027— "DON'T STOP, KAI."

The car ride was the longest twenty minutes of my life.

Not because anything happened. Because nothing happened and everything was loud anyway.

Kai drove. I sat in the passenger seat and looked out the window and caught him, twice, three times, glancing across at me before looking back at the road. He never said anything about the glances. Neither did I.

He was wearing a dark brown suit.

Same shade as my dress, which was either Anton's doing or a coincidence and I was not going to think about which.

I had never noticed how handsome he actually was.

Not the cold surface of it that I'd registered the first time I saw him. The actual thing. The way everything about his face was too sharp to be pretty…

I looked back out the window before I finished the thought.

"You're staring," he said.

"I have a wide field of vision," I said. "It's a gift."

The corner of his mouth moved two millimeters.

I looked out the window.

…

The building was already full when we arrived.

We walked in side by side and I felt the shift immediately. 

Heads turning. Attention moving through the room in a wave until it found us and stayed. I kept my chin up and told myself it was Kai they were looking at.

It wasn't only Kai.

My teammates were near the entrance. Anya turned and saw me and her mouth opened and stayed open. She grabbed Mari's arm without looking away and Mari turned and did the same thing.

I had a brief out of body experience watching people I played hockey with three times a week look at me like they'd never seen me before.

Anya crossed to me in four steps and grabbed both my hands.

"Who are you?" she asked.

"I own a dress apparently," I said.

"You own THAT dress." She looked at it. At my hair. She dropped her voice. "He hasn't looked away from you since you walked in."

"He's scanning the room…"

"Sloane. I'm standing right here. I have functioning eyes." She smiled. 

"I have a dance with someone. Don't do anything I wouldn't do." She leaned in. "Which is very little so you have a lot of room."

She disappeared into the crowd.

I turned around and Kai was gone.

                   

                     ~

I found a seat near the edge of the room and got a drink. The dancing had started, people pressed close together in the middle of it all.

I was absolutely fine sitting alone.

"You look like someone who's pretending to be fine sitting alone."

I turned.

He had very brown eyes and the smile of someone who meant it.

"Daniel," he said. "And you look like you could use better company."

He was human. I clocked it immediately and felt something in my chest loosen because human meant no pack politics, no hierarchy. Just a person.

We talked. 

He was funny in the way of someone who didn't know they were funny, the humor arriving sideways, landing before I'd decided to let it. He asked about hockey. I told him more than I intended to. He told me about his work and I found myself actually listening.

I laughed twice.

Real laughs. 

Then I felt it.

Dark eyes on me.

I looked.

Kai stood against the far wall with a drink he hadn't touched. He was looking at me with something in his eyes that had nothing professional in it. 

His jaw was tight. He looked at Daniel then back at me then at Daniel again. I had never seen him look like that.

I looked back at Daniel.

"Dance with me," Daniel said.

"Yes," I said.

                     ~

I hadn't expected the dance to be like that.

The music had slowed and Daniel's hand was at my waist. His face was so close and he was saying something near my ear…

"You really are beautiful", and I smiled and started to respond.

A hand closed around my arm.

I turned.

Kai.

His face was less controlled than I had ever seen it. Something was showing that he hadn't decided to show and he clearly knew it. His grip on my arm tightened.

"We're leaving," he said. His voice cracked slightly on the last word.

"We're in the middle of…"

"We're leaving." He looked at Daniel once. Daniel found somewhere else to be immediately. I rounded on Kai as he pulled me toward the exit.

"Let go of me…"

"Outside." His voice was rough.

 "Now."

"KAI!"

"Please." The word came out like it surprised him. 

"Outside."

He pushed open a side door and cold air hit my face and we were on a narrow terrace. I spun on him the moment the door closed behind us.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" I snapped. "He was just…"

"He had his hands on you."

I stopped.

He stopped.

His chest was rising and falling faster than usual. His hands were at his sides and they weren't loose the way they usually were. They were tight, like he was holding himself back from something and not entirely succeeding.

"That's what this is," I said slowly.

"That's not…"

"Say it." I stepped toward him. "Say what it actually is."

He looked at me and swallowed.

"Nobody puts their hands on you," he said.  

"Nobody."

I stared at him.

The words landed somewhere they had no business landing. I felt them settle in my chest and I should have said something cutting, something that established that I was not his anything, that the audacity of…

I leaned closer instead.

"Nobody," I repeated softly.

His eyes dropped to my mouth.

His control left his face completely.

He grabbed my neck with his whole hand, his warm fingers curling around the back of it, and pulled me into him.

His mouth came down on mine hard.

No warning. 

