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She was about to say something caustic about how it had turned out. But the truth was...it was turning out well. This moment was one she would never forget. As she sat there with this man’s eyes trained on her, giving her closer attention than she could remember ever having before, she felt...like this was the adventure she’d come for, without realizing it.
Krav was the adventure.
He poured her a cup of tea and handed it to her. His fingertips brushed against hers.
She suddenly felt warm and didn’t think it was to do with the tea.
“You are a strange little thing,” he said, just as she raised the cup to her lips.
“Am I?” She asked, lowering the cup quickly. “I thought I was simply unremarkable.”
“How can a woman called Riot ever think of herself as unremarkable?”
Maybe it was the man, maybe it was the moment. But she wanted to tell him. Everything.
“The name only adds to it. People expect someone wild and I’m not that at all. My mother was the child. There wasn’t room for two of us.”
“I see.”
“The name is hers. Not mine. It’s about her.”
“You could change it,” he said.
“Yes. Though there is something...defiant maybe, about keeping it. And continuing to be me.”
The corner of his mouth turned upward. “Ah, yes. Now that I am familiar with.”
She sipped her tea, and it was the waves of understanding that seemed to grow between them that surprised her most of all. She shouldn’t have anything in common with him. But she felt like he might understand her better than any other person she’d ever met.
The hours went by quickly. They didn’t talk about deep things. And yet the things they did speak of—favorite foods from their childhood, the seasons they liked best, all uncovered pieces of who they were. And it felt deep. It felt real.
And when he leaned across the space between them and kissed her, it wasn’t like kissing a stranger. Because he wasn’t a stranger. She knew him better than she’d ever known another person.
Krav who lived in the trees.
Krav whose mother was gone.
Krav, who kissed like a dream but was real. So very real. Warm and far too sharp and hard to bear. He burned bright, and so did she. Like the tiger had taken her for his own, not to eat, but to claim.
She’d never been kissed before. It came back to the fact that she had never trusted men and never wanted to.
Her mother had made a mess of her life over men and Riot had wanted...independence. Freedom. But she’d never felt half so free as she did right now, kissing this stranger in the trees.
His movements were expert, his hand on her cheek warm, his thumb sliding over her cheekbone and creating a hot sensation that started there but rioted through her. Down to her chest, down between her thighs. Until she burned, all of her.
“Krav,” she whispered.
His dark eyes burned into hers and she trembled. And she understood now why people made crazy decisions in the name of desire. Why Jaia was always tragic about some man or another. Because this moment, where she’d met a stranger in the rain and gone back to his house, seemed perfectly reasonable and somehow in the back of her mind she knew that it shouldn’t.
But it didn’t just seem reasonable, it seemed necessary. To part her lips for him and allow greater access. To let him slide his tongue against hers and taste her like she was an indulgent dessert.
She felt like an indulgent dessert. Or maybe a whole riot, contained in a girl who had never felt anything like that at all.
He tugged the shoulder of her robe down and the slick fabric fell away, revealing her shoulder and then, her breast. She might have gasped in shock if it didn’t seem natural. If it didn’t seem like exactly what was supposed to happen next.
Her nipple beaded tight and his eyes sparked with interest. And she felt...
She had never wanted a man’s attention before, not particularly. And so being the unexpected focus of his was something she could scarcely comprehend, much less anticipate.
