his.
I thrashed and jerked, elbowing him as I tried to twist away, but he didn’t let me go. His mouth, strong and demanding, moved to my jaw, my cheek, and my ear, sucking and biting, and I growled, throwing my left hand over my body and slapping him.
“Hurt me. Do what you want with me,” he gasped in my ear. “I deserve it.”
He brought his legs up between mine, bending them at the knee and spreading my own.
His hand slipped between my legs, and I cried out, suddenly afraid, but he stopped and just rested there, unmoving as he held me in his palm.
“Kai!” I yelled, fighting him.
His lips stopped on my cheek, breathing hard and hot. “Not tonight.”
What?
“I’m not Kai,” he said, “and you’re not Banks.”
There was something pleading in his voice that gave me pause.
“Thunder Bay doesn’t exist, and we’re not in The Pope,” he continued. “It’s six years ago when I was happy and excited, and you were curious about everything, and my words were all it took to touch you.”
My entire body stilled, and tears suddenly blurred my vision as he whispered to me.