“Watchyou, Adeline,” he growled—pleaded—and when her eyes darted to his in their reflection, he promptly slid two fingers inside her. Adeline cried out, her knees buckling at the intense and abrupt pleasure of Kai,anypart of him, finally inside her after so many long weeks. He groaned again, and she fought to keep her gaze locked on the mirror, watching her own eyes glaze when he pressed a kiss to her throat.
“Kai.”
“Keep watching,” he whispered against her jaw. “I want you to see how beautiful you look, coming apart in my hand.”
Fuck.
He was right, too.
Kai’s touch did wonders for her. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes dark and shining, lips plump and parted; but Goddess, his were too. His breath was hot on her neck as he watched her writhe against his hand, hisbeautifularm strained against her stomach while he worked relentlessly between her legs. He touched her like he’d never stopped. Like he remembered every touch that had come before, had memorised the cadence of every moan he’d ever wrung from her despite the time and strangeness between them. None of that seemed to matter. He’d promised to give her what she needed—and true to his word, Adeline watched as Kai brought her to a swift and abrupt orgasm, her thighs tight around his wrist and his name rolling endlessly off her tongue.
“That’s it, love, just like that,” came his ragged response.
Adeline’s breath had thinned like she’d climbed a mountain, and it was only as it swept back into her lungs and returned function to her brain that she realised she’d squeezed her eyes shut. She peeked one open, smiling, expecting to find Kai grinning back at her reflection, but the look on his face seized at her stomach, that loose, warm bliss crushed in one fell swoop. Kai was far from grinning; his eyes were dark and pained, his brows sloped together.
He looked utterly broken.
She grabbed his arm and gently drew his hand out from between her thighs, heart in her throat.
“What is it? Did I—”
He shook his head, cutting her off at once.
“You’re perfect,” he said hoarsely, but the words were too tight. His head dropped to her shoulder, and his sigh warmed her skin before he said again, “You’re perfect. And I’ve missed you.”
Oh.
Adeline inhaled and watched the shift of her throat in her reflection; she could nearly see her heart sliding down from its hiding place to settle in her ribs once more, back where it belonged. Just as she was back whereshebelonged. Warmth swelled in her chest at the thought, shimmering waves of it rising through her with every beat.
She turned in the circle of his arms and reached up to lay her hand on his face. Somewhere over the Crossing, his usual scruff had become a beard; it suited him a little too well. His cheek was pleasantly rough beneath her palm, his skin flushed with the heat that still simmered between them—or perhaps from his own admission. The difficult truth, and the scrap of pride it had cost him to admit it; he’d missed her.
“I’ve missed you too,” she whispered.
Kai’s pained expression smoothed. He laid his palm over her hand, then curled it around her wrist and squeezed, somehow all the more emphatic in his silence.
“Somuch,” she went on. She was alarmed to find her voice thinning before she could say anything more, say the three words shereallyneeded to say, but it mattered little—Kai claimed her mouth, along with anything else she might have told him. Her words were swallowed by his kiss, her mind consumed by it, her fleeting courage sedated and forgotten.
It was slow and sweet and devouring. He kissed her the way he always did, like it was the first time, and he wanted to spend hours tasting her in every way imaginable. Like it was thelasttime, and he could not bear to stop. His fingers threaded her hair and sent a cascade of flutters down the length of her spine, andwhen she sighed into their kiss, he sucked her lower lip between his teeth.
She could do this forever, she thought. Just this.
And then, as Kai’s hands drifted down her body and he drew her closer by the small of her back, she realised that no, she could not. Notjustthis. She shivered at the warmth of his palms curving around her bare waist, and realisation seemed to jolt through them in the same precise moment; that Adeline still stood before him almost entirely naked. Their lips parted in frenetic unison, his tongue gliding over hers, the kiss turning messy and frantic. Her hands scrambled blindly at his shirt, fingers finding the thick embroidery of its hem and fumbling so pathetically that he took pity and broke away to do it himself. His stomach tensed and flexed as he stretched to pull the shirt over his head, and the tightness that gripped Adeline’s chest at the sight felt an awful lot like a sob. Something caught in his shirt collar as he tore it over his head; a pendant she hadn’t seen before, rough seaglass that seemed to offer a faint glow despite the dim light around them. It caught the vibrant green in his hazel eyes, and they shone with wicked amusement when he finally freed himself of his shirt and caught her stare.
He moved to draw her in again, but she stopped him with a hand pressed firmly to his chest; Kai raised a brow. His eyes caught on the movement of her hands as she tucked her thumbs beneath the band of her undergarments and rolled them down her thighs, then shimmied them over one heeled foot, then the other. She leaned back and braced herself against the counter, using that leverage to lift and seat herself, parting her knees for him.
The silence had a weight to it. A heat.
And when Kai’s gaze raked down her body, when his eyes darkened with that same heat, Adeline thought, distantly, that she would remember that look on his face for as long as she lived. It would change her; it would be written into her very being, a formative part of her from this day forward. Epic poems had been crafted on far less than the way Kai Cumhaill looked at her in that moment. He was so profoundly beautiful she couldn’t help but wish she had something meaningful to say. Something worthy of that aching perfection, sitting before this man with her thighs spread wide and knowing he would worship her if she let him. She didn’t have the words. She didn’t deserve this, but Goddess, shewantedit, and it had been some time since she had dared to wantanythingfor herself.
So she spread her thighs wider.
“You made me a promise,” she whispered. “Come here, Your Majesty.”
As though a tether had snapped at her command, Kai was upon her in less than a breath, his mouth on hers. His hand combed through her hair as he crushed himself closer, and she moaned at the realisation of how badly he wanted her. He was so hard it made herache, and the straining ridge of his cock pressed the seam of his trousers over her core again and again until she could not help but grind mindlessly back, rolling her hips like she could have him right there, clothes and all. She reached down to wrench his belt open, andGoddess, the sound he made against her mouth was barely human, the way it rumbled up from the depths of his chest, and set his teeth together. It should probably not have made her moan in response.
He pulled back to hold her eye, his broad chest heaving as he slid his belt free and dropped it to the ground with a clash of metal on tile.
“Slow,” he reminded her, a warning in one deep, broken word.
