13
COOPER
My nose throbbed as I stood between Kitten’s thighs while she held a cold pack to my face, her butt on the bathroom vanity. “Where’d you learn to set a nose?”
She cleaned up the blood on my face, and treated a small cut on my cheek that I didn’t even realize I had—the sensation had been dulled under the throbbing of my nose. By tomorrow I’d be fine, but I let her fuss.
“When I was eight, I fell out of a tree trying to untangle one of my traps. Hit every branch on the way down with my face. Broke my nose, and Lorso made me fix it myself. Said it was adoctrina experientia.”
“A what?”
“Uh…” She paused, screwing up her nose adorably. I traced my finger down the bridge, feeling a slight bump. “A learning experience?”
I huffed a laugh. “Apparently, he was right.”
She smiled, and I noticed her front tooth was slightly crooked. Not noticeable from a distance, but this close, I could tell one sat just in front of the other. Probably from that same fall that broke her nose.
“What was it like, growing up wild?”
She shrugged. “Like growing up.” She shrugged, her hair bouncing, and I inhaled the scent of her. It was like sunshine and the forest. “Lorso loved me, like I was an unruly cub and he was a near ancient old man.”
“So not full of warm gestures then, I guess?” I touched her lips. “Your English is getting better every day.”
“The more I am forced to use it, the more words come back to me. What is that saying? Like riding a bike.”
I laughed as she taped my nose. Wouldn’t want it to rapidly heal wrong. She was sitting up on the bench so we were similar heights, and I soaked in her features as she worked.
“There must be more to it.”
Her lips pinched slightly. “I didn’t know there was any other way until I met Beckett and Corvin. Or they caught me, at least. They were like devils to me. Lorso had made sure that I feared the Manix enough that if I ever spotted one, I’d run in the other direction as fast as I could. Then he died.” I could see the old pain in her eyes, but I didn’t poke at the wound.
Instead, I leaned forward until I could feel her breath on my lips. “Can I kiss you, Kit?”
She froze in my arms, but then her heels hooked behind my thighs, dragging me closer. “I like that you call me Kit.”
She leaned forward and captured my lips. She tasted as sweet as she smelled, and I felt like I was drowning in her. I let her explore, answered her tentative nibbles with soft ones of my own, the flick of her tongue past my teeth with a stroke of mine against hers. Her fingers buried in my hair, holding me close, but I wasn’t going anywhere. I couldn’t think of a better place to be at this moment than right here.
She pulled back, resting her face in the crook of my neck. “Is it greedy to want you too?” she whispered, and my heart almost stopped.
“Not greedy. Are you sure?” My Beast growled at me. He was already pissed that we’d missed out on her heat, but he was way too attached considering we’d only known Kitten for less than a week.
“Yes.” There was no doubt in her voice, not a pause or a quaver. She wanted this.
And I was more than happy to give it to her. I cupped her jaw with my hand, stroking my thumb along her high cheekbone. She was so beautiful. Not like a delicate flower, though she was certainly delicate in stature. No, she might be slight, but there was a fierceness to her, a strength that said she didn’t need us. It made the fact that she wanted me so much sweeter.
I stroked my hands down her ribs until they settled on her hips—still too skinny but beautiful all the same. Once she was well fed, these curves would be soft beneath my fingers. I slid my hands beneath the waistband of her borrowed shorts, tracing the line of her underwear, asking for permission.
“More,” she growled, and it was cute as fuck. I wondered if she could shift. The guys seemed to think she couldn’t, but who knew?
That was a question for another time though, because right now, I wanted to taste. I wanted my mouth on every single inch of her as quickly as possible. I pulled at the shorts, and she lifted her ass so I could wiggle them off her legs. Grabbing her knees, I spread them wide and groaned.
“Aw, Kit. You’re so wet for me already. God, how could you be so perfect for us?” I bit the inside of her thigh gently, a claiming kind of bite. My Beast was screaming things I refused to hear, but they may have started with M and rhymed with the word Fate.
Dragging my teeth away from her creamy flesh, I stroked my tongue toward the apex of her thighs. Sliding between her folds, I lapped at her juices with a groan. Oh, yes. As I flicked my tongue over her clit, she curled against my mouth, showing me what she liked. A little soft, a little rough. My girl liked a variety. I could do that. I alternated plunging my tongue inside her with sucking gently on her clit until she was holding my hair and panting out her release.
I wanted this so bad that I was going to come right now. I thought about baseball, that one time I fell on a roofing job and broke my arm, anything at all that was completely unarousing so I could hold on.
But when she moaned my name? I was fucking done for.
