by Eden Butler
They were connected now. There was some small voice she chose to listen to that told her being with him was a mercy. For him. He’d wanted to feel something other than pain. She’d seen it in his eyes when she kissed him. She’d recognized it clearly from the lost, lonely moments that she stared in the mirror after losing Luka. He wanted her touch and so she gave in. She gave him everything he’d wanted. Gia let Kai hold her and feel her and let her wrap herself around him because he needed a reprieve from the ache that clung to him like ivy to an oak.
But she didn’t believe it would last. It shouldn’t have. Them together wasn’t supposed to mean anything other than the reprieve he’d wanted. At least, that’s what she told herself. But she hadn’t expected him to feel so right. So good. She hadn’t believed anyone could touch her the way Kai did and she’d want more for herself.
She had and it scared her, that craving for him. The desire to want more than his touch.
It petrified Gia, and she wasn’t a woman who scared easily.
So she did what she always did when she felt Luka slipping from her—not the boy he’d been and how fiercely she’d loved him. But the reminder of what that love had cost her. She’d blindly given him everything, taken all that he offered and it had nearly ended her. She couldn’t let that happen again.
She had to pull back. She had to give herself some distance from Kai.
“Will you come for dinner tonight?” Keola asked, holding onto Gia’s hand as they waited for their luggage at baggage claim. She wanted to tell the girl yes. She wanted to make promises that she wouldn’t keep away from her ever. But that wasn’t something she could do.
“Tonight you’re going to be very sleepy from the long plane ride,” she told her, squeezing that small hand between her fingers. Behind her, she felt Kai moving to grab the bags and heard his sister’s low mutter as she spoke to a security guard helping them to load the bags onto a rack. “But I promise I’ll come see you when you and your auntie come back from the beach next week.”
Keola pulled on Gia’s hand, standing on her toes to whisper in her ear. “I don’t really wanna go to the beach. We lived at the beach. I just want to go to the camp and see Miss Reese but I don’t want to hurt Aunt Nalani’s feelings.”
“Well,” Gia said, nodding at the girl, making sure to keep her mouth in a grin. “Maybe we can ask her to go for just a couple days instead of a whole week and I’ll have Miss Reese make space for you on her team for the final games.”
“You’d do that?” Keola asked, blinking at Gia.
“I’d do anything you want, cuore mio.”
“What’s that mean?”
Gia lowered her smile, curling her fingers around her hand. “It means I adore you.”
Kai stood behind her, clearing his throat, his mouth open as though he couldn’t believe what Gia had confessed and there, right there, she knew she’d have to hurt them both.
“Ready?” he said, motioning in front of him as Keola dragged Gia away from the small crowd and toward her aunt and the waiting security guard pushing a rack with their luggage.
“You think Miss Reese will mind me playing?” the girl asked Gia, smiling when she shook her head.
“Of course not…” Gia froze when Kai walked beside her, slipping his hand into hers. She glanced down at their joined fingers, then jerked her attention to Keola as she ran to catch up to her aunt and hop on the rack.
“Thank you,” Kai told her, bringing her knuckle to his mouth, kissing it slowly.
It was…too much, too frightening, too soon, and Gia pulled her hand out of his grip, digging for her cell before she lifted her finger, giving Kai a ‘one sec’ motioned and she dove into her messages, her attention on the screen and not at the disappointed frown her lineman gave her.
IT WAS TWO A.M., and Gia’s guilt wrapped around her like a scarf.
Kai hadn’t tried to touch her again after they drove away from the airport. Not with Keola asking them a litany of questions and his sister leaning out of the open window to take in the city.
But she felt his stare and the tension in his body as he sat next to her, as the ample space in the SUV seemed to shrink the closer they came to their building. Then, it seemed his anger warmed him, kept him from doing anything else but shutting himself away from everyone—a theory proven when they approached the elevator and an older couple from the fifth floor failed to hold the car for them.
