10 Ways to Steal Your Lover

by Dee Tenorio

  But she wasn’t going over alone this time.

  Fumbling one-handed—his other wasn’t about to leave her clit, even if someone threatened to cut it off—he undid his fly. Shoving at the offending denim, he freed himself, stroking only once to take a strong grip on himself before climbing up behind her and fit himself there.

  He sank slowly, all the way to the hilt, trying to savor the sensation and commit it to memory. It would have to last him and he had no idea for how long. Possibly the rest of his life.

  Settled deep, her body quaking while she held on with both hands to the sheet covering the bed, her head dropped between them on the mattress, he let himself have this one moment to remember. Joined, the feel of her rippling around him inside and out, he lowered his mouth to the line of her spine, pressing kisses there while his hands swept beneath her to cup her breasts in his palms. She undulated, not willing to wait any longer. still kissing her back, he dragged one hand down the already slick muscles of her belly, dipping to find her clit once more. Her muscles squeezed him tight in response and he matched the circular stroke of his fingertips to the slow movements of his hips. Deeply, he moved against the heart of her. Slow as possible, he slid back, rubbing himself against every millimeter of her sensitive channel. The return stroke was just as slow. Just as thorough.

  “Kane.” She lifted her head turning just enough to look him in the eye as he continued his slow siege. Passion had turned her eyes dark, the brilliant blue a near violet now, her lips swollen and red. And they looked beautiful whispering his name.

  “I love you, Del.” If this was the last time he would be with her, he wasn’t going to hold anything back. But he needed from her too, an ache that felt like it came from his soul.

  She stared into his eyes, almost pleading. If he were a stronger man, he’d give her all the time she wanted to take, but no matter what she said next, this was all the time he was sure to have. After everything he’d just thrown away, he needed to know this was more than just sex to her.

  He could see that she wanted to close her eyes, to drop her head and let him ride her to another wave, but as if she could read his mind, feel his demand, she didn’t do it. Didn’t ask him to move faster or rush him with her own movements. She met him slow rock for slow rock. She stared back at him, the connection between them growing tighter. Her muscles squeezed him every time he pulled back, milking, flexing like a velvet glove. His muscles screamed for release, his cock aching to bury deep within her and stay there forever, but he couldn’t stop and he couldn’t rush them both to the orgasms that would end it. Couldn’t keep from wishing for what was always beyond his reach.

  Her love.

  Her hand stretched out to him, twisting her torso to be able to cup his jaw. She was so beautiful, her cheeks pink, her black hair spilling over the white cushions like an ebony waterfall. Her thumb touched his lips. “Don’t you know, Kane?”

  He licked her thumb, fitting his teeth around it.

  “Haven’t you always known? Even when I didn’t realize it?” Her breathy voice broke with a soft cry, her soft mouth falling open while she rippled around him in fluid undulations. “It was always you. You were the one I’ve been waiting for, all this time. I love you, Kane. Always, always you.”

  He closed his eyes, something close to pain but infinitely sweeter ripping through him. He turned her, flipping her fully onto her back before sliding himself over her.

  He had to – had to – feel her with every part of him. He tucked his arms under her shoulders, lifting her closer, even as she wrapped her own around him. She was still murmuring when he took her mouth, swallowing her words when he began to push into her again. Her legs wrapped tightly around his waist, holding him until they were barely moving. Just her flexing around his cock, him gliding along those crucial places within her that made her gasp. Made her arch and quake. This time, when she came, she took him with her. Not with a scream, but with a whisper.

  With love.

  Chapter Twelve

  Delilah woke slowly, oddly enough to the sound of running water in the distance. She blinked, the dim light not helping her part the shadows from the cobwebs of her rest. She hadn’t dreamed, her sleep far too deep for that. The bone-deep slumber of contentment, she decided, a smile curving her lips. Nah, contentment didn’t begin to cover it.

