“I’m so sorry.” His hand shifted to cradle my hip, and when his fingers left my stomach, his lips found it. “He will pay,” Kris murmured, his breath warm against my skin, the stubble on his chin rough, yet comforting in the way only something so tangibly masculine can be. “No one should touch you out of anything other than adoration, ever again.”

My breath caught in my throat, and my hands caught in his hair, and when Kris stood, he was all I could see. “I adore you, Sera. Will you let me touch you?”

“Yes. Please.”

The words carried almost no sound, but he heard them.

Kris blinked at me in surprise, but that was gone in an instant, replaced by desire burning bright in his eyes, tinged with something stronger. Something I desperately wanted to believe in.

I could have this. I could have Kris, and if what I saw in his eyes could be trusted, I wouldn’t be getting him just for the night. And I wouldn’t be getting him alone. Kris was a package deal. He came with sisters, and friends, and a grandmother. A ready-made family with tempers, and hugs, and dementia, and chili, and arguments, and laughter, even in the worst of times, and a shared mission I already believed in.

They couldn’t replace the family I’d lost. But they didn’t have to, and they wouldn’t try to. They would just be there.

Kris would be there. If I let him.

Kris kissed me, and I kissed him back. I let everything go, and it was easier than I’d expected, because he wanted the burden. He didn’t just want to touch me, he wanted to know me. He wanted to know what had made me who I was. So I showed him.

I poured all my grief into that kiss. All my hunger for vengeance. And I fed from the same in him, astonished by the translation of heat from remembered violence to carnal appetite. We kissed until I forgot about the house around us and the people in it. Until I no longer felt the door at my back or the floor beneath my feet. I couldn’t feel anything but him, and I couldn’t touch enough of him to satisfy hands that had gone empty for too long. A mouth that had tasted only bitterness and pain for months on end.

But I could sure as hell try.

When kissing was no longer enough, I tugged on the end of his shirt, wordlessly commanding its removal as my mouth demanded even more from his lips. His tongue. Kris pulled away just long enough to tug his shirt over his head, and suddenly I could touch him unhindered by useless cotton.

I tasted him then, clean from a recent shower. His earlobes felt good between my teeth and his hair smelled like guy-shampoo. His neck was rough with stubble, and just a little salty. His chin was strong, and the back of his jawbone fit in the gap between my lips like I was always meant to kiss him there.

My hands found smooth skin over taut muscle. Hard planes and all the right masculine bumps and ridges. He let me play, tasting, testing, learning his body as thoroughly as I could, because I wouldn’t get another chance. His hands stayed anchored at my waist, fingers splayed around the curve of my ribs. He was more patient than I.

Until he wasn’t.

His eager tug at my shirt demanded reciprocation, so I lifted my arms and let him take it off. I didn’t see where it fell, and I didn’t give a damn, because then he was touching me, and his touch felt hungry, yet restrained. He took his time, as if every inch of me deserved to be explored with equal attention, and when he dropped to his knees in front of me again, his lips trailing from my navel toward the low waist of my borrowed pj shorts, my head fell back against the door and my hands tangled in his pale hair.

Kris blazed hotter than anything I’d ever felt. His lips were like sparks against my skin, his hands practically on fire, and I burned everywhere he touched me. When his mouth found my scar again, those flames almost overwhelmed me, and I felt my body go still on its own. But then I pushed the memories away. I let him burn them back until I could hardly see them anymore, and when he hesitated at the waist of my shorts, I pulled him up to eye level.

“Is this what you want?” I was suddenly sure I’d misread some signal, or read more into what he was saying than he’d actually meant. Was that why he’d stopped?

“So much,” he said, his voice scratchy with desire, and I almost melted with relief. “But if you don’t, we don’t have to...”

“I do.” I wanted to touch all of him. I wanted him to touch all of me. I wanted to forget everything in the world that wasn’t relevant to him, and to me, and to the two of us together, for as long as I could have him.

It’s sheer luck that we made it to the bed, when the floor was so much closer, but when I felt the mattress touch the backs of my thighs, I sat. Kris joined me seconds later, nude and unspeakably beautiful, and I closed my eyes, afraid to look too long at the miracle I’d found, for fear that it would disappear.

I exhaled at his next touch, then held my breath altogether when his mouth followed a moment later, working its way down from my neck. I kept my eyes squeezed shut and let my hands see for me, sliding over his arms and chest, feeling the curve of his biceps, then traveling over the planes of his back. His mouth trailed down from my breast, over my stomach, and I arched into his touch, drawing another groan from him as he slid the borrowed shorts over my hips. Then came the soft exhalation of surprise when he realized I wore nothing beneath them—I don’t borrow underwear.

And that was all the waiting I could take.

I kicked the shorts off and pulled him back up, opening for him, as he settled between my thighs. I slid the arches of my feet up his calves and he leaned closer to whisper into my ear.