Kai’s loud refrain of “Well, fuck you then,” had the old woman blushing as the doors shut and Keola frowning at her father like she thought he’d lost his mind. He glanced at his little girl, his features easing before he held his hand out to her. “I’m sorry, pēpē. Mukane kane is just tired and grumpy.”
He glanced at Gia when Keola held his hand, but there was no warmth in his expression. There was nothing there for her but the disappointment she knew she caused.
“Miss Gia?” Keola said as she stopped at her door. “Can’t you stay with us tonight?”
“No,” Kai answered for her, opening his door. “Leave Miss Jilani alone, keiki. She’s very busy.”
She hoped several glasses of wine would do something about the guilt. She hoped it would ease her, dull her sense so she didn’t see that shocked, sad expression Kai made when she pulled her hand from his in the airport. But it didn’t dull anything.
Gia knew better than to turn her back on him. She knew she couldn’t pretend, to pantomime a fantasy when there wasn’t one like he did, not for long. The pain was too sharp. The sting of it too biting and even after all these years, sometimes it flared to the surface. Sometimes even dulling your senses didn’t work when you added to that pain. When you turn your back on someone feeling the same ache.
She stood in her living room debating what to do. Two in the morning and a little buzzed on red wine, and Gia wasn’t sure if she could push down anything she felt…or the urge to see Kai, to apologize, to lose herself in him, to let him get lost in her too.
There was only three swallows left in the bottle and Gia did not bother with the glass. She stood in her kitchen downing what was left, telling herself to disappear in a shower. To forget this urgency she felt to knock on Kai’s door.
And then…he took away her choices.
She knew if she answered the knock on the other side of her door that everything would change. She’d run out of excuses. She’d have to apologize. She couldn’t tell him to walk away.
The knock came again, this one harder. Three firm knocks that rattled her insides.
Gia held the knob, telling herself to turn it was a very bad idea. She should just go to bed. But she didn’t want to be alone.
Kai looked older somehow, standing there, his large arms resting on either side of the door frame. His eyes were red rimmed again and swollen. He needed her, she knew that. She’d felt that. How could she turn him away?
“I…” she started, shutting her mouth when Kai frowned at her, shaking his head twice.
Then, he came inside, not waiting for her invitation. Seemingly uninterested in anything but touching her, trapping her against the wall with one hand pressed flat next to her head. She couldn’t relax, not as they were—him glaring down at her, the door still wide open, them vulnerable to be seen by anyone moving down their hallway.
Kai clenched his jaw, cupping her face in one hand, watching, waiting, it seemed, until Gia licked her lips, shooting her gaze to the open door then back up at him.
He pressed his lips together, not taking his focus from her face as he released her and shut the door closed with one hand. Now there were no excuses. Nothing to keep them from touching.
No more boundaries.
“Kai…I’m—”
He didn’t let her finish. Instead, he rested his hands on either side of her head, glaring down at her when she blinked, that look so penetrating it felt like a demand he made with the small movement of his eyes narrowing. Mouth opening a fraction, Kai inhaled, his nostrils widening as he inched closer, teasing her, taunti
ng her when he wet his bottom lip with that wide tongue of his.
She kissed him because he wanted it. It was in his expression, in that silent, demanding stare he gave her. Gia acted first because she wanted to, but it would be the last time she controlled anything.
That night, in Keeana’s guest room, Kai had let Gia lead. He let her take control, she guessed, because she always did. She held an authority, even in that room, that Kai didn’t seem eager to challenge. Now he did. Now Gia was seeing a rarity for her: a man that wanted her and seemed to not care about asking nicely.
Her heart raced so hard Gia thought she might get lightheaded. Her fingers shook when Kai moved in, his large palm touching her cheek, his long fingers twisting to hold her chin, to keep her still. There was something in his eyes she’d never seen before; something that made her feel like lava ran through her veins as Kai moved her chin up, glancing once at her lips before he crushed her mouth with his.
