Page 48 of Worth of Waste

Entirely.

Karen

“ARE you just going to stand there after all that and do nothing?” Karen asked.

Dino crossed his arms as amusement colored up his strong features. The hardness of the lines on his face almost seemed to soften when he grinned—not like when he smirked or sneered. This was different.

“I already told you,” Dino replied, “I’m leaving us—”

“Up to me. Yes, I got that.”

“Then it’s up to you, sweetheart.”

“Asking you to spend the night with me isn’t obvious enough that I want you?”

A tic moved in Dino’s jaw. “Want me, huh?”

A heat coated his tone, making his words feel like a silken caress sliding over her skin. He didn’t even have to touch her—he was two feet away—and she still felt like he’d touched every single inch of her.

Karen hid her shiver, but barely. “I do miss you, Dino.”

She had barely even gotten the words out before he was closing the distance between them, catching her face in his hands, and then his mouth crashed down on hers. The kiss was bruising—punishing, even as his tongue stroked her bottom lip before his teeth replaced it, nipping sharply into the same spot.

Her whine was swallowed by his chuckle of approval, and as the sound tried to escape, his tongue darted into the heat of her mouth, finding hers and warring there for long enough to take her breath away.

She thought it was very possible that she had missed his kiss most of all.

The way he dragged her closer, how his fingers knotted into her hair to keep her in place, and how her knees damn near buckled under the intensity but he just kept holding her up. He’d never let her fall before.

Those hands—fast and strong—had a goal in mind, it seemed. And that was to get her clothes off as fast as possible. Karen helped, only breaking their kiss long enough to step back and allow him to pull her shirt off. Her pants quickly followed, and as he tugged them down her legs, Dino dropped to his knees at the same time.

She only took a single, quick breath in as Dino’s fingers twisted around the waistband of her thong and he glanced up at her, frozen like that for a split second. The glimmer staring back at her, one she hadn’t seen in far too long, shined all too brightly.

Lust.

Need.

Want.

God, yeah.

She’d missed this man.

“Breathe,” she heard him murmur.

His words were there, the order was clear, but Karen didn’t really register what he was trying to tell her. It was only the slightest graze of the tip of his nose along her inner thigh that broke her from the daze.

She realized then that she was trembling, because her body knew what was coming—she knew all too well what was coming—and she didn’t want to wait. She couldn’t wait. It had been far too long.

“Not too loud,” Dino said, tipping his head to the side, reminding her where they were and the open-concept loft. “But still let me hear it, Karen.”

Jesus.

“Anything you want,” she replied.

Dino smirked, tipping his face down and nuzzling her thigh again, his mouth coming a little closer to her cotton-covered sex. “Not about me. It’s never been about me.”

Oh.