On each stroke, friction dug in and heaved her pleasure with him. Layers and layers of it, like dense fabric, like silken fire, gathering and dragging and burning inside her on every thrust. Crazed with readiness, she pulled his bottom lip into her mouth and begged him to take more, more, more.
Finally, a swelling rush built inside her.
“Don’t stop this time,” she pleaded, clutching him against her.
“I won’t.” He rocked higher into her. “This is it.”
And then, the pleasure he’d taken from her body, one gasp and moan and tremble at a time—all that tingling and bursting and surging—
He gave it all back.
It converged like the center of a storm, and then blew, thundering outward, tackling her beneath an endless rolling beat. The strongest orgasm of her life.
Lungs empty and body wrecked, she was vaguely aware of Kris shuddering through his own ending. When he relaxed over her, she wound her legs around his hips, warm and glowing and too satisfied to speak.
It was a while before he asked, “Still want to kill me?” against her neck.
She smiled, moving her hips gently. “No. You win.”
“You’re telling me,” he said, and raised his head and kissed her. Opening to him, she sensed an aching impatience gathering low in her chest, demanding to connect with him beyond what was possible. Even now, with him buried inside her and his tongue deep in her mouth, he was still too far away, and she longed to haul him through her rib cage and right into her beating heart.
Or was it less that he was too far away—but still too unknowable?
She’d spent years of friendship skirting around his edges. Holding back questions, keeping her distance. Well. Now she’d have to wait. Months, years even, because what she really wanted from her best friend was to know him, as utterly as she knew herself, and only time could offer such truth. Mornings wrapped in each other’s arms; evenings deep in conversation; moments that tested and punished and rewarded them. Time would grant her the power to decode him one piece at a time until she understood the man he was, in all his complexity, and could fit seamlessly against him.
That was why she ached—for an intimate relationship.
And he would give it to her.
Eventually, he pulled back and said, “You’re so perfect, I never want to move.”
“But however will we eat?”
He grinned and her happiness soared. She raised a hand to the side of his face, stroking her thumb over his bottom lip, scarcely believing she was allowed to spend her life with him.
“Say it,” he murmured. “Say what I can see in your eyes.”
She blinked, startled, and focused on his chin. “I—”
Had never said it. Never heard it. She hardly knew how it was supposed to sound.
Panic kicked up her pulse and he made a soft sound of reassurance as his fingers circled her shoulder.
“I’ll help,” he said. “This is all you do. Just say . . .” And he paused, waiting until she looked up, right into his eyes. Her heart stuttered, like the pair of trembling hands she longed to hide behind, too shy to look his emotion in the face. But she did, kept her attention fixed on the affection raw and tender in his gaze as he said, “I love you.”
It sounded like the gentle brush of his lashes against her heart as he saw all the way inside her; sounded like an extended palm, held out, waiting for her to take hold.
Her breath was fast, and she couldn’t look away.
“Frankie,” he said, whispering this time. “I love you.”
As the silence stretched out, a tear slid down her cheek. Not because she was scared of his love or her own for him. Rather because she had a lifetime of fear inside her and his confession had just nudged some of it out.
“It’s okay.” He brushed the tear aside with his nose and murmured, “I know you do.”
She wanted to confirm it, speak the words out loud, but as much as the past twelve hours seemed to disagree, she couldn’t change her entire life overnight, and that included her emotional limits.
She looked back and hoped he could still see it in her eyes.
“Okay.” Kris pushed higher onto his elbows, features growing serious. “You raised something significant earlier and I think it’s time we finally did something about it.”
Oh, hell. Her heart fluttered as she struggled to remember. What had she said? And what did he mean