He demanded. Insisted with the fierce movement of his tongue, with the low rumble of noise that Gia thought might be a groan but sounded like a growl. Then Kai grabbed her wrists, holding both in one hand as he lifted them over her head.
She couldn’t move, wouldn’t even if she’d been able to. There was such power in his expression, a fierce tightening of the muscles around his mouth that pulled his lips down, that made the stare he gave her a kind of promise she hoped he’d keep.
Around her, there was the faintest cry of a ship’s horn moving along the river, but nothing else. Nothing but those sounds Kai made and the tug she felt against her hips as he grabbed her. He licked against her neck, using his teeth to tease her skin and his freehand to knead her, to finger the crease the joined her thigh and center.
Then Kai kissed her again, his mouth fierce and frantic, his grip on her hands firm as he took from her lips, as he rubbed his fingertips across her stomach, then down, lower to cup her.
Gia’s gasp broke their kiss when he circled one long finger between her thong and her clit. She knew she was wet, felt the warmth there, felt it getting damper as Kai brushed at her lips, using two fingers now that were strong, that nudged her legs apart with just the simple brush of his hand against her.
Kai shuddered, but didn’t let go of her, kept her trapped there on the wall resting his forehead against hers, shooting his gaze, his sweet breath over her face as he pushed two fingers inside her.
“Please…” she panted, wanting to touch him, wanting to show him what she needed, but Kai wasn’t relinquishing his control.
“Not this time,” he told her, his voice coming out in a low rumbled that only made her wetter. Then Kai went deeper, curling his hand to touch her sweet spot and Gia didn’t care what he did or how he did it as long as he didn’t ever stop. “I’m going to show you, ku'uipo. Tonight you’re going to see…”
“What…what will I…I see?”
Kai increased the rhythm of his movements, teasing that small spot inside her until she arched, leaning her shoulders against the wall, then releasing a groan of overwhelming pleasure when he leaned forward, sucking her nipple into his mouth through her sleep shirt. He used his teeth in a bite, his hand working faster, deeper, his tongue teasing her nipple until her pussy clenched, until she rocked against his hand, chasing that orgasm like she was an addict and it was the last hit she’d ever have.
Then Gia came, squirming to touch him, to hold onto Kai as she rode that wave, never wanting it to end. It took minutes that felt like hours before Gia’s body calmed, before she shook her head, inhaling so that her heart would slow.
“By the time I’m done with you…you’re going to see,” he finally answered her, “that you will never be able to live without this.” Kai released her wrists, grabbing her by the back of the thighs to wrap her legs around him, rubbing her still throbbing pussy against his swollen dick. “You’re going to see that you can’t be without me.”
It was an hour later, after Kai had lain her on her bed, stripping her bare, spreading her legs wide to thoroughly taste her, to make her scream louder and longer than she ever had before, that Gia went into her shower, needed the heat from the spray to clear her mind.
Really, she knew, it was a distraction; something she told herself she needed because Kai was simply…too much. But the lie would not stand for long. Under that hot spray, with the water washing away his touch, his smell, Gia felt like she wanted to die. Kai had touched her better, fiercer than anyone ever had before. He touched her and kissed her in spots she believed would never be roused again.
What am I doing? she thought, scrubbing her face, letting the water hide her, but it would not last. She wanted him too much, more, maybe than how he promised he wanted her.
Kai was impatient. Unsettled. He’d taken her like he could not stand to be anywhere other than inside her. She could not complain, though it scared her, how much she wanted him. How she craved him.
The water was only a small comfort from the ache in her body and the tension that built inside her. She was not done with him. Didn’t think she ever would be and the fear that welled up inside her at the idea kept Gia in that shower, kept her hiding beneath the spray.
He wouldn’t let her hide long.
Cool air chilled her wet calves and feet when Kai opened the door behind her but the moment he stood against her, the outline of his wide body clear in those strong lines and thick bulges, her skin began to warm.
