Kai is right: his room at the Marriott is no penthouse. But it does have a balcony that overlooks the Scioto River, and after we open Styrofoam containers of the five dishes we ordered to go from Café Istanbul, it smells of sizzled meat and feta cheese.
“This was a great idea,” Kai says, his knee touching mine as we sit cross-legged on his king bed, our food spread out in front of us. “You’re a genius. A brave genius.”
His repeated use of the compliment thrills me, and I don’t move my leg away. I know that parking my butt on Kai’s bed is like playing with fire, but I tell myself that it’s only because there’s no place else to sit where we can both see the TV.
“Okay, so,” I say, pointing Kai’s Fire TV Stick remote at the screen, “prepare to be addicted. We’ll start with season three so you can meet Mark and Nikki.”
I scoop up a forkful of moussaka as the 90 Day Fiancé opening credits roll, and Kai bumps me with his elbow and rolls his eyes.
“Why don’t we just watch paint dry, or something else equally stimulating?” he asks. “It’s been ten seconds, and I can feel my brain rotting.”
“Hush.” I grab a grape leaf and nod toward the screen. “Just wait.”
Sure enough, by the time he’s eaten his way through two steak kebabs, Kai’s mesmerized. “But she’s nineteen,” he marvels, reaching for a bite of spinach pide. “And he’s fifty-eight.”
“I know. You can’t look away. Just wait until she rearranges his bookshelf and he acts like she set the house on fire.”
We eat in companionable silence, munching on kebabs and french fries as Mark tries to make his twenty-year-old daughter give poor Nikki her old hand-me-downs. By the third episode, Kai deposits the empty containers on a desk near the window and bumps my leg with his as he returns to the bed. It’s after nine, so the waning sunlight streaming through the window gives the room a twilight glow, and even though I should gather my purse and leave, I don’t.
Because I don’t want to.
“Thank you, Lucy,” Kai says, running a hand through his hair. “I needed this.”
“Obviously—90 Day Fiancé is an essential part of the reality TV canon. And just wait for Chantel and Pedro in season four.”
He laughs. “No, I mean, I can see why you’re into the show, but thank you for just hanging out with me. It’s not very often that I get to switch off my ‘Wowza!’ mode and relax.”
“What do you mean?”
He sighs. “When I first got the idea for a wildlife show, I didn’t even want to be on camera. I wanted to stay behind the scenes, like David Attenborough. But I was good on camera, you know? And the more over-the-top I went, the more times per episode I shouted ‘Wowza!’ like a goofball, the more people liked it. And before you know it, I had a whole crew relying on me for their incomes, and a catchphrase that people love shouting at me at airports.”
“I’ll admit, it does roll nicely off the tongue.”
“Sometimes I wish I could make something less flashy, you know? Like a nice, quiet documentary about the gorillas of Rwanda where I don’t appear on-screen or scream at anybody to stay wild. Something a bit more serious. Less schtick-y. Something a little more me.”
I remember his words on the phone: I want things to be different. I guess no one’s immune to feeling like their life is small, not even Kai.
“So why don’t you?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “Trust me, I’d love to pass the reins to Freya for a season while I go shoot in the jungle. But I have to think about our sponsors and what Animal Planet wants. I have to think about what makes money.”
I nudge his foot with mine. “Well, what about what you want?”
He smirks, but there’s no malice in it, only wistfulness. “I let go of what I wanted a long time ago.”
Despite my best intentions, I can’t stop my hand from wandering across the bed to touch his. “Well, maybe it’s time to get it back.”
He leans toward me, the wistful look on his face shifting to something more like longing. “What if there’s something else I want? Something I’m not supposed to. Something I shouldn’t.” His tone is husky, gruff, and whatever hope I had of triumphing over Bad Lucy disappears when he lets go of my hand and snakes his behind my head, caressing my ear with his thumb. “What should I do then?”
A wave of desire crashes over me, and I reach up to place my hand over his. My heart pounds, the rhythm wild and frantic, and I grab his other hand and place it against my chest so he can feel it. “That depends. What is it that you want?”
“You, Lucy,” he whispers. “I want you.”
I know that if I respond the way I want to, there will be no going back. There will be no returning to Lucy and Kai 1.0, no unrolling the die I’ve cast. But I don’t care. Because he knows me, at least as well as I’ve let anyone know me, and I want to know him, too. And because I’ve got plenty of nerve after all.
“I want you, too,” I say, and when he lifts his hand from my chest and runs it along my cheek, sliding his fingers all the way down to the ends of my hair, the part of me that ever thought he was an asshole melts into nothingness.
“I’ve never seen your hair down before,” he says, twirling a lock between his fingers like it’s pure gold. “It’s beautiful. So soft.”
