moment, he stared at the material covering my stomach, and the pervasive anger and underlying sense of loss I’d been living with for months warred with something new inside me. Something fragile and...hopeful.
Then he put his hands on my hips and looked up at me, and I held my breath. Kris looked so different from this angle. From above, his shoulders bunched with tension, his jaw tight. He looked strong, but sad.
He lifted the hem of my borrowed T-shirt slowly and his thumb trailed over my skin beneath the cotton. I held my breath. He was very careful, like my wound might still be open and bleeding literally, as it bled still in my heart.
He inhaled when he saw it, dark pink and smooth to the touch, and when he looked up at me, I saw my own horror reflected on his face.
Tears filled my eyes again when his hand covered my scar, low on the right side of my abdomen, trailing beneath the waist of my shorts. His hand was warm, and I felt it all around the wound, but not in the scar itself. The scar had no feeling, which was odd, because it seemed directly connected to my heart, which hurt all the time.
“I’m so sorry.” His hand shifted to cradle my hip, and when his fingers left my stomach, his lips found it. “He will pay,” Kris murmured, his breath warm against my skin, the stubble on his chin rough, yet comforting in the way only something so tangibly masculine can be. “No one should touch you out of anything other than adoration, ever again.”
My breath caught in my throat, and my hands caught in his hair, and when Kris stood, he was all I could see. “I adore you, Sera. Will you let me touch you?”
“Yes. Please.”
The words carried almost no sound, but he heard them.
Kris blinked at me in surprise, but that was gone in an instant, replaced by desire burning bright in his eyes, tinged with something stronger. Something I desperately wanted to believe in.
I could have this. I could have Kris, and if what I saw in his eyes could be trusted, I wouldn’t be getting him just for the night. And I wouldn’t be getting him alone. Kris was a package deal. He came with sisters, and friends, and a grandmother. A ready-made family with tempers, and hugs, and dementia, and chili, and arguments, and laughter, even in the worst of times, and a shared mission I already believed in.
They couldn’t replace the family I’d lost. But they didn’t have to, and they wouldn’t try to. They would just be there.
Kris would be there. If I let him.
Kris kissed me, and I kissed him back. I let everything go, and it was easier than I’d expected, because he wanted the burden. He didn’t just want to touch me, he wanted to know me. He wanted to know what had made me who I was. So I showed him.
I poured all my grief into that kiss. All my hunger for vengeance. And I fed from the same in him, astonished by the translation of heat from remembered violence to carnal appetite. We kissed until I forgot about the house around us and the people in it. Until I no longer felt the door at my back or the floor beneath my feet. I couldn’t feel anything but him, and I couldn’t touch enough of him to satisfy hands that had gone empty for too long. A mouth that had tasted only bitterness and pain for months on end.
But I could sure as hell try.
When kissing was no longer enough, I tugged on the end of his shirt, wordlessly commanding its removal as my mouth demanded even more from his lips. His tongue. Kris pulled away just long enough to tug his shirt over his head, and suddenly I could touch him unhindered by useless cotton.
I tasted him then, clean from a recent shower. His earlobes felt good between my teeth and his hair smelled like guy-shampoo. His neck was rough with stubble, and just a little salty. His chin was strong, and the back of his jawbone fit in the gap between my lips like I was always meant to kiss him there.
My hands found smooth skin over taut muscle. Hard planes and all the right masculine bumps and ridges. He let me play, tasting, testing, learning his body as thoroughly as I could, because I wouldn’t get another chance. His hands