Kai circled his arm around her waist, tugging her wet hair from her neck, lapping against the water and skin he uncovered, pushing her head against his chest to get at more of her. They didn’t need words. He moved her, she followed. He insisted and she complied. It was a dance Gia never knew she could perform and maybe she couldn’t before this night. Maybe it could only be accomplished with Kai.
He cupped her breast, gripping, massaging and Gia fell fully against him, letting him hold her up as he teased her nipples, as he rubbed her with greedy touches until he held his fingers back against her pussy, teasing her clit, making her sink deeper and deeper against him.
“Do you want me to stop?” She shook her head, unable to say what she thought. Terrified if she told him yes that he’d walk away and she’d never feel this again. “Can you…be without…this?” Kai leaned her against the tile, holding her thighs open, slipping his wide, hard dick inside of her from behind like it was easier to him than down blocking a three technique.
He possessed her. Took her body like only he knew what it needed. Then he held Gia by the waist, resting his elbow against the tile to thrust into her deeper. Her face slid on the wet marble as Kai fucked her and loved her and made her realize there was no way she could do without this.
Without him.
Kai had stamina. He had strength but when Gia felt herself tightening, when she squeezed against him, feeling her orgasm cresting, he could not last for long. He maintained his control, kept himself steady as he moved inside her, as he brought his hand down to cup her again, mouth on her neck, his hips moving faster and faster. Then Gia’s orgasm rent through her and she reached back, pulling him to her for a sloppy kiss, breathing into his mouth, taking each of his moans as he spilled inside her.
It was several long minutes, with the water pouring over them and their breath fogging the glass along with the hot spray before Kai seemed calm enough to pull out of her, but he did not let her go. Instead, he turned her, moving the wet hair from her face to hold her chin up, to take her lips in a greedy, desperate kiss that left her breathless.
His stare was fierce, serious, his tone sharp, but sincere when he spoke. “Don’t ever pull away from me again.” Gia’s pulse raced when he kissed her that time, the surprise of how hard he took her mouth shocking her. “Na`u `oe. You’re mine. Even if you don’t know it yet…even if you tell yourself you can only love a shadow…deep down you know you’re mine.”
And for the life of her, Gia couldn’t find the strength or reason to argue.
18.
KAI
THERE W
AS nothing better to Kai than Gia when she let her guard down. In this place, away from the rest of the world, she was his, wholly and completely. She didn’t make demands, unless it was to tell him what she needed from his mouth or cock or tongue. Here, they could be, swaddled in a world made of secrets and quiet, of glistening skin and pleasure. Kai was drunk on her. Higher than he’d ever been just by watching her sleep, seeing her smile and know he was the one who put it there.
And when she loved him? When Gia wrapped her mouth or her pretty pussy around him and let him enjoy her, let himself feel everything she offered, he swore he could fly.
“This?” she asked, grinning when Kai grunted a half moan, half gasp as she moved back down on his body, sucking him, those perfect full lips taking all he had for her like she couldn’t get enough of the taste of him.
“That. Is. Perfect.” Kai held the back of her head against him, his shoulders and head digging into the mattress when she used her tongue and fingers. “Oh…shit…” He couldn’t watch her when he came. It was too much sensation to see her cheeks concave and that proud tilt of her mouth moving up as she took him all.
“So easy…” she said, moving next to him when Kai’s breathing had returned to normal. Gia rubbed her fingertips over his chest, tickling the curve of his nipple as she watched him. “Women could literally rule the world if we were just more organized.”
“You could…” he said, his breathing still uneven.
“Your people are too easily led by your dicks. One blow job and I could have you signing over your entire bonus to me.”
“I’d do it without the BJ if you wanted it,” he admitted, knowing she didn’t believe him. There was too much truth in that admission, but Gia wouldn’t hear it. She tended to tune out anytime he was honest about how easily she could have anything he had. “But if you’re offering.”
“Well,” she said, that grin returning to her lips, “it’s not like you haven’t returned the favor…often.”
