A Reckless Note (Brilliance Trilogy #1) - Lisa Renee Jones Page 0,48
Kace that I cannot quite read. I don’t want to read it, either. I don’t want to talk. I push to my toes and dare to be bold when nothing in my life has been bold but death. I don’t want to think about death tonight. I press my lips to his.
For a moment, the briefest of moments, he is stiff, and then there is a low, rough groan that escapes his lips and vibrates against my lips. His tongue licks into my mouth in a sizzling slide that has me moaning. He slants his mouth over mine, deepening the connection, and he kisses me as I have never been kissed. He kisses me as if he is claiming me as if I really am his. And tonight, I want to be. Tonight, I so want to be, but his words come back to me, they stab at me.
I’ve learned in life that the façade of truth destroys more than outright lies.
I don’t need another lie in my life. I tear my mouth from his. “I need you to know that I do want to see your violins. Your Stradivarius. I have a personal reason. But that is not why I’m here now.”
“Why are you here, then?”
“Because of you. Because I need to feel what you make me feel.”
“What do I make you feel, Aria?”
“Free. And alive.”
He doesn’t pull back but he doesn’t move. His lips linger above mine, his body close, his breath warm and his scent spicy. Seconds tick by in which I swear I can feel him in every part of me and I crave his kiss. A kiss that has yet to come and I begin to wonder if it will.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
He does kiss me. God, how he kisses me.
His mouth slants over mine, and I swear I feel the deep stroke of his tongue in every part of my body. My nipples pucker. My sex clenches. My body aches. Kace has that power. He kisses me and I melt, as I do now, sinking into the hard lines of his perfect body. No other man has ever affected me this completely, but he does. He owns me with just a kiss, but then, Kace is like no other man I’ve ever known. His tongue against my tongue seduces, demands—and while there was always a reserve to me in the past, a warning playing in my head, there is no part of me that holds back with Kace. I kiss him with abandon, with passion. I kiss him with my own demand, and then he tears his mouth from mine and backs me up until I’m pressed against his grand piano. “What are you doing to me, woman?” he demands, once again.
“This,” I say, pressing my hands under his T-shirt.
In reply, he tugs the shirt over his head and tosses it aside. “Is that what you want?”
“Yes,” I say with no hesitation, my hand caressing the musical notes on his arm, tattoos that say he claims who he is, he embraces who he is. I want this man. I give myself permission to own my desires the way he owns me just by being in the same room as me. And I’m not afraid of that. Not here. Not now. Not this night.
He grips the piano behind me, “Do you know what I want, Aria?”
There’s an edge to him again now, a dark edge that shouldn’t appeal to me, but it does, it so does. I ask the question he’s demanded. “What do you want, Kace?”
“Too much,” he says. “Too much, Aria.”
He means it. It’s in this moment that I understand the hot and cold I’ve experienced with this man is far more than I realized. He wants me. He doesn’t want to want me. He doesn’t believe I should be here. My defenses flare and my hand presses to his bare chest. “Why am I here then? You don’t want me here.”
“I want you, Aria. Very much. Too much. That’s the point.”
“But you don’t want me here.”
He cups my face and stares down at me, the hardness, somehow tender. “I do very much want you here.”
“You’re confusing me.”
“The feeling is mutual, baby,” he says, his voice thick with emotion that I don’t understand, that I’m not sure I’ll ever understand. But it moves me. He moves me and I reach up and cup his hand on my face.
“What are we doing, Kace?” I whisper.
He leans in and brushes his lips over my lips, a feather-light