Her hand slid over his shaved head, fingers tightening at the back of his head as she guided him down to her mouth.“I need you to put your hands on me, Nick.I need to feel you.All of you.I need to know we’re still here.”
His eyes closed for a heartbeat at the soft, honest weight of it.“Then feel me,” he said.He took his time.He kissed his way down her throat in slow, open-mouthed pulls that left her arching off the furs, and when his lips found her collarbone, he lingered there until she made a soft, frustrated sound that pulled a low laugh out of him.He smiled against her skin.
“Patience.”
Kara frowned at him, nearly a pout, which was sexy as hell.“I have been very patient.”
He gave her neck a quick lick.“Patience looks beautiful on you.”
“Nick.”
He moved lower.His mouth traced the soft slope of her chest, his hand sliding up to cup her breast with the deliberate care she needed now.He learned the new fullness of her under his palm, the heavier weight of her, the way her breath caught harder when his thumb brushed across the tight peak of her.He filed every reaction away carefully, the way he filed everything about her, and he used what he learned.
When his mouth replaced his hand, she gasped his name, her hips lifting off the furs, and his free hand pressed gently and grounding along her ribs to steady her.
“Yeah,” he breathed against her skin.“This is what you need, what I need.”
“Nick, I can’t, it’s,Nick.”
“Sensitive,” he murmured.“I know.I’ve got you.Just feel it.”
He kept going.
He kissed his way down the soft plane of her stomach, slowing when he reached the gentle curve at the base of it.His mouth pressed there, lingered there, his hand splayed wide and protective over the warmth of her.He stayed long enough that her hand drifted down to rest on his head, her fingers stroking once.His throat closed for a beat.He kissed the soft skin again, low, reverent, and let her feel what he couldn’t get past his teeth.
Then he moved lower still.
He took his time with her there, too, slow and unhurried and ruthless in the steady, attentive way he had spent time learning her body.Her hands dropped to the covers as she fisted them tightly, her thighs trembled against his shoulders, and the sounds she made tore through him and rearranged something in his chest.He brought her to the edge with deliberate cruelty, eased her back, and brought her up again, listening for every shift in her breath, watching her face, learning her all over again the way he learned her every single time, because she was his and he would never be done memorizing her.
When he finally let her fall, she came apart on a soft, broken sound of his name, and he stayed with her through every shudder, his hand stroking up and down her thigh in long, slow lines until she went boneless against the furs.
Only then did he move back up her body.
She caught his face in both hands the moment he was within reach and kissed him hard, her mouth open and hungry, tasting herself on him without hesitation, and his control slipped another notch sideways.He groaned into her mouth.
“I want you,” she whispered against his lips.
“You have me.”
“I want you in me, Nick.”
His forehead dropped to hers.He breathed once, slowly, the way he’d taught himself to breathe when she said things like that to him, because she could undo years of careful patience in a single sentence, and she knew it.
“Look at me,” he said.
Her eyes opened, dark and soft and entirely his.
“I love you,” he told her quietly.“More than I knew there was room inside me.You and the baby.There’s nothing in any realm that’s getting through me to either of you.Do you understand me?”
Her eyes filled.“I understand.”
He shifted between her thighs, his hand sliding under her knee to draw her leg up over his hip with care, and he eased into her slowly, watching her face the entire way.Her lips parted on a soft, shaken sound, and his vision fogged at the edges for a moment as she took him in.He stilled when he was fully seated, breathing through it, his forehead pressed to hers, both of them shaking.
“There you are,” he whispered.
“Nick.”
“I feel it, too.”Then he moved.