Just his lips on mine like he'd been thinking about it since the staircase and had run out of reasons not to.

I went completely still.

One heartbeat.

Two.

Three.

Then something in me gave up entirely and I kissed him back.

He made a sound against my mouth, and his grip on my neck tightened, tilting my head back, opening me to him. 

His other hand found my waist and slid down to the small of my back and pressed, fitting my body against his until I could feel everywhere we touched, the heat of him, the hard line of his thigh between mine.

His lips left mine.

"Ahh…" The sound escaped before I could catch it, embarrassingly close to a whimper, and he heard it.

His mouth curved against my jaw for one second before he opened it against my throat. His tongue was hot and wet on my skin, dragging slowly from beneath my ear down to where my pulse hammered.

I gasped, my fingers finding his hair and gripping tight.

"Kai…"

He closed his mouth over that spot and sucked.

Hard.

Really hard.

My knees buckled. 

"Ahh, Goddess…" I moaned, the sound vibrating in my own ears. 

His arm banded around my waist, holding me up, pulling me harder against him while his mouth worked at my neck. 

He alternated. Sucking, then soothing with his tongue, then sucking again, and each time the pressure built, I felt it between my legs, a pulse that had everything to do with the rhythm of his mouth and the slow roll of his hips against mine.

"More," I breathed against his hair, not sure what I was asking for.

 "Kai, more…"

He bit down, just slightly, at the juncture of my neck and shoulder, and I cried out…

"Ah!"

I was surprised by how much I wanted it, how much further I wanted him to go. How much I wanted…him.

My hands fisted in his hair and I arched into him, offering my throat, and he took it, his tongue tracing patterns that made my hips move without my permission, grinding against his thigh, seeking friction.

Seeking more.

He groaned against my skin. The first time I'd heard that sound from him, and his hand at my back slid lower, over the curve of my ass, pulling me against him until I felt how hard he was, the thick line of him pressing into my stomach. 

The knowledge of it. That I had done this to him, that all his control had narrowed to this, made me moan again, louder this time, my head falling back against the hand still wrapped around my neck.

"Look at me," he said against my throat, his voice barely recognizable.

I did. I forced my eyes open and looked down at him, at his mouth wet from my skin, and he held my gaze as his hand left my waist and found the slit in my dress, sliding up my bare thigh and immediately inching higher.

"Tell me to stop," he said.

I didn't. 

I spread my legs slightly and his hand moved between them, two fingers pressing against me over the thin fabric of my underwear, and I was so wet I felt it myself. 

So wet that his fingers glided.

The pressure was finally, exactly where I needed it.

"Uhhhm…" My hips jerked into his palm and he made that wrecked sound again and pressed harder, his fingers finding the shape of me through the soaked fabric, rubbing in slow circles that made my vision blur. 

"Ohh… Kai…"

He pushed the fabric aside and touched me directly. Skin to skin, his fingers sliding through wetness that made my face burn even as my hips chased more. 

"Fuck," he breathed against my jaw. He felt it too, how ready I was.

"Kai," I moaned, and I was begging now, no question, my hands clutching at his shoulders, my body moving against his hand with no coordination, just need. 

"Kai, please, don't stop…"

His thumb found the exact spot above where his fingers moved and I gasped…

"Ah!" My head falling forward onto his shoulder, my teeth finding the fabric of his suit jacket and biting down to muffle the sounds he was pulling from me. 

His fingers curled inside me, pressing against something that made my… and I was so wet I could hear it. The shameless sound of his hand working between my legs, and I didn't care, I only wanted more.

His mouth crashed back into mine, his tongue sliding deep, tasting me, his fingers still working inside me, and I was making sounds I had never made before. 

"Ah, ah, ahh…" My body was tightening around his fingers, my inner muscles fluttering with how close I was. His thumb pressed harder, faster, and my knees went, my weight collapsing into his arm around my waist, and I tore my mouth from his to gasp, "There, there, don't…"

He stopped.

His fingers withdrew slowly, and I felt the loss like a physical wound.

"Kai."

He stepped back, putting a distance between us.

His chest was heaving. His hair was destroyed where my hands had been. His mouth was red. I could see the shape of him still straining against his trousers and he didn't try to hide it, his hand. The one that had been inside me was still slightly wet.

"I've been drinking," he said.

His voice was completely even.

I stared at him. At his mouth. 

"It was a mistake," he said. "Forget it happened."

I looked at him for one more second. My body was still shaking, still wet and aching where he'd left me, and I hated him for that, hated him for stopping, hated him for starting, hated that I couldn't tell which I hated more.

"Of course it was," I said.

I turned and walked back through the door before he could see my face.