  Every inch of her body was languid and satisfied to the point that she didn’t want to move. Except for the fact that she wasn’t remotely where she remembered falling asleep. Kane must have moved her up on the bed, tucking the blankets around her after turning what could have been an ugly discussion into something wonderful. Beautiful.

  Freeing.

  She felt stupid now, for holding back her feelings from Kane. Disconcerted, too, to learn how transparent she’d been. At least to everyone else. If she’d been honest sooner, with herself and Craig, they would never have gotten as far as a wedding day. She’d have been free to follow those feelings that had drawn her to Kane from the beginning. Hel, he probably would have come to her just like he did that morning in the church—

  She sat up, eyes wide at the flash of memory. She hadn’t called Kane to her. She hadn’t even had the chance to tell her parents the wedding was off or why. She’d taken a gulp or two of the champagne her grandmother had left on the vanity in order to bolster her courage to break it off with Craig and was staring at it, considering downing the rest to tell her parents her decision when Kane’s staccato knock had sounded. He’d opened the door and popped his hand in, that familiar beaten-up tan hat waving like a white flag.

  “Del? Craig said you wanted me?”

  She’d wanted to laugh and even cry a little at that. She must have made a sound of some kind because Kane had stepped into the room, a concerned frown on his handsome face, looking all kinds of sinful in the black tux she knew he hated wearing. Give him a pair of jeans and a t-shirt for every day of the week and his day was made. Only for her and Craig had he agreed to truss himself into a monkey suit. On the condition that he got to keep his hat. She’d had more fun than she’d been able to admit working out a deal with him over that and it had been worth all the finagling to see him dressed up.

  His eyes, that steady green gaze she trusted more than any other, fixed on her face. “Everything okay?”

  That was when she knew she’d made the right decision.

  “No, everything is finally just the way it should be.” She’d smiled up at him, wondering if he could see on her face how free she finally felt. “I do want you.”

  His confusion cleared slowly. So slowly that she realized he was afraid he might be wrong. She slipped her hand into his, relieved as she curled her fingers between his rough, dry ones and rose on her toes to press a soft kiss to his warm lips.

  “I’ve wanted you for really long time, Kane. I was just too scared to admit it. I’m not scared anymore, though. None of it matters. Not the wedding. Not my parents. Not who I keep trying to be or who I thought I was supposed to be with. I couldn’t sit one more second knowing I was about to make the biggest mistake of my life to make everyone else happy. It wasn’t worth it. Not when I finally know where I belong. With you.”

  A pained gleam filed Kane’s eyes until he scrunched them shut. “But…Craig—”

  “Knows,” she interrupted. “That’s why he sent you.”

  His last gift to her. More than she’d ever expected of the man walking out of her life, but possibly the most wonderful thing he’d ever done for her.

  Kane stared down at her for the longest seconds of her life, his expression inscrutable, before he gently puled the glass flute from her hand and downed the rest of the champagne in one gulp. He put the glass down on the nearest table firmly, then looked back at her with that special grin that set her heart tilting to a matching angle.

  Next thing she knew, she was swept into his kiss, both his arms around her, her whole world wobbling into a new position.

  The right one.

  The memory faded behi
nd the gauze in her mind then, their words becoming too faint to make sense of. Not that she needed more. If the rest of their night never came back, she’d be just fine with it. She had the memory that mattered. They could make all new ones.

  Well, once she found him, anyway.

  She tugged the sheet free from the bed, wrapping it around her body with a self-effacing smile. She stood a good chance at turning this toga-style robe into a habit if Kane insisted in getting her naked whenever they were alone. “Kane?”

  He didn’t reply so she followed the light and the sound of water toward the bathroom. Too much water to be the showe—

  She jumped at the sound and feel of paper under her feet. With a frown, she bent to pick up discarded pieces of tan colored parchment. Like the kind Norman had handed to Kane at the chapel…

  The four distinct squares had spread out on the thick carpet and Delilah picked them all up carefully. She flipped them until she could see the printing and it was without question their combined license and certificate. Kane had torn it in half. Twice. But why?

