Since I Saw You (Because You Are Mine #4)(43)
Author: Beth Kery

“What?” she sputtered. “No, of course . . . Ian said that?”

“Yeah. He seems to think that you’re like a piece of fine porcelain that we men trample all over in our blind, savage stupidity.”

At first she just stared at him incredulously before the ridiculousness of what he was saying struck her. She burst into laughter. The familiar thundercloud expression darkened Kam’s face.

“What are you laughing about?” he demanded.

She tried to stop giggling, but only snorted. His scowl was priceless. She brushed her hand over his jaw, heartened to see her caress lighten his expression ever so slightly.

“It’s just hilarious. Why would Ian say something so strange to you?” she asked, repressing her mirth with effort.

Kam scooted closer to her. One second, they’d been apart, and the next his solid male body was close, skimming and brushing against tingling patches of her skin. His movement erased her erupting amusement like nothing else could.

“You think it’s strange, do you?” he murmured, a warning glint in his eyes, his face just inches from hers. His big hand opened at her lower back and lowered to her ass. He pushed her closer yet with a precise flex of his arm. She zipped across the sheets and thudded against his solid length. He paused, squeezing her buttock. Desire rippled through her when she felt his obvious response to their pressing naked bodies.

“Yes. Don’t you?” she asked, her chin tilting up to bring his mouth into striking distance of her own.

He held her stare and shook his head slowly. “I think Ian’s got a point. You certainly turn me into an animal.”

A smile flickered across her lips. “I don’t think that’s what Ian meant.”

“He meant I should be careful with you,” Kam said distractedly. Even though the light was dim, she sensed his gaze drop to where her breasts pressed against his chest. “But it’s just so fucking hard when all I want to do is . . . fuck you hard,” he muttered before he kissed her—hot and toe curling—and Lin gave up entirely on making sense of their conversation. He lifted his head slightly a moment later. “I want you again,” he stated the obvious, which throbbed against her thigh. “I know you’re probably sore. I’m sorry. I’ll try to be civilized.”

She closed her eyes and moaned softly as he shaped one of her breasts to his palm.

“I don’t want you civilized,” she whispered before she pressed her lips to his and lost herself in Kam’s wild, fierce heat.

•   •   •

Kam awoke in the early morning hours. Rather than being disoriented like he had been almost every day when he woke up in his claustrophobic hotel room, he knew precisely where he was. The scent from Lin’s hair combined with the unmistakable fragrance of sex lingering in the air had pleasantly warned him even before he’d opened his eyes.

He’d left the bedroom door open when he rushed Lin in here earlier, laid her on the bed and ravaged her. A light was on in the hallway, the distant glow sufficient for him to see Lin’s face on the pillow next to him. For a few seconds, he just studied her sublime beauty cast in shadow and pale gold. He recalled in vivid detail their last joining. She’d been on top, her face tight with pleasure, her breasts heaving, her round hips gyrating in a graceful, precise rhythm that had left him sweating. He’d finally taken control, driving her down on him until her cries had grown frantic and she’d shuddered around him, her bliss driving him straight over the edge with her.

So much for going easy on her. He knew very well she was tender from his forceful lovemaking, but he couldn’t seem to stop this frenzy of need.

He waited for the urge to leave her bed to settle on him, studying her peaceful expression the whole time. It finally dawned him that the impulse wasn’t coming. Instead, he wanted to pull her against him and join her in the warm, secure cocoon of deep sleep.

He stiffened at the realization. The only woman he’d ever regularly spent the night with had been Diana. Even with Diana, however, he’d sometimes awakened in the middle of the night feeling claustrophobic. Suffocated. He’d controlled the impulse to flee, however, knowing it wasn’t appropriate with the woman he loved.

The Kam Reardon who had first arrived in London for college at seventeen, the awkward, brutish young man, had vanished, replaced by a well-groomed and cosmopolitan, if occasionally taciturn, cardiology resident with a brilliant future. The nearly ten years he’d spent in London had altered him beyond recognition. Many of the quirky mannerisms he’d acquired at Aurore Manor had to be willfully abandoned, strangled out of existence, or at best controlled. His brooding, harsh moods morphed into reserved, aloof ones. He’d believed in the rightness of his self-discipline of his more idiosyncratic, loner mannerisms until the day Diana had found out about his parentage and bizarre, inglorious upbringing. He’d believed until the day she’d fabricated a lie for him to give as a cover story to their affluent “friends.” Until he’d stubbornly shoved his ragged, shameful past into her and her friends’ faces, publically humiliating her—or so Diana had claimed.

Until she’d left him. Or he’d sacrificed Diana to his pride and left her. Kam had never really figured out which.

After that catastrophe, he hadn’t even bothered to rein in his instinct for isolation. He’d been entranced by Diana’s elegance and sophistication, her beautiful body and a face that could make a man like him crazed, it was so beyond his experience. He’d been hypnotized into sacrificing his freedom.

It suddenly struck him that the more refined Kam had recently made a reappearance since coming to Chicago. Yes, his cosmopolitan impression was less consistent than it had once been, and probably a hell of a lot less convincing. But he’d definitely been donning the once-familiar role again.

He’d been doing it because of Lin, and for no other reason.

“Kam?” Lin murmured a minute later as he pulled on his pants, her sleep-roughened voice in the darkness causing goose bumps to rise on his neck and arms.

“Yeah. Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you. I thought I should go. I’m moving over to the apartment in the morning.”

“I’ll send a driver to the hotel who can help you transport all your things,” Lin said in a hushed voice.

“It’s okay,” he assured, whipping on his shirt and buttoning it rapidly. “I can carry it all, no problem. I’ll take a cab.” He hesitated next to the bed, now fully dressed. Her low, melodious voice, graceful arms and soft-looking form beneath body-warmed covers pulled at his consciousness.