Chapter 70
Chapter 70
“Why Paris?”
“Why the fuck not?”
“Because you have a fight in three days!” He makes me laugh when he’s like this. I grab him and kiss him back, deep and fast, before anyone else boards, and I whisper, “Let’s go anywhere with a bed.”
“Let’s do it on a swing.”
“Ken!”
“Let’s do it in an elevator,” he insists.
Laughing, I shake an index finger at my big, bad, naughty boy. “I’m never, ever, doing it in an elevator so you’re going to have to find someone else.”
“I want you. In an elevator.”
“And I want you. In a bed. Like normal people.”
His gaze dips below my waist, and his expression morphs from a playful, smiling sex-god to a dark, sex-starved sex-god. “I want you in those pants you’re wearing.”
Feeling warm and wanted, I nod, grin, and lace my fingers through his, kissing each one of his bruised knuckles.
His head tilts in curiosity, and his dimples slowly vanish. He looks like he's never been given these kinds of attentions until me. Suddenly, it makes me want to give him more.
So I do.
Crawling closer to him, I cup his jaw and kiss his hard cheek and run my hands through his hair, watching his gaze go heavy with desire along with something else. Something that makes his eyes look mysteriously dark and liquid.
Car doors open.
It appears Coach is riding up front in the limo, so Jhon, Anthony, and Natalia settle on the bench across us. Ken squeezes my fingers as I try to ease away—that action alone telling me not to—then he slides down the edge of his seat and slumps his big shoulders as if he’s trying to make himself less bulky. When that proves impossible due to his size and muscles, he grabs me closer and ducks to settle his head on the soft part of my chest, grunting softly and then sighing.
I’m so surprised I don’t move.
Jhon lifts one eyebrow as he watches Ken wrap his arms even tighter around my hips and draws me closer until the side of his head is perfectly cushioned on my breast. He grunts and sighs again. Anthony lifts two eyebrows. Natalia smiles tenderly, like she just melted.
I am not only melted. I’m liquid beneath him.
My parents, a coach and a teacher, are wonderful people but not big on hugs and kisses like, for example, my friend Susy is, who was showered with affection and spreads it around the world like it’s her duty to. But the way Ken looks at me, the way he doesn’t hide his attraction to me even to his public during his fights, and the way he just cuddled me like a big hibernating bear who just found a cave, makes me ache in inexplicably deep places.
Quietly, and with all the tenderness in the world, I run my nails through his spiky dark hair, then trace one fingernail along his ear. He holds both arms securely around my waist, somehow trapping me to him like he’d trap a pillow.
“You guys want a time out when we get to the hotel?” Jhon asks us, and his timbre vibrates as if some deep emotion touched him.
I’m engrossed sifting my fingers through his hair when I feel Ken nod against my chest, not even bothering to lift his heavy head.
I’ve never seen him so quiet when he’s manic.
Or sit so utterly still.
Jhon and Anthony’s stunned expressions completely confirm that they haven’t either.
When we hit the rooms, we receive our suitcases in our suite, and then I do what I always do. I unzip mine and set my small cosmetics bag hidden under the sink, to begin with.
Ken watches me from the door with such fierce longing, I stop brushing my teeth, my mouth full of foam when I notice his stare. He looks hungry. Feral. Almost desperate. I quickly rinse as he approaches and towel off my hands. He’s not smiling. His black eyes swallow me in their depths. He lifts me easily in his arms and carries me back to the room.
I can’t help the way my insides flutter as I cuddle into his neck and breathe him in while he lowers us to the bed. I think I know what he wants, but I’m not sure. So I wait and watch him for a moment.
He pulls off my shoes and tosses them aside, then I hear the big thunk of his own crashing to the floor. “I want your hands on my head.”
I nod and edge back to make room for him. “Does it calm your racing thoughts?”
He shakes his head, then takes my hand and spreads it open over his wide chest, his voice textured as he traps my gaze with his. “It calms me here.”
A tangle of emotion hits me as I feel his heart beating, slow and powerful like only great athletes’ hearts can beat, under my palm. I stare into his eyes, seeing that same fierce longing in them I just saw, and I love him to such a degree I swear that my heart just picked up the rhythm of his.
He slides next to me, both of us dressed as we settle on the bed comforter. He drops his head to my chest and snuggles every bit of his huge muscles into me, inhaling my neck. I lower my face and kiss the top of his head as I start running my fingertips through his scalp.
He hasn’t slept in long, endless, restless, crazy days.