All the Pretty Poses (Pretty #2)(40)
Author: M. Leighton

His eyes flick up to mine. In them is passion like I’ve never seen before. Reese slips the tip of his wet finger into his mouth, his eyes drifting shut on a groan of pure pleasure. “God, that’s the best thing I’ve ever put in my mouth.”

Despite my spent body, a spark flares between my legs as I watch him spread my folds and ease back into me. “Now let me fill you up,” he says before he begins his sweet torment all over again. True to his word, Reese fills me up when he reaches his own climax. He doesn’t stop until I can feel it running down onto the floor beneath me.

In the end, it’s my third orgasm that does me in. I’m so overcome with intense pleasure that I don’t even realize I’m screaming Reese’s name until I see his smile.

I did it. Just like he said I would.

I was happy to prove him right.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE – Reese

Kennedy doesn’t object when I dress her, pick her up in my arms and carry her back to her room.

She also doesn’t object when I turn on the shower and take her with me into it, fully clothed, only to repeat my invasion of her body all over again. It’s when we are lying naked in her bed, curled up beneath the warm covers, her body tucked into the curve of mine, that I begin to wonder why it is that I just can’t seem to get enough of her.

“What are you thinking about?” she asks softly from beside me. I had thought she was asleep.

Before I can think better of it, I tell her the truth. “Why it is that I can’t seem to get enough of you.”

I can almost hear her smile. “Is that a bad thing?”

I pull her in closer to me and kiss the silky skin behind her ear. “Hell no.”

“Then why so puzzled?”

“I don’t know. I just…I just feel like I don’t even know who I am anymore.”

I feel her stiffen slightly before she rolls onto her back and turns her head so she can look at me. “You mean because you’re with me?”

The sadness and disappointment in her eyes gives me a painful stab in my chest. “God, no! Why would you even think that?”

She shrugs casually, but I know she feels anything but nonchalant. “It’s not like I’m exactly ‘acceptable’ in your world.”

“Who gives a shit? I’ve spent my whole life trying to be someone I’m not. Now, all these years later, I’m just…angry.”

Kennedy reaches up and strokes my cheek, her eyes big, green pools of something sweet and safe and real. “You don’t have to be anybody but Reese with me.”

“But do you even know who I am?”

My question surprises her. She has no answer.

“Do you really want me to be the guy who could just leave you like I did? Because I don’t think I like him very much.”

“We all grow and change with time, Reese. You don’t have to be exactly like that guy anymore. You can be anyone you want to be.”

“One thing hasn’t changed in all these years.”

“What’s that?” she asks, her fingertips making lazy circles over my jawbone.

“I don’t think I’ve ever stopped feeling what that nineteen year old boy felt. Since the day I left you, all I can ever remember being is angry. Everything else was just a…a…façade. A mask. A pose for someone else’s benefit. To convince people that I’m something I’m not.”

“You mean your father?”

I nod. “And others. I’ve built an empire by showing people that I’m a shrewd, ruthless businessman who can’t be taken advantage of. Just like my father. Yet I’ve spent a lifetime trying to be anything but him. As it turns out, I’ve been walking in his footsteps all along.”

“It’s not too late to start over, Reese. It’s never too late.”

I stare into Kennedy’s eyes, into her beautiful face. “I wish it was that easy.”

“It can be.”

I smile and kiss her on the end of her nose, but I make no comment. She probably wouldn’t say that if she knew everything about me.

No, she wouldn’t say that at all.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO – Kennedy

I’ve never felt more like a princess than I do when I’m with Reese. Well, I’ve actually never felt like a princess at all until Reese. He had this way of making me feel special when we were younger. That’s something that hasn’t changed. He makes me feel like I’m the only girl in the world.

He’s hardly left my side for a minute since the night he found me in my room, sea sick. During the day, he’ll go for a few minutes here and there to take care of business with Karesh or make a few necessary phone calls, but it’s usually when I’m changing clothes for dinner. Otherwise, every morning he’s curled around me when I wake up, he’s putting his hands all over me in the gym as he works me out, he’s giving me the royal treatment as we lie by the pool and then he’s hiding away with me at night, making love to me in breathtaking ways. It’s been the most surreal experience of my life.

He hasn’t asked me to dance again either. He did manage to apologize the morning after my last dance, though. The morning after that crazy encounter on the stage.

I woke to the fine tickle of something along my side. I reached around to brush it away, only to find it was Reese’s hand.

“Your skin is like the finest silk in the world,” he’d purred by my ear. At that point, he’d abandoned the light tickling and started to stroke his palm up and down my side. “I’m sorry if I embarrassed you last night.”

“How did you embarrass me?” I asked, starting to squirm as his hand moved further and further toward my front, skimming the edge of my breast all the way down to the inside of my hipbone and back again.

“By clearing the room,” he said, dragging his palm up between my br**sts and then back down again. His fingertips stopped just at the apex of my thighs, causing a thrill to precede them and land in my core like a bolt of lightning. On his next trip up and down, I found myself anticipating his arrival there, hoping he’d touch me like I wanted him to.

“Yes, how horrible of you to do what you want to do on your own ship. It was scandalous,” I teased, trying to be patient and wait for him to make the first move.

When his hand found its way to the bottom of my stomach again, I eased my legs open the tiniest bit in invitation, but still he stopped just short of the throb there.

“You don’t know how conflicted I was. This is my boat and these are my clients and that’s the kind of entertainment I promise them. But not you. Never you. I loved seeing you up there, but knowing that they were watching you…” He trailed off, his touch growing rougher, more insistent as he trekked back up my stomach to cup my breast. “Knowing that they were watching your ni**les get hard under that water…” He pinched my nipple then, tugging it as though the memory still aggravated him. I sucked in a breath and I waited, fighting the urge to arch my back and press my butt into his groin. “Knowing that they were wishing they could put their hands on you,” he said, moving down to the ache that seems only to burn for him, “to put their fingers inside you. Their cocks.”