I edge closer to him on the bed and do what I’ve been wanting to since I sat next to him in Phil’s office. I rake a hand through his hair, and he leans forward to press his lips to my collarbone. We sit like that for a moment, his hair thick between my fingers and his breath hot against my neck. When he rights himself, his hair mussed from my touch, there’s a question in his glinting hazel eyes.
“Lucy,” he says. “I thought we were going to pretend the kiss didn’t happen.”
I arch my body toward his, every inch of my skin aching for his touch. “I tried,” I whisper, nuzzling my face into his neck. “But I can’t.”
It’s the final bit of encouragement he needs, and he groans and gently grips my hair, tilting my head back to press his lips to mine. His kiss is a slow burn at first, his tongue patient and yielding, until I let out a soft moan and lean forward to wrap my arms around his neck. Then his patience disappears, and the feel of his mouth against mine is needy, wanting. Aching. We stay like that for a few minutes, his hands strong on my back as our mouths meet, part, and meet again, until the work of staying upright is too much and Kai shifts me onto my back, his broad chest looming over me as I wrap a leg around his waist.
As his mouth finds his way back to mine, my insistent fingers wrestle with his shirt, and Kai laughs at the disgruntled noise I make when the buttons don’t yield to me immediately.
“Let me help,” he whispers against my neck, and he pushes himself off the bed and smiles, almost bashful, as he works one button at a time. When he finally takes the shirt off and drops it to the floor, he leans over me, his strong arms boxing me in, and the sight of his flexed biceps and broad chest and easy smile above me is the hottest thing I’ve ever witnessed. It’s better than Aragorn flinging open the doors in slow motion after the Battle of Helm’s Deep in The Two Towers. It’s sexier than a locked-up Leonardo DiCaprio doing shirtless triceps dips in The Departed. It’s more erotic than Darcy’s infamous hand flex after his fingers grazed Elizabeth’s in the 2005 version of Pride & Prejudice.
It’s incredible.
“No fair,” I say, placing my hand on Kai’s chest. “Are you sure you’re human?”
He rocks his hips against me, as if to demonstrate how very human he is, and I shut the hell up and go back to kissing him with everything I have. He reaches one hand under my skirt and caresses my thigh while the other cups my breast, and there’s nothing I want more than to rip off my dress.
“Wait,” I say suddenly, scooting out from under him.
Kai retracts his hand from my skirt immediately, and his forehead wrinkles in concern. “Too fast? We can slow down, Lucy, or stop altogether.”
I look at him like he suggested we rob a bank naked. “Are you crazy? I don’t want to stop. I just want to close the curtains.” The sun has set, but I want to ensure our privacy, and I cross the room in a few quick strides and tug the curtains closed. Before I can even turn away from the window, Kai’s arms snake around my waist, and I laugh as he moves my hair aside to kiss the back of my neck. “You weren’t supposed to follow me over here.”
His words are warm against my ear. “I’m not supposed to do a lot of things.”
When I turn around, reaching for Kai in the darkness, he wraps his arms around my hips and scoops me off the ground, and I close my legs around his waist as he carries me toward the bed, his forehead pressed to mine the whole time. He sets me down to stand at the foot of the bed and sits before me. I run my hands through his hair as he kisses the hollow between my breasts and gives my ass a gentle squeeze. I reach for the bottom of my dress, but he gets there first, and he stands as he tugs it over my head and tosses it aside. Then he picks me up again, this time lowering me onto the bed so slowly that it feels like it’s happening in slow motion.
When Kai settles over me, I buck my hips against him, and he lets out a soft moan but gently pushes me back down to the bed, bending forward to leave a trail of kisses from my mouth to my clavicle. When he goes lower, kissing the exposed skin at the top of my breasts, I try to wiggle out of my bra, but he reaches behind me and does the work for me. I smile when it takes him three attempts to unhook it, but once it’s gone, he cups a breast in one hand and lowers his mouth to the other, kissing and licking the nipple as I writhe my hips against him. Kai keeps one hand on my chest as his mouth works its way past my belly button and down to the band of my underwear. He kisses the lowest part of my stomach and then lifts his mouth to mine again, and his hand abandons my breast as he uses it to cup the space between my legs. I let out a soft groan and grind against his hand, and he massages my clit through my underwear as his tongue curls around my own.
“Lucy,” he whispers, tearing his mouth away from mine, “tell me what you like. Tell me what feels good.”
I’m usually shy about stating my preferences, at least at first, but something about the way Kai says it—like we’re a team in this, like making each other feel good is the only thing in the world that matters—puts me at ease.