  She shuffled through the pieces until she found the one missing his signature. The line was still blank. She frowned in confusion, her heart aching. What had happened to make him do this? To throw away something he told her over and over again that he wanted more than his next sunrise. Her eyes stung, fingertips running soothingly over the damaged paper.

  It made no sense, of course, the paper couldn’t feel, but tearing something as sacred as a marriage certificate felt so wrong she couldn’t help wanting to make it better. She took it all back to the bed, where she put them back into the proper order. It didn’t give her any answers but it felt better than leaving them in a ramshackle pile on the floor. Turning her back on it, Delilah picked up the trailing end of the sheet and walked back to the bathroom.

  Whatever answers there were, Kane was the only one who knew them.

  She padded across the marble, her steps slowing as her husband—paper or no paper—came into view. Hip deep in steaming water, his forearm flat to the glass, his head against his own fist, he stared out to the city far below. He must have dunked under at some point because his dark gold hair was nearly black, slicked and dripping down his back. Beads of water had found precarious holds all over his skin, spilling into one another as gravity dragged them back to the pool. And yet, for all the heat, every muscle in his body was rigid. As if he were holding himself together by sheer force of will.

  Maybe he was.

  Because clearly, he knew she was in the room with him.

  “I fell in love with you the first time I saw you,” he said without turning around, his voice a low growl. “I’ve loved Craig like a brother almost my whole life but the second I saw you, I wanted to tear him apart for finding you first.”

  A lump formed in her throat at the raw pain in him. She wanted to comfort him, but she understood that the best thing she could do was listen as he let his own secrets out.

  “It was ridiculous, I know, but it was how I felt. I ignored it as much as I could, told myself that it was just lust making me crazy. Lust that would go away when I found out more about you. You don’t know how hard I looked to find something wrong with you, but the more I got to know you, the deeper I fell. I tried not to love you, I tried not to want you. I even tried leaving you behind, but the only thing worse than seeing you with him was not seeing you at al.”

  Delilah sighed, slowly walking closer. Down the wide steps of the palatial bath, finally sitting on the last step above the water line and folding her legs under her.

  “There’s plenty wrong with me. I’m picky, I have no idea how to make myself useful, I’m pig-headed, I have the hardest time admitting when I’m wrong.”

  Like that needed pointing out. After all, she was the one who’d spent three years trying to convince herself that she wanted to be a society wife, that she enjoyed being appreciated for her beauty and not much more. Allowed herself to be patted on the head for her goals of getting a master’s degree, to set it aside, class by class, semester by semester. She had almost been willing to sacrifice her other dreams too—of children, a home set far enough from the city that she would always see the stars overhead and feel her roots settling at her feet. Clean air and open spaces. She’d nearly convinced herself it was a girlish dream, impractical to have it all in this day and age, that growing up meant letting it go.

  God, the lies she’d told herself out of fear…“But worst of all, I’m blind.”

  He turned from the glass finally, fixing her with a smoky gaze so hungry, so restrained, the ache in her heart deepened until she had to put her hand over it. The mess she’d made of both their lives was almost unforgivable. She hoped. He needed the truth from her now and she needed to give it to him. Had to face it for herself.

  “You scared me, Kane. When Craig introduced us, I was terrified because all of a sudden, my life felt like it wasn’t mine anymore.” Like she had run smack into a crossroads and the fear that she wasn’t enough, could never be enough, had kept her from even trying. It was a feeling she’d run from for so long. “One look in your eyes and something inside me clicked into place. I can’t describe it, I just knew nothing was ever going to be the same and I wasn’t ready.” Her eyes stung at the pain she could see in his stoic expression. Pain she’d put there. “No matter what I did to you, you were always there, being what I needed, sharing yourself, opening yourself to me. So I ran from you, from everything you made me feel and realize. I told myself I was crazy to think of you as anything other than Craig’s friend who was being nice to me, pushed myself further into my relationship with him, even though it wasn’t making me happy. It wasn’t even making him happy, but I was determined that if I just worked a little harder, it would feel right. It would be right.”

