each encounter between them could and should be the last, and she wasn’t entirely sure she was ready for that.
Kate started to pull off him, intending to finish the game, but Kennedy had other ideas. One hand cupped her butt firmly, holding her against him, the other pulling her face down for a kiss.
She sank into it. Sank into him, letting her lips and tongue communicate all of the things she didn’t know how to say, even to herself.
“I’ll follow your rules,” he said against her lips. “But I’ll play on my terms.”
She pulled back slightly in confusion. “What—”
He hooked a finger into the front cup of her lace bra and held her gaze as he tugged it down. Then his head dipped, capturing her nipple in his mouth with a firm suck.
Her back arched, her hands coming to his head, as his fingers pulled down the cup on the other side, a little rougher this time, and licked that nipple as well. Back and forth he went, and somewhere through the haze of passion, she realized his game. Their strip-chess rules dictated her bra and his pants stayed on.
Technically.
His mouth returned to hers, kissing her passionately as her hands found the button of his pants. She unfastened them, he groaned his encouragement, and together they wrangled his pants and briefs down but not off.
Kate looked down her body, taking in the strangely erotic sight of her breasts spilling over the top of her bra, his pants bunched around his thighs. Her fingers wrapped around him. Stroked.
“Yes,” he growled.
She did it again, and he rewarded her with a lick at her nipple, a thumb on her clit. With torturing, teasing hands, they brought each other to the brink, his eyes on hers the entire time, until finally, when they couldn’t take any more, he wrestled a condom out of his wallet. She didn’t care that it was cliché he carried it with him, didn’t know if he always did or just since they’d started hooking up, and she didn’t care.
Correction, she didn’t want to care. But it was darn hard when he lifted his eyes to her, his gaze dark and intense as he brushed her hair away from her face in a tender gesture that belied their frantic fumbling from moments before.
Kate held her breath, pausing for a drawn-out moment, trying to reclaim her heartbeat. Trying to reclaim her heart.
The realization caused a ripple of fear, and she reached for him, positioning him at the entrance of her body before sinking down, slamming her eyes shut as she did so. He murmured her name, a question on his lips, but she shook her head, her hips moving urgently over his.
Kennedy hesitated a moment longer, then his body made the decision for him, hands greedily moving over her as he lifted her, then pulled her down again, his hips slamming up to meet hers in a furious coupling.
He maneuvered his hand between their bodies, his fingers rubbing just above the spot where they were joined. She cried out, and he joined her at the precipice, thrusting into her hard at the exact moment she clenched around him.
Her orgasm was as turbulent as it was satisfying, and, too weak to do anything else when it was over, she slumped against his shoulder, her breath coming in near sobs.
She’d wanted fast and furious, and she’d gotten it. No tender lovemaking here, just good old-fashioned, no-strings screwing.
But as her heart rate slowed and her breath ceased coming in gasps, she registered . . . him.
The way his arm wrapped around her possessively, his other hand running over her hair in a caress meant to comfort. She felt a single tear run out of the corner of her eye and knew from the way his hand froze for a moment that he felt it hit his shoulder.
But then he resumed his gentle stroking and didn’t ask why she was crying.
She suspected that she didn’t have an answer. Not even for herself.
28
Saturday, June 8
Two weeks later
“You nervous?” Kennedy asked.
It was a rhetorical question. Ian had been pacing around the dedicated “groom’s room” for a solid twenty-three minutes now.
“You know what? Why don’t we revisit that question when you get married, see how you like it,” Ian snapped, putting both hands on top of his head and taking a deep breath. “Sorry. I’m on edge.”
“No worries,” Kennedy said placatingly. He’d had plenty of friends and a brother get married. This wasn’t his first rodeo.
Though he purposely