A Wicked Song (Brilliance Trilogy 2)

I wrap my arms around his neck. “What orders, Kace?”

He rolls us to our sides, the thick pulse of his erection between my thighs, while he has managed to ensure my injured hand is out of harm’s way, and I know this is no accident. Kace does nothing by accident. I’ve learned that already about him.

“Not tonight,” he says. “No orders tonight. No games tonight.” He strokes a hand through my hair and tilts my face to his. “But if I could order you to trust me, I would, but then it wouldn’t matter as much if it was a demand, now would it?”

“No,” I whisper. “No, I suppose it wouldn’t.”

“You can trust me, Aria,” he vows.

He wants me to say that I do. I want to say I do, but my life isn’t that simple. We have proven we are not that simple.

“I want to believe that,” I say instead because it’s true. I have never wanted to trust anyone the way I want to trust Kace.

He breathes out and presses his forehead to mine. “I hate that you don’t know you can.”

I pull back and look at him. “We’re naked in bed together Kace. We aren’t in a bad place. I just—my life has been about—”

“Fear.”

“Yes,” I say, and it matters to me that he understands. “Fear.”

“I need you to know that I understand, probably more than you think I do.”

My mind goes back to the words he’d spoken outside the ER: I do know you, but that still requires me trusting you and I’ve had plenty of reasons in my life not to offer you that trust. Reasons you don’t know. Many reasons, Aria. Many betrayals. But I give you my trust anyway.

I don’t know what his betrayals might be, but I know they splinter painfully and bleed into the center of the darkness that I’ve always sensed in him. Suddenly I don’t want this to be all about me trusting him. I want it to be about him trusting me. “You can trust me, too. I know you said that you do, but I just want you to know that you can.”

A sharp emotion flickers in his eyes but before I can even begin to name it, his mouth lowers to mine, his breath a warm fan on my lips. “I’ll be gentle. I don’t want to hurt you.”

For just a moment, I’m not sure if he’s talking about my hand or my heart and I never get the chance to find out. His mouth closes down over my mouth. His tongue licks past my teeth and one hand flattens between my shoulder blades, molding me close. His kiss is velvety warm and liquid sweet. His taste is both demanding and somehow gentle. His hands are magical, and I swear I can feel the glide of his fingers down my spine in every part of me. My nipples tingle, my sex clenches and as if he knows this is the perfect moment, he presses inside me, hard and thick. I moan with the feel of him, arching against the shock and pleasure.

He swallows the moan with his kiss, and I can feel the intensity in him, the arousal, the need, and it affects me. I am burning alive for this man. The heat between us is searing, and with my good hand buried between us, my injured arm is all I have to hold onto him and it’s not enough. Kace seems to know, though. He cups my backside and drives into me, rocketing sensations through me. I pant and arch into him. His hand is on my breast, fingers teasing my nipples, and when he nips at my lip and tugs on my nipple at the same time, my back arches. He thrusts into me, tangles fingers into my hair and kisses me. We are in a wild frenzy that becomes soft, sultry, erotic, tender even. It no longer feels like sex. It feels like something much deeper, something I have never known. It’s in that place, with this amazing man, that we both tumble into release, and each other.

When it’s over, we don’t speak, but that tenderness between us doesn’t fade. We end up naked under the blankets, the lights out and our warm bodies pressed close.

And in the darkness, that fear we discussed is a shooting star that streaks into the distance and fades away. Lying here in Kace’s arms, it too has faded. It’s gone, at least for one night.

CHAPTER EIGHT

I wake to my arm frozen on top of the mattress. It—won’t—move. “Oh God,” I whisper and roll to my back, with no sensation in my limb at all. “Oh God!”

Kace is instantly leaning over me, one hand on each side of my body, his body over mine. “What is it? Pain?”

“I can’t move my arm. That stupid shot they gave me did something to my arm. It’s bad, Kace. I can’t move it.”