  But it never was.

  And every time Kane visited, usually just for a weekend, the wrongness became more and more defined.

  She wasn’t the only one who’d noticed it either. Craig’s work became his focus, his smiles for her growing shorter, less intimate. They became less like lovers and more like friends who shared a bed but none of their secrets. Their interests shifted, going in different directions. They’d even tried to make that a positive aspect of their relationship to their friends. They weren’t co-dependent. They could be there for each other and not have it consume their lives. But that was the worst lie they told each other, because every time she saw Kane, she could almost feel what being consumed would be like and she’d want it a little bit more. Resent Craig a little more for not believing she deserved it…

  “Don’t I still scare you?” Kane asked, his soft voice startling in the silence now that the pool had finished filing, the water licking at her ankles, having slipped over her toes without her even noticing.

  She smiled at him, thinking of how she’d told him this already. He just didn’t remember. “No. I’m not scared anymore.”

  Turning fully, Kane strode through the water toward her. Her mouth dried, anticipation speeding her heartbeat. It wasn’t a new experience, not by a long shot. Just walking, he was so male, so commanding. But now, she could feel his intent to touch her, to claim her and her body went riot at the prospect. As she expected, his strong hand slid up her back, cupping her shoulder, while the other grasped her hip, sliding her across the wet marble step until he could mold her body against his. Her legs settled on either side of his hips, the hard heat of his erection nestling between her thighs while the sheet dragged in along with her, both of them uncaring where it fell. “What do you feel with me?”

  With me. Not about me. He wasn’t asking about her emotions, not with that fiery intensity in his eyes and the proprietary hold on the back of her neck. He knew she loved him. Knew she had no intention of taking that declaration back or fighting his command to her body. She was putty in his hands, something that might be embarrassing if she couldn’t feel in every cell of her body that she did the same thing to him.

  But given the torn marria
ge license, he had no idea what she meant to do with that love. Would she tell him she was still unsure of her future? That she wasn’t interested in being a wife on a ranch now that she wasn’t legally attached to the role? The answer was so clear that her soul practically sang with it. She made sure to meet his eyes, everything within her steady. He needed to see that she’d made her choice.

  “I feel ready.”

  “Ready,” he repeated. “For me? For what a life with me would mean?” She knew that’s what he was asking for. Not just a lover. Not just a bride who’d rocked his world after some kind of wild elopement he still couldn’t quite bring into focus. He wanted her to be part of his life, good and bad, higher water and lower ground. A part of him, just like he’d demand to be part of her. Kane wasn’t Craig, he wouldn’t settle for a shadow of love and commitment. He’d accept no less than all of her, because that’s how much of himself he would give.

  “Is that why you tore up the license? Because you didn’t think I was ready for a life with you?”

  His jaw clenched and he blinked, beads of water dripping off his long lashes, but he didn’t look away. If anything the hand at her nape tightened, tilting her chin upward. “I want you, Delilah Anne. Never doubt that. I want a life with you. With your voice and your touch and your thoughts and your arguments. I want your grace and your mistakes and your promises and your everything, all twisted up with mine. I want it so bad that I feel like I can’t breathe whenever I think about being without you.

  “But I’d be lying if I said you didn’t scare me too. Let’s face it, almost everyone I’ve ever loved, I’ve lost. Everyone except Craig and Jesse. No matter how hard I held on or how long I prayed, I lost them. Maybe that’s why I never made a move, never tried to tell you how I felt. I never wanted to lose you, too. Especially not now that I’ve touched you, held you. Not now that I know you feel the same way. But that’s why I’ve been holding onto you so tightly, onto that hope that we were really married. Like it would keep you safe, keep you mine. But that paper isn’t going to change anything. The license would just be a lock around your neck. It would make you my wife, but it wasn’t going to make you my woman. Wouldn’t make me your man. Sure as hell wouldn’t make you any less gone.”