“Touch me,” I whisper against his cheek, and he tugs my underwear low enough that I can kick it off. Then, his mouth enveloping mine in a kiss that’s the opposite of a slow burn—it’s urgent, desperate, like he could never get enough—he reaches between my legs, exploring the now-uncovered territory. It’s delicious, the feel of his body against mine as he rubs my clit, and it’s not long before I can sense my orgasm on the horizon. But as if he can sense it, too, Kai stops and scoots me lower down the bed until my legs hang over the end of it before gently guiding my knees apart. I let out a frustrated moan at the sight of him standing between my legs, and I reach up to grab for his belt buckle.
“Do you have a condom?” I ask, breathless.
He smiles. “Yes, but I don’t think it’s time for that yet. Do you?” Not giving me time to answer, he bends down to the ground and slides a finger inside me as he kisses the inside of my thighs.
“Lucy,” he says, “let me taste how sweet you are. Please.”
I want to laugh at how positively polite he is when requesting to do something that’s anything but, but I only let out an enthusiastic moan.
Kai kneels on the carpet before the bed, gripping the backs of my thighs. When he lowers his head to the ache between my legs, everything ceases to exist except the flick of his tongue against me. He takes his time, increasing the pressure and speed of his movements and then slowing them down, as if he’s savoring every single second of my pleasure.
“Kai,” I say after a few minutes, almost breathless. “I’m close.”
Like a man on a mission, he slides a finger into me and licks my clit with even more vigor, and it’s only a matter of seconds until the pressure swells and climbs until it combusts, and an explosion of heat and satisfaction have me crying out in pleasure.
“Hey,” Kai says when I’ve finished, crawling back onto the bed to kneel over me. “Come here.” He lifts my chin toward his and kisses me again, and I reach forward blindly to unbuckle his belt.
“Are you sure?” he asks as I fumble with the buckle and finally manage to open it.
I raise an eyebrow at him and run a hand over the bulge in his pants, and he lets out a little moan as it grows harder. “I’m sure,” I whisper, cupping his cock through the denim. He stands up to kick them off, revealing a snug pair of gray boxers underneath, and he pads across the room to fish something out of his wallet.
When he returns to the bedside, he goes to open the condom, but I crawl to the end of the bed and snatch it away, depositing it next to me. “I don’t think it’s time for that yet,” I say with a grin, reaching out to stroke him through his boxers. “Do you?”
I tug his boxers down until his cock is unsheathed, and as Kai stands naked before me, I take a second to marvel at how beautiful he is—the broadness of his chest, the sculpted-but-not-to-the-point-of-being-intimidating abdomen, the smooth cock that begs for my touch. When I lower myself toward him and take him in my mouth, he grunts in response and reaches out to run his hands through my hair. He moans before I’ve even started to move, and when I slide my curled fist and my mouth up and down his cock in unison, Kai lets out a guttural noise that tells me it won’t take long for him to finish this way.
Maybe he wasn’t lying in the nursery; maybe it has been a while. Before long, he gently pulls himself out.
“Lucy,” he whispers. “That was so good, that was . . .”
I kiss him before he can say anything else, because I want him inside me, and I want him inside me now. Sensing my urgency, Kai reaches to unwrap the condom and slide it over his cock, and then he lowers himself onto his elbows over me.
“Lucy, are you—”
“I’m sure,” I tell him, grazing his chest with my fingers. “I want you.”
He leans forward to kiss me, and I open my legs to give him unhindered access. Kai reaches down to guide his cock inside me with a groan of pleasure, and he keeps himself there for a moment, just kissing me and tracing my breast with his fingers, and then he starts to move. Somehow it’s an even more delicious feeling than the pressure of his fingers and mouth against my clit, because it’s him, it’s Kai, and he’s inside me, and we’re moving together, taking each other to a place we’ve never been before.
Kai slows his pace, trying not to get ahead of himself, but I buck against him to encourage him to go at whatever pace he wants.
“Lucy,” he says as a moan escapes my lips. “Lucy.”
I know he’s checking to see if I want him to hold back, to last longer, but all I want is to earn his release. To feel what it’s like for Kai to lose all control, when the swagger and smugness and ridiculously well-fitted jeans are stripped away and all that’s left is him. The real him.
“Come,” I tell him, reveling in the fire in his gaze as we lock eyes.
“Lucy,” he says again, and I keep one arm wrapped around his neck and use the other to squeeze his ass as he rides me, thrusting faster and faster until he lets out an earth-shattering, guttural cry and presses his tongue into my mouth, getting as much of his body inside mine as he can.
We stay like that for a long moment, his forehead resting against mine, and after he eases off me and gets up to dispose of the condom, he crawls onto the bed and takes me into his arms, planting kisses on my jawline.
“Well, I was right about one thing,” he says when he’s caught his breath, stroking my hair with his hand. “You are a goddamn force of nature.”