CHAPTER HUNDRED & SEVENTY-NINE

CHAPTER HUNDRED & SEVENTY-NINE
KYLE

I’ve kissed Ashley before.

Before we were married, when everything was new and uncertain and thrilling.
During our marriage, when the world still made sense and the future felt like something we could actually hold.
Even after our divorce—when the kiss had tasted more like regret than love. A dying ember we tried to pretend was still fire.

But this?

This kiss wasn’t like any of those.

It didn’t blaze. It didn’t burn.
It healed.

It felt like exhaling after years of holding my breath.
Like coming home after getting lost for too long.
Like something broken inside me finally clicked back into place.

This kiss was redemption.
This kiss was peace.

And for the first time in weeks—hell, maybe years—everything I’d been feeling melted away. The guilt. The shame. The need to fix everything before I was worthy of being loved again.

She didn’t ask me to be perfect.

She just chose me.

Ashley always had this way of grounding me—of seeing past the noise and control and ambition I wear like armor. Where the world demands Kyle Blackwood, the CEO, the strategist, the fixer… she sees me.

The boy who lost his mother.
The teenager who drowned himself in expectations.
The man who tried too hard to rebuild what someone else destroyed.

And even when I failed her, God, I failed her she never weaponized my wounds. She understood them. She felt them with me. For me.
She’s chaos in the way wind carries fire—fierce, untamed, and capable of razing everything you thought was solid.
Soft, too. In the way moonlight settles over old scars, making them look almost beautiful.
But above all…
Ashley is peace.

My peace.

I didn’t always know that.

There were years I believed control would save me.
Structure. Logic. Command.
I thought if I planned everything down to the second, nothing would fall apart again.

But order didn’t keep me sane.

She did.

Her laughter echoing through the emptiest corners of my life.
Her fire melting the ice in me I didn’t even know had settled.
Her forgiveness—undeserved, and yet freely given.

Ashley didn’t just walk into my life.
She redefined it.

And right now, she was under me.

Breathing hard. Lips kiss-swollen. Eyes glassy with want.

Her fingers slipped into my hair, tugging me closer, and I obeyed like gravity itself had bent around her.

We kissed like we were starving for it—like the past didn’t matter and tomorrow didn’t exist.

Messy. Fierce. Desperate.
And it still wasn’t enough.

I needed to feel her.
All of her.

Her shirt was the first thing to go, my hand slipping beneath the fabric before I even realized I’d moved. I trailed my palm over her stomach, feeling every tremble in her muscles, every catch in her breath.

She arched into my touch, gasping when my thumb brushed the underside of her breast.

“Kyle…”

God. My name on her lips—it was wreckage and worship in the same breath.

I groaned low in my throat, lips parting from hers just long enough to murmur against her skin. “Keep saying my name, freckles.”

Her back arched when I wrapped my mouth around one tight peak through her bra, and I reached up to free the other, dragging my knuckles down her side as I kissed and licked and claimed.

“That’s it,” I whispered, dragging my teeth gently against her skin. “That’s my girl.”

She was breathless, wild, and so fucking gorgeous it was unreal.

I kissed my way down her body slowly, memorizing every reaction. Every shiver. Every soft sound.

By the time I reached her shorts, she was already squirming.

I hooked my thumbs into the waistband and looked up at her, waiting.

She gave a frantic nod. “Please.”

God help me.

I tugged them down in one smooth motion, her panties going with them, and when I spread her thighs…

I forgot how to breathe.

She was soaked. Glowing. Perfect.

And mine.

I pressed a kiss to her inner thigh, savoring the way she jerked and whimpered.

Her fingers tangled back into my hair, tugging hard when I didn’t immediately move.

“Kyle—”

“I’ve got you,” I whispered. “Let me take care of you.”

She moaned when I finally leaned in, but I didn’t dive in—not yet.

I wanted her shaking by the time I got there.

I let my tongue drag teasingly over her, just a flick, just enough to make her hips buck. Then I did it again, slower, firmer, until her whines filled the room and her thighs threatened to close around my head.

“You taste like fucking heaven,” I muttered against her. “Sweet, wet, and mine.”

“Kyle, please—”

I smiled darkly. “Please what, Freckles. Please eat out this pretty little cunt of yours? Tongue fuck you until you beg me to let you come?”

“Please… put your mouth on me.  Do something.”

My control snapped.

I gripped her thighs, dragged her closer to the edge of the bed, and lowered my head with no more hesitation.

She cried out as my tongue slid between her folds, as I licked and sucked and explored like she was the only thing I’d ever wanted.

And in that moment… she was.

Every sigh. Every stuttered moan. Every shiver that rolled through her body—

It was all mine.

And I planned to keep it that way.

Ashley writhed beneath me like her soul was coming undone, her hips rolling against my mouth with instinctive desperation. One moment she was tugging at my hair like she couldn’t get enough, the next she was gasping, begging me to stop.

But she didn’t mean it.
Not really.
Not when her thighs clamped around my head and her cries got louder every time I sucked her clit or curled my tongue just right.

She was soaked, dripping all over my face and I couldn’t stop tasting her.
Didn’t want to.
Wouldn’t.

I’d spent years craving control.
Now?
I was drunk on surrender.
Hers.

I buried my tongue deeper, and when I found that spot just inside, just right her entire body arched off the bed

And then she came

A full-body shudder rippled through her as her orgasm took her under.
The kind that looked like release and rebirth all at once.

I didn’t stop.

Not yet.

Not when she was still trembling.
Still open.
Still so goddamn beautiful in her unraveling.

I pressed one final, slow lick to her overstimulated clit.

“No… more,” she gasped, voice cracking like glass. “I can’t… oh God—”

But I wasn’t done.

Not until every part of her had been worshiped.

I slid two fingers between her folds, teasing her entrance before easing them in just to the first knuckle. Her hips twitched. Another moan slipped free. Her hand shot down to grip my wrist, but I kissed her inner thigh and kept going, slowly pressing deeper.

My mouth returned to her clit in a lazy swirl while my fingers moved inside her, out, then in, again and again building her right back up before she could recover.

She cried out again, sharp and sweet, her hips jerking as I pumped my fingers faster, curling them just right. Her walls fluttered, her cries turning frantic.

And then she shattered.

She drenched my hand and my mouth, her body locking and trembling as the second orgasm tore through her with even more force than the first.